“It’s beginning to look as though we were getting into the time when the land was ahead,” remarked Perry, examining the soil.
“Yes, yes,” said Antoine, “you are right. And see!”
He pointed to the face of the escarpment, up which they were toilsomely climbing.
“Fossil trees!” cried Perry.
“Yes, yes. All petrified. All these trees floated down that river millions of years ago. There were floods. There will be animals here, too, that were carried down by the floods.” He pointed to one of the many bones that could be seen. “The crocodiles were here,” he said, “so the bones are likely to be all separated, the dead animals having been pulled apart when they were eaten. It will not be easy, Perry. There must have been a sand-bar at the mouth of that old river somewhere about here, and when the animals came drifting down with the river gravel and sand, they were stopped and piled up at the sand-bar.”
“Hello—” interrupted the boy, “what’s happening? It isn’t sunset yet!”
The whole caravan had halted, as if at the time of Mohammedan prayer, and the men and boys fell on their knees. But, this time, the camels and donkeys crowded in and the lad saw that a few small rain-pools had been discovered. This unexpected supply of water cheered everybody, and it was only a little more than two hours later that the tents of the advance party came into sight. This party, carrying supplies and the heavy tools, had gone from Cairo to Tamia by train and hence had arrived three days earlier.
Late that evening the tents were reached and the permanent camp pitched. It was on the widest of these ledges or tiers of rock, a ledge varying from one to two miles wide and stretching in an almost even line sixty to seventy miles long. The level of the Libyan desert was six hundred feet higher still, a stiff climb.
“I don’t know how you feel about it, Antoine,” said Perry, confidingly to his friend, as they turned in for the night, “and I wouldn’t say so to Uncle George for the world, but I’m sure glad to have a rest from that camel. I was just beginning to think that my backbone never would come straight again.”
Antoine smiled sympathetically.