In January 1889, Golénischeff made an expedition from the Nile to Berenice and back. His object was to collect archæological information, especially concerning the ancient roads and stations, but the careful account[23] which he has given of his journey is also of geographical interest. Starting from Redesia by Cailliaud’s route, he examined the temple of Seti I, and then discovered the ancient station of Abu Medrik[24] further to the south-east. Passing the ruins at Samut and Dweig (Cc), he found another small station on the way to Abu Had, and arrived at the station in Wadi Gemal (Ed), near Wadi Hafafit. From the Wadi Gemal he proceeded via the Wadis Abiad (Fe), Abu Hegilig, Hefeiri, Abu Ghusun (Ge), Haratreit (Hf), Khashir (in which another ancient station was discovered), and Lahami (Hg), past the Abu Greia ruins, to Berenice. He returned by way of Wadis Naait (Hh) and Lahami on to the plain of Kharit, and thence past Hamrat Mukbud (Cf), via the Wadis Khashab, Kharit (Ag), and Abu Modellim, to the Nile. Golénischeff, besides giving small plans of the various ancient stations and a carefully measured plan of the temple of Berenice, made a comparison of his itinerary with the descriptions of the old roads by classical writers and by Colston. He considers there can be no doubt that Abu Greia is the Vetus hydreuma of Pliny, and the ruins in Wadi Khashir the Novum hydreuma of the same writer. The ruins in Wadi Haratreit he considers to be the station Cabalsi of the Antonine Itinerary, Apollonus being identified with the well found by Colston at Hefeiri, Falacro with the ruins in the Wadi Gemal, and Aristonis with those in Wadi Dweig.
In 1891, Floyer, at the head of a scientific exploring expedition sent out by the Khedive Tewfik Pasha, travelled over the country north of 23° 30′, and his results were published in French in 1893.[25] A little later, the geographical results of the expedition were embodied in an English paper read at the Royal Geographical Society.[26] The general map in the French essay is only on a very small scale, but the English publication is accompanied by a much more illuminating map on a scale of 1:760,320, reduced from one prepared by the Intelligence Division of the War Office from Floyer’s original plane-table sketches. This latter map, in spite of many errors and defects, was a very great advance on anything which had previously appeared, and it formed the principal source of geographical information concerning the north part of the district at the commencement of my survey in 1905.
The geological observations made by Floyer during his expedition formed the subject of a paper read by him before the Geological Society of London in 1892.[27] This paper is chiefly remarkable for the number of grave errors of observation into which Floyer’s limited acquaintance with geology caused him to fall, and later researches have fully justified the scepticism with which his deductions were received by the Society. Thus, for instance, he refers to the ancient schists and slates of Zabara as “blue clay,”[28] and to the dark schists and diorite of Abu Hamamid and Abu Gurdi as “compact granite.” The rocks which Floyer considered to be “metamorphosed sandstone” are diorites and schists at Um Eleiga and in the Wadi Gemal, and typical gneisses and granites in the Nugrus and Hafafit ranges. Not a trace of sandstone has been found to exist within many miles of the places where Floyer records its metamorphism, nor has any evidence of the recent volcanic activity reported by him (Geog. Journal, 1893, p. 430) been discovered.
An account of a short visit to the Elba district was published by Bent[29] in 1896. Bent landed at Halaib and camped near Gebel Shellal (Qt). He thinks that Halaib may have been the town of Aydat mentioned by the Arab geographers Abu el Feda and Edrisi, and that it is a place of purely Arab origin. At Suakin el Qadim (Qs) he found among the mounds nothing earlier than Cufic remains, unless certain graves, formed of four large blocks of coral set deep in the ground, may be looked upon as a more ancient form of sepulture. His “Gebel Shendeh” should be correctly Gebel Shendib, and his “Shendoeh” is correctly Shendodai; the “Riadh” mentioned by him I have not been able to identify. His estimated heights are considerably in error; thus Gebel Shendib is really 6,273 feet and Gebel Shellal 4,623 feet instead of the 4,500 feet and 4,100 feet which he gives. The paper contains interesting remarks on the Hamedorab tribe, which Bent was informed totalled only some 300 fighting men in the entire district from Asotriba to Ras Benas. The reference to the sheikh as “the batran” is due to a misconception; Batran was the late sheikh’s first name, and is not a title of station. The map accompanying Bent’s paper is only to a very small scale, and formed practically no addition to existing knowledge.
