Belzoni’s map[5] of his routes is of course very crude and erroneous, but the fact that he gives the names of the places he passed enables one to reconstruct his routes on modern maps with fair exactitude. His drawings of the ruins he visited are fairly accurate, that of the rock temple of Sikait being a much truer picture than Cailliaud’s.
The extreme south-east corner of Egypt was first explored in 1831 and 1832 by Linant de Bellefonds, who twenty years later published an interesting account of his travels and discoveries.[6] The manner in which Linant Bey’s expedition arose is very curious. He had read the accounts of Diodorus and Arabic writers concerning the ancient gold mines of the Eastern Desert, and when he accidentally discovered small crystals of gold in quartzose detritus brought down the Wadi Alaqi into the Nile by a storm torrent, he at once inferred that this wadi would lead him to the mines. The Arabs told him, quite correctly, that the down-wash had its origin far up the wadi, nine days’ journey from its mouth. Reporting his discovery to Mohammad Ali Pasha, that prince commissioned him to lead an expedition to search for the mines. Starting from Aswan, Linant journeyed south-east and discovered the ancient mines and ruins at Gebel Seiga (Bp), and subsequently the more extensive workings at various places round the head of Wadi Alaqi, such as Egat (Ft) and Darahib (Gu). From the Alaqi district he proceeded northward to Bir Shinai (Hr), and thence eastwards round the spurs of the mountains to Bir Meisah (Kr), east of which he discovered the old mines of Romit (Ls). Crossing the great Wadi Di-ib, he appears to have reached Bir Akwamtra (Os), at the foot of Gebel Elba. His desire to explore the mysterious Elba mountains was frustrated by the Arabs, and he only ascended a minor peak before commencing his return march. From Elba he returned via Bir Meisah, Bir Beida (Ho), and the Wadis Khashab (Gn), Hodein, Rod el Kharuf (Ch), and Kharit to Daraw on the Nile, discovering the springs of Abu Saafa (Em) in the course of his march.
Linant thus performed for the south portion of the district a similar service to that which his compatriot Cailliaud had already done for the north portion. His remarks on the people of the country, their manners and customs, are no less interesting than his descriptions of the ruins and mines which he discovered. The notes on certain points, such as the manner of trapping the wild ass which then roamed these deserts, are specially interesting as illustrating past usages. Linant also compiled a small Bisharin-French vocabulary as an appendix to his work. The large map accompanying his book, though it is well engraved and depicts well the general mountainous character of the country, is unfortunately full of large errors; Gebel Is (Jt), for example, is placed more than sixty kilometres too far south; while many of the place-names are either wholly incorrect or so loosely transliterated as to be almost unrecognisable. But with all its defects, Linant’s map remained the only source for cartographers for a large portion of the Eastern Desert down to the time of the commencement of the present survey; the map of Egypt published in 1905 by the Topographical Section of the British General Staff, for instance, contains much of Linant’s material, though a comparison of that map with the one joined to this report will show how great were the errors in the matter thus incorporated.
Wilkinson[7] gives very brief notes on Berenice and the ancient roads leading to it, as well as on the emerald mines of Zabara and the ruins of the Sikait district. Wilkinson believed he had identified all the ancient stations on the Koptos-Berenice road, besides another smaller one not mentioned in classical itineraries. In the temple of Berenice he found a small fountain, which is now in the British Museum. But his work added little to what had already been learned by Cailliaud and Belzoni regarding this part of Egypt.
In 1836, Wellsted,[8] a lieutenant in the Indian Navy, who had been employed in surveying the Red Sea coast, described the topography of Berenice, and assigned to the place its true latitude of 23° 55′. He gives a plan and view of the temple, which he partially cleared, and in which he found fragments of Greek tablets and of a statue.
