Wanderings in North Africa

by traveler James Hamilton

From Bu Jerabah we travelled over a slightly-undulating country, covered with a short, wiry grass, called by the Arabs wild barley, which affords excellent pasture for horses, till we reached Turbiat, in five hours and a half. This was again a short day, as the camels and horses were too tired to proceed. Here, after much scolding and threatening of the Courbadj, we obtained a small supply of corn for the horses—a necessity which was not agreeable to Hassan Aga, as he had to pay here for what he required, while the corn he took in Siwah was levied as a contribution on the town. The Siwy persuaded the Arabs, who were glad to save their camels the extra weight, to assure the Commandant that corn was to be had in any quantity after the eighth day; but these same Arabs now took care to send on before us during the night, to warn all their fellows out of our way. As everything taken from the Arabs was fairly paid for, it seemed mere spite on the part of the sheikhs who were with us thus to increase the inconveniences of the journey, and I acknowledge I was not sorry to hear that one of the most troublesome among them had received from the Commandant’s own hands a rather severe drubbing. Twenty-five hours were employed the two following days in reaching the wells called El Hammam. We had now left the coast line, but the next day, an hour and a half after starting, having the Arabs’ Tower, or Abou Sir, the old Taposiris, in sight, we passed through extensive ruins, marking, perhaps, the site of Antiphræ, so famous for its wine—it was so bad. At a considerable distance to the right rise the flat hills of Hoshm el’Aish, which may be said to bound the district of Mariout. We only made nine hours this day, stopping at Caraya, where are five wells of ancient construction, the largest built with very solid masonry, having an orifice of twelve feet by three. The old Lake Mareotis is now an extensive plain, covered with dark shrubs, and dotted with low, yellow mounds.

Two thousand female dromedaries belonging to the Viceroy were stationed here for the pasturage, the best camel-browsing ground in Egypt. I wondered to what purpose these were applied, and admired his Highness’s tender solicitude for his stud of Arab horses, when I learned that, immediately after the mares foal, the dromedaries are sent up the country to supply them with milk. His horses are decidedly the best lodged, best fed, and best cared for of the present Pacha’s subjects. After passing two Marābut chapels, Abu Hadidj and Sheikh Masa’udi, which lay to the right, we came to the first village in Egypt, Gheitá, and stopped, eight hours from Caraya, at El Hamra. The next day was the last of our weary journey: in two hours we came to El Hhosh (Hhosh Ebro ’Isa), which is celebrated for its breed of falcons; and in six hours more we pitched our tents outside the flourishing town of Damanhour.

Here ended my desert journey, and it was not without feelings of pleasure that I found myself once more within the circuit of Eastern civilisation. But it must not be supposed that I left the desert without some feelings of regret. A prolonged sojourn in those vast plains of sand,—condemned to a perpetual sterility—a voyage over those waterless seas, is less devoid of interest than at first sight one might be led to expect. They offer, indeed, little variety, and they promise less; but this very monotony renders the traveller more attentive to the varied aspects which Nature even here presents, and awakens his attention to many an object which in more-favoured climes he would pass unobserved. The only variety of general feature is the passing from loose sand to more compact gravel, or from boundless plains, which the wearied eye ranges over without meeting an object on which to fix the gaze, to equally desert hills, whose sandy solitudes are undisturbed even by an echo. Sometimes, more awful still, one comes upon vast tracts covered with small, dark, loose fragments, giving a chocolate colour to the ground, which there seems to absorb the rays of the mid-day sun, but without reposing the eye from its glare. The camel here leaves no traces of his path, so that the solitary traveller must strain his sight to keep in view the distant caravan; the dry tramp of his horse alone disturbs the mournful silence; the sun is darting on him his most burning rays; and, from the colour of the ground, he seems to have lost even the companionship of his own shadow.

