“Achmet always insisted on my taking a saber as a protection against the hyenas, but I was never so fortunate as to see more than their tracks, which crossed the path at every step. I saw occasionally the footprints of ostriches, but they, as well as the giraffe, are scarce in this desert. Toward noon, we made a halt in the shadow of a rock, or if no rock was at hand, on the bare sand, and took our breakfast. One’s daily bread is never sweeter than in the desert. The rest of the day I jogged along patiently beside the baggage camels, and at sunset halted for the night. A divan on the sand, and a well-filled pipe, gave me patience while dinner was preparing, and afterward I made the necessary entries in my journal. I had no need to court sleep, after being rocked all day on the dromedary. Until noon of the fourth day we journeyed over a vast plain of sand, interrupted by low reefs of black rock. Soon after midday the plain was broken by low ranges of hills, and we saw in front and to the east of us many blue mountain-chains. Our road approached one of them, a range, several miles in length, the highest peak of which reached an altitude of a thousand feet. The sides were precipitous and formed of vertical strata, but the crests were agglomerations of loose stones, as if shaken out of some enormous coal-scuttle. The glens and gorges were black as ink; no speck of any other color relieved the terrible gloom of this singular group of hills. Their aspect was much more than sterile: it was infernal. The name given to them by the guide was Djilet e’ Djindee, the meaning of which I could not learn. At their foot I found a few thorny shrubs, the first sign of vegetation since leaving Korosko. We encamped half an hour before sunset on a gravelly plain, between two spurs of the savage hills, in order that our camels might browse on the shrubs, and they were only too ready to take advantage of the permission. They snapped off the hard, dry twigs, studded with cruel thorns, and devoured them as if their tongues were made of cast-iron. We were now in the haunts of the gazelle and the ostrich, but saw nothing of them.
“On the fifth day we left the plain, and entered a country of broken mountain-ranges. In one place the road passed through a long, low hill of slate rock, by a gap which had been purposely broken. The strata were vertical, the laminæ varying from one to four inches in thickness, and of as fine a quality and smooth a surface as I ever saw. A long wady, or valley, which appeared to be the outlet of some mountain-basin, was crossed by a double row of stunted doum-palms, marking a water-course made by the summer rains. Eyoub pointed it out to me, as the half-way station between Korosko and Abou-Hammed. For two hours longer we threaded the dry wadys, shut in by black, chaotic hills. It was now noonday, I was very hungry, and the time allotted by Eyoub for reaching Bir Mûrr-hàt had passed. He saw my impatience and urged his dromedary into a trot, calling out to me to follow him. We bent to the west, turned the flank of a high range, and after half an hour’s steady trotting, reached a side-valley or cul-de-sac, branching off from the main wady. A herd of loose camels, a few goats, two black camel’s-hair tents, and half a dozen half-naked Ababdehs, showed that we had reached the wells. A few shallow pits, dug in the center of the valley, furnished an abundance of bitter, greenish water, which the camels drank, but which I could not drink. The wells are called by the Arabs el morra, ‘the bitter.’ Fortunately, I had two skins of Nile-water left, which, with care, would last to Abou-Hammed. The water was always cool and fresh, though in color and taste it resembled a decoction of old shoes. We left Mûrr-hàt at sunrise, on the morning of the sixth day. I walked ahead, through the foldings of the black mountains, singing as I went, from the inspiration of the brilliant sky and the pure air. In an hour and a half, the pass opened on a broad plain of sand, and I waited for my caravan, as the day was growing hot. On either side, as we continued our journey, the blue lakes of the mirage glittered in the sun. Several isolated pyramids rose above the horizon, far to the east, and a purple mountain-range in front, apparently two or three hours distant, stretched from east to west. ‘We will breakfast in the shade of those mountains,’ I said to Achmet, but breakfast-time came and they seemed no nearer, so I sat down in the sand and made my meal. Toward noon we met large caravans of camels, coming from Berber. Some were laden with gum, but the greater part were without burdens, as they were to be sold in Egypt. In the course of the day upward of a thousand passed us. The afternoon was intensely hot, the thermometer standing at one hundred degrees, but I felt little annoyance from the heat, and used no protection against it. The sand was deep and the road a weary one for the camels, but the mountains which seemed so near at hand in the morning were not yet reached. We pushed forward; the sun went down, and the twilight was over before we encamped at their base. The tent was pitched by the light of the crescent moon, which hung over a pitchy-black peak. I had dinner at the fashionable hour of seven. Achmet was obliged to make soup of the water of Mûrr-hàt, which had an abominable taste. I was so drowsy that before my pipe was finished, I tumbled upon my mattress, and was unconscious until midnight, when I awoke with the sensation of swimming in a river of lava.