Macalister[30] has given a detailed and interesting account of the Sikait district (Ed), with special reference to its geology, as the result of an expedition there in 1899. The small scale sketch map of the route followed in reaching the mines from the valley is not very correct, but the detail maps of the Sikait neighbourhood give an accurate representation of the area in which the mines are situated, while the geological notes give an excellent idea of one of the most highly metamorphic areas of the entire Eastern Desert. Macalister gives some notes also on the ruins and the people of the neighbourhood. His experience of the Ababda as workers was very unfavourable; though his characterisation is unfortunately only too well merited by a large section of the tribe, it is probable that a longer acquaintance with Arabs would have enabled him to select men of a better class. A sufficiency of good men for a caravan of 130 camels cannot be raised without great expenditure of time and care, even by those who have lived for many years among the Arabs, and a few bad characters in a desert camp soon exert a bad influence over the rest.
The brilliant series of investigations carried out by the officers accompanying the Austrian research ship “Pola” in the Red Sea in the winter of 1895-96, though chiefly concerned with oceanographic questions, contain not a few observations of interest connected with the land.[31] The positions determined include Sherm Sheikh, Berenice, St. John’s or Zeberged Island, and Halaib. The latitudes observed agree well with the values which I found by triangulation.[32] For longitude the method used was the transport of chronometers, and this method is liable to such considerable errors that we need have no hesitation in preferring my triangulation values, especially as our latitudes are in agreement. The observations made by the officers of the “Pola” on the compass-variation at Berenice and Halaib are of considerable importance as enabling us, by comparison with my own observations at the same places, eleven and twelve years later, to obtain a reliable value for the rate of secular change of this magnetic element in the district. A large scale map of Halaib is given, and amongst other observations of interest to the geographer in South-Eastern Egypt are analyses of the water at Halaib, a series of pendulum observations which show a decided increase in the force of gravity over the sea as compared with the intensity over the land, and descriptions with figures of some of the reptiles which are found in the region.
Turning now to the work of the Geological Survey in the district, the maps and descriptions in the present volume are the result of surveys carried out by me in the three seasons 1905-1908, or about twenty-two months’ work in all. The survey was commenced primarily with the view of enabling mining concessions to be accurately marked out. How little possibility of this existed so recently as 1902 may be gathered from the fact that although a ministerial order of that year had defined the administrative frontier between Egypt and the Sudan as being a line joining certain important mountains and wells, which were named, yet it was impossible to lay this frontier down correctly on a map because the geographical positions even of these important features were uncertain to many kilometres.
The main interest in the field methods used, which will be described in detail in a subsequent chapter, lies in the fact that many of them are wholly or in part new, having been devised as the work proceeded to meet the special exigencies of the case. The costly nature of camel-transport, and the relatively small value of the country, precluded the employment of the ordinary sequence of survey operations, and it was necessary to carry on reconnaissance, precise triangulation, detailed topographical mapping, and geological surveying, all at once, and to move rapidly so as to cover a large area in a moderate time. Starting from a measured base near Gebel Muelih, which had been previously connected by triangulation with the Nile Valley, a network of large triangles was thrown over the country. The essential feature of the triangulation was the employment of observations at relatively few occupied main summits, to fix large numbers of points by intersection; in some cases over a hundred triangulation points were sighted from a single occupied station. The triangulation was continued so as to join to a second base line near Gebel Um Harba (Ck), and was also connected on to main points in the trigonometrical survey of the Sudan, thus linking up a continuous chain of triangles from Alexandria to Berber. The total number of main (occupied) stations was sixty-four, while the intersected points numbered 450. In addition to these, about 1,200 minor points were fixed by subsidiary triangulation from short local bases.
Levels were taken trigonometrically for all points fixed by triangulation, using the actual sea-level as the datum. The altitudes of nearly all camps were likewise found trigonometrically, and between successive camps aneroid readings, adjusted to the initial and terminal points of the day’s march, were employed to supplement trigonometrical determinations made on the journey.
For the control of the maps, latitudes and azimuths were taken at intervals, the former by equal altitudes of three or more stars, the latter by elongations of close circumpolar stars.