Wanderings in North Africa

by traveler James Hamilton

In the gray of the morning, I mounted with the intention of retracing my steps and joining my caravan, but just as I emerged from the palm trees, I saw two men and a camel coming from Augila. At this sight my malignant star suggested to me the idea of saving time, and not returning on my way—a bad omen in the beginning of a journey; so I rode up to the new comers, asking if either would accompany me to the Wadi, the place of rendezvous for caravans starting to Siwah; and one of them saying he knew the way, agreed to guide me. I knew that my servant, when he saw the camels arrive without me, would at once conclude that I had ridden straight to the Wadi, and without a misgiving I rode on. I had eaten nothing since an early breakfast on the previous day, and when midday came and we were still far from the Wadi, I turned to see what store of good things my saddlebags contained. I found in them only a single sea-biscuit. Of this I gave half to my conductor, and, unable to make any impression on what remained, I reserved it till my arrival in the Wadi. We reached it at half-past two, but there was no appearance of the Cafilah, and I now began to contemplate with some dismay the possibility of the Ottoman having again broken his word, and having another day to wait with my not abundant store of provisions. There was at least water here, and this was all I had to give my horse and dog; my tarboush served to draw it, and for them to drink out of. The Wadi was here and there dotted with tufts of a bright-looking thorny grass, and to enable him to pick up a few mouthfuls, and at the same time prevent him from going far off, I tied my horse’s forelegs together, and sent him to look for his dinner.

Meantime my guide had made me a fire, which he lighted from the smouldering embers left by a caravan, which must have started a few hours before we came up; and I then dismissed him, showing the half biscuit which remained, as a good reason for his not staying with me, while I assured him that my people could not be long in coming up. Evening was fast approaching, so I ate half the remainder of my biscuit soaked in water, gathered sticks to feed my fire, and choosing the sheltered side of a palm-bush, looked to my arms and arranged my saddle and saddle-cloth, so as to make something which I persuaded myself was a bed. I had not even a cloak, as in a fit of carefulness for my steed I had removed it to save him the weight, never reckoning on such a contingency as the present; the only additional covering I had to the white trowsers and jacket I wore, was one of those light india-rubber overcoats, bearing a barbarously meaningless name, such as the classic public of the Strand delights in. The sky was bright and clear, and the air proportionately cold. I had no provisions, no wine, no brandy, no covering, not even a cigar, but I had a chronometer, a sextant, a compass, a thermometer, a telescope, in fact a whole observatory of instruments to console me for the want of a dinner, and I was thus enabled to certify, that at dawn the thermometer marked 43°; and the sharp air, contrasted with the heat of the sun during the previous day, made this seem still more piercingly cold.

In one point at least I am a true Englishman, for I can brook anything better than the want of my “victuals;” next to this the most painful feeling I know is that of inaction. I had had enough of my two days’ fast, and in the morning I thought to avoid further endurance of either evil by mounting my poor horse and going back, somewhere or other; my ambition in fact was to keep moving. The old gray, knowing my temper pretty well, after an eight months’ acquaintance, had probably foreseen this; he woke me half a dozen times during the night by rubbing his nose against my legs, by way of asking how I felt, and at last getting some cross words for disturbing me, had made himself scarce. As far as the telescope could command he was not to be seen, and I was in no humour for a tramp in search of him through the loose sand. The morning wore heavily, a quarter of my biscuit still remained, but I reserved it with an idea of keeping rather than eating my cake, while from time to time I took a look to see if “anybody was coming.” At last I saw a spot moving in the distance, a single man, but so wrapped in his borneau that I could not distinguish him. He came straight towards me, and then I recognised him as my guide of the previous day, who had brought me a basket of dates, some corn for my horse, and two pieces of stick to kindle a fire. I sat down on the sand with the basket before me, he sitting in true Arab style of hospitality at a little distance to see me eat, and while I picked out a few dates without relish (appetite was gone, and I fancied them dirty), he told me why he had returned. It was midnight when he reached his cottage in Jalo; his mother got up, made him a fire, and gave him something to eat while he told her how he had spent his day. He then lay down to sleep, but his mother said to him, “My son, this is no time for sleep; my heart is troubled for the man in the Wadi; rise and go to him, for he is alone, and I fear robbers; carry him these dates, for he is hungry.” Abd-er-rahman started afresh and reached me about ten in the morning, having hardly rested during forty-eight hours. When he had seen me eat, he went to the well and washed, and then employed himself in gathering date-stones in the sand round the fire-places of previous caravans. I was puzzled to see him thus groping in the earth, and visions of truffles, which I had read of in Theophrastus as being found in this desert, rose before me. Were I given to the vice of gourmandise, as those whose palates are not gifted with discrimination call the sense of taste, I could not have hastened with more alacrity to join in the search; but my disappointment was great, when I found that he was only gathering old date-stones, which he pounded and then gave, mixed with straw and water, to his cousin’s cow.

