MYSTERIES OF THE LIBYAN DESERT

My Hagin, or Riding Camel.

The saddle bags, or hurj, are gaily coloured and the rider rests his legs on the leather pad over the withers, the camel being controlled by a single rein. ([p. 33).]

MYSTERIES OF THE
LIBYAN DESERT

A RECORD OF THREE YEARS OF EXPLORATION
IN THE HEART OF THAT VAST &
WATERLESS REGION

BY
W. J. HARDING KING, F.R.G.S.
Awarded Gill Memorial in 1919 by the Royal Geographical Society
AUTHOR OF “A SEARCH FOR THE MASKED TAWAREKS,” &c.

WITH 49 ILLUSTRATIONS & 3 MAPS

London
Seeley, Service & Co. Limited
196 Shaftesbury Avenue
1925

“In a land that the sand overlays—the ways to her gates are untrod.

A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God,

Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall,

And of this is a story written: but Allah alone knoweth all!”

Kipling—The City of Brass.

Printed in Great Britain at
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.

PREFACE

IT is not easy to condense into a reasonable compass an account of three years’ work in an entirely unknown part of the world like the centre of the Libyan Desert.

Most of the scientific results I obtained during that time, however, have already appeared in the journals of the Royal Geographical Society, or other scientific bodies, so it has not been necessary to reproduce them. Many of the journeys, too, that were made into the desert had of necessity to retraverse routes that I had already covered, or were of too uninteresting a character to be worth describing, so no account of these was necessary. On the other hand, various incidents have been introduced into the narrative part of the book which, though they may appear comparatively unimportant in themselves, illustrate the character of the natives, and so supply data of an ethnographical character in one of its most practical forms.

The photographs which form the illustrations were all taken by myself. Unfortunately many others that I took were so seriously damaged by the sand, or heat, as to be unfit for reproduction. These have had to be replaced by sketches that I made from them—for these I can only offer my apologies.

The names by which the new places that we found in the central part of the desert are called will not be seen on any map. They are only those given to them by my men. But it has been necessary to use them in order to avoid repetition of such cumbersome phrases as “the-hill-that-appeared-to-alternately-recede-and-advance-as-we-approached-it,” etc.

I received so much kindness and assistance in so many quarters in carrying out my work that it is a little difficult to decide where to begin in acknowledging it. To the War Office I am indebted for the gift of the graticules upon which my map was constructed; the Sudan Office in Cairo lent me tanks and gave me much useful intelligence. Major Jennings-Bramley, Capt. James Hay and the late Capt. (afterwards Colonel) O. A. G. Fitzgerald all gave me information and advice of great value.

Dr. Rendle and his staff of the Botanical Section of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington kindly identified for me a collection of plants that I brought back, and in addition allowed me the use of their library while working out the geographical distribution of the collection.

For the identification of part of my other collections I am also indebted to the staff of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. A collection of insects made on my last journey sent to the Tring Museum were most kindly identified for me by Lord Rothschild.

I am under a deep debt of gratitude to the Royal Geographical Society for a most generous loan of instruments; and last, but by no means least, I have to express most cordial thanks to the Survey Department in Egypt for the loan of tanks and instruments and for much valuable advice and assistance. More especially I am under obligations to the following members of this department: To the late Mr. (afterwards Lt.-Col.) B. F. E. Keeling and Mr. Bennett, for calculating some of my astronomical observations; to Mr. J. Craig for his kindness in working out my boiling point and aneroid altitudes; to Dr. John Ball and Mr. H. E. Hurst, who gave me much assistance and so far enlightened my ignorance on the subject as to enable me to take some electrical observations on the sand blown off a sand dune; the former, too, most kindly lent me his electrometer for the purpose of the observations. Mr. Alfred Lucas of this department also kindly analysed some samples of crusted sand that I collected in order to discover the cementing material.

The Libyan Desert, that in the past has to a great extent defied the efforts of all its explorers, is bound before long to give up its secrets. Suitably designed cars, accompanied perhaps by a scouting plane, our enemies against which even the most avid desert is almost defenceless, though one cannot but regret the necessity for such prosaic mechanical aids, they unquestionably afford an ideal method of conducting long pioneer explorations in a waterless desert. But these things have only recently been invented, and there are still many problems that remain unsolved as to “what lies hid behind the ridges” in the vast area that we know as the Libyan Desert, and speculation is so full of fascination, that it seems almost a pity that those problems should ever be solved.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MAP FOR “MYSTERIES OF THE LIBYAN DESERT.”

Seeley Service & Co. L^td.

[(Large-size)]

Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

CHAPTER I

OF the making of books on Egypt there is no end. The first on the subject was Genesis, and there has been a steady output ever since. But the literature of the Libyan Desert, that joins up to Egypt on the west, is curiously scanty, when the enormous area of this district is considered.

The Libyan desert may be said to extend from the southern edge of the narrow cultivated belt that exists almost everywhere along the North African coast, to the Tibesti highlands, and the northern limit of the vegetation of the Sudan. On the east the boundary of the desert is well defined by the Valley of the Nile; but on its western side it is extremely vague.

A broad belt of desert stretches all across North Africa from east to west. The western portion of this is known to us as “the Sahara.” But “Sahara” is not really a name, but an Arabic word meaning a desert—any desert. By the natives this term is applied to the whole of this desert belt, and is used just as much to describe the Libyan Desert, as the more westerly part of it. The boundary line between what we know as the Sahara and the Libyan Desert has never been drawn, but it may be said to run roughly from the northern end of Tibesti to the base of the Gulf of Sidra. With such vague boundaries it is impossible to give an accurate estimate of its extent, but it may be taken that the Libyan Desert covers nearly a million square miles. It is probably the least-known area of its size in the world. There are still hundreds of thousands of square miles in its southern and central parts quite unknown to Europeans, the map of which appears as so much blank paper, or is shown as being covered with impassable sand dunes.

I had had some experience of desert travelling in the Western Sahara, so when, in 1908, I wrote to the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, suggesting a journey into the Western Sahara, and received a letter in reply proposing that I should tackle the Libyan Desert instead, as offering the largest available area of unknown ground, and should take up the study of sand dunes, for which it afforded an unrivalled opportunity, I jumped at the suggestion, which had not before occurred to me.

But after a jump of that kind one usually comes to earth again with something of a bang, and when, after making a more thorough enquiry than I had previously done into the nature of the job I had undertaken, I began to realise its real character and felt that in saying I would tackle this part of the world, I had done something quite remarkably foolish.

Many expeditions had set out from Egypt to explore this part of the world, but none up to that time had ever crossed the Senussi frontier, with the exception of Rohlfs’, who, in 1874, before the Senussia was firmly established in the desert, attempted to reach Kufara Oasis. Even he, hampered perhaps by his enormous caravan, only managed to proceed for three days westward from Dakhla and was then compelled, by the insurmountable character of the dunes, to abandon the attempt and to turn up towards the north and make for the Egyptian oasis of Siwa. This difficulty of crossing the sand hills, the obstructing influence of the Senussi, who had reduced passive resistance to a fine art, and, perhaps, in some cases, want of experience in desert travelling, had rendered the other attempts abortive. Still, this seemed to be the most promising side from which to enter the desert.

I first took a preliminary canter by going again to the Algerian Sahara. This was, of course, some years before the war, in the course of which the Senussi—or the Senussia as they should be more strictly called—were very thoroughly thrashed. Just before the war, however, they were at about the height of their power and were a very real proposition indeed.

They had the very undesirable peculiarity—from a traveller’s point of view—of regarding the part of the Libyan Desert, into which I was proposing to go, as their private property and of resenting most strongly—to put it mildly—all attempts to penetrate into their strongholds. There can be little doubt that at this period they had been contemplating for a long time an invasion of Egypt, and were only waiting for a suitable opportunity to occur of putting it into execution. In the circumstances, they naturally did not want Europeans to enter their country for fear that they should get to know too much. Moreover their fanaticism against Europeans had been considerably augmented by the advance of the French into their country from the south.

Even now most people seem hardly to realise the real character of the Senussia; for one constantly hears them alluded to as a “tribe” or merely as a set of unusually devout Moslems, who have chosen to take up their abode in the most inaccessible parts of Africa, in order to devote themselves to their religious life, without fear of interruption from outsiders. The fact is, that they are in reality dervishes, whose character, at that time at any rate, was of a most uncompromising nature towards all non-Mohammedans and was especially hostile towards Europeans, particularly those occupying any Moslem territories. Moreover they were not confined only to the Libyan Desert, but formed one of the most powerful of the dervish orders, with followers spread throughout practically the whole Moslem world from Sumatra to Morocco.

As I expected to come a good deal in contact with them in the Libyan Desert, after leaving the Algerian Sahara, I spent a considerable time in the public libraries of Algeria and Tunis, in collecting such information as was available on the Senussia and other dervishes of North Africa.

For the benefit of those unacquainted with the subject it may be as well to explain the nature of these dervish orders. They resemble in some ways the monastic communities of Christianity, and are usually organised on much the same lines. Their zawias, or monasteries, vary in size from unpretentious buildings, little better than mud huts, to huge establishments, which in size and architecture favourably compare with the finest institutions of their kind in Europe.

Each dervish order has its own peculiar ritual. Many of them are entirely non-political and of a purely religious character; but there are others, such for instance as the notorious Rahmania and Senussia, who are of a strongly political character, usually hostile to Europeans. Frequently, however, their influence is not apparent, as they keep discreetly in the background; but it has been repeatedly shown that it has been intriguing sects such as these, who have been at the bottom of the numerous risings and difficulties that Europeans have had to contend with in dealing with their Moslem subjects.

Other political orders—such as the Tijania—are actually favourable towards Europeans; while others again lend their support to some particular branch of the community, acting for instance, as in the case of the Ziania, as protectors to travellers or, as the Kerzazia do, supporting the dwellers in the oases against the attacks of the bedawin who surround them, and so forth.

As these dervish orders are largely dependant upon the refar, or tribute, that they exact from their followers, for their support, with few exceptions, each sect does its utmost to increase the number of its adherents and to prevent them from joining any other order. This naturally leads to a considerable rivalry between them, and when two of them pursue an exactly opposite policy—as for instance in the case of the Tijania and the Senussia—this rivalry develops into a deadly feud. It is the impossibility of inducing rival dervishes to combine, more perhaps than anything else, that makes that wild dream of Pan-islam, by which all Mohammedans are to unite to get rid of their European rulers, such a hopelessly impossible scheme.

A very large proportion of the Moslem natives of North Africa belong to one, or more, of these orders. But it is seldom that a native can be found to discuss at all freely the particular one to which he belongs. A knowledge, however, of them and of the peculiarities by which the followers of each sect can be identified, is most useful. The information that I picked up on this subject before going to Libya I found of the greatest possible value, as it often enabled me to gauge the probable attitude towards me of the men with whom I came in contact, and even to put a spoke in their wheel, before they even realised that I had any ground for suspicion.

On leaving Tunis, I went on to Egypt, where, before actually setting out for the desert, I spent some time in Cairo, putting the finishing touches to my equipment and picking up what information I could about the part into which I was going. It is extraordinary how many of my informants regarded the desert as “a land of romance.” No doubt in many cases distance lends enchantment to the view, and covers it with a certain amount of glamour; but a very slight experience of these arid wastes is calculated completely to shatter the spell. Romance is merely the degenerate offspring of imagination and ignorance. There can be few parts of the world where one is so much up against hard cold facts as one is in the desert.

On the whole, the information that I was able to collect was of a very unsatisfactory character. I could learn practically nothing at all definite about the desert—at least nothing that seemed to be reliable, except that the dunes of the interior of the desert were quite impassable.

But I soon found out that though I was learning nothing, other people were. The truth of the local saying that “you can’t keep anything quiet in Egypt” was several times forced upon me in rather startling ways. Most of the news that natives learn probably leaks out through the reckless way in which some Europeans talk in the presence of their English-speaking servants. But even allowing for careless conversation of this kind, it is astonishing how quickly news sometimes travels. This rapid transmission of secret news is a well-known thing in North Africa, and one that has always to be reckoned with. In Algeria they call it the “arab telegraph,” and many extraordinary cases of it are recorded.

As a result of my enquiries I was able to draw up a sort of programme for my work in the desert, the main objects in which were as follows:—

(1) To cross that field of impassable dunes.

(2) If I succeeded in doing so, to cross the desert from north-east to south-west.

(3) Failing the latter scheme, to survey as much as possible of other unknown parts of the desert.

(4) To collect as much information as possible from the natives about the unknown portions of the desert that I was unable to visit myself.

Before leaving Cairo, I engaged two servants. My knowledge of Arabic at that time was scanty, and what there was of it was of the Algerian variety—a vile patois that is almost a different language to that spoken in the desert—an interpreter was consequently almost a necessity. I took one—Khalil Salah Gaber by name—from a man who was just leaving the country. He was loud in his praises of Khalil, stating that he was an extremely good interpreter and “very tactful.”

Since then I have always been distinctly suspicious of people who are noted for their tact—there are so many degrees of it. Tactful, diplomatic, tricky, dishonest, criminal, all express different shades of the same quality, and Khalil’s tact turned out to be of the most superlative character!

I also engaged a man called Dahab Suleyman Gindi as cook. Dahab—unlike Khalil, who was a fellah or one of the Egyptian peasants—was a Berberine, the race from which the best native servants are drawn. He was a small, elderly, rather feeble-looking man with an honest straightforward appearance, who not only turned out to be a very fair cook, but who also made himself useful at times as an interpreter, as he knew a certain amount of English.

After my preparations were completed, I stayed on for a while to see something of the sights of Cairo. Its cosmopolitan all-nation crowd made it an interesting enough place for a short stay. But after one had spent a little time there, and done all the usual sights, dirty, noisy Cairo and the other tourist resorts began to pall upon one. After all, they are only a sort of popular edition of the country, published by Thomas Cook and Son. Beyond lay the real Egypt and desert, a land where afrits, ghuls, genii and all the other creatures of the native superstitions are matters of everyday occurrence; where lost oases and enchanted cities lie in the desert sands, where the natives are still unspoiled by contact with Europeans, and where most of the men are pleasing, and, though the prospect is vile, that could not destroy the attraction that lay in the fact that about a million square miles of it were quite unknown, and waiting to be explored.

Before I had been very long in Cairo, I had had enough of it—it was so much like an Earl’s Court exhibition—and at the end of my stay, I cleared out for the desert with a feeling of relief.

The train for Kharga Oasis left Cairo at 8 p.m. After a long dusty journey I found myself deposited at the terminus in the Nile Valley of the little narrow gauge railway that runs across the desert for some hundred miles to Kharga Oasis.