But this very silence, this monotonous absence of animation, are of themselves impressive, and soon acquire a peculiar charm for the imagination. The earth seems boundless as the ocean, not less cheerlessly uniform than a sea becalmed, and not less dangerously wild than it when roused by the strife of elements. The sky is pale in the glare of mid-day, but glows with the brightest tints as evening closes in; after sunset, it is again illuminated by the zodiacal light, which fades to disclose a surface of the deepest purple, spangled with thousands of stars, whose twinkling brightness surpasses anything that our northern climates can show. The desert, where no howling of wild beasts alarms the ear, no watch-fire proclaims the vicinity of fellow-men, affects one less with a sense of solitude than of vastness, and, like the sea, awakens feelings rather of the moral greatness with which man is endowed, than of the physical weakness which is his lot. Man, alone, can traverse the broad desert; I have been days without meeting the trace of a quadruped, or seeing a bird in the air; the wind-worn rocks bear no nourishment for the former, the restless sandwaves afford no prey to the latter.

When, in this sea of sand, one approaches the rare islands with which it is dotted, the eye is first attracted to the tracks worn by the jackals and gazelles, which, making their abodes during the day among the shrubless rocks, often twenty or thirty miles from water, at night go to drink and feed in the oasis. Then the sand is dotted with clumps of the zumaran, and other thick-leaved plants, whose roots, stretching along the surface, draw sufficient moisture for their existence from the air; round these may be marked the tiny footprints left by the nightly gambols of the gerboa. A clump of palm-trees, or a few mimosas, are at last seen on the horizon, and welcomed with joy by the thirsty caravan; the camels now increase their pace, the Arab’s step becomes more elastic, though it will be hours before the wished-for spring is reached. Round this are the blackened fire-places of former travellers, the deep claw-marks of the vultures, the tracks of the fox, the jackal, and the gazelle, the trail of the land tortoise, even the black, rough-backed beetle, patiently rolling its load towards its hole, each and all are welcome, as telling of the living world from which the traveller has been separated.

Desert travel has its pleasures as well as its tribulations. Of the former I have said but little in the preceding narrative, for hours of contemplation find no place in a note-book; of the latter I have said, perhaps, more than enough, for annoyances which in the retrospect are insignificant, seem proportionally great while one is suffering from them.

The time of actual travelling from Siwah to Damanhour was 155 hours, a fair journey of thirteen days, which is the time the caravans usually employ, while Alexandria is a day nearer. There is another road which is easier for the camels, following the coast line (in going to Siwah) from Berbetat el Mudar to Kasr Adjubah, one day and a half. Thence to Jarjub, the same distance; to Esh-Shamar, half a day; to Sallum, three days. Thence, turning northwards, to Bir el Hhamza, two days, and thence to Siwah, three days. The direct road to Siwah from Cairo is by Tervaneh and the Natron lakes, but by this route of eleven days there are four without water. From Siwah to Derna is a journey of fifteen days, and to Benghazi twenty days.

I will not detain the reader by an account of my adventures after reaching Damanhour. How the Turkish colonel of the Bashbuzuks came to meet me, and then was inclined to treat me somewhat cavalierly; how I recalled him to his senses, and how it ended in our kissing and being friends; and my then spending a night with him at Rachmania, from which place I embarked for Cairo.

This narration of a nine months’ journey, in countries little known, however uninterestingly told, is at least faithful. I believe, indeed, that the traveller who simply records what he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears, and indulges in none of the pleasures of the imagination, rarely meets with those stirring scenes which, beheld by the fancy and treated with the pen of an artist, so frequently charm the reader. My tale is true, and it relates to what may still be called unknown countries; and this is my reason for offering it to the public.

I am bound to express my obligations for the ready aid afforded me by Her Majesty’s Consul in Cairo, during the absence or leave of the accomplished Consul-General, whose departure, a few weeks after my arrival, was a subject of regret both to Turk and Frank. It would be unjust also to omit stating, that the Viceroy, within twenty-four hours of the arrival of my letter, despatched orders for the march of 150 soldiers to my relief; and, after my presentation to him in Cairo, ordered another party of 200 to be sent to disarm the town, and to bring forty-nine of the Siwy to Cairo to answer for their conduct.