“The tent was struck in the morning starlight, at which time the thermometer stood at fifty-five degrees. I walked alone through the mountains, which rose in conical peaks to the hight of near a thousand feet. The path was rough and stony until I reached the outlet of the pass. On leaving the mountain, we entered a plain of coarse gravel, abounding with pebbles of agate and jasper. Another range, which Eyoub called Djebel Dighlee, appeared in front, and we reached it about noon. The day was again hot, the mercury rising to ninety-five degrees. It took us nearly an hour to pass Djebel Dighlee, beyond which the plain stretched away to the Nile, interrupted here and there by a distant peak. Far in advance of us lay Djebel Mokràt, the limit of the next day’s journey. From its top, said Eyoub, one may see the palm-groves along the Nile. We encamped on the open plain, not far from two black pyramidal hills, in the flush of a superb sunset. The ground was traversed by broad strata of gray granite, which lay on the surface in huge bowlders. Our camels here found a few bunches of dry, yellow grass, which had pierced the gravelly soil. To the south-east was a mountain called by the Arabs Djebel Nogàra, (the mountain of the Drum,) because, as Eyoub declared, a devil who had his residence among its rocks, frequently beat a drum at night, to scare the passing caravans.
“The stars were sparkling freshly and clearly when I rose, on the morning of the eighth day, and Djebel Mokràt lay like a faint shadow on the southern horizon. The sun revealed a few isolated peaks to the right and left, but merely distant isles on the vast, smooth ocean of the desert. It was a rapture to breathe air of such transcendent purity and sweetness. I breakfasted on the immense floor, sitting in the sun, and then jogged on all day, in a heat of ninety degrees, toward Djebel Mokràt, which seemed as far off as ever. The sun went down, and it was still ahead of us. ‘That is a Djebel Shaytan,’ I said to Eyoub; ‘or rather, it is no mountain; it is an afrite.’ ‘O effendi!’ said the old man, ‘don’t speak of afrites here. There are many in this part of the desert, and if a man travels alone here at night, one of them walks behind him and forces him to go forward and forward, until he has lost his path.’ We rode on by the light of the moon and stars; and two hours after sunset, we killed Djebel Mokràt, as the Arabs say: that is, turned its corner. The weary camels were let loose among some clumps of dry, rustling reeds, and I stretched myself out on the sand, after twelve hours in the saddle. Our water was nearly exhausted by this time, and the provisions were reduced to hermits’ fare, bread, rice and dates. I had, however, the spice of a savage appetite, which was no sooner appeased, than I fell into a profound sleep. I could not but admire the indomitable pluck of the little donkeys owned by the Kenoos. These animals not only carried provisions and water for themselves and their masters, the whole distance, but the latter rode them the greater part of the way; yet they kept up with the camels, plying their little legs as ambitiously the last day as the first. I doubt whether a horse would have accomplished as much under similar circumstances.
“The next morning we started joyfully, in hope of seeing the Nile; and even Eyoub, for the first time since leaving Korosko, helped to load the camels. In an hour we passed the mountain of Mokràt, but the same endless plain of yellow gravel extended before us to the horizon. Eyoub had promised that we should reach Abou-Hammed in half a day, and even pointed out some distant blue mountains in the south, as being beyond the Nile. Nevertheless, we traveled nearly till noon without any change of scenery, and no more appearance of river than the abundant streams of the mirage, on all sides. I drank my last cup of water for breakfast, and then continued my march in the burning sun, with rather dismal spirits. Finally, the desert, which had been rising since we left the mountain, began to descend, and I saw something like round granite bowlders lying on the edge of the horizon. ‘Effendi, see the doum-trees!’ cried Eyoub. I looked again: they were doum-palms, and so broad and green that they must certainly stand near water. Soon we descended into a hollow in the plain, looking down which I saw to the south a thick grove of trees, and over their tops the shining surface of the Nile. ‘Ali,’ I called to my sailor-servant, ‘look at that great bahr shaytan!’ The son of the Nile, who had never before, in all his life, been more than a day out of sight of its current, was almost beside himself with joy. ‘Wallah, master,’ he cried; ‘that is no river of the devil: it is the real Nile, the water of Paradise.’ It did my heart good to see his extravagant delight. ‘If you were to give me five piasters, master,’ said he, ‘I would not drink the bitter water of Mûrr-hàt.’ The guide made me a salutation, in his dry way, and the two Nubians greeted me with ‘A great welcome to you, O effendi!’ With every step the valley unfolded before me; such rich deeps of fanlike foliage, such a glory in the green of the beans and lupines, such radiance beyond description in the dance of the sunbeams on the water! The landscape was balm to my burning eyes, and the mere sight of the glorious green herbage was a sensuous delight, in which I rioted for the rest of the day.”
SANDS OF THE DESERT.
“Now o’er their head the whizzing whirlwinds breathe,
And the live desert pants and heaves beneath;
Tinged by the crimson sun, vast columns rise
Of eddying sands, and war amid the skies,