There is a proper station at this junction now, but at that time, in 1909, the line had only been recently opened, and the junction consisted merely of a siding, a ramshackle little wooden hut for the station-master, and a truly appalling stink of dead dog, the last being due to the fact that owing to an attack of rabies in the district, the authorities had been laying down poisoned meat to destroy the pariah dogs of the neighbourhood, who all seemed to have chosen the vicinity of the station as the spot on which to spend their last moments.

Having shot out my baggage at the side of the permanent way, the train disappeared into the distance and left me with about half a ton of kit to get up to Qara, the base of the oasis railway, where I had been told I could get put up. After a delay of nearly an hour, during which time, as it was bitterly cold, I began to feel the truth of the native saying that “all travel is a foretaste of hell,” some trollies put in an appearance. Moslems, it may be mentioned, believe that there are seven hells, each worse than the last—and they say they are all feminine!

As soon as the trollies had been loaded up, a start was made for Qara, some five miles away, where I spent the next few days, while collecting the camels for my caravan.

To assist me in buying the beasts, I engaged a local Arab, known as Sheykh Suleyman Awad, a grim, grizzled old scoundrel of whom I saw a good deal later on. In his youth he had had a great reputation as a gada—a term corresponding pretty closely to our “sportsman,” and much coveted by the younger bedawin.

He had gained this reputation in a manner rather characteristic of these Arabs. Once, when a young man, he was having an altercation with a couple of fellahin, who after showering other terms of abuse upon him, finally wound up by calling him a “woman.” An insult such as this from a couple of mere fellahin, a race much despised by the Arabs, was too much altogether for Suleyman, who promptly shot them both. It was a neat little repartee, but Suleyman had to do time for it.

The bedawin in that part of Egypt are semi-sedentary, living encamped in the Nile Valley on the edge of the cultivation. Most of them live in tents woven of thick camel and goat hair, others in huts of busa—dried stalks of maize, etc.—a few of the more wealthy Arabs have houses, built of the usual mud bricks, and own small areas of land which they cultivate. At certain seasons of the year, they migrate into the oases, returning again to their camping places in the Nile Valley in the spring, to avoid the camel fly that puts in its appearance in the oases at that season, and is capable of causing nearly as much mortality among the camels as the tsetse fly does among horses in other parts of Africa.

After spending a day or two trying to buy camels round Qara, I at length secured five first-rate beasts in the market at Berdis.

Each Arab tribe has its own camel brand or wasm, the origins of which are lost in the mists of antiquity. Some of these marks, however, are identical in shape with the letters of the old Libyan alphabet of North Africa, and with its near relation the Tifinagh, or alphabet of the modern Tawareks, and it is possible that there may be some connection between them.

The camels I bought at Berdis came from the Sudan. They were large fawn-coloured beasts with a fairly smooth coat, and all showed the same brand—a vertical line on the near side of the head by the nostril, and a similar line in the bend of the neck. They belonged, I believe, to the Ababda tribe.

Sheykh Suleyman eventually produced a decent-looking camel from somewhere, which I bought, and that, with the five I had procured from Berdis, constituted my whole caravan—and an excellent lot of beasts they were.

I engaged a couple of drivers to look after them—Musa, a young fellow of about eighteen years of age, and a little jet-black Sudani, called Abd er Rahman Musa Said, who turned out to be a first-rate man, and stayed with me the whole time I spent in the desert. Both of these men belonged to Sheykh Suleyman’s tribe.

The choice of a guide is a serious question, as the success or otherwise of an expedition depends very largely upon him, and I found considerable difficulty in finding a suitable man. I nearly engaged one who applied, as he seemed to be the only one of the candidates who knew anything at all about the desert beyond the Egyptian frontier. But Nimr—Sheykh Suleyman’s brother—sent me word by Abd er Rahman, that he was not to be relied on as he “followed the Sheykh”—the usual way among natives of describing a man who was a member of the Senussia, and as he refused a cigarette I offered him, I declined to employ him. Smoking, it may be noticed is forbidden to the followers of Sheykh Senussi, and the offer of a cigarette is consequently a useful—though not always infallible—test of membership of this fanatical fraternity.

My suspicions were confirmed on the following morning, when this man came in to hear my answer to his application. The camel he rode was branded on the neck with the wasm of the Senussia—a kind of conventionalised form of the Arabic word “Allah” (

)—a damning piece of evidence showing not only that he belonged to the sect, but that his mount was supplied by the Senussia itself. He was probably one of their agents.

I was beginning to despair of finding a guide, when I received a telegram from the mudir (native governor) of Assiut, to whom I had applied for a reliable man, saying that he had got one for me, and asking whether I wished to see him.

The man arrived the next day. I took a fancy to him at once, which even his many peccadilloes never quite destroyed. His appearance was distinctly in his favour. He was a big man, nearly six feet high, which is very tall indeed for an Arab. He looked about sixty years old, and carried himself with that “grand air” which so many of the bedawin show, and which goes so well with the flowing robes of the East. Unlike most bedawin he was spotlessly clean.

His name he said was Qway Hassan Qway. It is quite impossible to convey an accurate idea of the pronunciation of Arabic names by mere European systems of writing, but his first name as he pronounced it, sounded like “choir” with a sort of gulping “g” instituted for the “ch.” He added the gratuitous piece of information that his grandfather had been a bey—a sort of military title corresponding roughly to a knighthood. He was clearly not in the habit of hiding his light under a bushel. But as he was very highly recommended by the mudir, and I liked the look of him, I engaged him.

“Guide” is perhaps hardly the correct term to describe the capacity in which he was expected to act, for he did not even profess to have any knowledge of the desert beyond the Egyptian frontier. But as it seemed hopeless to attempt to find anyone who did, I employed him as a man of great experience in desert travelling, who would act as head of the caravan and help me with his advice in any difficulty that arose.

I took him round and introduced him to my other men. At my suggestion he arranged with Sheykh Suleyman to hire a riding camel from him, as he said that he had not one of his own that was strong enough for a hard desert journey.

In spite of his engaging manners, for some reason that was not apparent, both Sheykh Suleyman and Abd er Rahman obviously took a strong dislike to him. I was rather pleased at this, as a little friction in one’s caravan makes the men easier to manage. At the time, I put it down to his belonging to a different tribe; but, judging from what afterwards occurred, I fancy it was really due to their knowing something against him, which, native-like, they did not see fit to tell me.

Qway being thus provided for, I dispatched my caravan by road to Kharga Oasis, and followed them myself a day or two afterwards by the bi-weekly train.

CHAPTER II

FOR the first few miles the line ran over the floor of the Nile Valley. Some twenty-eight miles from Qara, we emerged from the wady through which the railway ran on to the plateau above. Jebel, the word generally used in Egypt to signify desert, means literally mountain; the desert near the Nile Valley consisting of the plateau through which the Nile has cut its course.

The view on the plateau was impressive in its utter barrenness—no single plant, not even dried grass, was to be seen. Though the actual surface of the desert was very uneven, the general level was extremely uniform. The whole plateau consisted of limestone, in the slight hollows and inequalities of which patches of sand and gravel had collected. Here and there very low limestone hills, or rather mounds, were to be seen, none of them probably exceeding twenty feet in height. Everywhere on the plateau the effect of the sand erosion was most marked. The various types of surface produced being known to the natives as rusuf, kharafish, kharashef and battikh, or “water melon” desert, the nature of which will best be seen from the photographs.

The descent from the plateau into the depression in which Kharga Oasis lies, lay, like the ascent from the Nile Valley on to the plateau, through a wady. Kharga Oasis was at that time very little known to Europeans. Until the advent in the district of the company who had constructed the railway, the oasis had only been visited, I believe, by a few scientists and Government officials.

The desert beyond it had been so little explored that, within about a day’s journey from the oasis, I found a perfect labyrinth—several hundred square miles in extent—of little depressions, two or three hundred feet in depth, opening out of each other, that completely honeycombed what had previously been considered to be a part of the solid limestone plateau. Unfortunately, I was never able entirely to explore this curious district. It almost certainly contains at least two wells, or perhaps small oases—’Ain Hamur and ’Ain Embarres.

It is difficult to convey to anyone who has not seen them a clear idea of these oases in the Libyan Desert. Kharga is an oblong tract of country measuring roughly a hundred and forty miles from north to south by twenty from east to west. It is bounded on the east, north and west by huge cliffs or hills. Only about a hundred and fiftieth of its area, in the neighbourhood of the various villages, hamlets and farms scattered over its surface, is under cultivation. These cultivated areas are irrigated by artesian wells, many of which date back to a very remote period. But Kharga Oasis and its antiquities have already been described by two or three writers, so no lengthy account of them is necessary. It contains a number of temples and other ruins, the most important of which is the Temple of Hibis.

The temple has an excellent mummy story connected with it. Those engaged in excavating the temples and tombs of Egypt—an occupation locally known as “body snatching”—are well aware that in their work they always have “the dead agin them,” and there are few places where this has been so well exemplified as in the Temple of Hibis.

At the time of my arrival in Kharga it was being restored by an American archæologist, named W———. Before it was taken in hand, sand had drifted by the wind up against the walls, until it reached very nearly to their summit. In order to find out the extent of the buildings, W——— caused a trench to be dug parallel to one of the main walls.

Before this was completed, his men told him that they did not wish to continue working in that part, giving as their reason that a sheykh, i.e. a holy man, had been buried there, and since he was of exceptional holiness, lights had been seen hovering over his grave at night, and a man who had dug there before had fallen ill.

After some difficulty W——— succeeded in inducing the men to continue their work. But a sacred mummy is an uncanny thing to tackle. Sure enough, after his men had been digging a little longer, some earth slipped down into the trench, and with it came half the mummy, the other half remaining in the ground by the side of the trench. The men “downed tools” at once, and stood aghast at this calamity. The mummy’s feelings must have been seriously outraged for he lost no time in getting to work—the native who had actually dug him up was subject to fits, and had one and died that night.

The next morning the mummy had disappeared and all the men were back at work again, just as though nothing had happened. After some little time W——— began to make cautious enquiries as to what had happened to the mummy; but he elicited no information whatever. His enquiries were met with a blank stare of surprise—“mummy? What mummy? There had been no mummy there.” When a native knows nothing like that, it is quite hopeless to try and get anything out of him.

W———’s men went on with their work as though nothing had happened. One of them had atoned for the little accident to the mummy, so they knew that the rest of them were safe . . . but they seemed solicitous about W———’s health, and W——— soon found that he had not done with that mummy. Before the end of the season, he and the European working with him, who had had most to do with the mummy, went down with very bad Kharga fever—a virulent form of malaria—from which W——— himself nearly died.

Some time afterwards he discovered that his men had gone down before him, on the night the mummy had been dug up, and had collected his remains and given him a decent Mohammedan burial. He found out where he was buried and built a really magnificent tomb-top over his grave. It must be nearly ten feet long, six feet wide and two feet high. It was built of the very best mud bricks the oasis could produce—and he even whitewashed it. Since then the mummy has been pacified and has left W——— in peace.

When I found out where the mummy was buried, I bakhshished him, by shoving a five-piastre piece into the ground by the side of his grave—a proceeding that met with Dahab’s highest approval—and I had a more successful trip that year than any other. But it doesn’t say much for the intelligence of the mummy, for that five-piastre piece was a bad one.

For the benefit of the sceptical, I wish to add that this story is true—absolutely true—any native in Kharga will tell you that—besides there is the whited sepulchre to prove it; so for a mummy story it is very true indeed.

After a stay of some days in Kharga to allow the caravan to come through from the Nile Valley, we started off for our journey to Dakhla Oasis. Our road at first ran roughly from east to west. Shortly after our start it passed through a patch some two miles wide of curious clay ridges. These, which seemed all to be under twenty feet high, were evidently formed by the erosion of the earth by the wind-driven sand, for they all ran from north to south, in the direction of the prevailing wind. Just before reaching the western side of the oasis, our road passed through a gap in a belt of sand dunes, which, like the clay ridges, also ran in the same north to south direction of the prevailing wind.

These sand belts consist of long narrow areas covered with dunes, running across the desert in almost straight lines, roughly from north to south. This Abu Moharik belt, through which our road ran, has a length which cannot be much less than four hundred miles; but, though it varies somewhat in width at different points along its course, its average breadth is probably not much more than five miles, that is to say, about an eightieth of its total length. These belts consist almost entirely of more or less crescent-shaped dunes. In places the sand hills of which they are composed are scattered and stand isolated from each other, with areas of sand-free desert between them. In other parts the dunes are more closely packed; many of the crescents join together to form large clusters, and the spaces between the dunes are also sometimes covered with sand.

Beyond the dune belt, we turned sharply towards the south and soon came on to the northern end of the cultivated area surrounding Kharga village. From Kharga we journeyed southward to the village of Bulaq, passing on our way the sandstone temples of Qasr el Guehda—or Wehda, as it is often locally pronounced—and Qasr Zaiyan. Both were surrounded by a mudbrick enclosure filled with the remains of a labyrinth of small ruined brick buildings and contained some hieroglyphics and some fine capitals to the pillars.

Shortly after leaving Qasr Zaiyan, we entered a sandy patch covered with vegetation consisting of graceful branched Dom palms, acacias, palm scrub and grasses, in which some of the cattle of the breed, for which the oasis was noted, were grazing. Half an hour’s journey through this scrub-covered area brought us to the palm groves and village of Bulaq, on the south side of which I pitched my camp. Bulaq, though one of the largest villages of the oasis, with a population of about one thousand, is quite uninteresting. Its palm groves and cultivated land lie on its eastern side; on the north, south and west it is bounded by open sandy desert. It is chiefly noted as being the main centre in the oasis for the manufacture of mats and baskets, made chiefly from the leaves of the numerous Dom palms growing in the neighbourhood.

After breakfast the next day we struck camp and set off due west across the dune belt. It took us only an hour and a quarter to negotiate. Between the dunes were many interspaces entirely free from sand, so by keeping as much as possible to these and winding about, so as to cross the sand hills at their lowest points, we managed to get through the belt and emerged on to a gravelly sand-free desert beyond.

This, my first experience of the dunes of the Libyan Desert, was distinctly encouraging. Not only were the sand hills much smaller than I had been led to suppose, but their surface was crusted hard, and we crossed them with little difficulty; on emerging on the farther side, I set out for Dakhla Oasis, feeling far more hopeful of being able to cross the heavy sand to the west of that oasis than I had ever been before.

