12. A zoological collection, mainly of insects, was also made.
CHAPTER XXVI
CUSTOMS, SUPERSTITIONS AND MAGIC
THE natives of the oases in Egypt are known as the Wahatys, and are a feeble lot as compared with the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, with whom they seem racially to be intimately connected. This deterioration in the race is probably due to their poverty, insufficient food, poorer housing accommodation and to the prevalence of the serious form of malaria known as oasis fever.
In their customs the inhabitants of the oases closely resemble the natives of the Nile Valley; but in some respects they are peculiar. Until the railway into Kharga was constructed, the oases were very much more cut off from the outside world than at present. Consequently the inhabitants are in many ways much more primitive than the fellahin of the Nile Valley, and still follow customs which in some cases may have been followed there, but which have long since become obsolete. Many of their peculiarities in this respect are probably confined to the oases, and may never have existed elsewhere.
As an example of the primitive conditions of life in Kharga, it may be noted that the old method of producing fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together is still used by some of the older inhabitants, though the introduction of matches is causing it to die out. Fire is produced in this way by two methods. In one, a stick is held vertically upon a block of wood and rapidly twirled between the palms of the hands; in the other it is rubbed backwards and forwards in a groove on the block with the action of a carpenter sharpening a chisel on a hone. In both cases a pinch of fine sand is sometimes placed between the two pieces of wood in order to increase the friction.
Marriage Procession in Dakhla Oasis.
Note the clown and band in front, the bride’s friends firing guns and carrying flags, her tea things and her wedding dress on a cross above the procession behind. She herself wears old clothes. ([p. 252])