At the present moment the coast below Ras Bernas and above Sawakin is the hot-bed of the slave trade, carried on between the Dervishes of the Nile Valley and Arabia. Regular Egyptian coastguard boats keep matters pretty clear north of Ras Bernas, and we can testify to their activity, for we ourselves were boarded and searched by one; but south of this, before the influence of Sawakin is reached, there is a long stretch of country where the traffic in human flesh can be carried on undisturbed. Troops of slaves are sent down from the Nile valley to the Dervish country at certain seasons of the year, and the petty sheikhs along the coast, owing a doubtful allegiance to the Egyptian Government, connive at this transport; and the pearl-fishing craft which ply their trade amongst the coral reefs are always ready to carry the slaves across to the opposite coast, where the markets of Yembo, Jeddah, and Hodeida are open to them. This will, of course, be the case until the Dervish power is crushed, and the Soudan opened out for more legitimate trade. As we sailed along we passed hundreds of these pearl-fishing boats engaged in this dual trade, and nothing could be more propitious for their pursuits than the absolutely lawless condition of the tribes by the coast. At Berenice, for instance, there are absolutely no government or inhabitants of any sort. Nominally, one of our Nile frontier subsidised sheikhs, Beshir Bey Gabran, of Assouan, has authority over all the country between the Nile and the Red Sea, but the coast has been visited more frequently by Dervish emirs than by Beshir Bey. One Nasrai, a Dervish emir, is said to have resided in the mountains behind Berenice for some time past, and, with a small following, collects tithes of cattle from the nomads and sees to the safe conduct of slave caravans. The collecting of yusur, or black coral, as they call it, a fossilised vegetable growth, is a third trade in which these boats are employed. From this pipes are made, and beads, and the black veneer for inlaying tables.
The navigation of an Arab dhow is no easy task, with its clumsy arrangements for sails, when there is a strong north wind behind it and reefs in every direction. Three men are perpetually in the bows on the look out for rocks, and indicate the presence of danger to the steersman by raising their hands. The gear of these boats is exceedingly primitive. They do not understand reefing a sail, hence they are obliged to have no less than five different sizes, which they are constantly changing as occasion requires. They use a clumsy cogwheel for raising and lowering the sails, and do it all by main force, singing silly little distiches and screaming at the top of their voices as they haul the ropes. The arrangement for baling out the bilge water is extremely laborious. A large trough, with channels on either side, is erected in the centre of the boat, into the middle of which the water is baled by skins from below, and the stenches during the process are truly awful, as the water flows out of either channel, according to the roll of the ship. There was always a large surface of wet wood to dry up.
Leaving Kosseir on the last day of 1895, we reached Ras Bernas on the second day of 1896, stopping, of course, each night, always rolling and tossing about, and always keeping a sharp look out for coral reefs, the watchers shouting advice continually to Reis Hamaya.
We were supposed to owe our safety in getting through some dangerous reefs, with not a yard to spare on either side, and escaping our other difficulties, to the lucky fact of Reis Hamaya's having discovered amongst the plants that my husband had collected in our walks ashore one of the order of Compositæ, which he pounced on gladly and hung on the bow of the Taisir, as a protection to us.
He pointed out another thing, a shrub called tuldum, with tiny yellow flowers on green stalks, good to tie round the arm to make one see far.
Ras Bernas is a long, wandering cape composed of rocky hills of ironstone and silicate curiously blended together, with shoals and rocks, and coral reefs, and sandbanks hanging on to it in very shallow water. It is about twenty-five miles long, and ends in a sandy spit.
We encamped at the head of the lagoon, and spent several days amongst the ruins of this old Ptolemaic town of Berenice, and made sundry excavations there. In its centre is an old temple of the date of Tiberius Cæsar, the hieroglyphs in which are rapidly becoming obliterated. All around is a sea of mounds covered with sand, where the houses stood, mostly built of madrepore, and laid out in streets. On the surface are to be found numerous glass beads, Roman coins, bracelets, &c. and a great number of fragments of rough emeralds. From the celebrated emerald-mines in the mountain behind we picked up fully fifty of these, besides a large quantity of olivines or peridots, cornelians, and crystals, testifying to the wealth of these parts in precious stones in ancient days.
A few startled Ababdeh nomads came to visit us; at first they only inspected us at a distance, but gradually gained courage and came to our camp, and we were able to purchase from them two lambs to replenish our larder.
With its emerald-mines, its harbour, and its great road terminus Berenice must have been one of the most important trade centres of the Red Sea; though, judging from the plans of the streets we made out, the town cannot have been a very large one. In digging we turned up immense quantities of textiles in scraps, fine and coarse, nets, knitted work, as well as weaving, plain and in colours, and bits of papyrus in Greek cursive hand. The wretched Ababdeh tribes were constantly at war with one another, and the Dervish Khalifa could make his authority felt about here with a small handful of resolute men judiciously placed. Nasrai had, I believe, done this for some time past with only thirty men.
The nights here were very cold, the thermometer going down to 46° F. There were a few gazelles about, but we saw no other animals.