After crossing the dune belt, we altered our course and turned up nearly due north so as to make for the well of ’Ain Amur. The desert over which we were travelling was of pebbly sand, with an occasional rocky hill or ridge of black sandstone, and presented few points of interest. We camped at five, and I had a good opportunity of studying the peculiarities of my men, and of the kit they had brought with them for the journey.

Qway’s equipment was about as near perfection for the desert as it was possible to get it. His camel saddle was a rabiat, over this was a red leather cushion on which he sat. On this he placed his hurj, or pair of saddle-bags, of strong carpet-like stuff, one of which hung down on either side; above this lay a folded red blanket, and over this again he spread his furwa, or black sheepskin—an indispensable part of a camel rider’s equipment, which he not only places over his saddle, where it forms a soft and comfortable seat, but on which he sits when dismounted, lies on or covers himself with at night and throws over his shoulders on a cold day. Over the camel’s withers in front of the saddle was a second small pad, also of red leather, on which to rest his legs as he crossed them in front of him as he rode, hanging from his rabiat on either side was a sack of grain for his camel, the pockets of his hurj resting on the top of the sacks.

Slung on to his saddle was a most miscellaneous collection of articles. A Martini-Henry rifle I had lent him, with a text from the Koran engraved on it in gold lettering, lay along his camel’s back under his hurj on one side, and was balanced by a red parasol on the other. A goat-skin for carrying water, a small crock full of cheese, his camel’s nose-bag, or mukhlia, in which, when leaving an oasis he generally carried a few eggs packed in straw that he had managed to cadge from some village as we passed, his ’agal, or camel hobble, and a skin of flour, were all tied on to some part or other of his saddle.

In his hurj Qway carried a most extraordinary collection of things: a small circular mirror and a pair of folding nail scissors, with which at the end of a day’s march he frequently spent some time in trimming his beard and moustache—he was always spotlessly clean and neat—a clothes-brush, with which he always brushed his best clothes; his best shoes; an awl with the point stuck into a cork for operating on the camels; a packing needle and one or two sewing needles, with their points similarly protected, a little bag containing thread and buttons; a lump of soap; part of a cone of sugar; tea, salt, red pepper, pills and one or two other mysterious Arab medicines, all carefully tied up separately in different pieces of rag, some cartridges I had given him for his rifle, any onions he had been able to cadge in the last oasis, and a quantity of dried dates, constituted only a few of the miscellaneous assortment of things that his camel bags contained.

The kit of the camel drivers, who were of course on foot, was much more simple. Between them they brought a skin of flour, an enamelled iron basin to make their dough in; a slightly dished iron plate (saj) to bake their bread on, and two or three small tin canisters, in which they carried sugar, salt and tea, when they had any, and which were thrown into the ordinary sack in which they carried the small amount of surplus clothing they possessed.

Dahab carried his belongings in a bag rolled up in a rug on which he slept, his kit being of a very workmanlike nature. Khalil’s outfit, however, was largely of an ornamental character, including such trifles as a pink satiny pillow thickly studded with gold stars and covered with a pillow-case trimmed with lace!

In the rough usage inseparable from a desert journey everyone’s clothing becomes more or less damaged. The other men during our halts got their clothes patched and mended, but Khalil never repaired the numerous rents that soon began to appear in his garments. He ultimately became such a scarecrow that when, on one extremely hot day, he seated himself on a rock during our noontide halt, he sprang up again a great deal quicker than he sat down, the reason being that the rock was greatly heated, and, to put it poetically, he had not been “divided from the desert by the sewn.”

While in the Valley, Khalil had been quite a success, for he made a very fair interpreter. But no sooner did he get into the desert, than he appeared at once in his true character, of a dragoman of the deepest die. He was a sore trial, until I got rid of him.

The first few days in the desert with a new caravan are always trying. The men have not got into their work, and the camels, being strangers to each other, spend most of their time in fighting. A savage camel is a dangerous beast and it is of no use playing with him. The right place to hit him is his neck. Hit him hard with something heavy, and go on doing it and he becomes partially stunned and is then amenable to reason. Still, as the gifted author of “Eothen” put it, “you soon learn to love a camel for the sake of her gentle womanish ways.”

The Arabs have different names that they apply to camels according to their age—a one-year-old beast is called ibn esh Sha’ar, or sometimes ibn es Sena; a two-year-old, ibn Lebun; a three-year-old, Heg; a four-year-old, Thenni; a five-year-old, Jedda; a six-year-old, Raba’a; a seven-year-old, Sedis; and an eight-year-old, Fahal. The names apply to both male and female beasts. After eight years a male is called jemel (camel) simply, and the female naga.

On some very bad roads, where there is much rock surface to be crossed, many of the caravan guides carry an awl, string and pieces of leather, for the purpose of resoling a camel’s foot should the whole skin of it peel off, as it sometimes will. Qway resoled a foot of one of my camels once that went dead lame from this cause.

The operation was a simple one and seemed to be quite painless. He bored holes diagonally upwards through the thick skin on the edge of the sole of the foot, cut out a piece of leather slightly larger than the camel’s footprint, and then passed pieces of string through the holes he had bored, and through corresponding holes in the piece of leather and tied the ends of the string together. One or two of the strings got cut through by the rock and had to be replaced. The camel, however, without much difficulty was able to hobble back into the oasis, and after some weeks’ rest to allow the skin on the sole of his foot to grow again, completely recovered.

Camels vary considerably in colour. Among those I bought in my first season in Egypt were a beast of a rather unusual chestnut colour and two other fawn-coloured brutes, one of which had a shade of grey in its complexion, and the other was inclined towards a roan tint. These were called by my men the red, blue and green camels respectively.

The “green” beast was the one I used to ride. He was not a bad mount, but as he had not been ridden before I bought him, and guiding a camel by means of a single rein is always rather like trying to steer a boa-constrictor with a string, my stick at first had to be used pretty often.

In the afternoon of our third day, after leaving Kharga, we passed a mass of eroded chalk jutting up above the sandy ground, which, being a recognised landmark was known to natives from its shape as Abu el Hul—“the Sphinx.” From there we proceeded to the well of ’Ain Amur, close to which I found a few patches of light blue sand.

A journey of a day and a half westwards over the tableland, on the north cliff of which ’Ain Amur is placed, brought us to the top of the slope from the level of the plateau to Dakhla Oasis.

This negeb, or descent, proved to be rather difficult to negotiate. The sand had drifted up against the cliff we had to climb down, and once on the bank of sand the camels, by walking diagonally down the slope, were able to reach the bottom without difficulty. But at the top of the sand bank, the rocks of which the cliff was composed, overhung to form a sort of cornice, and the path on to the sand slope below it lay through a cleft in the cornice, so narrow that the baggage had to be lifted temporarily up from the camels’ backs to enable them to pass through the passage.

It took us half an hour to negotiate this place; but having at length managed it without any catastrophe, we camped in a bay in the cliff soon after reaching the bottom.

Soon after sunset a wild goose flew over the camp on to the plateau, coming from the south-west. Many were the speculations as to where it had come from, as no water was known to exist in the desert from which it came anywhere nearer than the Sudan.

CHAPTER III

ABOUT two in the afternoon of the following day we reached “Ain El Jemala,” the first well of Dakhla Oasis, situated near the edge of a large area of scrub, which was said to be a favourite haunt of gazelle. We halted here to water the camels. We then pushed on past the village of Tenida, to Belat.

The ’omda (village head-man) came round during the afternoon, bringing some of the leading men of the village with him to welcome me to the oasis, and to invite me to dine with him, greeting me with the picturesque formula invariably used in the desert to anyone returning from a journey—“praise be to Allah for your safety.”

After dinner a man was brought in who had come from Mut, the capital town of the oasis, bringing me a note from the mamur, or native magistrate, welcoming me to his district, and saying that, though he had heard I had come, no one had been able to pronounce my name. He asked me to get someone to write it down in Arabic. Dakhla Oasis, though it lies just within the Egyptian frontier, had been visited by very few Europeans up to that time, and my arrival in this out-of-the-way spot consequently created somewhat of a stir in its little community.

I entrusted Khalil with the answer to the letter. The “ing” sound in my name is one which no Arab-speaking native has ever been able to master. At length, after much discussion, Khalil got the letter written; the result being that I ever afterwards went in the oasis under the name of “Harden Keen.”

From Belat we pushed on to Smint el Kharab, or ruined Smint, where are some mud-built ruins, some of which have paintings on their interior walls, apparently of Coptic origin. From Smint el Kharab we pushed on to the village of Smint itself. Here we were of course invited to lunch by the ’omda—an invitation of which I was for once glad to avail myself, as we had made an early start, and the caravan, which had been told to wait for me outside the village, had by some misunderstanding, gone on to Mut.

My first impressions of the inhabitants of these oases, with their cordial welcome, was certainly a most favourable one. Their hospitality, however, I found at times somewhat overwhelming.

’OMDA’S HOUSE, TENIDA.

As to the nature of this hospitality there appears to be some misunderstanding. In many cases one’s host is a private individual, or, if he be an ’omda, entertains one in his private capacity. But usually when invited to partake of a meal or to stay with an ’omda, one is in reality the guest of the entire village, though the fact may not be apparent. The ’omdas of Dakhla Oasis have the right to take a small proportion of the flow of any new well sunk in their district, to pay for the hospitality they show to the strangers that come to their village. In cases where there are no new wells, they collect from the heads of the different families the expenses that they have incurred in this way; so that in reality the cost of one’s entertainment falls on the whole village.

The majority of the natives of these oases are miserably poor, and it goes much against the grain for a European to have to live upon them in this way. But to refuse their hospitality would be considered as a slight, if not as an actual insult, and so would any attempt to offer them any payment in return.

The meals, as a rule, were quite well cooked, and usually better than I got in camp. It was the tea and cigarettes that were such a trial. The one luxury the inhabitants of the oasis allow themselves is tea; even the poorest of them consume enormous quantities. The quality of the tea in the better class houses is irreproachable. The best of it is said to come from Persia, and I was told that as much as £1 a rotl (the Egyptian pound) is paid for it. In addition to red tea, a green tea, and also a brown and a black are used. The last I only tasted once; it seemed to be of an inferior quality. The richer natives will often offer two or even three different kinds in succession.

After drinking, it is quite the correct thing to sit silent for some time licking and smacking one’s lips, “tasting the tea” as it is called, as a compliment to the quality supplied by one’s host. The natives have another way of showing their appreciation of the fare set before them, which, however, it would be better not to describe.

The greatest ordeal I had to face was not the tea but the cigarettes. My host would extract from somewhere in the voluminous folds of his clothing a large shiny papier mâché tobacco-box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, from which he would produce some tobacco and cigarette papers and proceed to roll me a cigarette, which he then licked down.

Eventually I found a means to avoid them. If the cigarette was offered me before the tea, I placed it above my ear—the correct position to carry it in the oases—and explained that I would smoke it later, so as to avoid spoiling the tea. If it was handed to me after the tea drinking, I was able to postpone lighting it for a time by saying that I would not smoke it just then, as I was still “tasting” the tea; then, while still licking and smacking my lips, with the cigarette still unsmoked above my ear, I found that it was time to take my departure. Once safely outside my host’s house in the desert, the cigarette would fall down from my ear and be promptly scrambled for by my men.

In Smint, however, no cigarettes were forthcoming. The reason was not far to seek. Close to the village the Senussi had built a zawia, and a large number of the inhabitants of the village had already been converted to the tenets of the sect, or, as the natives put it, they “followed the sheykh.” The members of this sect are forbidden to smoke.

SENUSSI ZAWIA AT SMINT.

In company with the ’omda we went to call on the sheykh of the zawia. After speaking to us for a minute or two, he rather sulkily invited us to enter and treated us to the usual tea.

The zawia was an entirely unpretentious looking mud-built building, and might have been only the house of a well-to-do villager. The head of it—Sheykh Senussi by name—was quite a young man in the early twenties, and had probably been given the position owing to the fact that he had married a daughter of Sheykh Mohammed el Mawhub, the chief Senussi sheykh in Dakhla, who himself had a zawia at Qasr Dakhl, the largest town in the oasis, situated in its north-western corner.

He was said to be an Arab from Tripoli way, a statement that was borne out by his clothing, which consisted of the ordinary white hram of a Tripolitan Arab of the poorer class. He was very silent during the whole of our visit, and when he did condescend to speak it was generally to sneer or laugh at some remark that we made. The interview was consequently cut as short as possible.

Re-soling a Camel’s Foot.

The sharp rocks of the desert sometimes flay the entire skin from the sole of a camel’s foot, the Arabs replace this with a piece of leather sewn on to the camel’s foot. ([p. 35]).

After Qway had succeeded in extracting some barley for his camel off the ’omda we started again, for Mut, which lay about six miles away to the west.

In many parts the scenery of these oases is extremely pretty. Our road to Mut lay through cultivated fields, alternating with areas of salt-encrusted land, and sprinkled with palm plantations and low earthy hills. Away to the north at the foot of the cliff that bounds the oasis lay the palm groves of the village of Hindau. The fields, with their ripening grain and green crops of bersim (clover), the yellow ochreous hills, the clumps of graceful date palms with their dark green foliage, set against a background of cream-coloured sand dunes and purple cliffs, made a lovely picture in the light of the setting sun.

As we neared Mut, however, the country became less productive. Large areas of land thickly encrusted with salt and barren stretches of desert replaced the fertile fields and palm groves in the neighbourhood of Masara and Smint. Owing probably to the sinking of new wells at a lower level in the village of Rashida, the water supply of Mut has for many years been falling off, and now, although the place is the capital town, the district in which it lies is one of the poorest in the whole oasis.

We reached Mut in the dusk soon after sunset. Built on a low hill, and seen in the failing light, the place gave rather the impression of an old medieval fortified town. We skirted round its southern side, past a number of walled enclosures used to pen the cattle in at night, and, passing through a gap in the south-western corner of the wall that surrounds the town, arrived at a large rambling mud-built building, mainly used as a store, in which I had received leave to stay. It was a gloomy-looking place, and had evidently been built with a view to defence. Entering through a gate in the wall, secured by a bar, and turning to the right past some low outbuildings, we found ourselves in a narrow court, surrounded on three sides by high two-storied buildings—the upper part having apparently been used at some time as a harem by one of its former inmates.

Doors opened from either end of a gallery that joined the two wings. One led into the centre of three rooms on the western side that looked over the desert, and the other into some small chambers which, as one had a fire-place in it for cooking, I allotted to Dahab and Khalil, retaining the three western rooms for my own use.

OLD HOUSES IN MUT.

