Gebel Abu Hamamid is a great ridge of hard greenish schists towering above the surrounding mountains to a height of 1,747 metres above sea. Its crest is broken into a number of separate summits, which appear from most aspects of almost a sugar loaf form; the beacon is on the most northerly and highest of these, its position being latitude 24° 14′ 41″, longitude 34° 47′ 38″. The mountain is best ascended from the Wadi Um Semiuki, a tributary of Huluz, which drains its north-east face. By ascending this wadi till camels could go no higher owing to its increasingly rough and stony floor, I was able to pitch a camp at 865 metres above sea-level and two and a quarter kilometres north-east of the summit, leaving an ascent of 882 metres to be made on foot. The ascent, which occupied four hours, was free from difficulty till within about one hundred metres of the top, but the last portion was extremely steep and was only negotiated with considerable trouble; it represents pretty nearly the limit of possibility in getting instruments up difficult places. Once the top was reached, however, the magnificence of the view obtainable, and the excellence of the point as a station for triangulating the principal peaks among the thousands visible, seemed an ample recompense for the trouble of reaching it. The top of the ridge (see [Plate VII,] p. 166) is very rough and narrow, only a little over a metre wide, and it is difficult to find a spot near the summit where one can spread one’s blankets for the night with even a slight approach to comfort. The eight nights of enforced bivouacking which I was obliged to spend on the top of Abu Hamamid in February 1906, before I could complete my observations, belong to the least pleasant of my experiences in the desert. A little work only was possible the first day, owing to haze obscuring the more distant peaks. On the second day clouds enveloped us in a wet drizzle, and a bitterly cold north wind blew with great violence; a rude rubble shelter which my men built on the summit, covered with a blanket, was a very poor protection, and I found it better to throw a rubble embankment across a steep gully on the lee side, forming a small level platform where we were sheltered from the biting wind. For the next five days, we were alternately wrapped in clouds or left free under a brilliant blue sky with clouds covering all the surrounding country. It was curious on these days to look over the surface of the clouds, as over a boundless level sea, with only the highest peaks projecting sharp and black above the white surface, and to see the sun rise and set exactly as though one were on the ocean. Then at last the clouds began to disappear, and on the first clear day a very large amount of triangulation was accomplished, all the more prominent peaks within a radius of about sixty kilometres being observed. Gebel Abu Hamamid forms a culminating point on the Nile — Red Sea watershed, its eastern parts draining to Wadi Huluz and its western ones to Wadi Abu Hamamid, a tributary of Wadi Kharit.
PLATE XII.
Typical Views among the Mountains of Hamata and Abu Hamamid. (The high peak in the distance in the lower view is Gebel Hamata).
Gebel Um Semiuki is a sharp cone rising to 1,283 metres above the sea among a mass of lower hills three kilometres north-east of Gebel Abu Hamamid. It is of a reddish aspect, due to a film which covers the weathered surface of the green and grey hornfels of which it is composed. It is drained by the Wadi Um Semiuki.
Gebel Abu Argub is a very conspicuous mountain, almost conical in shape, seven and a half kilometres south-south-west of Gebel Abu Hamamid, from which it is separated by lower hills. To the south, Gebel Abu Argub overlooks the plain of Selaia. Its peak, 1,690 metres above sea-level, is a good landmark from the south and west.
Gebel Kahfa is a many-peaked mountain of granite rising abruptly to a height of 1,018 metres above sea from among lower hills of dark schists, nineteen kilometres south-west of Gebel Abu Hamamid. It is detached from the main mountain-mass, being separated from it by the heads of Wadi Um Retba. Its faces are in many places sheer precipices of several hundred metres (see [Plate XIII]), but the ascent of it from the north is not very difficult. In occupying Kahfa as a station I approached it from Bir Shadli by a well-marked track which skirts the western foot-hills and leads to the Wadi Helie. Leaving this track where it crosses Wadi Um Hargal some six kilometres from Bir Shadli, I ascended the Wadi Um Hargal and crossed the pass at its head into the head of Wadi Um Retba, where I pitched my camp at an altitude of 563 metres, at the foot of Gebel Kahfa 1·3 kilometres north-north-east of the beacon on its summit. The climb of 455 metres from this camp to the top occupied three hours. There is good bivouacking ground close east of the summit, between two ridges. The beacon which marks the triangulation point is in latitude 24° 8′ 18″, longitude 34° 38′ 55″. A walk round the top is full of interest; one can reach many points overlooking tremendous precipices, and the forms assumed by the granite peaks are very remarkable. On the west side of the mountain is a rather large open space forming the head of Wadi Helie, but elsewhere one is surrounded by low hills. The principal drainers of Kahfa are the Wadis Um Hargal and Um Retba (tributaries of Wadi el Sheikh) to the north, and Helie and Abu Hashim (tributaries of Wadi Kharit) to the south.
Gebel Medsus is a small group of high hills rising among lower ones between Gebel Abu Hamamid and Bir Shadli.
Gebel Metawit is a high granite hill rising conspicuously among much lower hills thirteen kilometres north-west of Bir Shadli. A track leading from Bir Shadli to Bir Metawit and other wells further north-west passes close east of the hill. Gebel Metawit is a good landmark for Bir Metawit, which is situated in the wadi of the same name about three kilometres north-west of it. The summit is 741 metres above sea-level or about 295 metres above the wadi floor at the well.