Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

I found Abd er Rahman waiting to report on the state of the camels. Everything he said had gone well, except that the green camel had bitten the blue one, and that the red one had been attacked by mange. Abd er Rahman, however, said that he had buttered him well—which, he added, had made him very angry, and he hoped now that he was cured.

The ’omda of Rashida dropped in during the afternoon. On leaving, he expressed a fervent wish that I might find Zerzura, and that I should find a lot of treasure there. I soon found that it was quite useless to attempt to persuade any native into the belief that I was only intending to make maps and collect scientific information. Even the more intelligent of them—such as the native officials, the Mawhub family and the ’omda of Rashida—were quite unable to realise that anyone could be so foolish to do work of that kind unless he were paid to do so, and they were such confirmed treasure seekers themselves, and so secretive in their methods of conducting their hunt for buried riches, that they all considered that the reason I gave for my journey was only a cloak to disguise the fact that I was really looking for treasure.

In making my plans to set out into the unknown part of the Libyan Desert beyond Dakhla, I found myself at once confronted by a serious difficulty of a distinctly unusual nature. Generally, when a traveller starts on a journey, he has some definite object in view—he is going to climb a particular mountain, to follow a certain river to its source, to complete the survey of some lake that has been found, or to look for some place that has been reported to exist on native information—but in this part there was no such object available.

With the exception of the Kufara group of oases, on its extreme western side, practically the whole Libyan Desert to the south and west of Dakhla was quite unknown, so the south-west quarter was the one that appealed to me most, as any journey made in this direction would lead right into the heart of the largest area of unknown ground in Africa, or for the matter of that outside it, and it was in this quarter, too, that the maps showed the great dune-field, the crossing of which was one of the main objects of my journey, so this was the part I decided first to tackle.

It was then that I found myself faced with the problem. What was to be my objective? Between west and south there are a great many bearings upon which one can march. In which direction should I go?

The prospect of being able to find a well, perhaps only a two-foot shaft in the ground—very probably silted up with sand—by wandering out haphazard into several hundred thousand square miles of desert is remote.

The maps gave little assistance in solving the problem. Many of them left this space entirely blank. Those that placed anything there at all, described it as being entirely covered with large dunes, or as some of them put it, “impassable dunes.”

The nearest point to Dakhla in this south-western quadrant, that was marked in the maps, was an oasis which native information placed eighteen days’ journey to the south-west. Eighteen days, that is over ordinary desert, which might mean thirty at least if large dunes had to be crossed, and from what I had seen of those dunes it was doubtful if they were negotiable at all. It was said to be inhabited; but even its name was unknown. It was also said to have an old road leading from it towards Egypt. This looked somewhat promising, but the place was too far off to be of any use as a first objective, as until its position was accurately known, so that I could be certain of finding it at my first attempt, it would be necessary for me to arrange to get back again in the event of my not being able to reach it—and this would have necessitated a thirty-six days’ journey away from water, over easy desert, or two or three months over large dunes.

When it is considered that a camel, laden only with grain, will consume its own load in about a month, and that the amount of water that would have to be taken in addition on a journey of this description would be far heavier than the grain required, it will be easily realised that such a journey as this would be quite impossible without adopting some system of depots or relays, which, owing to the risk of their being tampered with, I felt disinclined to do until I knew more about the district. Before I could hope to reach this place, it was necessary for me to find some nearer oasis, or well, from which I could start afresh; so it was clear that this intermediate oasis, or well, must be my first objective. But where was this place to be found?

In the absence of more reliable information, it occurred to me that possibly some indication of its whereabouts might be gathered from the legends of Zerzura. The story of Rohlfs’ excavations in the Der el Hagar, told me by men who had actually been living in the neighbourhood at the time when they were said to have taken place, showed the extent to which even comparatively recent events are contorted by the natives.