These proved to be high, spacious and airy, and commanded a fine view over the desert. The windows were large and fitted with a sort of trellis. This not only made the rooms more private, but considerably reduced the glare of the desert. So beyond the fact that the floors in many places seemed unsafe, and that the place was said to swarm with scorpions, I had little fault to find with my lodgings.

I walked out in the dusk as soon as we had settled into our quarters in the old store, to see what I could of the town. Many of the streets were roofed over, as in Kharga Oasis, but the tunnels were not nearly so long and very considerably higher, so that, except for the unevenness of the roadway, we had no difficulty in getting about. We were, however, compelled to carry a lantern in order to find our way.

There was not much to be seen; but the monotonous thudding of the women pounding rice, the continuous rumbling sound of the small stone hand mills by which they were grinding grain, the smell of wood smoke, the soft singing of the women and an occasional bar of ruddy light, crossing the roadway from some partly open doorway, showed that most of the inhabitants were in their houses preparing their evening meal.

Rice enters largely into the bill of fare of the natives of the oases, and is pounded by the women with a large stone held in both hands, which is brought down with all their strength into a small basin-shaped hollow scooped out of the rocky sandstone floor upon which the town is built.

The following morning I received a state visit from the mamur (magistrate), Ibrahim Zaky by name, the doctor, Gorgi Michael, a Copt from Syria, and the zabit, or police officer. The mamur and doctor spoke English fairly well.

Like most of the native officials who are to be found in the oases, the mamur was rather under a cloud, and had been sent to Dakhla as a punishment for some misdeeds of his in his last appointment. These oases posts are cordially disliked by the natives, as in these remote districts they are entirely cut off from the gay life of the towns of the Nile Valley. The appointments, however, have certain advantages. Being so far removed from the towns of the Nile Valley may be dull, but it frees them from the constant supervision of the English inspectors, a state of things of which an Egyptian is usually not slow to take advantage, by extorting bakhshish from the wretched fellahin of their district—often to a most outrageous extent.

One of the English inspectors had very kindly written to the mamur to inform him that I was coming into his district, and to tell him to help me in any way he could. The mamur’s term of office in Dakhla being nearly at an end, he was extremely anxious to get my good word with the inspector in order that he might be appointed to a better district. He was accordingly most oppressive and unremitting in his attentions—until the government removed him to another and still worse district.

He was by no means enthusiastic about his life in the oasis, and, from his account of the natives, he evidently looked upon them as being little removed from beasts. He explained that he had left his wife behind in Egypt, but as he found that he did not get on well without one, he had married a young girl from Mut. He complained bitterly of the expense she had put him to, for as he expressed it in his rather defective English, it had “cost him £25 to make her clean!”

After the Egyptian officials had departed, a succession of ’omdas from all over the oasis dropped in to pay their respects and to ask me to come round to their villages.

After the ’omdas came various minor fry. First the camel postman, a burly, black-bearded Arab, called ’Ali Kashuta, looked in, drank a gallon or two of tea, took a handful of cigarettes out of the box that was handed to him, told me several times that he was my servant, and obviously didn’t mean it; and then asking if I had any letters for post, departed, leaving a breezy independent atmosphere behind him, which was a pleasant contrast to the fawning attitude of the other natives.

Then came the clerk to the Qadi, Sheykh Senussi, who was also a member of the Senussi sect. He was a very learned person and a poet in his leisure moments. He drank tea, but didn’t smoke, and was all smiles and compliments.

Next came the postmaster. He had been to school in the Nile Valley and spoke English quite well. He explained—what I was beginning to realise—that I was causing much mystification to the good people of the oasis; they could not make me out at all. The postmaster, however, who had been educated in Egypt, knew all about it. He had read about a man called “Keristoffer Kolombos,” who had found America, and he thought that I must be in the same line of business. I told him that he was quite right. He beamed all over, and immediately departed to break the good news to an expectant oasis that the great problem had been solved. Before going he wished that Allah would preserve me on my journey, and hoped that I should find another America in the Libyan Desert.

In the afternoon I went round to tea with the mamur in the merkaz, or official residence.

One of his guests was a tall intelligent looking man, who was introduced to me as the ’omda of Rashida, the mamur adding in English that he was one of the most hospitable men in the oasis; but very fond of whisky.

The latter statement unfortunately proved to be true. According to the mamur, he was a most depraved and habitual drunkard. This, however, was an exaggeration.

Between him and this ’omda there was very little love lost. Shortly before my arrival they had quarrelled furiously. I never heard the cause of the dispute—it was probably a case of cherchez la femme, for Dakhla is one of those unfortunate places where, as Byron so nearly expressed it, “man’s love is of his wife a thing apart, ’tis woman’s whole persistence.” These small-minded natives will squabble over the most trivial matters and keep the quarrel going for years. Often a tiff of the most puerile kind will become a family matter and end in a regular hereditary feud. In the Nile Valley this often leads to bloodshed. In the oases, however, the quarrel usually takes the form of the two sides to abusing and telling lies about each other behind their backs, wrangling whenever they chance to meet, and endeavouring at every possible opportunity to subject their opponent to an ayb (insult, slight, snub) often of a most elaborate description.

Shortly before my arrival the ’omda, getting sick of the squabble, or finding that the mamur was making things too unpleasant for him, had held out the olive branch by sending him a basket of early mulberries—a fruit much appreciated in the oasis. The mamur had made this an opportunity to humiliate his opponent. He had thrown the fruit out of his window into the square in front of the mosque, where all the inhabitants had seen it. It was generally considered that he had scored heavily by doing so, and that this was one of the best aybs that had been seen for years. The whole oasis had been talking about it.

The partisans of the ’omda were consequently much discomforted; but endeavoured to cover up their defeat by explaining that it hadn’t really been a good ayb—the mamur had not thrown the whole of the mulberries away, as he had stated, but had taken out all the best ones and had only thrown away the rotten ones out of his window; so as an ayb it didn’t count at all.

The ill-feeling between these two at length rose to such a pitch that some of the leading men in the oasis decided to try and effect a reconciliation between them, and a ceremony known as “making the peace” took place.

The two opponents were invited to meet together in the presence of some of their friends, who had argued with them, and at length the quarrel had been patched up. They had then fallen on each other’s necks and embraced and had agreed to feed together. They had partaken of a huge feast in which whisky apparently played a prominent part, and had both got drunk and started quarrelling furiously again, in their cups. The next morning, when they were both probably feeling rather cheap, the peace-makers had got to work again and explained to them that they had not played the game, and again a reconciliation had been effected; but there was still a good deal of latent ill-feeling between them which vented itself mostly in backbiting, under a show of friendship.

CHAPTER IV

BY Qway’s advice I started feeding my camels on bersim, preparatory to our journey into the dunes. There are two kinds of bersim grown in the oasis: bersim beladi[1] and bersim hajazi.[2] Bersim hajazi, however, should not be fed to camels in its green state, as it very frequently causes them to get hoven.

The bersim was bought off the natives by the kantar, of a hundred Egyptian pounds. At first there was some difficulty in getting it weighed. Abd er Rahman, however, proved equal to the emergency. He discovered a rock, which was supposed to weigh a kantar, and which was the standard weight for the whole oasis. He then rigged up a pair of scales, consisting of two baskets fixed to either end of a beam, suspended from a second beam.

In the evening of the first day I spent in Mut I climbed to the top of a low hill close to the town to look at the dune field that I hoped to cross. A more depressing sight it would be impossible to imagine. Not only were the sand hills in the neighbourhood of the town much higher than those we had encountered on leaving Kharga Oasis, but they extended as far as it was possible to see to the horizon, and obviously became considerably larger in the far distance, where they were evidently of great height.

I returned to my rooms with the gloomiest forebodings, wishing I had never been such a fool as to tackle the belad esh Shaytan, or “Satan’s country,” as the natives call this part of the desert, and wondering whether, when I attempted to cross those dunes, I should not end, after a few hours’ journey, in having to return completely beaten with my tail tightly tucked between my legs, to the Nile Valley. I lay awake for most of the night in consequence.

But daylight as usual made things look more cheerful. Anyway I could have a shot at it, and as my camels did not seem to be in very good order I decided to give them a rest and to feed them up into the best possible condition, before subjecting them to what appeared to be an almost impossible task. In the meantime I thought I might as well see something of the oasis, and at the same time collect what information I could about the desert.

So a few days after my arrival at Mut I set off with the mamur, the policeman and the doctor to stay for a night with the ’omda of Rashida, leaving the caravan behind me.

For the first two hours after leaving Mut, till we reached the village of Qalamun, our road lay over a barren country largely covered with loose sand, which proved to be rather heavy going.

Qalamun is rather a picturesque village, and seems to have been built with an eye to defence. A great deal of land in the neighbourhood is covered with drift sand, which in places seems to be encroaching on to the cultivation, though not to be doing any serious damage. An unusually large proportion of land in the neighbourhood is planted with date palms, and, as the water supply seems to be fairly abundant, the place has a prosperous well-to-do air. In some cases the wells appear to be failing, as a few shadufs for raising the water were to be seen. These and a few Dom palms gave the neighbourhood a rather distinctive appearance. Of course we visited the ’omda. The sheykhs of this village—the Shurbujis by name—claim to have governed the oasis ever since the time of the Sultan Selim, “The Grim.”

On leaving Qalaman we made straight for Rashida, most of our road lying through cultivated fields, planted mainly with cereals. Before reaching the village, we passed a large dead tree—a sunt, or acacia, apparently—which is known as the “tree of Sheykh Adam,” and is supposed to possess a soul. The wood is reported to be uninflammable.

Shortly before reaching Rashida, we were met by the ’omda and some of his family, who had ridden out to meet us, all splendidly mounted on Syrian horses, gorgeously caparisoned with richly embroidered saddles and saddle cloths. These joined on to our party and rode back with us to Rashida.

Kharashef.

Sand Grooved Ridge.

The wind driven sand grooves away the rock, sometimes leaving large ridges standing above its surface. ([p. 308]).

In Old Mut.

This shows the fortified character of the houses formerly built in the oases of the Libyan desert as a defence against raids. ([p. 41]).

The village is one of the prettiest and most fertile in the oasis. It is built on a low ridge lying at the south-east corner of a very extensive grove of palms, in whose shade were planted great numbers of fruit trees: figs, mulberries, apricots, oranges, tangerines—known in Egypt under the curious name of Yussef effendi, i.e. Mr. Joseph—bananas, almonds, pomegranates, limes, lemons, olives and sweet lemons, the last bearing a large, tasteless, but very juicy fruit, something like a citron in appearance.

THE TREE WITH A SOUL, RASHIDA.

The village lies close to the cliff. The interior of the village was of the normal type, and, beyond presenting an unusually prosperous appearance and having the walls of some of its houses painted on the outside in geometrical patterns, usually in red and white, did not differ from the other villages in the oasis.

The ’omda’s house was delightfully situated, with palm trees growing almost up to the walls. He took us up into his guest chamber, a long narrow room neatly whitewashed and furnished almost entirely in the European manner, with deck-chairs, sofas round the walls, a large gilt hanging lamp, bent wood chairs and three-legged tables. The windows were draped with European curtains and the floor covered with Eastern rugs and carpets. A large mirror in a gilt frame and an oleograph portrait of the Khedive completed the list of furniture.

On entering the room one’s eye was at once caught by the words “Ahlan wa Sahlen”—welcome—painted on the opposite wall. And welcome that hospitable ’omda certainly made us. The windows had been kept closely shuttered all the morning to keep out the heat and the flies; but these were opened on our arrival. Then the ’omda entered and proceeded to spray the room and its inmates with scent. Shortly afterwards the inevitable tea and cigarettes made their appearance.

After compliments, enquiries as to the health of all parties present and the usual polite preliminaries had been got through—a process that took some minutes—the conversation turned upon horses. Only a few of the richer natives of the oases are able to afford them, and the remainder, when they do not walk, ride on donkeys. Powerful quarters, round cannon bones and a small head, with an especially small muzzle and widely distended nostrils, seemed to be the points they valued most.

After luncheon, when the heat of the day was past, we were taken by the ’omda to see some of the sights of the village. First we were led to a big mud ruin known as the ’Der abu Madi. He told us he had dug up a number of mummies about a mile to the north of the village, which he said had been buried in earthenware coffins. Fragments of one of these coffins that he produced showed that they must have been about three inches thick and had evidently been baked in a kiln. Many of the mummies had been wrapped round with a cloth of some sort, with their arms lying straight along their sides, and had then been wound tightly round with a rope. The remains of one of them was shown us. It was, however, entirely knocked to pieces, as the ’omda and his family had stuck it upright on the ground and then amused themselves by turning it into an “Aunt Sally.” One or two coins and the skull of a gazelle had been dug up from one of the graves. The coins unfortunately were so worn and decayed that they could not be recognised. There seems to be plenty of work for an archæologist in Dakhla—and still more for an inspector of antiquities.

We were next taken off to see the great sight of Rashida—the Bir Magnun, or “foolish well.” When this well was being sunk about forty years ago the labourers stopped working for the day, not knowing that they had almost reached the water-bearing stratum, with the result that the water forced its way through the small distance from the bottom of the bore hole to the top of the water reservoir, and gushed up with such violence that it forced the tubing, above the bore hole, partly out of the ground and flooded the whole country round.

On first arriving in the oases, I made enquiries on all sides from the natives for information as to what wells, roads or oases were to be found in the unknown parts of the desert, beyond the Senussi frontier. For a long time I could extract no information from any of them, and it was not till I got to Rashida, and happened to ask the ’omda whether he knew anything about the oasis of Zerzura, that I got any information at all. There is no stopping a native of Dakhla when he gets on that subject, and one begins dimly to realise how very little the East has changed since the days when the “Arabian Nights” were written.

Many of the wealthier natives of the oases, and also, I believe, of the Nile Valley, spend an appreciable portion of their time in hunting for buried treasure. The pursuit is an absorbing one, to which even Europeans at times fall victims. Curious as it may seem at first sight, the native efforts are not infrequently attended with some success.

The reason is not far to seek. In former days, when the country was ruled by a lot of corrupt Turkish officials, a native, who was known to be possessed of any wealth, at once became the object of their extortionate attentions. He consequently took every precaution to hide his riches from these rapacious officials. The plan which he very often adopted was to bury his valuables in the ground. Not infrequently he must have died without imparting to his relations the whereabouts of his cache. The treasure buried in this way in Egypt would probably amount to an enormous sum in the aggregate, if it could only be located.

Then, too, the sites of old Roman settlements are to be found all over Egypt. The careless way in which the Romans seem to have scattered their petty cash about the streets of their towns is simply amazing. You can hardly dig for an hour in any old Roman site without coming across an old copper coin or two.

