DERB EL ANKABYE
[p.459] safe, at least as far as the convent, I did not think it necessary this time to travel in the disguise of a pauper. Some few comforts may be enjoyed in the desert even by those who do not travel with tents and servants; and whenever these comforts must be relinquished, it becomes a very irksome task to cross a desert, as I fully experienced during several of my preceding journeys.
The Bedouins of Sinai, or, as they are more usually denominated, the Towara, or Bedouins of Tor, formerly enjoyed the exclusive privilege of transporting goods, provisions, and passengers, from Cairo to Suez, and the route was wholly under their protection. Since the increased power of the Pasha of Egypt, it has been thrown open to camel-drivers of all descriptions, Egyptian peasants, as well as Syrian and Arabian Bedouins; and as the Egyptian camels are much stronger, for a short journey, than those of the desert, the Bedouins of Mount Sinai have lost the greater part of their custom, and the transport trade in this route is now almost wholly in the hands of the Egyptian carriers. The hire of a strong camel, from Cairo to Suez, was at this time about six or eight Patacks, from one and a half to two Spanish dollars.
The desert from Cairo to Suez is crossed by different routes; we followed that generally taken by the Towara, which lies mid-way between the great Hadj route, and the more southern one close along the mountains: the latter is pursued only by the Arabs Terabein, and other Syrian Bedouins. The route we took is called Derb el Ankabye [Arabic].
We proceeded on a gentle ascent from Kayt Beg, and passed on the right several low quarries in the horizontal layers of soft calcareous stone of which the mountain of Mokattam, in the neighbourhood of Cairo, is composed; it is with this stone that the splendid Mamelouk tombs of Kayt Beg are built. At the end of
EL MOGAWA
[p.460] an hour, the limestone terminated, and the road was covered with flints, petrosilex, and Egyptian pebbles; here are also found specimens of petrified wood, the largest about a foot in length. We now travelled eastward, and after a march of three hours halted upon a part of the plain, called El Mogawa [Arabic], where we rested during the mid-day heat. Beyond this spot, to the distance of five hours from Cairo, we met with great quantities of petrified wood. Large pieces of the trunks of trees, three or four feet in length, and eight or ten inches in diameter, lay about the plain, and close to the road was an entire trunk of a tree at least twenty feet in length, half buried in sand. These petrifactions are generally found in low grounds, but I saw several also on the top of the low hills of gravel and sand over which the road lies. Several travellers have expressed doubts of their being really petrified wood, and some have crossed the desert without meeting with any of them. The latter circumstance is easily accounted for; the route we were travelling is not that usually taken to Suez. I have crossed this desert repeatedly in other directions, and never saw any of the petrifactions except in this part of it. As to its really being petrified wood there cannot be any reason to doubt it, after an inspection of the substance, in which the texture and fibres of the wood are clearly distinguishable, and perfectly resemble those of the date tree. I think it not improbable, that before Nechos dug the canal between the Nile and the Red sea, the communication between Arsinoe or Clysma and Memphis, may have been carried on this way; and stations may have been established on the spots now covered by these petrified trees; the water requisite to produce and maintain vegetation might have been procured from deep wells, or from reservoirs of rain water, as is done in the equally barren desert between Djidda and Mekka. After the completion of the canal, this route was perhaps neglected, the trees, left without a
EL MOGRAH
[p.461] regular supply of water, dried up and fell, and the sands, with the winter rains and torrents, gradually effected the petrifaction. I have seen specimens of the petrified wood of date trees found in the Libyan desert, beyond the Bahr bala ma, where they were observed by Horneman in 1798, and in 1812, by M. Boutin, a French officer, who brought several of them to Cairo. They resemble precisely those which I saw on the Suez road, in colour, substance, and texture. Some of them are of silex, in others the substance seems to approach to hornblende.
We continued our route E. by S. over an uneven and somewhat hilly country covered with black petrosilex; and after a days march of eight hours and a quarter, we halted in a valley of little depth, called Wady Onszary [Arabic], where our camels found good pasture. Close by are some low hills, where the sands are seen in the state of formation into sand- rock, and presenting all the different gradations between their loose state and the solid stone. I saw a great quantity of petrified wood upon one of these hills, amongst which was the entire trunk of a date tree.