Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

Long journeys in the hot weather on a short water supply are very exhausting to the camels; the camel drivers did not consider this one to be in a very bad condition. ([p. 181]).

But at dawn the hill appeared to be no nearer, and as we continued our march it seemed actually to recede and became noticeably smaller.

Qway was completely puzzled by it, and declared that it must be an afrit. As we continued to advance, however, it suddenly appeared to come nearer; then after a time it receded again.

Qway seemed seriously to imagine there was something supernatural about it. The men, too, evidently began to think that they had got into a haunted part of the desert, for they stopped their usual chaffing and singing and trudged along in stolid silence. It certainly was rather uncanny.

It was an unusually bad piece of desert. The scorching noontide sun caused the whole horizon to dance with mirage, and it was impossible to tell where the horizon ended and the sky began—they seemed to merge gradually into each other—strips of the desert hanging some degrees above the horizon in the sky, while large patches of sky were brought down below the horizon, producing the appearance of sheets of water—the Bahr esh Shaytan, or “devil’s lake,” of the natives.

But that hill was no mirage. We reached it at noon on the third day after we had sighted it, and it proved to be about four hundred and twenty feet high above the plain, and not an optical illusion. On account of the peculiar way in which it seemed first to recede as we approached it, and then to leap suddenly towards us, only to recede again, the men gave it the name of the “Jebel Temelli Bayed”—“the ever distant hill”—which they afterwards abbreviated to Jebel el Bayed. I was for a long time puzzled by the way in which it seemed to alter its position as it was approached; but came to the conclusion that this effect was produced by the fact that the road, by which we were travelling over the desert, though apparently of a dead level, was in reality slightly undulating, while the hill itself was of a shape that merged very gradually into the surrounding desert.

Consequently, while standing in a position such as A (Fig. 2), on the top of one of the undulations, we were able to see over the next ridge, E, down to the line A, B (Fig. 1 and 2) almost to the foot of the hill. When, however, we got into a trough between two of the undulations, as at C, we could only see the portion of the hill showing above the line C, D (Figs. 1 and 2), and it consequently appeared to be much smaller, and so more distant, than when seen from A. But on reaching the top of the ridge E, the whole hill down to its base came into view, rapidly increasing in size, and so appearing to leap forward, as we ascended the slope from C to E.

DIAGRAM OF JEBEL EL BAYED.

I explained this view to Qway, who at once accepted it as correct, and was evidently much relieved, for, as he half laughingly admitted, he was beginning to believe that the hill had been enchanted, and did not like having anything to do with it.