Let a native find a few coins in this way, and he will spend weeks, when no one is looking, in prowling around the neighbourhood in the hopes of finding more. Should he be lucky enough to find an earthenware pot containing a handful or two of old coins hidden in the past from a Turkish pasha, it is pretty certain that he will become a confirmed fortune-hunter for the remainder of his life. There is no doubt that quite considerable sums—several pounds’ worth at a time—are occasionally found in this way. The natives are extraordinarily secretive about this kind of thing, and have been so long under a corrupt Government that they can hold their own counsel far better than any white man—for even now in out-of-the-way districts such as the oases, where the English inspectors cannot properly supervise the native officials, the extortionate ruler is at times most unpleasantly en evidence.

In their hunts for buried riches the natives are frequently guided by old “books of treasure.” Every self-respecting native, who is wealthy enough to procure one, possesses at least one copy.

Before leaving Kharga I was fortunate in meeting E. A. Johnson Pasha, so well known as the translator of the whole of Omar Khayyám’s “Rubaiyat” into English verse—Fitzgerald, of course, only translated a portion of it. He was the proud possessor of the only complete copy known to exist of a book of this description, dating from the fifteenth century.

One of the problems of the Libyan Desert, beyond the western frontier of Egypt, is that of the oasis known as Zerzura, or “The oasis of the Blacks.” It was, I believe, first heard of by Rohlfs, who, in his attempt to go westward from Dakhla Oasis to Kufara, found the sand dunes impassable for his big caravan, and so had to turn up to the north and make for the oasis of Siwa instead. During this journey he encountered three blacks, who said that they were escaped slaves from the oasis of Zerzura, a place that they described as being some distance to the west of his route.

On mentioning this place to Johnson Pasha, he told me of this old book, and said that it contained a description of the road to this oasis, and of what might be found there by anyone who was fortunate enough to reach it. His book also described the road to the mines of King Cambyses.

He very kindly gave me a translation of the portions of this queer old volume that related to these two places. There were two descriptions of the road to Zerzura in a section of the book headed “In the Oases” They ran as follows:—

“Go to the Der el Banat (the girls’ convent), near it you will find a hollow place, three mastabas (platforms), a round hill and three red stones. Burn incense here.” Then follow two lines of cipher writing and cabalistic signs, which presumably give instructions for following the road, and the description ends.

The second reference was much more to the point. It was as follows: “Account of a city and the road to it, which lies east of the Qala’a es Suri, where you will find palms and vines and flowing wells. Follow the valley till you meet another valley opening to the west between two hills. In it you will find a road. Follow it. It will lead you to the City of Zerzura. You will find its gate closed. It is a white city, like a dove. By the gate you will find a bird sculptured. Stretch up your hand to its beak and take from it a key. Open the gate with it and enter the city. You will find much wealth and the king and queen in their palace sleeping the sleep of enchantment. Do not go near them. Take the treasure and that is all.”

The book also contained two separate directions for finding the mines of King Cambyses. One of them instructed the reader thus: “Go to the Der el ’Ain, west of Esna, where there is a medical spring, and go north from the Der and the well five farasangs, which make a barid and a quarter, to where there is a red hill with a beacon mark on the top of it. You are to go up and look towards the east. You will see a pillar divided into two halves. Dig there.” Then the aggravating book—just when it comes to giving the final definite directions for finding the mines, breaks off into line upon line of cabalistic signs, as it did in the case of Zerzura.

The second instruction for finding the mines, however, is much more explicit, and goes into minute details of the road to be followed, so much so that it would appear to be impossible for anyone to miss it.

It runs as follows: “By the town of Esna, north of Edfu. If you go there seek the mines of King Kambisoos (Cambyses). Ask for the Holy Der, which is called ‘———’ but to give away directions for finding such wealth of treasure would be foolish. King Cambyses was a son of Cyrus the Great—the Conqueror of Babylon—and ruled over the Medes and Persians when the Persian Empire was at about its height. He was a real big King, and the much-vaunted mines of King Solomon—a mere petty Sultan by comparison—probably bear about the same relation to those of King Cambyses as a threepenny-bit bears to the present National Debt. The mere description of them in Johnson Pasha’s book of treasure makes one’s mouth water.”

First the directions lead you—in the clearest possible way—to a valley called the Wady el Muluk (the valley of the kings). Here you find the crucibles and all the apparatus and tools necessary for smelting, merely waiting to be used. You go a little farther on and you come to the “high class mine”—and very high class it is. You have only to dig half a cubit deep into it and you come at once on to a mineral “like yellow earth in stony ground.” First you find it in lumps the size of beans, which “is sent by Allah,” and you are directed to take “His good fortune.” Then if you dig deeper, you will find it in lumps the size of melons. This you are explicitly told “is gold of Egypt. There is none better”—a statement it would be rash to contradict.

Having dealt with these particular mines, the old Arab astrologer directs his son, to whom the book is addressed, to go on to where two great rocks stand up, with a hollow before them, stating that in the hollow will be found “a black earth with green veins like silver rust,” and directs him to take it. It is “sent by Allah.” Unfortunately he omits to mention the nature of this mysterious mineral.

He then directs his son to “go with the blessing of Allah” to another place, where he states “You will find, oh! my son, before you a high hill in which they used to get the peridots.” Next he tells him how to go on to the “Emerald pits which are three in number,” and after that, directs him to the “Copper mine which is in a cave closed by a door,” adding that the copper ore is “green earth very like green ginger and having veins in it like blood.”

With the dazzling prospect of acquiring such untold wealth as that to be obtained in the very “high class mines,” described in books of treasure such as this, is it to be wondered that the natives of Egypt spend so much time in looking for them?

Treasure hunting must be a most fascinating pursuit. But it is seldom a remunerative one. Still it is a curious fact that peridots used formerly to be known in the trade as “Esna peridots,” which rather points to the fact that they were brought in to be marketed in that town, perhaps by the road alluded to in this book.

When I broached the subject of Zerzura to the ’omda of Rashida, he said he did not know of any place called the Der el Banat (convent of the girls), but the old name of the Der Abu Madi was, he said, the “der el Seba’a banat” (convent of the seven girls), and that there was supposed to be a book and a mirror buried somewhere near there. By following the directions contained in the book, and then looking in the mirror the way to Zerzura would, he said, appear.

He told me—I don’t guarantee his veracity—that three years before, while he was staying in an hotel in Egypt, a waiter had come up to him and asked him if he were not the ’omda of Rashida. On hearing that he was, he told him that he wanted to go to the “Der el Seba’a Banat,” as he had read in a book of treasure that seven hundred cubits to the north of the Der, there were three mastabas round a round hill, and that under each of them was buried a pan of large gold coins called gurban. He then showed him a specimen which the ’omda said was very old, larger than a five-piastre piece and very thick and heavy. The waiter told him he had found the coin in the Nile Valley by following the directions given in his book of treasure, and offered, if he would go into partnership with him, to give him half of anything they found.

The ’omda had apparently refused this offer, and started digging on his own account; but having failed to find the treasure, he was very anxious for me to go into partnership with him, and said that by combining our instructions we ought to be able to find something. I was not, however, sufficiently sanguine as to the result to feel justified in entertaining his offer—still three pans full of gurban. . . !

After a night spent at Rashida we started for Qasr Dakhl, stopping on our way to visit Budkhulu, a poor little place with but a scanty water supply. Like Rashida it lies close to the cliff that bounds the oasis; but being situated at a considerably higher level than either Qasr Dakhl or Rashida, the number of modern wells sunk in these two districts are said by the inhabitants to have greatly diminished their water supply. Its ’omda was only noted for his drunken habits.

On leaving Budkhulu we rode past the little hamlet of Uftaima, and soon afterwards entered a stretch of soft sandy ground, a mile or two in width, beyond which we could see Qasr Dakhl with its palms and fields. This is the biggest town in the oasis, and is said by its inhabitants to produce the richest dates in Egypt.

Approached from the south-east, Qasr Dakhl looked a singularly picturesque and fertile place. The view of it from this side, across a reed-grown pool, reflecting the palm plantation with the village and blue scarp in the background, was one of the prettiest to be seen in the oasis.

The Gate of Qalamun.

The houses all join up to form a continuous wall as a defence against raids, having palm leaf hedges round some of the roof tops. ([p. 48]).

The ’Omda of Rashida and his Family.

The natives spend a great deal of their time on the flat house tops. Note the painted decoration of the wall in the background and the open work crest of the walls. ([p. 50]).

Just before entering the town, we passed the Bir el Hamia, one of the chief wells of the district, and the one from which most of the drinking water of Qasr Dakhl is drawn. The water from the well, effervescing strongly, rushed from beneath a stone platform that had been built over its mouth into a large clear pool, in which a number of the inhabitants were bathing as we passed, the water from this well being hot, is considered to have medicinal properties. It is said to have formerly been much hotter than at present; it is even stated that eggs could be boiled in it.

The ’omda invited the whole party to lunch with him, and an excellent lunch it proved to be. The sheykhs of this village claim to be descended from the Qoreish tribe of Arabia, to which the prophet, Mohammed, belonged, and state that they settled in the oasis about A.D. 1500. They give themselves no small airs in consequence.

After lunch, from which for a wonder Qway excused himself on the plea that he wished to go and call on a friend, the inevitable tea was brought in, and with it arrived several of the leading men in the place, who all sat down on the floor in a line along one of the walls of the guest chamber.

Hoping to elicit some information, I asked if anyone had ever heard of the oasis Zerzura. Hadn’t they! Half a dozen of them began to tell me all about it at once. Cows, I was told, had several times come into the oasis from the desert. They were very wild, but otherwise exactly like the cows of the oasis. They came from Zerzura. Kimri sifi (palm doves) and crows came into the oasis in the spring. They also came from Zerzura. Both the kimri and the cows came from the south-west; but the whole desert there was covered with sand and no one could go there. The last cows had come in only seventeen years before.

Another man told me that a woman leading a boy had once staggered into the oasis from the south, nearly dead from thirst, and that the descendants of the boy were still living in Mut. The woman and boy came from Zerzura too. In Mut, however, I was told practically the same story; but was there most positively informed that the boy’s descendants were not living in Mut, but in Qasr Dakhl, so I found it a little difficult to know what to believe.

Having exhausted the subject of Zerzura we got on to that of Rohlfs, who had visited the oasis in 1874. An aged individual said he saw Rohlfs—or “Ro-hol-fus” as he called him—and remembered him quite well. He knew all about him. He had got a “book of treasure,” and had come out to Dakhla to dig for buried riches in the Der el Hagar—a stone temple near Qasr Dakhl—and had employed a great many men in the excavation. But the treasure was guarded by an afrit (spirit), and for a long time he was unable to find it, and he got very angry and disappointed. At last, one day he sent everyone out of the temple, except a black man whom he kept with him. The rest of the men went and sat on the ground a little way off waiting developments, as they were sure that he was going to write a talisman or do something to propitiate the afrit.

DER EL HAGAR, DAKHLA OASIS.

For a long time nothing happened. Then loud cries for help, followed by the most piercing and blood-curdling shrieks were heard coming from the temple, and they knew that the talisman must be working, and guessed that the afrit was getting the worst of it.

Nothing more happened for some time. Then they heard a crackling sound, followed by dense clouds of black smoke arising from the temple. The crackling sound and the smoke continued for some time, and then Rohlfs emerged from the temple, looking very pleased and smiling, announced that he had found the treasure at last, and invited them all to come and see it.

They all trooped in and found that he had discovered the opening to the treasure chamber, which was a trap-door covering a flight of steps that led down into a vault that was filled with gold and silver and diamonds and treasure of all kinds, and Rohlfs was very pleased.

Then they looked for the black man, but could not see him. At last, in another part of the temple, one of them discovered the glowing embers of an enormous fire, and in it were the charred skull and some bones—the black man had been sacrificed by Rohlfs to propitiate the afrit!

Several of the men present concurred in this story. None of them, though they were living in Qasr Dakhl, had been present on the occasion; but they had heard of it, and everybody in the oasis knew about it.

They did not quite know what had happened to the treasure, but Rohlfs had a very large caravan with him, and all the camels were loaded when he left, so they supposed he took it all away with him.

All this was told with the utmost gravity, and with considerable detail, and they all unquestionably believed the story themselves. Yet it was all supposed to have happened close to their own village, and many of them were not only living at the time, but must have been young men and not children. They, none of them, thought any the worse of Rohlfs for this sacrifice—in fact they seemed to think all the better of him for having overcome the afrit.

CHAPTER V

AFTER lunch—and the tea that followed—we started off to pay a visit to Sheykh Mohammed el Mawhub, the representative of the Senussi in the oasis, at his zawia (monastery) close to the town.

His history is interesting, as throwing some light on the methods of the Senussi sect. He was born somewhere between 1840 and 1850, at Jalo, in Tripoli, and early in life became a member of the Senussia. While still quite a young man, probably under thirty, he was sent by the head Senussi sheykh to try to convert the inhabitants of Dakhla Oasis.

He arrived with practically no possessions beyond the clothes he stood up in, and began to expound the doctrines of his order to the inhabitants. He soon succeeded in collecting a following, upon whom, after the manner of his kind, he lived.

His next step was to apply to the authorities in the oasis for a permit to sink a well, and, having obtained it, asked his followers to help him in the work. The first well he sank—Bir Sheykh Mohammed—lies some four miles to the west of the village of Qasr Dakhl, and, when sunk, turned out to be an extremely good one. Soon afterwards, he sank a second well—Bir el Jebel—rather nearer to the village, which proved to be an even better one than Bir Sheykh Mohammed. This well was also sunk mainly by voluntary labour. The two wells together irrigated a considerable area. Close to them ezbas (farms) were built, which were inhabited by Sheykh Mohammed’s sons. These farms being on the road from Dakhla to Kufara, the headquarters of the Senussi, and well removed from the village, without any of the ordinary fellahin of the oasis near them, enabled the Mawhubs to come and go to Kufara, a journey always conducted by them with a considerable amount of mystery, without fear of being observed by the other natives of the oasis.

While the property round these wells was being developed, the building of his zawia was also being proceeded with. This also was largely carried on by voluntary workers, not only from the members of his sect, but also from other villages, who, without actually belonging to the community, were sympathetic towards it and considered it a pious act to assist in the building of a religious edifice to be devoted to the service of Allah. Later on other wells were sunk.

The zawia consisted of a courtyard surrounded by a very high wall of mud bricks that was not even plastered. The whole building had no pretensions to any architectural beauty. I glanced into the court through the door as we passed it. A man, sitting on the floor of a small room opening out of it close to the entrance, and three small boys he was teaching, were the only inhabitants to be seen.

