Rough drawings of camels, of a very similar type to those here reproduced, have been found by Lieut.-Col. Tilho in the oasis of Harda, in Borku; and I came across others myself in a cave, near Marsa Matru, on the North Egyptian coast. The latter were found in conjunction with drawings of a cannon being fired and of a paddle-wheel steamer, which appeared to be contemporaneous, so evidently they were of a comparatively recent date.

The drawings of ostriches and the fragments of their shells which are often to be found in the Libyan Desert, even in the neighbourhood of the Egyptian oases, has been held to show that they once existed wild in this part of the desert. But the argument is by no means conclusive; ostrich eggs used frequently to be brought from the Sudan by the old slave-trading caravans, who used them as food, and the drawings no more show that ostriches inhabited this part than the pictures of boats show that dahaybas once sailed over the desert in the neighbourhood, say, of Dakhla Oasis. The occurrence of these, and of drawings of antelopes and other wild animals, merely show that some of the travellers who used these roads came from districts where the creatures they represented could be seen.

LIBYAN DESERT
AND
ENNEDI

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Map for “Mysteries of the Libyan Desert.”

[(Large-size)]

INDEX AND GLOSSARY