From Qasr Lebakha we went on to ’Ain Um Debadib. Our road lay almost due west, parallel to the cliff of the plateau on our right, and turned out to be anything but a good one, being both hilly and very heavy going owing to the drift sand. The camels, too, gave a lot of trouble.
The caravan, as a whole, turned out to be the worst I ever owned. There was, however, one exception. He was an enormously powerful brute from the Sudan, that it seemed almost impossible to overburden. The proverbial “last straw” that would have broken that camel’s back could not, I believe, have been grown. But like other powerful camels, he was always trying to bite the other beasts and was a confirmed “man-eater.”
’Ain Um Debadib is a considerably larger place than Qasr Lebakha. At the time of my visit it was inhabited by two men and their families, natives of Kharga village, to which they occasionally returned, leaving this little oasis to look after itself. Like Qasr Lebakha, the place was originally defended by a castle, also apparently of Roman date. An old road runs north-west from ’Ain Um Debadib, which leads over the cliff to the north of the oasis by what appears from below to be a difficult pass. I intended at some later date to come back and try to find this place; but unfortunately the opportunity did not occur. The Spaniards have a proverb to the effect that hell is not only paved with good intentions, but is also roofed with lost opportunities, and probably, in omitting to find out what lay beyond that cliff, I added a slate to the infernal regions, for I think it extremely likely that a depression lay on the other side of it containing the well of ’Ain Hamur—not to be confused with ’Ain Amur—or possibly a place called ’Ain Embarres.
CHAPTER XIII
WE reached Dakhla Oasis on 23rd January, and stayed for a day in the scrub-covered area, through which the road runs before entering the inhabited portion of the oasis, on the chance of getting a shot at gazelle. While camped here the ’omda of Tenida, the nearest village, who was notorious throughout the oasis for his meanness, sent down over night a ghaffir (night watchman) after dark, to spy out who we were, and, having made sure of our identity, carefully got himself out of the way, in order to avoid having to invite us in to a meal, according to the hospitable custom of the oasis!
As gazelle-hunting, owing to some confounded bedawin, who were camping in the neighbourhood and wandering all over the place, seemed likely to prove a waste of energy, I moved on the following day to the village of Belat.
Very little barley is grown in the oasis beyond that required for the use of the inhabitants; but as I heard that the ’omda had a large store of it that he had been unsuccessfully trying to sell, I endeavoured to buy some off him.
But unfortunately he “followed the Skeykh,” and Qway continuing his obstructive tactics of Assiut, secretly got hold of him, with the result that, when I approached him on the subject, the ’omda declared that there was not a grain left in the village—“not one.”
A distinctly stormy scene followed, which ended in the ’omda caving in and producing about a quarter of a ton of the absent grain, which I bought off him at an exorbitant price.