Sheykh Mawhub’s house was of the same simple character as the rest of his zawia. We were led up into a guest chamber of the usual type, with settees round the walls, and were left for some time to our own devices. After about ten minutes’ waiting a Sheykh Ibrahim—whom I recognised as the schoolmaster I had seen in the courtyard of the zawia—came in and announced that tea was coming shortly, and that Sheykh Mawhub himself would follow it—he evidently considered this a mark of considerable condescension on the part of the sheykh.

Tea in due course appeared, and Sheykh Ibrahim, having seen that we had all been duly served, departed and another interminable delay occurred.

At length we heard sounds of slow shuffling footsteps, punctuated by halts and questions and answers in a low voice in the distance, and the mamur whispered to me that he thought it must be Sheykh Mawhub who was coming. He seemed to stand rather in awe of him.

The sheykh himself at last appeared in the doorway, respectfully—it would hardly be too much to say reverently—supported by Sheykh Ibrahim. He seemed to be in the last stage of nervousness. He just touched hands with us in an almost lifeless manner, and then, still supported by Sheykh Ibrahim, sat down huddled up on a settee in the far corner of the room, being tenderly tucked into his place by the attendant sheykh. Hardly had he settled himself into his corner than, rather to my surprise, Qway came in, just spoke to him casually and then went and sat down as near as possible to the tea. It was evident that Sheykh Mawhub was the friend that Qway had asked leave to visit, and that he had already seen him, as the usual greetings were omitted on his entry.

A very resplendent young man followed close on Qway’s heels, went up and kissed Sheykh Mawhub’s hand, and then immediately went out again and stationed himself just opposite the door with his back to the wall of the passage, where he remained watching the assembled guests. This proved to be Sheykh Ahmed, the eldest son of Sheykh Mawhub.

It was noticeable that the native Government officials, who, while at Rashida and during the journey through the oasis, had behaved in the usual boisterous manner of their kind, laughing and chaffing each other and perpetually bawling out orders, apparently for no other object than to hear their own voices and assert their authority, were all most subdued and almost timid in the presence of Sheykh Mawhub.

His stage management was excellent, and he was certainly rather an impressive looking individual. Since his access of prosperity, and the advent of his sons to manhood, he had led an extremely retired life and become practically a recluse, seldom emerging from his zawia or seeing anyone except his followers, leaving the management of his property largely to his sons and the men, such as Sheykh Ibrahim, who were attached to his zawia. It was popularly supposed that he devoted his whole life to study, the affairs of the sect to which he belonged and to his religious observances. It was probably this method of life, combined with the influx of so many strangers, that accounted for his obvious nervousness.

The old sheykh, from the time of his entry, entirely dominated the meeting. His manner was so quiet and subdued as to be almost an affectation. He spoke at first in such a low voice as to be scarcely audible, and replied to the remarks of the officials as briefly as possible.

The mamur took it upon himself to explain to the sheykh that I was going off to map the desert, and had been making enquiries about Zerzura; so, as he had introduced the subject, I asked Sheykh Mawhub if he had ever heard of the place. He thought for a moment, and then said he had. It was an enchanted oasis, and all the inhabitants and cattle had been turned into stone, and would only come to life when someone had been sacrificed there.

He then for a few moments gazed out of the window at the sky with the rapt expression of a stained-glass saint, and added in a tone of dreamy reminiscence that a Greek had once tried to look for Zerzura, but that he had not been able to find it, and had died of poison on his way back to Europe. He then came down to earth again and glanced at me in an absent-minded way; but I thought that I detected something like a twinkle in his bleary eyes.

Afterwards we got on the subject of natural history. The sheykh woke up and became interesting. I had a long conversation with him on a variety of subjects. Towards the end he rather overcame his reserve and seemed to be trying to please, for on my expressing regret that my knowledge of his language was insufficient to enable me to converse with him, except through an interpreter, he volunteered to teach me Arabic, if I would come to his zawia.

I own I was tempted. The chance of completing my education in a Senussi monastery was unique; but it would have been an “eye-washy” sort of job, and I had other work to do—besides I doubted his motives, so I declined. He seemed genuinely disappointed. He had hoped, I suppose, to keep me learning Arabic in his zawia, instead of going off to explore the Libyan Desert that the Senussi looked upon as their private property.

After some further conversation, the sheykh invited us all to be his guests for the night at the ezba belonging to his son, Sheykh Ahmed.

Sheykh Ahmed’s ezba lay some five miles to the west of the zawia. The first part of the way was mainly over uncultivated land. As soon as he was removed from the restraining influence of his father’s presence, Sheykh Ahmed shook off his odour of sanctity and appeared in his true character of a very cheery and slim young scamp. He and his two brothers, Sheykhs Mohammed and ’Abd el Wahad—both of whom joined us before reaching the ezba—had by no means the reputation in the oasis for sanctity that their father possessed. Sheykh Ahmed was reported to be an extremely slim fellow to deal with, and, even among the natives, had the character of being “the biggest liar in the oasis.” ’Abd el Wahad, the youngest brother, was still in his ’teens, and had not then attracted the gossip of the oasis. But Sheykh Mohammed was considered to be even more tricky than his elder brother.

It was the old, old story; too much pious teaching in the youth is apt to lead to a reaction later on. One meets clergymen’s sons, for instance, who are famous for many things, but excessive piety is seldom one of them. History being based on human nature is proverbially apt to repeat itself, and those in loco parentis would, I fancy, always do well to remember that Robert the Devil was the son of Richard the Good—he frequently is!

Old Sheykh Mawhub’s religion was obviously a very real and genuine thing, but that of his sons was, from all I heard and saw, largely a matter of conforming to the outward formalities of their order. But the prestige of the sect they belonged to was so great that, with the simple inhabitants of the oasis, their backslidings were overlooked, and almost regarded as one of the privileges of their holy character. In North Africa it is only necessary to label yourself as a holy man, to say enough prayers and fast occasionally, and you can do pretty much what you like in the meantime.

A ride of something over an hour brought us, just as the sun was setting, to Sheykh Ahmed’s ezba. His guest house, like that of the ’omda of Rashida, was built on to his private dwelling, where his wives and family lived. The house, and its guest house, were surrounded by a series of open yards forming the farm buildings, and used as places in which to house the stock at night, as threshing-floors and so on.

A Tea Party in Dakhla Oasis.

Enormous quantities of very strong tea are drunk by the natives, the making of which is a regular ceremony. Note the large copper urn on the left. ([p. 39]).

The guest chamber was a long narrow room about twenty-five feet from east to west by twelve from north to south. Two windows and the door opened on to a kind of terrace, while on the opposite side three windows looked out, to the north, on to a garden, in which was the well that watered the ezba, and where a number of palms and other fruit trees were planted, over the tops of which could be seen the cliff bounding the oasis in the blue distance.

SHEYKH AHMED’S GUEST HOUSE.

The windows were draped with red curtains, and a doorway, leading into a small bedroom on the western end of the room was covered by a pair of heavy and rather dusty velveteen curtains of the same colour. The floor was carpeted, a few mats being placed here and there over the carpet. The roof, which seemed to be built in the usual way with palm trunk rafters supporting jerids (palm leaf stems), was covered with a thin coating of plaster, whitewashed like the walls and painted with broad red stripes—a form of decoration which, though roughly executed, was both effective and tasteful, and, taken with the subdued hues of the rugs on the floor, formed a colour scheme of which a European artist need not have been ashamed.

Knowing the reputation that the Senussi bear for leading the simple life, and their supposed aversion to adopting any European innovations, the contents of the room filled me with complete surprise.

On a plate by an open window, so as to be in the draught, stood the inevitable gula—a porous terra-cotta bottle for cooling water, to be found in every native’s house in Egypt. Nailed to the wall were circular paper fans of Japanese make and two or three of a curious hatchet shape, ornamented with bits of red cotton stuff, such as are made in the oasis. A gaudy red and black print of Mecca was nailed to the wall opposite to the door, and a second long print in silver on silk, which stretched nearly across the eastern wall, showed another view of the same subject in villainous perspective, together with some other scenes of Eastern towns that I was unable to identify, the spaces between the views being filled up with texts and Arabesque ornamentations.

The remainder of the furniture was pure European—a shelf, with a mirror beneath it fixed to the wall, might have been bought in Tottenham Court Road; a hammock chair and some of bent wood with cane seats of the usual type, a couple of deal tables, on one of which stood a nickel-plated paraffin lamp and a sparklet bottle, and on the other a few books, an ordinary black japanned tray, with a glass water bottle and tumblers, and a gramophone. On one side of the gaudy print of the sacred Ka’aba at Mecca, was a coloured oleograph of the Khedive, and on the other was one of King Edward VII!

Having seen us all settled comfortably in our places, Sheykh Ahmed excused himself from attending on us any further, explaining that it was time for the maghrib prayer, and departed downstairs, where shortly afterwards we heard him fervently leading the prayers in the room beneath us.

Soon after he returned with a servant bringing the inevitable tea. Having seen that we were all served, Sheykh Ahmed departed again to change his clothes, and returned in a more gorgeous raiment than before.

While waiting for dinner to appear, Sheykh Ahmed’s two brothers—Sheykh Mohammed and Sheykh ’Abd el Wahad—came in, went up and kissed his hand and then remained standing till he waved them permission to sit down.

The Senussi—or the better class among them at any rate—keep up the ceremonious manners of the old patriarchal system of the Arabs. Sheykh Ahmed, for instance, would not even stay in the room with his father in the zawia, much less sit down in it without his permission. His younger brothers, in his own home, kissed his hand when they came into the room and waited his permission to sit down. They stood up whenever he did, and remained standing till he went out of the room, or till he signed them to be seated. When Sheykh Mohammed, the second brother, came in, the youngest, Sheykh ’Abd el Wahad, at once stood up.

When dinner arrived the two younger brothers left, to go, I understood, to Sheykh Mohammed’s ezba, which was not far from that of Sheykh Ahmed. Sheykh Ahmed himself helped to lay the cloth. A folding iron table was brought up to near where we were sitting, and an enormous round tray in red enamel, having views of Switzerland in panels all round it, was laid on the table. A cloth was spread over it, and on this the dinner was laid. At nearly all the ’omdas’ houses we stayed at we ate with our fingers in the native way; but at Sheykh Ahmed’s ezba we had nickel-plated spoons and forks, plates, tumblers and knives with plated handles.

Sheykh Ahmed himself, in accordance with the strict Arab etiquette, with his sleeves carefully rolled up to prevent them from being soiled by coming in contact with the dishes, waited on his guests at first—he was a good “bun hander”—and it was not till I invited him to join us, that he took his seat at the table and joined in the conversation. I was unfortunately unable to follow a good deal that he said, as my Arabic at that time was not of the best, but from the laughter that greeted many of his remarks, he was clearly an amusing and witty talker. He joined freely in the chaff of the Egyptian officials, and had evidently a gift of quick repartee.

The Mawhub family prided themselves upon keeping the best table in the oasis, and the dinner that he provided for us was, without any exception, the best meal I ever had the good fortune to take part in, and I took a large part in it.

The mamur was one that the Senussi hoped to convert to their sect—if they had not already done so. Much of their influence in Egypt was gained by this form of “pacific penetration.” Sheykh Ahmed was no fool, and probably realised that the easiest road to an Egyptian’s heart is through his tummy. He had accordingly borrowed his father’s cook from the zawia at Qasr Dakhl to do honour to the occasion. This man was said in the oasis—probably correctly—to have been at one time a chef to the Sultan of Turkey, and Turkish cooking is probably the best in the world.

I do not know whether we in Europe borrowed our monastic system from the Arabs, whether they got it from us, or whether we both got it from some common source; but certainly there are a great many points of resemblance between ours and theirs. The reputation for “good living,” enjoyed by the monasteries of the Middle Ages in Europe, when

“No baron or squire or knight of the shire

Lived half so well as a holy friar.”

has its exact counterpart in most of the Moslem monasteries at the present day. That cook from zawia of the Senussi sect—so famed for their abstemious simple life!—in Qasr Dakhl, was a past-master in his art, and that dinner must have been one of his finest efforts.

First arrived a large basin full of broth with two or three young chickens that had been boiled in it. The broth was strongly flavoured with lemon, which is an acquired taste.

Then came the pièce de résistance—a turkey. The police officer who was sitting next to me, who was himself an excellent cook, and quite knew what he was talking about, said it had been boiled in milk and then buttered, covered over with some sort of paste and put into the oven for a few minutes. It was stuffed with almonds, rice, raisons and ferikh, a sort of pop-corn, made, I believe, of green corn fried in butter. The stuffing had also some sort of spice in it that I was not able to identify.

The meat seemed to have lost all its fibre and almost melted in one’s mouth; the skin was crisp and tasted like pastry; the stuffing—but to give an idea of what that stuffing was like is beyond me—no one but a poet could describe it.

After the turkey came chickens, roasted and also stuffed. Rissoles, flavoured with some delicious herbs, followed.

By the time the rissoles had been finished, I already felt that I had done more than justice to Sheykh Ahmed’s hospitality, and that to attempt to pay him any further compliments in this direction might be attended by serious consequences. I hoped that the end of the meal might be in sight. But not a bit of it.

“The hardships of the lonely white man in Africa” have often been described, but they have never been really done justice to—they’re frightful! After the rissoles came an endless succession of sweets, made as only a Turkish cook can make them. A spongy kind of blancmange eaten with jam. Jam-tarts—the jam being apparently made from dates. Crisp, thin flakes of pastry, covered with whipped cream, coloured pink and eaten with honey. A kind of very sweet nougat, also eaten with cream, followed by unmistakable Turkish Delight, thickly covered with powdered white sugar, which was infinitely superior to the best “Rahat lakum” that could be bought even in Cairo—rahat lakum, by the way, was a name that no one seemed to have even heard.

After dinner of course came tea, and following that kerkadi, or Sudan tea—a drink made from the dried flowers of a plant that grows somewhere in the Sudan.

The latter I had heard of in Egypt, but had never seen, so hearing that Sheykh Ahmed had some, I asked for it. It is not only considered by Moslems to be quite correct to ask your host to produce any little thing in this way, but it is even considered as a compliment.

The kerkadi was first made cold. A few flowers were dropped into a tumbler and stirred round for a few minutes till a pale pink decoction was produced, and then sugar was added to sweeten it.

When made in this way it produced a drink with a curious slightly acid flavour, that would have been very pleasant and refreshing on a hot day. It can also be drunk hot, in which case it is made exactly in the same manner as ordinary tea. But it is not nearly so good when made in this way, and when it has been left standing for some time it takes a strong acrid flavour, that would not be likely to appeal to European tastes. But as a cold drink it is surprising that it is so little known.

