Climate.
The climate of the district is predominantly hot and dry to the west of the watershed, hot and moist eastward of it; but very cold weather is apt to prevail for a few weeks in January and February, with strong north winds, on both sides of the watershed, and the transition from piercing cold to great heat at these times is often brought about very suddenly by a change of wind direction. There is seldom any frost, but water-bags are occasionally frozen on the mountain tops at night. Cool north-west winds prevail in the north part of the area, while hot damp winds from the south-east are usual in the south. In the central part, round Berenice, absolute calms are frequent.[39] The highest mountain-masses are frequently swathed in clouds for weeks together, especially from January to March. The hot, dry, sand-laden winds called Khamsin occasionally blow for four or five days together in March and April; at these times the shade temperature rises to over 45° C., and the air is thick with sand and dust. Rain falls in most years, but its quantity is very variable; in some years there is barely enough to keep the wells supplied, and much of the vegetation withers; in others, heavy storms produce wild downrushes in the wadis, filling them for short periods with raging torrents. Curious electrical and optical phenomena can sometimes be seen on the mountain-tops during storms and in mists.[40] The Elba region is seldom free from clouds, and receives far more rain than any other portion of the area, forming in fact the northern limit of the rainy tropical zone; it is in consequence relatively well wooded, while the other mountains are a dreary waste of naked rocks.
Sketch-Map OF SOUTH-EASTERN EGYPT.
Showing Drainage-Basins.
| Ball. Geography & Geology of South-Eastern Egypt. | PLATE II. |
Photo-Metal-Process. Survey Dept. Cairo 1910. (60-190)
Scale 1:2,000,000.
Scenery.
The predominant types of scenery are extensive sandy plains and gaunt rugged mountains. In the low-lands, pleasant relief from the stony monotony is afforded by the trees and scrub which occur along most of the wadis, though their struggle for existence is often evidenced by miles of withered and blackened scrub in places which a few years ago were green and flourishing. The bareness of the mountains becomes slightly relieved in the Elba district, where beautiful trees and flowering plants thrive high up the mountain-side along all the drainage lines. As to the forms of the mountains, one sees extensive broken sandstone plateaux at Gebel Abraq (El), remarkable rounded granite bosses at Gebels Muelih (Ab), Nugrus (Dc), Selaia (Fh), and Um Rasein (Jr), jagged and spiky granite peaks in the mountains of Faraid (Jk), Qash Amir (Os), and Elba (Ps), and broken masses of gneiss, dark schists and serpentines at Gebels Hafafit (Dc), Hangalia (Dc), Abu Hamamid (Ef), Hamata (Gf), and Gerf (Hp). Perhaps the most remarkable of all the peaks are those of Faraid (Jk), which from the north look like the expanded fingers of a huge hand, whence they received their name of Mons Pentadactylus in antiquity, while one specially sharp peak is styled very appropriately “the Bodkin” on Admiralty Charts. The mass of Elba forms a very fine view from the north, but the prevalence of clouds about its summits frequently hides it from view for months together. The views from the mountain-tops are extensive and beautiful, especially at sunrise and sunset, when the peaks take on wonderful colours, and the views from the summits when the entire lower landscape is bathed in clouds, through which only the higher peaks project like islands from a great sea, are not less remarkable. Though a good look out was kept from the highest mountains across the sea, the mountains of the opposite shore of Arabia were never with certainty made out; the cone of Zeberged Island was, however, often seen. It is stated by d’Anville, on the authority of Castro,[41] that both the Arabian and African mountains can be seen from the summit of Zeberged.