SILUGI HOUNDS
A number of jackals and a few wild cats lived in the caves among the wadis in the Scarp. Their mournful wailings echoed through the rocky ravines, and owing to its eeriness at night the bedouins thought that it was haunted by evil spirits. But in the daytime they climbed about it quite unconcernedly, and their goats snatched a scanty pasturage among the rocks. During most of the year the Scarp looks harsh and forbidding, but after the rains a change comes over it; one notices a faint green tinge about the cliffs, and a closer examination shows that it is covered with blossoming flowers and rock plants. The slopes become gay with mauve, pink, yellow and blue flowers, saltworts, samphires, sea lavender, yellow nettle, campanulas, little irises, marigolds, ranunculas, Spanish broom, masses of night-scented stock and a quantity of other little flowering plants which clothe the grim rocks in a robe of brilliant colour. The flat country, too, blossoms out into colour. One sees scarlet poppies, mallows, and tall scabious among the budding corn, and fields of swaying asphodel, and the whole desert is scented in the evening by the night-scented stock.
The rain that causes this transformation falls occasionally during the winter months from November till about March. During this time there are clouds in the sky, and sometimes terrific downpours. The Arabs greet the first rain of the season with great delight, the men sing and shout, and the women raise piercing shrieks to show their pleasure. Unless there is a good rainfall none of the barley grows, and the grazing on which the sheep and camels depend is insufficient. When it rains the wadis become rushing torrents, roads are impassable, every house leaks, and many of the roofs subside. The camels have to be led from their flooded lines to the higher ground where they stand shivering. Camels hate rain. If one is out on trek and a really stiff shower comes on the camels barrack down, with their backs towards the direction of the rain, and nothing will make them budge till it is over. One just has to wait till it stops. If the track is muddy and wet the camels slither and slide and one must dismount and lead them; they were made for hot, dry countries, not for a damp, wet climate. Hardly any of the houses at Matruh or Sollum are watertight, and it was nothing out of the ordinary when one called on a man to find him camped out in the middle of his most watertight room, surrounded by his perishable belongings, with a sort of canopy consisting of a waterproof sheet and a mackintosh or two stretched out above him. But though rain storms were very violent they did not last long, and the sun soon came out and dried everything up again. When, however, one was caught by a bad storm out on trek on the desert, with only a thin tent, and no change of clothes, it was very disagreeable.
The word “house” is misleading. People imagine at least a large comfortable bungalow. But on the Western Desert the average house occupied by an English official, with possibly a wife, was a three-roomed stone hut, with plastered walls and a wooden roof, with a very thin layer of cement. The largest room would be about twelve feet square, the plaster invariably crumbled off the walls owing to the salt in it, and the cement invariably cracked in the summer so that the rain poured through the roof in the winter. Cement for some reason was almost impossible to get. One always heard that for “next year” the Administration had included the building of real houses for its officials in the Budget, but this item was always one of the first to be struck out on the grounds of economy. Nobody has yet discovered an ideal roofing for the Western Desert, where there are extremes of heat and cold and occasional terrific hurricanes and downpours. So far, the best type of abode seems to be the bedouin tent.
One of the chief events on the coast was the arrival of the cruiser, Abdel Moneim, which came up from Alexandria about once every fortnight or three weeks bringing mails, supplies and sometimes high officials on tours of inspection. She spent a day or two in harbour at Matruh and Sollum on each trip. This little cruiser was built in Scotland for the Egyptian Government, and with two other boats comprises the navy of Egypt. She was a neat-looking grey ship, always very spick and span with fresh paint and shining brass, manned by a crew of Egyptians in white or blue sailors’ uniform and red tarbooshes. Her captain was an English bimbashi in the Egyptian Coastguards Administration, whose uniform was somewhat confusing, as he wore, besides the naval rank on his sleeve, a crown and star on his shoulder. The cruiser was carefully built so as to allow a spacious saloon and two state cabins, for the accommodation of the Director-General. Two machine-guns were posted fore and aft. The Abdel Moneim had the well-deserved reputation of being warranted to make the very best sailor seasick, even in comparatively calm weather. She rolled and pitched simultaneously in a more horrid manner than any ship I have ever known. The result was that, when people went down the coast to Alexandria on leave, they arrived in Egypt looking and feeling like nothing on earth, and spent the first few days of their all too short leave recovering from the evil after-effects of the voyage. I have never yet met anyone who really enjoyed a trip on the cruiser. Personally, the only time that I felt comfortable on board was when we were firmly moored to the quay at Matruh or Sollum. When the high officials landed after a sea trip they were generally feeling so ill that their visits were not entirely a pleasure to the people who were being inspected.
Occasionally misguided individuals, who knew nothing about it, got permission to go up to Sollum and back by cruiser, hoping for a pleasant little trip on the Mediterranean. Generally, when they arrived at Matruh, they inquired anxiously whether it was possible to return to Alexandria by car, or even by camel. Some queer visitors sometimes came on these “joy rides,” but very little joy was left in them by the time they reached Sollum. On one occasion, a Mr. B. of the Labour Corps, a Board School master in private life, arrived by cruiser at Matruh. He announced that he had come to study the coast and the Arabs. He was just the type that Kipling describes so well in his poems. The Governor invited him to lunch; he arrived in spurs, belt, etc., though it was the summer and every one else was wearing the fewest and thinnest clothes; however, that may have been politeness. There happened to be three or four other men present. At lunch Mr. B. proceeded to air his views on how the desert should be run; we heard some startling facts about it; he disapproved of the Administration, and told us so; he then proceeded to tell us about the Sudan, as he had lately spent one week in an hotel at Khartoum. The Governor had been recently transferred from the Sudan, where he had been Governor of one of the largest provinces, and as it happened every single man present had served there for some considerable time, so, naturally, we were interested to be told a few facts about it!
A couple of days later I happened to go down the coast with Mr. B. and a certain District Officer. The latter spent his whole time, when he wasn’t ill, telling Mr. B. the most outrageously impossible stories of camels, Arabs and the desert, which he swallowed unblinkingly and noted down in a copybook in order to give lectures, so he told us, at his club when he returned home. That club must have heard some startling stories. One of the facts—or fictions—that interested him particularly was a description of “watch camels which are posted by the Arabs round their flocks and when a stranger appears they gallop across to the camp and warn their masters.” Another very vivid story was the description of a whole herd of camels going mad from hydrophobia. It is wonderful how credulous some people can be, but I think he deserved it.
CHAPTER II
THE DESERT