Gebel el-Korn, or the Hill of the Horn, would have been more attractive had it been steep enough to shade us from the midday sun. The rise in temperature in the moist air of cultivated lands is as nothing to what it is in the dry air of the desert. We saw some bushes ahead, along what appeared to be a dried watercourse, and we decided to move on and possibly to find some shade in which to pass our midday halt. This, however, was nothing more than camel-thorn—a dried-up mass of prickles—as useless for shade as it apparently was for fodder. But Laura and the other camels thought differently; the absence of shade did not trouble them, and the way they started devouring these long sharp thorns reminded us that of the twenty-three camels which formed our caravan not one carried anything in the shape of fodder. They would be away no less than a fortnight from the cultivation, and on questioning our guide as to what the creatures would have to eat, he seemed to think that enough fodder could be picked up on the journey. ‘You forget the hump,’ said one of our companions. Camels having ‘the hump’ is an old and well-seasoned jest, but their feeding on their humps was news to me. I decided to examine Laura’s hump when next she was unsaddled and see if it held a fortnight’s nutrition, also to take daily observations of its disappearance. The throaty noise spelt ‘ghrrr!’ from our guide brought his camel down on its haunches. I made the same noise, or thought I did, and, like descending a lift in two shifts, Laura came down to the ground. She looked at me when I jumped off, as much as to say, ‘Don’t flatter yourself that I have come down owing to the silly noise you made; I was only following the example of my husband over there.’
Laura was not her real name, it was more like Laharrha with a throat-scraping sound in the middle. This was not euphonious, and all the throat-scraping sounds I could produce were to be reserved for when a halt should be called.
We decided to lunch on the top of a low-lying hill where, if there was no shade, we should at all events get the benefit of what breeze there was. My word! we did enjoy that lunch. I forget what we had, and can only remember the appetite with which we ate it. I kept some back for Laura, to see if kindness could overcome the dislike I felt sure she had for me. She gobbled it up, and nearly took a bit of my hand with it. I think she preferred this to the sharp thorns of her last snack; but if she felt any gratitude, she carefully disguised it. It was probably more contempt for me as a rider than a dislike of me personally. Her expression was as a sealed book with an ugly cover.
THE TOMBS OF THE KHALIFS
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Now was the time to fix the blankets on to the saddle, and the Ababdi guide and Selim made a good job of it. The trot at which we started was less painful in consequence, and I had also, by carefully watching the motion of our guide, fallen into the movement myself, and the bump, bump of the previous day, which had caused my discomfiture, disappeared, and I rose and fell to the motion of my mount. When once this is acquired, a long day’s ride will cause less stiffness than an hour’s journey to a novice.
It was not until we had reached Gebel el-Korn that we finally lost sight of the Der el-Bahri cliffs. A feeling of being far away from home and of venturing into the unknown got hold of me, though I was barely twenty miles in a direct line from the hut beneath those cliffs. I consoled myself that the assistant I had brought out from Paris had some French neighbours close by, who could assist him with his novel housekeeping. M. Baraize and his wife would also appreciate having a near neighbour who spoke their language.
Nothing much in the way of archæological finds were made during the day, and these were not to be expected till the wide track closed in between the rock surfaces. We saw in the distance the little oasis of Lakéta, with its palms upside down in illusive sheets of water at their bases; for a moment it looked like an island shimmering in the sunlight, and which might vanish as easily as the reflections it cast. It looked as if it might be reached in a half-hour’s trot; but it had that look for a long while—the appearance of water gave way to that of the arid waste all around us more than an hour before the oasis was reached.