Here also are rock tombs in some of the cliffs, and in one of them I discovered the remains of a coloured mural painting, a picture very much obliterated, of a cow and some palm trees with large clusters of dates on them, roughly done in brown and blue colours. Evidently at one time the oasis was inhabited, and if one sought complete seclusion it would be quite a pleasant place to live in. There are several thousands of date palms at El Areg and Bahrein which would produce fruit if they were pruned and looked after. At one time men used to come out from Siwa and tend the trees, collecting the fruit later on, but now there is not enough labour in Siwa to cultivate all the gardens, so both these oases are deserted. The route from Siwa to Farafra passes through El Areg and Bahrein, and there is another caravan track from El Areg to the Baharia oasis, and thence to the valley of the Nile, which it touches somewhere near Assiut. But practically no travellers pass this way, and the Mashrabs are almost lost to knowledge.
West of Siwa town, at the end of the lake, at the foot of an enormous flat-topped mountain, there is a little hamlet called Kamissa, and a number of gardens. Beyond this, if one crosses the cliffs by a rocky pass, one arrives at a valley called Maragi, where there is another salt lake surrounded by gardens which belong to a colony of about sixty Arabs who settled here some fifty years ago and have remained ever since. They do not intermarry with the Siwans but “keep themselves to themselves,” as they consider that they are very superior to the natives. They live in tents and breed sheep and cattle, and are to all appearances similar to the Arabs on the coast, except that they have no camels. At one time two of these Arabs moved into Siwa and settled in houses, but they were regarded as renegades by the remainder. Further west there is yet another salt lake called Shyata, a long patch of blue among the yellow sand-hills, with good grazing around it and fresh water which can be obtained by digging in certain places, which one needs to know from experience, as there is no indication of its whereabouts.
North-west of Shyata there is a cluster of uninhabited oases, Gagub, Melfa and Exabia. They are queer wild places with wonderful rock scenery, huge towering limestone cliffs, deep morasses, and stretches of shining water, edged with rotting palm trees, like
“. . . That dim lake
Where sinful souls their farewell take
Of this sad world.”
These oases have a strangely evil appearance, one could well imagine the witches of Macbeth celebrating their midnight orgies in such places. At night a feverish miasma rises from the dark rotting vegetation, and with it myriads of venomous mosquitoes. By moonlight the scene is even more macabre; the gigantic masses of strangely shaped rocks take on the appearance of
“Dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable——.”