In about four hours, the caravan and my horse, which had gone to join it, arrived, and I learned, as I had anticipated, that this fresh delay was due to my Sheikh, from whom, however, I thought that I was now pretty safe. But he had still a trick of villany in store for me, for when the camels came to load (and they carried less weight on account of the water I should require during the first days), his people refused to carry water unless I paid half a dollar a skin extra. I had no resource, as I was still too near Jalo to force them to move on against their will, but to submit, which I did with secret vows to have them punished in Siwah for the imposition. I little guessed what would be my reception there.

It was twelve when I started from the Wadi after filling a dozen skins at its well, whose water is “sweet as those of heaven,” as Abd-er-rahman poetically called rain, though the sand from which it springs is mixed with crystals of common salt, admirably white and pure. For an hour and a half the ground is dotted thickly with hillocks of the Tumaran, of which each camel received a bundle in passing, as during some days little or no wood is to be found on the road. This is a low-growing woody plant with spare short fleshy leaves, whose thick twisted roots creep over the sand near its surface, forming low mounds. It is thornless, is easily torn up in large pieces, and though alive and in leaf, burns with a clear bright flame. Much of the petrified wood found in parts of the desert is formed of Tumeran, which even in its living state seems to be undergoing the process of petrifaction, as long veins of red brown earth run through its roots. Six hours after starting, travelling through fine loose sand in a N.E. direction, we reached a lofty sand-hill, the ground at whose base is sprinkled for a considerable distance with dark gravel and fragments of black half-vitrified stone. Many parts of this desert, seen in a bright sun, seemed perfectly flat, but as day closed in, and the shadows lengthened, the gentle undulations of the sand became visible. For ten hours we continued our course over a nearly flat country, gradually trending to the north, when we came to a long line of low hills, among which we were soon engaged. It is here that the two roads to Siwah separate; that which I took is the longer, but is easier for the camels; the other is the one more usually followed by the slave-dealers, and the same followed by Hornemann; it is preferred as being further removed from the haunts of the Aoulad Ali Arabs.

In gentle swells, these hills ultimately reach a considerable height. Journeying over such ground is singularly fatiguing, for the sand offers no variety to the eye, which is pained by the intense glare which it reflects, and the horse sinks in it to the fetlocks at every step. Nothing marked the road, which is very rarely used, and a slight wind suffices to obliterate every trace of former travellers. No caravan had passed this way to Mecca for three years, in consequence of disturbances among the Tuarick, to whom this country principally belongs. Thus we continued during fifteen hours and a quarter, constantly ascending between two lines of low hills, which rose on either side like waves driven from opposite directions. By this I mean that they rise on one side in long gentle swells and fall very suddenly on the other, forming an angle of about 70°, while eight or ten feet of their crests are on this, one would say the lee side, perfectly perpendicular. But the action of the wind, to which this appearance is doubtless due, is such, that in this place the lee side of each sand-wave faces that of the other, forming a valley between them, bounded on each side by steep sand. My greyhounds enjoyed themselves famously in running along the crests of these hills, and then rolling and tumbling down their steep sides; but after a couple of days of such gambols, the sand began to distress their feet, and they were glad to mount a camel during the greater part of the remaining journey.

It was on the afternoon of the third day, that, sending on the servant who had waited on me at luncheon, I stayed behind to smoke a chibouque, and having a supply of tobacco beside me I thoughtlessly protracted this amusement beyond a due time. When I at last started I rode straight for the passage, between some distant hills, where I had last seen the caravan, but soon I found that I had lost the track. At the height I had then reached, the wind blew so strongly, that, in exposed places, the footsteps were speedily effaced, and for an hour I wandered sufficiently to convince me how easy it would be to lose oneself in the sand. Evening was not far distant, and I was on the point of returning to my noon-day resting-place, but determined first to try one cast more. With this intent I rode directly at right angles to my course, and happily came upon the tracks of the camels. I soon reached the base of a peak round which they had gone, and, turning it, I beheld the most extraordinary scene of desolation.