The policeman told me in a whisper that the tea which preceded the kerkadi was of extremely fine quality, adding native-like that Sheykh Ahmed must have paid a guinea a pound for it. He was very likely correct, for this is by no means an unusual price for one of the richer natives of the oasis to give for his favourite Persian tea.

When dinner and tea were over, and our cigarettes had been lighted, the Coptic doctor took possession of the gramophone, and we were regaled by Arab songs and tunes. Songs, band pieces and an occasional recitation followed each other for about half an hour. At length a very dreary tune was put on, and, as everybody voted it a bore, Sheykh Ahmed went over to the pile of records and began sorting them over, saying that he would find something better.

The record that he put on the machine proved to be a dialogue between a man and his wife, who after a few sentences started to quarrel violently, abusing each other and calling each other all the filthy and disgusting names that even the Arabic language could produce. This record evidently appealed to the audience, for they fairly roared with laughter at some of the remarks. As soon as it was finished and had been repeated, Sheykh Ahmed put on a song, which I was quite unable to follow, but which, from the remarks of the audience, must have been of an exceedingly racy character.

That gramophone was a great institution, but one that in my second year in the desert nearly led to unpleasant complications. On my return to Cairo, after my first season in the desert, I ordered half a dozen records to be sent to Sheykh Ahmed as bakhshish—leaving the choice of them to the shop assistant, as being more likely to know what would appeal to native tastes.

I visited Sheykh Ahmed again during my second season, and the gramophone was once more brought out and my records produced. Sheykh Ahmed had kept them in a separate place from the others in his collection, and I suspect had never put them on his gramophone before. But he placed them, one by one, on his machine and sat over it, beating time to the music, politely pretending to be thoroughly enjoying them. From this I gathered that he was entirely unaware of the nature of the music that his gramophone was producing—for they were certainly not records that I should have selected to send to a Senussi sheykh.

Some years later, owing to a slight difference of opinion with the Government authorities, Sheykh Ahmed found it convenient to clear out suddenly with his family and belongings to Kufara.

If some future visitor to that oasis should hear proceeding from a native house a fine baritone voice, announcing that he will “sing him songs of Araby and tales of fair Kashmir,” or a choir of voices, accompanied by a brass band, exhorting him to further efforts by the inspiring strains of “Onward, Christian soldiers! marching as to war,” he will be able to locate Sheykh Ahmed’s house, and will know where those records came from.

I called at the shop, when next I was in Cairo, to ask why records so entirely inappropriate for a present to a Senussi sheykh had been sent to him. During the course of a rather heart-to-heart talk on the subject, the shop assistant explained that, as he had not expected me to go out again to the oasis, he had chosen those records as “a joke.” It certainly had a humorous side; the sight of that unsuspecting Senussi sheykh politely beating time to “Onward, Christian soldiers!” was quite worth seeing!

But to return to my first visit to Sheykh Ahmed’s ezba. When that gramophone’s repertoire came to an end, a lengthy and serious discussion took place as to whether our digestion of the dinner was sufficiently far advanced to allow us to go to bed. Although it was then past two o’clock in the morning, the conclusion that was unanimously arrived at was that we should give our digestions some further time to continue their work before we retired. The company had evidently determined to make a night of it.

It was decided at first that we should have a little more music. The policeman during the morning had manufactured a sort of penny whistle out of a piece of cane. The mamur got hold of an iron tray, which he proceeded to use as a tamtam. The Coptic doctor, having had the advantage of an education under European teachers at the Qasr el ’Aini hospital in Cairo, was more civilised in his choice of an instrument—he managed to get hold of a comb from somewhere, and, with a piece of paper added, proved to be a first-rate performer. Having thus improvised a jazz band, they proceeded to make the night hideous by singing over again some of the songs they had heard on the gramophone.

At length, tiring of that amusement, they proceeded to play a childish game, in which one of them thought of something and the others, by questioning him in turn, tried to find out what it was. This caused considerable amusement, and the fun waxed fast and furious. The game was evidently a popular one. But the things that that sanctimonious Senussi sheykh thought of—well! they were Eastern! so much so that I eventually went to bed, and left them still playing—so austere were the Senussi!

Making Wooden Pipes.

These oases are irrigated by artesian wells of unknown antiquity, they are all lined with wooden pipes. Similar wells are being sunk to this day. ([p. 312]).

A Street in Rashida.

Sometimes the upper stories of the houses are built over the streets to keep the roadways cool in hot weather. ([p. 49]).

After a somewhat disturbed night’s rest, I was aroused by a renewal of the concert by the jazz band. Coming out of my room I found the whole party in various stages of undress, sitting on the mattresses on which they had spent the night, smoking cigarettes, singing, banging trays and waiting the arrival of the barber to shave them. Sheykh Ahmed, himself, was not to the fore, he had retired to his private house for the night, and had not then put in an appearance.

The arrival of the barber and two servants with washing appliances put an end to the pandemonium. The barber went the round of each of the native guests in turn, shaving them and trimming their hair, while the remainder washed their hands as the attendants poured water over them. These preliminaries having been got through they proceeded to dress.

Sheykh Ahmed, gorgeously arrayed as usual, soon came in from his house, and proceeded with the help of the servants to lay the table for breakfast.

The meal having been concluded, tea made its appearance, and this having been consumed, we were taken by our host to see his well and garden. In one of the small-walled enclosures built round his house, he showed us his oven, round which were lying a number of rough earthen plates, pots and basins. The oven itself was a small beehive-shaped erection, slightly ornamented on the dome with raised patterns, among which a device like an inverted Y was conspicuous. This may possibly have been his wasm—tribal cattle brand.

The Senussi sect itself has a wasm of its own, consisting of the word “Allah,” to show that the beasts and slaves branded with it are consecrated to His Service. I have never seen any slaves marked with this brand, but have often seen their camels, which had been marked in this way. In each case, however, the word took the form

. This may have been due only to bad writing on the part of the man who branded the beast, but it may also be a kind of conventionalised form of the correctly written word.

Sheykh Ahmed’s two brothers arrived just before his house party broke up. So when we had gone back to the guest chamber to pack our belongings, I took the opportunity of photographing them together. I afterwards tried to induce Sheykh Ahmed to be photographed in his white praying clothes; but I made rather a faux pas there. He looked very angry for a moment, then stiffly replied that that was impossible as it was haram—forbidden by his religion. But he soon recovered his temper and was all smiles by the time we left.

CHAPTER VI

THE mamur, who was personally conducting our party, had arranged that we should look in at Gedida. On the way there we passed the village of Mushia, lying in an area of blown sand, which in some places seemed to be encroaching on the cultivation. Most of the land was planted with palms, of which there were said to be about twenty-six thousand. The village itself proved to be uninteresting, its most noticeable peculiarity being the painting of geometrical patterns which decorated the outer walls of some of the houses. The inhabitants showed more signs of progress here than in most of the villages of the oasis, as a number of sagias—waterwheels—had been erected to irrigate the cultivated land, where the partial failure of the wells had rendered this necessary.

At Gedida, however, they seemed more conservative. The water supply was failing, owing, according to the inhabitants, to the large amount of water yielded by the big modern wells at Rashida, and many of their palms were dying for want of irrigation. A few shadufs had been introduced to raise the water; but the inhabitants complained bitterly of the hard labour required to work them. When asked why they did not use sagias, they apathetically replied that no one knew how to make them, and seemed to think it would be too much trouble to import them from the Nile Valley.

At Gedida I heard another story of Zerzura. It appears that many years ago—the exact number was not stated—when the forebears of the present inhabitants all lived scattered about the district in little hamlets and ezbas some very tall black men, with long hair and long nails, came up out of the desert and stole their bread at night. In the morning the natives followed their tracks out into the desert, found the wells they had drunk from when coming into the oasis, and filled them up with salt to prevent them from being used again. They then returned to Dakhla Oasis, and, banding together, built the village of Gedida (the “new town”) for mutual protection.

We reached Mut just at sunset, passing a number of the natives driving in their cattle to be housed in the little walled enclosures that surround the town.

I found Abd er Rahman waiting to report on the state of the camels. Everything he said had gone well, except that the green camel had bitten the blue one, and that the red one had been attacked by mange. Abd er Rahman, however, said that he had buttered him well—which, he added, had made him very angry, and he hoped now that he was cured.

The ’omda of Rashida dropped in during the afternoon. On leaving, he expressed a fervent wish that I might find Zerzura, and that I should find a lot of treasure there. I soon found that it was quite useless to attempt to persuade any native into the belief that I was only intending to make maps and collect scientific information. Even the more intelligent of them—such as the native officials, the Mawhub family and the ’omda of Rashida—were quite unable to realise that anyone could be so foolish to do work of that kind unless he were paid to do so, and they were such confirmed treasure seekers themselves, and so secretive in their methods of conducting their hunt for buried riches, that they all considered that the reason I gave for my journey was only a cloak to disguise the fact that I was really looking for treasure.

In making my plans to set out into the unknown part of the Libyan Desert beyond Dakhla, I found myself at once confronted by a serious difficulty of a distinctly unusual nature. Generally, when a traveller starts on a journey, he has some definite object in view—he is going to climb a particular mountain, to follow a certain river to its source, to complete the survey of some lake that has been found, or to look for some place that has been reported to exist on native information—but in this part there was no such object available.

With the exception of the Kufara group of oases, on its extreme western side, practically the whole Libyan Desert to the south and west of Dakhla was quite unknown, so the south-west quarter was the one that appealed to me most, as any journey made in this direction would lead right into the heart of the largest area of unknown ground in Africa, or for the matter of that outside it, and it was in this quarter, too, that the maps showed the great dune-field, the crossing of which was one of the main objects of my journey, so this was the part I decided first to tackle.

It was then that I found myself faced with the problem. What was to be my objective? Between west and south there are a great many bearings upon which one can march. In which direction should I go?

The prospect of being able to find a well, perhaps only a two-foot shaft in the ground—very probably silted up with sand—by wandering out haphazard into several hundred thousand square miles of desert is remote.

The maps gave little assistance in solving the problem. Many of them left this space entirely blank. Those that placed anything there at all, described it as being entirely covered with large dunes, or as some of them put it, “impassable dunes.”

The nearest point to Dakhla in this south-western quadrant, that was marked in the maps, was an oasis which native information placed eighteen days’ journey to the south-west. Eighteen days, that is over ordinary desert, which might mean thirty at least if large dunes had to be crossed, and from what I had seen of those dunes it was doubtful if they were negotiable at all. It was said to be inhabited; but even its name was unknown. It was also said to have an old road leading from it towards Egypt. This looked somewhat promising, but the place was too far off to be of any use as a first objective, as until its position was accurately known, so that I could be certain of finding it at my first attempt, it would be necessary for me to arrange to get back again in the event of my not being able to reach it—and this would have necessitated a thirty-six days’ journey away from water, over easy desert, or two or three months over large dunes.

When it is considered that a camel, laden only with grain, will consume its own load in about a month, and that the amount of water that would have to be taken in addition on a journey of this description would be far heavier than the grain required, it will be easily realised that such a journey as this would be quite impossible without adopting some system of depots or relays, which, owing to the risk of their being tampered with, I felt disinclined to do until I knew more about the district. Before I could hope to reach this place, it was necessary for me to find some nearer oasis, or well, from which I could start afresh; so it was clear that this intermediate oasis, or well, must be my first objective. But where was this place to be found?

In the absence of more reliable information, it occurred to me that possibly some indication of its whereabouts might be gathered from the legends of Zerzura. The story of Rohlfs’ excavations in the Der el Hagar, told me by men who had actually been living in the neighbourhood at the time when they were said to have taken place, showed the extent to which even comparatively recent events are contorted by the natives.

But the name Zerzura itself was suggestive. Zerzur means literally a starling, but is a term often loosely applied to any small bird. Assuming the name to be derived from this source, it would have some such meaning as “the place of little birds,” a name that seemed of such a fanciful nature that it appeared to me unlikely to be applied to any definite place, and, taken in conjunction with the somewhat mystical character of the stories with which the oasis was associated, I concluded that either no place of that name ever existed, or, which seemed more likely, that Zerzura was a generic name applied to any unknown or lost oasis, and that the various legends I had heard of it were, in some cases at all events, garbled versions of events that had really occurred in the past; and judging from the speed with which the story of Rohlfs’ excavations had been distorted, a past that was not necessarily very remote.

Zerzura was said to lie to the south-west of Dakhla, and the other indications, small as they were, all pointed to this being the most promising direction in which to go. Not only was the unknown oasis, with the road running back towards Egypt, marked on the map as lying approximately in this direction, but what was probably the best indication of all, a large migration of birds came up annually from this part of the desert. Certainly there was not much to go upon in deciding to adopt this route, but in the absence of more reliable information, I was compelled to follow such indications as there were. Later on—in my last season in the desert—I was able to collect from various natives a large amount of data as to the unknown parts, from which I was able to construct a more or less complete map. But the information came too late for me to make use of it. It may perhaps be of service in affording an objective for future travellers. If I had had this intelligence to go upon when I first went out into the desert I should have tackled the job in an entirely different manner.

The red camel having recovered from his buttering, and being declared by Qway to be cured of the mange, I decided to start at once.

Much curiosity existed in the oasis as to the direction in which I intended to go. The majority of the natives, influenced perhaps by my enquiries about Zerzura, were firmly convinced that I was bent upon a hunt for the hidden treasure to be found there, and any statement that I made to the contrary only had the effect of strengthening them more strongly in their opinion. No native, when he is starting treasure seeking, ever lets out where he is going, he tries to mislead his neighbours as to his real intentions, and any statements I made as to the object of my journey were invariably regarded from this standpoint.

The mamur came to see me off, and, just before starting, asked me in what direction I intended to go. I told him the south-west. The mamur was too polite to contradict me, but his expression showed his incredulity quite plainly—incredulity and some admiration. His thoughts put into words were: “Liar, what a liar. I wish I could lie like that.”

On my return he was one of the first to come round to “praise Allah for my safety.” Having got through the usual polite formalities, he asked me where I had really been. When I said I had gone to the south-west as I had told him I should, he looked extremely surprised and glanced across to Qway, drinking tea on a mat near the door, for confirmation. Qway laughed. “Yes, he did go to the south-west,” he said.

“But—but—but—,” stammered the mamur, “that’s where you said you were going.”

Even then I don’t think he quite believed it. When asked questions of this kind, I invariably told the exact truth and never made any secret of my plans. I knew quite well they would not believe me, and at first they never did. Afterwards, when they began to realise that my statements were correct, they looked on me, I believe, as rather a fool. They did not seem to understand anyone speaking the truth, when he merely had to lie in order to deceive.