Between 1830 and 1840 important contributions were furnished to the geography of Eastern Egypt by the surveys of the Red Sea, carried out by Moresby, Wellsted, and other officers of the East India Company’s Navy. Their sailing directions formed the foundation of the “Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Pilot,” now published by the British Admiralty.[9] Both the charts and sailing directions have been continually revised by Admiralty surveys, and furnish much accurate information about the coast. The principal errors are that almost the entire coast-line between latitudes 22° and 25° is placed too far to the west,[10] and some of the place-names are wrong, or at least unknown to the local sailors of to-day. Such details of the inland relief as are given on the charts are not correct, as was of course to be expected in a hydrographic survey; but the main summits are fairly accurately laid down, and their altitudes agree well with my determinations. Thus the “Southern peak” of the chart, in latitude 23° 18′, is Gebel Fereyid;[11] the “Black conical hill,” near Mersa Shab, is Gemeida; “Scragged hill” is Qash Amir;[12] “High peak” is Gebel Elba; “Castle hill” is Gebel Shendodai; and “South peak” is Asotriba, the highest mountain of the Elba group.
In 1846, Barth made a journey from Aswân to Berenice and thence to Qoseir, and subsequently published a brief journal of his expedition.[13] Going eastward from Aswân, he passed north of Gebel Hamrat Mukbud (Cf), via the Wadi Khashab, past the tomb of Sheikh Shadli (Df) and the granite boss of Selaia (Fh), which he thought to be of slate, and then descended to the coast by Wadi Salib Abiad and Wadi Khoda (Hf). He discovered the old station (now called Garia Kalalat) south-west of Berenice, on his way to the temple, of which he took measures. Barth remarks on the insignificant nature of the ruins and on the badness of the site for a town. On his return journey, he discovered the wells and ruins of Shenshef (Jj), where there are well preserved remains of substantial dwellings which he thought denoted a settlement by people from Berenice. Ascending the Wadi Shut after returning to Wadi Khoda, he turned westward and reached the plain south of the Abu Hamamid-Hamata mountains. Crossing this mountain track by the difficult pass of Hilgit, he descended the Wadi Huluz (Ef), into Wadi Gemal, whence he turned northward and visited the ruins of Sikait. From Sikait he proceeded by winding tracks past Bir Ghadir (Ec) and on to Qoseir.
The next traveller to visit the district, von Heuglin, examined the country from the coast.[14] Sailing southward from Qoseir, he discovered ruins which he thought to be those of Ptolemy’s Nechesia, in latitude 24° 55′, a little south of Ras Tundeba. Further south, he enumerates the various openings and anchorages of the coast to Suakin. Gebel Hamata (Gf) he wrongly thought might be the Alaqi of the ancient mining records. His “Wadi el Hemmah” is doubtless Wadi Lahami (Hg). Rounding Ras Benas, he passed the coral island of Mukawar (Geziret el Ras), and anchored by the ruins of Berenice, which he states to be called Sikait Qibli.[15] In and near the temple ruins von Heuglin found copper nails, fragments of statues, Roman coins, a quartz sistrum and pieces of beryl, besides potsherds and broken glass. Passing Mersa Shab (Sherm Hel el Madfa), he notes a few fishermen’s dwellings on Seyal Island, and a pearl fisher from Jidda plying his calling at a small anchorage called Gota, near Ras Fatma. He mentions Kwolala as “Geziret Elba,” close to the “peninsula of Halaib” (now an island, Geziret Halaib).[16] The Elba mountains he states to be the Prionotus mons of Ptolemy. The “Sherm Qubeten,” which he notes to the south of Halaib, is doubtless Mersa Qabatit of my map.
