Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

From the top of the hill a very wide view was obtainable. Towards the north, the pass by which we had descended from the plateau, was invisible, owing to a rise in the intervening ground; but farther to the west, the southern cliff of the plateau was visible and the surface of the plateau itself in this direction could also be seen, showing that it sloped fairly sharply towards the south; but this part of it seemed to be much less thickly studded with hills than the portions over which we had travelled.

Towards the north-west I saw a line of sand dunes running over the tableland, and the point where they came over the scarp, and their continuation on the floor of the depression could also be seen through my glass. They evidently passed some little distance to the west of us.

The cliff of the plateau became much lower towards the west, and looked as though it were going to die out altogether, and the tableland to become gradually merged into the floor of the depression; but the view in this direction was cut off by a long range of hills, with a very jagged outline, that ran from north to south from the neighbourhood of the scarp, and hid most of the view of the horizon between north-west and south-west.

South of this range of hills was a vast plain of open sandy desert, falling towards the west, and so far as we could see containing no sand dunes, but here and there a single low rocky hill.

Right ahead of us to the south-west, standing alone in this sandy plain, about two days’ journey away, was a very conspicuous hill, or cluster of hills, with a jagged skyline. This broken outline, and that of the range of hills to the west, may possibly indicate a change in the geological formation. The hills of Nubian sandstone to be seen on the plateau and in the surrounding desert were, with a few exceptions, all of certain definite types—flat topped, domed or conical—and the irregular skyline was only rarely to be seen in the Nubian sandstone formation.

The desert remained of the same monotonous level, sandy nature all round from south through east to nearly north, though on this side of our position the isolated rocky hills appeared to be rather more plentiful. It was an extraordinarily featureless landscape. From our exalted position we must have been able to see without difficulty for well over fifty miles in almost all directions, but there was hardly anything to go down on a map. I took a few bearings, and jotted them down and minutely examined the rest of the landscape through my glasses to see if there was anything to note. In about five minutes I had collected all the available material for mapping about ten thousand square miles of desert, and left the greater part of it blank—there was practically nothing to record.

When I had finished, Qway borrowed my glass and gazed through it for some time, declaring that it was useless to look for water anywhere near in that part of the desert as it all lay at a very high level, adding that we were getting near the country of the Bedayat, and had better return to Mut.

It was clear that what he said was right. There was no chance of finding water for another three days, and we had not got sufficient supplies with us to go so far, so, very reluctantly, I climbed down from the hill and prepared for our return journey.

Before starting, I had a look round our camp. Close to the foot of the hill I found an ’alem and one of the low semicircular walls of loose stone that the bedawin erect at their halting places as wind shelters; so if any further proof was necessary, that we were still on the line of the road we had been following, these relics of a bygone traffic appeared to settle the point conclusively.

One’s beasts during a hot weather journey in the desert require rather careful management. We left Mut on the 3rd of May. On the 8th we gave the camels a drink, and afterwards I sent Abd er Rahman back to Mut with all the empty tanks, telling him to fill them up and return again along our tracks to meet us on our homeward journey. In the event of his not meeting us, he was to leave the tanks behind him and return at once to Mut to await our arrival, taking with him only just enough water for himself for the return journey. The latter instructions were designed to provide for the contingency of our finding water out in the desert and continuing our journey.