I found myself standing on the ledge of an oval basin, some five or six miles long, whose sides were formed of stratified rocks, of a bluish gray colour, in their horizontal layers; across ran low dykes of the same laminar construction, the upper layers being generally of a blackish stone, but all bearing the appearance of vitrifaction. The dykes ran in lines parallel to the minor axis of the ellipse, and one might almost have supposed it the ruins of a construction on a gigantic scale, like that called Solomon’s Pool, near Bethlehem. Excepting at points where the rocks crop out, the bottom of the basin was filled with sand; piles of stones, memorials of former caravans, erected on the dykes; many skeletons, both of men and camels, bleached white as the purest ivory, pointed out the path which I must follow. Night closed in while I was still in this lonely valley; and it was with some pleasure that I heard the signal guns, which were fired from time to time, to direct me to the halting place. At sunset, as I had not been seen for six hours, the caravan was halted, although it had only made ten hours and a half journey that day. The Arabs call this place the Gerdobiah, or Little Gerdebah, قردبه, to distinguish it from the great range of this name, which commences two hours and a half further on. A ridge of round-backed sandhills forms the separation between the Gerdobiah and the immense range of low dark hills and table-lands which here presents itself. A low line of sandstone rocks, with nearly perpendicular sides, bound the line of road, sometimes closing upon it, sometimes leaving a wide plain on either side. In the basins thus formed rocks rise frequently, in the form of low truncated cones, generally in two steps, one rising from the other, so like diminutive craters, that in referring to this day’s journey my servant always calls them, “les Vesuves.” The black appearance of the ground is caused by numberless fragments of flat, dark, flint-like, coarse, broken glass, with which the sand and rocks are covered; among them are many pieces of petrified palm-wood; and, in some places, I found four or five feet of the trunk of the tree still standing erect as it grew: while, in more than one instance, large fragments of the tree, like the débris of a broken column, lay scattered round. In one spot, I found the trunk of such a tree (judging from its form at the base) in the position and place where it grew, and lying alongside of it, fragments of its stem, in all more than twenty feet long; the fractures of each of these corresponded to those on either side of it. It would seem from this that the trees were petrified as they grew, and that their general prostration is due to some convulsion which followed the withdrawal of the petrifying waters in which they had been immersed. I believe these trees to be, many of them, date palms, such as grow in the oases at the present day; they are similar in appearance; and so were some petrified date-stones, which I found, to their stones. It took in all twenty-six hours to traverse this line, which, judging from the cold, must be at a very considerable elevation. The south wind blew so bleakly that even at midday a cloak was a welcome addition to the borneau. In the mornings and evenings the thermometer was rarely above 43°, and at midday, notwithstanding the bright sun, I twice found it only 45°.

Towards the last part of the Gerdebah I observed large masses of beautifully-marked agate, of a coarse crystalline grain, with colours more vivid than the Sicilian. Descending into a plain of sand, the next landmark is a lofty cone, called Gar Hhot, خوت, some sixty or seventy feet high, which rising abruptly from the level, is seen at a great distance. It was formerly a stronghold of the Aoulad Ali, who from it descended to pillage the Majabra caravans. The tombs of seven or eight Majabra, who were killed in one of their raids some forty years ago, are at the base of the hill; but this was the robbers’ last exploit, for the Majabra are said to have come in overwhelming numbers, and to have overpowered them. I will not answer for the truth of the story which was told me by my guide, whose grandfather was among the slain; for in my experience of timid people, I must do the Majabra of the present generation the justice to say, that I never met with any who had so strong a regard for their personal safety. Along this line they never light fires during the night, for fear of attracting the Arabs, and for the same reason they frequently diverge from the direct line of journey; their cargoes of human merchandise being, it is said, very attractive to the Arabs. However this may be, I have no complaint to make of the dangers of the road: every night two large fires were kindled in my encampment, yet I was never molested, nor during the whole journey saw the trace of man, excepting in the case of one small slave caravan, which I came up with the day after passing Gar Hhot, at the first well we reached, called Maten Et-Tarfawy, طرفاوي. It is seventy-four hours from the well of the Wady.

This place was visited by Hornemann, and is the only spot in which my route (which is the one followed by the great pilgrim caravans) coincides with the more southerly one. The slave caravan, which I came up with here, continued to follow Hornemann’s route. Near the place I found some palm trunks upright, imbedded in reddish, coarsely crystallised flint. The sand is in great part composed of débris of small marine shells, and the limestone rocks from here to Siwah are filled with fossils. A considerable descent from the high ground we had been traversing, crossing several hills and valleys, which grow gradually more sandy as we advanced, leads to a valley clothed with gum bushes. From it rises a platform of soft, white limestone rock; and it is in this that the wells of brackish water called Et-Tarfawy are pierced. The white platform is picturesquely crowned with a garland of the bright-green ’ajrum bushes, which grow somewhat like a broom. Here we watered our camels, and then went an hour and a half further to a hattych (a copse) called Bou el Lawah, لاوه. The wind, which had blown for several days constantly from the south, shifted for a few hours to the north, and was gratefully warm; heavy rains speedily followed, during which it again veered to the south.