It is to the veteran African traveller Schweinfurth that we owe the first investigations of the Elba mountains, as long surrounded with mystery as the stronghold of dreaded Bisharin tribes.[17] Like von Heuglin, Schweinfurth visited the country from the coast, making excursions inland. Starting from Qoseir in March, 1864, he proceeded with frequent stoppages to Suakin, spending nearly six months in exploring the littoral districts. His chief object was the investigation of the flora of the country, but his accounts[18] contain much geographical and geological information of great interest. He compares the coastal ranges of Africa with the Cordilleras of South America, and the Abyssinian highlands with Quito. The flora of the Elba district he found to be sharply marked off from that of the rest of Egypt by the presence of large numbers of plants of Abyssinian types. Among his geological notes, it is interesting to come across a reference to serpentine, which I have lately found to form the great mountain masses of Abu Dahr (Gk), Korabkansi (Fq), and Gerf (Hp). Schweinfurth wrote, however, in the early days of petrography, and his term “basalts” includes a variety of fine-grained dark eruptive rocks which we should now call by other names. The sulphur mines of El Ranga he characterised as worthless, the mineral being in very small quantity. Schweinfurth’s map of the Elba district was a great advance on anything of the kind previously existing, though it contains many inaccuracies, particularly of place-names, as was in fact only to be expected from his very short stay in the locality. He remarked the separation of Gebel Elba (Pr) from the more southern mountains, but failed to notice that Qash Amir (Os), (the “Scragged Hill” of the Admiralty Chart), is in its turn quite distinct from Elba, Halaib is called Elei,[19] and the Geziret Halaib is shown as a peninsula; Kwolala is called “Geziret Elei,” and the Geziret el Dibia (the Elba Island of the charts) is called Geziret Abu Fendira by Schweinfurth. My Wadi Shellal he calls “Wadi Heberah,” and Cape Elba (my Ras Hadarba) is noted as “Ras Edineb.” His “highest peak” (South Peak of the charts) is Asotriba, the highest mountain of the group, lying just within the Sudan; the name Asotriba (Schweinfurth’s “Soturba”) means “green mountain,” and refers to the vegetation on its slopes. Schweinfurth’s experience of the Bisharin led him to give them a very bad character, though he gives high recognition to their beauty of feature and figure; but being unfamiliar with their language was, he admits, an obstacle to forming a fair judgment of them.
In 1873, Colonels Purdy and Colston, two American officers attached to the Egyptian Army, were commissioned by the Khedive Ismail Pasha to carry out a reconnaissance for a proposed railway line between Berenice and Berber. Colston[20] travelled overland from Qena via Qoseir to Berenice, discovering several ancient stations on his way to join Purdy. Though Purdy sanguinely states[21] that “la construction d’un chemin de fer de ce point (Berenice) à Berber n’offrirait pas de grandes difficultés,” the reconnaissance appears to have been singularly rough for a decision in so weighty a matter. Distances were mere guesses, and the only instruments employed seem to have been a compass, aneroid, and hypsometer. The compass must often have been unreliable owing to magnetic rocks, which in places deflect the needle as much as 40° from its normal position, while the use of the aneroid was so little understood that Purdy could actually write, in the concluding paragraph of his paper: “Je me permets de rappeler l’attention sur les notes barométriques jointes à ce rapport. A ce propos, je dois faire observer que quoique l’anéroïde soit très sensible aux changements de niveau, il ne l’est pas assez pour la pression atmosphérique, et sa marche est excessivement irrégulière. . . . Il m’est arrivé, par exemple, de constater, le matin, au moment du départ, une différence sensible du point marqué le soir précédent à mon arrivée.” Not only are many of the place-names given by Purdy erroneous, but some of his most important statements are contrary to fact; to take only a few examples, the Wadi Kalalat is confused with Wadi Shenshef, and Gebel Shut with Gebel Dahanib, while it is stated that no water exists between Gebel Dif (Fm) and Gebel Egat (Ft), although there are several good wells between the two places. The map accompanying Purdy’s paper is full of errors, and almost worse than useless. Of Colston’s route from Qena to Berenice there was no published cartographic record until 1891, when G. Cora[22] endeavoured to place Colston’s track on a map from his manuscript sketches. Cora’s map shows no new material except the route, and even this cannot be very correct, for it is evident on comparison with the results of the recent survey that Colston’s sketch map was of the same rough and inaccurate character as Purdy’s.