The lower-lying sandstone hills turned a greyish violet, except where a roseate light caught their summits, and purple black hung about the base of the Hammamât mountains. The altitude of the latter being considerably more than any we had so far seen, the heights still reflected the light from the setting sun—a flame-colour split up in violet patches of shade. It was wonderful, but was it beautiful? Where strange combinations of colour and form are first seen, this question is often difficult to answer. We watched the dark shades rise and spread over these mountains till they told black against an ash-grey sky. The Rehenu Valley of the Egyptians was a spooky place to enter. Our path wound through great masses of breccia rock, and it contracted in places so that we could hardly ride abreast. The darkness increased till the camels of my companions were lost in the gloom, and the white helmets rising and falling with the motion of the beasts were soon all that I could see of our party.
Our track becoming quite invisible, there was just a chance that our Ababdi guide might take a wrong turning, and if once well out of the beaten road, in a wilderness such as this, it is doubtful whether we could find our way before our water-supply gave out.
The longed-for moon showed herself at last, and by her light we pursued our way to the well where we had settled to camp for the night. The valley opens up here to a considerable width, and the well, known as Bîr Hammamât, is a conspicuous object in the centre. There was nothing now to do but to wait for our baggage camels, and to keep ourselves as warm as we could.
Our guide rode back to reconnoitre, and when we could distinguish an answer to his calls, other than the echo, we were filled with a sense of relief.
Lakéta is only thirty miles from Bîr Hammamât, but with our crossing and recrossing the valleys in search of graffiti we must have ridden half again as far. Dinner and sleep, and an easy day to follow, were pleasant things to contemplate.
CHAPTER XX
THE WADY FOWAKIYEH AND BÎR HAGI SULIMAN
WE slumbered till the sun beat down on our tents. There was enough water obtainable to fill our collapsible baths to the brim, and good enough for the camels to drink—poor brackish stuff we should have found it, had we depended on it for our own consumption.
The well seemed an immense depth, and had a spiral staircase down it, though it was dangerous to descend more than a few yards. A mining company had of late years partially restored the building which stood over it, and for the first time since we left Luxor we saw the names of some fellow-countrymen who had put this well in workable order. Unfinished sarcophagi lay near by, with some flaws in the stone to account for their having been left here by the workmen of one of the Ptolemies.
We did not propose to travel more than a few miles that day, for the Wady Fowakiyeh, as the natives call it, is that part of the Hammamât valley where Lepsius and other former explorers made their greatest finds.