I return to our fifth day in the desert, on which we set forth early, about eight o’clock, from the little valley E’ Sufr, where we had pitched our tent under some gum or sont-trees, and arrived at half-past twelve, after we had left the road about half an hour, and turned to the left into a wide valley, at the brackish wells of Wadi Murhad. Here we had concluded about half of our journey; we saw a few huts built of small stones and sedge, near which a couple of thin goats sought fruitlessly for some food; our black host led us into an arbour of bulrushes, where we made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit.
In this valley we had for some time observed the snow-white surface of the natron on the sand, which makes the water in the valley brackish. Toward the end of the valley, where it divides into two branches, there are the standing waters, five or six feet below the surface, which have been dug out into eight wells. The furthest wells have a greenish, salt, and ill-tasting water, which, however, serves the camels very well; the three front ones, however, have brighter water, which we could have drunk very well, if it had been necessary. This is a government station usually occupied by six people; at this time four were on an excursion and only two in the place. Two ways led hence to Korusko, a western and an eastern one; Ibrahim Aga had unfortunately chosen the former, by which we had missed him, having ourselves taken the latter. Sheikh Ahmed was not to be found here; probably he had only reached our camels on the second day, and we were therefore obliged to proceed without him.
The Abâbde Arabs, with whom we had now everywhere to do, are a true and trustworthy people, from whom one has less to fear than from the cunning thievish Fellahs of Egypt. To the north-east of them are the Bishari tribes, who speak a peculiar language, and are now at bitter feud with the Abâbde, because they waylaid and murdered some Turkish soldiers two years ago in the little valley, where we stayed the night, and for which Hassan Chalif, the superior sheikh of the Abâbde, to whose care the highway between Berber and Korusko is committed, had nearly forty of the Bishari executed. With the aid of the Abâbde, too, Ismael Pasha had been able four-and-twenty years before to bring his army though the desert and seize the Sudan. Guides are only posted by government along the road by which we were coming, but not on the longer but better watered line from Berber to Assuan, which is now little used.
At half-past four we rode away from the wells, after we had examined some hagr mektub (written stones, for which we everywhere inquired), on some rocks in the neighbourhood, where a number of horses, camels, and other animals had been rudely scratched, at some by no means modern period, in the same manner as we had often seen in Nubia. At half-past nine we halted for the night, after we had left the mountains an hour and a half. On the morning of the sixth day we passed the wide plain of Múndera, to which another high mountain range called Abu Sihha joins; the southern frontier of this plain, by those mountains, they call Abdêbab; the southern part of the Roft mountains behind us, Abu Senejât.
At three o’clock we left the plain, and entered the mountains again, which, like the former ranges, were of granite. Half an hour later we halted for a noontide rest. After two hours we rode on and encamped about midnight, after passing through another little plain, and the mountains of Adar Auîb into the next plain, comprehended under the same designation, which stretches to the last mountains of this desert, Gebel Graibât.
On the seventh day we set forth at the early hour of half-past seven, and came at last beyond Gebel Graibât, into a great and boundless plain, Adererât, which we did not leave until our arrival at Abu Hammed. To the south-west the little mountain El Farût, and the higher range Mograd, were in sight; in the far-east there joins another mountain to Adur Auîb, that of Abu Nugâra. South-easterly there are the other mountain chains of Bishari, the names of which were unknown to our Abâbde guides. The beginning of the plain of Adererât was quite covered for hours with beautiful pure flint, which sometimes jutted out of the sand, as rock, although the principal sort of rock continued to be black granite, which was intersected about noon by a broad vein of red granite. Early in the day a small caravan of merchants passed us at some distance.
We saw the most beautiful mirages very early in the day; they most minutely resemble seas and lakes, in which mountains, rocks, and everything in their vicinity, are reflected like in the clearest water. They form a remarkable contrast with the staring dry desert, and have probably deceived many a poor wanderer, as the legend goes. If one be not aware that no water is there, it is quite impossible to distinguish the appearance from the reality. A few days ago I felt quite sure that I perceived an overflowing of the Nile, or a branch near El Mechêref, and rode towards it, but only found Bahr Sheitan, “Satan’s water,” as the Arabs call it.
By day the caravan road cannot easily be missed, even when the sand has destroyed every trace of it; it is marked by numberless camels’ skeletons, of which several are always in sight; I counted forty-one within the last half-hour before sunset, on the previous day. Of our camels, however, although they had not long rested in Korusko, and got scarcely anything to eat or drink on the way, none were lost. Mine, in whose mouth I had occasionally put a bit of biscuit, used to stretch back his long neck in the middle of the march, until it laid its head with its large tender eyes in my lap, in order to get some more.
We halted at about four o’clock in the afternoon for two hours, and then proceeded till eleven, when we pitched our camp in the great plain. The wind, however, was so violent, that it was impossible to fasten up our tents. Notwithstanding the ten iron rings which are prepared for keeping it up, it fell three times before it was quite finished; we, therefore, let it lie, laid our own selves down behind a little wall, that the guide had constructed of camel saddles as a shelter, and slept à la belle étoile.
On the eighth day we might have arrived at Abu Hammed late in the evening, but we resolved to stay the night at an hour’s distance from that place, that we might reach the Nile by day. The birds of prey increased in the neighbourhood of the river; we scared away thirty vultures from the fresh carcase of a camel; the day before I had shot a white eagle, and some desert partridges, which were seeking durra grains on the caravan road. We only saw traces of wild beasts by the carcases; they did not trouble us at night, as in the camp at Korusko, where we had shot a hyæna, and several jackals. In the afternoon we met a slave caravan. The last encampment before reaching Abu Hammed was less windy, but our coals were exhausted, and the servants had forgotten to gather camel’s dung for the fire; therefore we were obliged to drink the last brown skin-water without boiling it, to quench our thirst. The donkeys could not be spared any of it.