We reached Jebel el Bayed on the 12th May, and, as the camels’ drink on the 8th had not been nearly enough to satisfy them, the poor beasts were already showing obvious signs of want of water. Even as far back as the 9th, two of them had left part of their feeds uneaten; on the 10th all of them had done so, and two of them had refused their food altogether—a very bad sign. Qway had then wanted me to return; but in spite of their obvious thirst, the camels seemed to be going strongly, and I had made up my mind to see what was to be seen from the top of that hill, before returning, even if we had to run for it afterwards; so, strongly against his advice, and in defiance of his statement that I should lose two or three of the beasts and should not be able to get back if I went on, I had risked it.
OLD WIND SHELTER, “VALLEY OF THE MIST.”
But it was clear that the camels were at their last gasp for want of water, and the two weaker ones could hardly even stand. There was only one way of getting those beasts back to Dakhla, and that was to keep just enough water in the tanks to take the men back to our rendezvous with Abd er Rahman, and to give the camels all the rest. This had the double advantage of not only quenching their thirst, but also of lightening considerably the loads that the poor brutes had to carry; but it spelt disaster if Abd er Rahman failed to turn up.
In travelling in the desert during the hot weather, when the whole caravan was on a limited water ration, I usually took the occasion of watering the beasts to have a bath. The water was poured into a folding canvas arrangement, in which—without using any soap—I performed my ablutions, and the camels were allowed to drink out of it afterwards. As a camel is not a fastidious beast in his diet, the arrangement worked very well. But on this occasion I was deprived of my wash, as, owing to the necessity of reducing the weight of the baggage, I had been obliged to leave the bath behind in Mut.
The difficulty of keeping oneself properly clean on a limited water supply constituted perhaps the greatest trial in a desert journey. The baths I obtained when the camels drank were a great luxury, but my washing in between their drinks was of the scantiest possible description. The method that I found made the water go farthest was to scrub myself clean with the moistened corner of a towel and rub myself vigorously with the drier part of it afterwards. Sometimes the supply was insufficient for even this economical method. I then usually retired behind a rock, stripped and rolled in the sand like a camel. This, though not so cleansing as the damp towel method, was distinctly refreshing.
We got what rest we could during the early part of the evening, and got off about two in the morning, marched throughout the night until we halted for the midday rest. We were off again at five in the evening and marched, with only one halt near midnight, to eat a meal, till nine o’clock on the following morning, by which time we had reached the top of the Bab es Sabah. We had then had enough of it and camped till sunset, when we resumed our journey and marched throughout the night till dawn.
The stars in the clear desert atmosphere shine with a brilliance altogether unknown in our more northerly latitudes. The Milky Way appears as a filmy cloud, and is so distinct that, when first I saw it in the desert, I took it to be one. We were practically on the line of the tropic of Cancer, and, in that southerly latitude, many stars appeared that never show above the horizon in England, conspicuous among them being that rather overrated constellation the Southern Cross.
Wasm, or Brand, of the Senussia.