I had already surveyed the route, and as a second mapping of the road was unnecessary, we were able to travel a great part of the time by night, when the temperature was at its lowest. By rapid marches we were able to reach the pass leading down into Khalil’s “Valley of the Mist” on the fifth day.
With hardly an exception, the numerous rocky hills that rose above the plateau were so shaped that it was quite impossible to find any shade under them during the middle of the day, so we were obliged to rig up such shelter as we could by stretching blankets or empty sacks from one water-tank to another, or by supporting them from any framework that could be rigged up on the spur of the moment. Qway usually tied one end of his blanket on to the pommels of his saddle and then stretched the other end over a tank or two that he placed on end, or else secured it on to his gun, which he fixed up as a kind of tent pole.
On descending from the plateau into the “Valley of the Mist,” we continued in the same line of march. The floor of the depression proved excellent going, consisting as it did of hard smooth sand, containing a sprinkling of rounded pebbles; there was hardly even a ripple to break the evenness of its surface. Here and there a few stones showed up above the sand that covered the remainder of the surface; from these it was clear that we were still on the same Nubian sandstone formation as the plateau. In one place we found a huge slab of the stone propped up to form an ’alem, and here and there we came across white pulverised bones, that from their size must have belonged to some camel that in the distant past had died in that part of the desert, all showing that we were still on the line of the road we had been following.
OLD ’ALEM, “VALLEY OF THE MIST.”
Soon after descending into the depression we sighted a double peaked hill almost straight ahead of us that, as it stood completely alone in the midst of the level sandy plain, promised to give a wide view from its summit. On sighting the hill, I suggested to Qway, who was riding alongside of me, that it might be a good plan to send Abd er Rahman to climb to the top, to see if anything were to be seen.
Qway looked at the hill doubtfully for a moment. “I think that hill is a long way off,” he said. “We shall not reach it before noon.”
But distances on these level plains, where there are no natural features with which the size of an object can be compared, are often extraordinarily deceptive—even Qway with all his experience was often taken in by them. We had not reached that hill by noon, and though we continued our march for two hours in the afternoon, at the end of the day it appeared to be no nearer—if anything it looked farther off than it had done in the morning. As there was nothing whatever to survey, we set off again at half-past eleven that night, and continued our journey towards the hill till four next morning.
Rather Thin.