Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

I, unfortunately, forgot to wind my watches the first night in the hattia, and so allowed the half chronometer I had been using in taking my observations to run down. As I was depending on it for my longitudes, this necessitated a stay of two or three days in the camp in order to ascertain its new rate after it had been rewound.

These watches are for some reason only made so as to run for one day. As oversights of this kind must be of common occurrence with travellers, it would seem to be preferable that they should be made so as to run for two days, and be furnished with an up and down indicator to show how long an interval has elapsed since they were last wound.

I spent a considerable part of the time while in the hattia in trying, without success, to get a shot at gazelle. There appeared to be very few in the district, though a considerable number of old tracks were to be seen where they had been feeding on the scrub.

This scarcity of game may perhaps have been due to the fact that a few bedawin were at that time living there in charge of some camels belonging to the Senussi zawia at Qasr Farafra. These men kept away from the camp, but I saw them and their camels several times wandering about in the scrub, and twice found small hovels constructed of brushwood, in which they had been living—they had, so far as I could see, no tents.

My men spent most of their time in grubbing about in some large mounds. On the top of one of these, about thirty feet high, Ibrahim found some burnt bricks. The whole mound was covered by a thick growth of terfa bushes, among which the sand had collected, completely hiding any building there might have been beneath it.

It must have been originally a building of some size and of considerable height, and was perhaps a tower. The men unearthed part of a small room at the base of the mound. It had been well built, of the same burnt bricks, and the interior was covered with plaster. A few pieces of broken pottery were found, one of them covered with a green glaze. There were four or five other mounds of a similar nature in the neighbourhood; but we had neither time nor implements thoroughly to examine them.

As the total result of their treasure hunt in Kairowin the men only unearthed one corpse and a few bits of broken pottery, without finding even a single copper coin to gratify their cupidity. They were consequently considerably disillusioned with their occupation, and I experienced no difficulty in getting them to start for Qasr Farafra.

I made first for the main well, that is known as the Bir Kairowin, in order to close my traverse. The water lay about eight feet below the surface; access being gained to it by the usual sloping path, cut out of one of its sides. By the top of the well was a mud-built trough for watering camels, with an empty paraffin tin lying beside it for use as a bucket.

Immediately on leaving the hattia we got into the dunes, which cover a large area in the centre of the Farafra depression. The first two or three dunes gave a little difficulty, but we found the rest of them quite easy to cross. They were all, so far as I could see, of a very elongated whalebacked type, which ran roughly from north to south, in the direction of the prevailing wind.

Qasr Farafra lay almost due west from our camp. Soon after we got into the sand it became clear that Qwaytin was again hopelessly lost, as I found we were marching almost due south. I was obliged to put it to my guide, as inoffensively as I could, that if he would change the direction in which he was leading us by a mere right angle, we might perhaps reach our destination, instead of going on to Dakhla Oasis as we seemed to be doing. Qwaytin was so hopelessly lost that he accepted my suggestion without the slightest argument.