This raises a somewhat intricate question in morality. When you know that if you speak the truth, you will not be believed, and so will deceive as to your real intentions, isn’t it more strictly moral to lie?

I had made somewhat elaborate preparations for crossing the dunes. I had brought with me several empty sacks to spread on the sand for the camels to tread on, and for my own use I had a pair of Canadian snow-shoes, with which I had found it perfectly easy to cross even the softest sand.

I walked out to have a nearer look at the dunes. At close quarters they seemed to me even more formidable than when viewed from a distance. Not only were they of considerable size, but, what was infinitely worse, the sand of which they were composed was so loose and soft that the camels would have sunk in almost to their hocks. It was obvious that, if the whole dune-field was of this character, to get a caravan over many days’ journey of this soft sand was an almost hopeless task.

However, I made up my mind to give it a trial. So the evening before starting out into the desert, I sent Qway off on his hagin to find the best place for us to enter the dune belt, with the result that, instead of setting out towards the south-west, he led the caravan towards the north-west, where he had found a low point in the sand hills, but it was with a good deal of trepidation that I set foot on the first dune we came to, and realised that I had embarked on the desperate attempt to solve the riddle of the sands of the “Devil’s Country”—it was an awful prospect.

CHAPTER VII

THE first dune we had to negotiate was only about eight feet high and, as the sand at this point was crusted hard, in a minute or two, without the slightest difficulty, we were across the first sand hill of that field of “impassable dunes”—and the last!

We at once found ourselves on a sand-free patch lying between the dunes. By following a winding course across the belt we were able to reach its farther side in about an hour and a half, without having to negotiate any further sand. The sand hills were not nearly so closely packed together as they appeared to be from a distance.

We emerged into a long lane between the dunes quite free from drift sand, running parallel with the sand belt and stretching away to the south, till it ended in the distance in a hill on the skyline. On the far side of this lane was another belt of sand hills, which, being closely packed together and of considerable height, would have caused some difficulty to cross. So instead of keeping a south-westerly direction, which would have necessitated crossing these difficult dunes, I followed the sand-free lane to the south and coasted along them, hoping to find an easier place where the dunes had become lower or more scattered. An old disused road ran west from Mut into the dunes, presumably leading direct to Kufara. We found the continuation of this road where it crossed the lane and again ran under the dunes to the west of it. At that point it bore 265° mag.

We soon joined the tracks of five camels proceeding in the same direction as ourselves, and apparently only three or four days old. We followed these tracks, which ran along the lane between the dunes and presently, to everyone’s profound astonishment, came upon the unmistakable track of a two-wheeled cart. They eventually led us to a very low gritstone hill.

As wheeled conveyances are entirely unknown in the oasis the presence of the tracks was a perfect mystery. It was not till my return to the oasis that I learnt their history. At least forty years before, the father of the ’omda of Rashida had imported a cart into the oasis from the Nile Valley, in order to fetch from the gritstone hill two millstones we had seen in a mill in his village.

The permanence of tracks in certain kinds of desert is well known to anyone with any experience of desert life. The marks in this case ran over a level sandy surface thinly covered with darker pebbles. The cart must have crushed the pebbles deeply into the soft sand on which they lay, and the ruts thus formed rapidly filled up again with drift sand during the first sandstorm, showing as two conspicuous white lines, owing to the absence along the tracks of the darker pebbles, and forming marks that might easily last for a century, unless they happened to be situated in a part of the desert where the sand erosion was gradually wearing away the surface of the ground.

Close by the hill from which the millstones had been quarried the tracks of the five camels we had seen turned off towards the west. As the lane we had been following ran up north in the direction of Qasr Dakhl and the only camels in the oasis were those kept by the Senussi living there, there was little doubt that the tracks we had seen were those of a party of Senussi from the zawia on their way, probably with letters, to Kufara.

The Senussi invariably conducted their visits to and from their headquarters with the greatest secrecy, for fear that, when proceeding there, they might be followed and the road that they took might thus become known. The route followed by this party was eminently well suited to preserve their secret, as, while following the lane, they must have been entirely concealed from the inhabitants of the oasis by the intervening line of dunes that we crossed. So we had evidently stumbled upon one of their secret roads to Kufara.

About four o’clock we reached the hill we had seen on the skyline at the end of the lane between the dunes, and as it was the highest in the neighbourhood I climbed to its top with Qway and Abd er Rahman, sending the caravan round its base to wait for me on its southern side.

From the summit we could see over a wide range of country. In the far north lay Dakhla Oasis with the scarp behind it. The continuation of this cliff beyond Qasr Dakhl could be seen stretching far away to the west as a faint blue line that appeared to get lower towards the west.

The desert to the west of Dakhla was almost entirely covered by dunes, which seemed to be higher farther to the north and in the extreme west, where they were noticeably redder in colour than the cream-coloured sand hills in the neighbourhood of the oasis.

Everywhere to the south-west, in the direction in which we were going, the desert was very level, and to my great surprise entirely free from drift sand, with the exception of one or two isolated dunes that could be seen in the distance. Instead of the sand-covered desert to the south-west of Dakhla shown on the maps, the whole surface consisted of bare Nubian sandstone—there was no sign of the limestone that caps the plateau near the Nile Valley. The hill on which we stood was considerably higher than Dakhla, and from our elevated position we could see a great distance; but not a trace was there to be seen of the “great sea of impassable sand” that was shown on the maps of the south-west of the oasis. Never had an unsuspecting traveller been so hopelessly misled by an imaginative geographer. The great area covered with huge dunes that was supposed to exist here, extending to thousands upon thousands of square miles, simply did not exist at all. It was an absolute myth!

The sand belts of this desert creep forward towards the south under the influence of the prevailing north wind—not as I once saw stated in a novel at the rate of many miles in the course of a night—but with a steady advance of, say, twenty yards in a year. Long belts, like the Abu Moharik already referred to, are known to extend for hundreds of miles, and it had consequently been assumed that the dunes that Rohlfs had found ran for a similar distance.

From where we stood the reason that these belts were so curtailed was perfectly clear. The ground level rose fairly rapidly all the way from Dakhla, and the area lying to the south-west of our position constituted an elevated plateau, along the northern edge of which ran a chain of hills of considerable height. The sand belts found by Rohlfs had all banked up against these hills, except in one or two places where a line of isolated crescent dunes had crept through a gap in the range and emerged on to the plateau.

The contrast between this part of the desert, as shown on the map, entirely covered with these “impassable” dunes, to cross which was a problem that during the past few months I had been racking my brains in attempts to solve, and the desert as it existed in reality—with only one small ridge of sand about eight feet high and perhaps forty yards broad to be crossed, which had presented no difficulty at all, could hardly have been greater. I felt considerably annoyed with the compilers of those maps for causing me so much wasted scheming. The discovery, however, of the sand-free character of the desert, was of the greatest importance for the purpose of my journey, as it naturally made our road far easier to traverse.

As the “impassable sea of sand” had proved to be a myth, and the Senussi did not appear to be anything like as fanatical as I had been led to expect, I began to hope that the other unsurmountable difficulties foretold would also vanish in the same way, and that I should have no other impediments to surmount than the shortage of water and other problems that always have to be faced in every desert journey.

Abd er Rahman had been minutely examining the whole desert towards the south-west from the top of the hill. Suddenly he touched my arm and drew my attention to two ’alems (landmarks) lying in the distance.

I looked through my glass in the direction that he indicated, but could see no ’alem at all. However, as he persisted they were there, we went down to the bottom of the hill to look for them.

For a long way from the foot of the hill, the whole surface of the desert was covered with loose slabs of sandstone rock. Abd er Rahman led us across this up to a little pile of three stones about a foot high that, with the keen sightedness of the bedawin, he had spotted from a distance of some two hundred yards, although it lay on the ground so covered with loose slabs of stone that I had not been able to see it myself, even when pointed out by Abd er Rahman, until I got within a few yards of it.

These little heaps of stone, sometimes only a few inches high, are placed at intervals along the desert roads to act as landmarks to those who use them. Occasionally, instead of being placed on the road itself, they are erected on a hill, or rising ground, close by it. The bedawin, even if unacquainted with the district, will often travel great distances, relying for their guidance on the ’alems erected along the roads by previous travellers.

Some hundred yards farther on we found the second ’alem that Abd er Rahman had seen. It consisted of a similar pile of stones. I took a bearing along the line of the two and then we proceeded to march along it. But the road proved to be very bad going, the camels slipped and tripped over the loose stone slabs, till once or twice I thought one would be down. But after a time we got on to easier ground, and began to make better progress.

In making a compass traverse, it is, I believe, usual to estimate the speed at which the caravan is travelling for each section of the road. I personally found this method so unsatisfactory that, after many attempts, I at length was forced to abandon it and to keep my route book on a method of my own, which I found to give much better results.

I assumed a uniform speed of two and a half miles per hour, which is about the rate of a caravan of loaded camels over normal ground. Then, after having passed over an unusually difficult section of the road, where I knew we had not been marching up to our standard speed, I estimated the amount of time we had lost, and entered it in the route book as a “halt,” to be deducted from the amount of time actually occupied in crossing it. I found that a compass traverse, booked in this way, not only fitted considerably closer to the astronomical positions I found, but the actual plotting of the traverse itself was very much simplified—and the risk of errors in consequence much reduced—by having a uniform speed to work upon.

Shortly before we camped for the night we crossed a very faint old road running almost due east and west. These old roads—of which we found a large number—remain visible for an extraordinarily long time, where they happen to run over certain kinds of desert.

We found the going over the plateau unusually bad. Not only had we to cross large areas of kharafish (sharp, sand-eroded rock), but we repeatedly came across a particularly obnoxious form of it known, I believe, as sofut—a type of erosion consisting of knife-edged blades of sandstone standing up two or three inches above the ground, which proved to be a severe trial to the soft-footed camels, who tripped and staggered along, uttering the most melancholy groans.

Another type of surface we had occasionally to cross was that known as noser. At first sight this appeared to be a perfectly level expanse of hard crusted sand. But appearances were deceptive. The sand was only a few inches thick and overlay a bed of stiff clay which, under the influence of the great summer heat, had cracked into fissures often a foot or more wide and extending for several feet down into the ground. The smooth sandy surfaces showed no trace of these chasms. But if the heavy camels, while walking over the ground, happened to place one of their feet over a fissure, they immediately broke through the weak crusted sand, and stumbled forward into the hole below, on more than one occasion coming right down and throwing their loads. Fortunately we had no worse casualties; but strained sinews, and even broken legs are by no means uncommon from this cause.

We continued marching along the bearing I had taken between the two ’alems, so far as the unequalities of the desert would allow us, for though the general level of the plateau was maintained over a large area, it had many minor undulations. But by looking ahead in the direction of the bearing we were generally able to decide where the road ran.

Here and there we came across ’alems, showing that we were still on the right track; but it was not until we had followed it for nearly two days that we again saw any part of the road itself.

Then, however, we found a stretch of it lying in a sheltered position, which we were able to follow for over two miles. In one place where, being sheltered, it was rather more plainly visible than usual, I counted no less than forty-three parallel paths. At one time it must clearly have been one of the main caravan roads of the desert. But we saw no more ’alems, nor did we come across any more stretches of the road on that journey.

The farther out on the plateau we got the greater were the number of the hills we saw. They were all of the same Nubian sandstone of which the plateau itself consisted—I saw no trace anywhere in this part of the desert of the limestone that caps the plateau to the north and east of Dakhla and Kharga. The hills were of the usual desert type, either flat-topped, domed, or pyramidal. Here and there we came across some with a more jagged outline, but these were rare. In parts these hills were extraordinarily numerous, from one point I counted over two hundred and fifty of them, in spite of the fact that about 60° of the horizon were cut off by the proximity of a long ridge. The largest of them that I saw was not much more than three hundred feet in height. The general level of the plateau was approximately that of the tableland of the top of the cliff to the north of Dakhla.

On our fourth day out from Mut we got into a considerable area of very rough ground, largely consisting of sharp-edged sofut, with the result that by evening two of the camels were limping slightly, owing to the injuries to their feet from the sharp rock, and as I could see much lower ground to the south, I turned off on setting out on the fifth morning in that direction.

After two hours’ march we reached the bottom of a small wady, which my aneroid showed to be 110 feet deep. As, shortly before reaching it, we had seen the track of a rat, my men christened it the “wady el far” or “Valley of the Rat.” It was still quite early in the day, but as one of the camels was still limping, I decided to camp, and sent Qway off on his hagin towards the south-west to scout.

The Most “Impassable” Dune.

The whole of the central part of the Libyan desert was supposed to consist of an “impassable sea” of sand dunes, but on a journey to about the middle of the desert, the only dune that had to be actually crossed was the small one shown above. ([p. 82]).

On his return to the camp I asked Qway what he had seen during his ride. He said he had ridden for two hours towards the south-west, and then he had reached the edge of a plain on the far side of which was a high black mountain. Beyond that he said was a very deep valley, which he had been unable to see into, but which was overhung by a mist. As the mountain lay about four hours’ ride away, and the valley about two hours beyond it, he had returned to the camp to report what he had seen.

This sounded most promising news, and I was anxious to go off at once and have a look at the “wady esh shabur,” or “Valley of the Mist,” as Khalil poetically called it, so I took Qway off to look at our water-tanks.

But the inspection was not too encouraging. We were distinctly short of water. Qway thought we should have just enough to take us out to his “Valley of the Mist,” and back again to Dakhla, if all went well, but he pointed out that we had one lame camel and another limping slightly, and that at that season it was quite possible that we might get some hot days with a simum blowing, and he consequently thought that it would be far better to be on the safe side and go straight back to Dakhla, rest the camels, and then come out and go on to the valley on the next journey.

As this was obviously sound advice, we struck camp, packed up and prepared to set off at once towards Dakhla, leaving several sacks of grain behind us, which greatly eased the burden of the camels and allowed us to leave the two limping beasts unloaded.

The wady in which the camp had been pitched evidently lay on the southern fringe of the plateau, and opened out on its eastern side down a sandy slope on to the lower ground beyond. The plateau, I knew, did not extend much farther to the east, so with two damaged camels in the caravan, I thought it best to avoid a return over the very rough road we had followed on our outward journey, and to strike instead in an easterly direction, round the south-east corner of the tableland, over the smooth sandy desert lying at the foot of the scarp of the plateau.

This road, though somewhat longer than the one we had followed on our outward journey, proved to be excellent going; it lay almost entirely over smooth hard sand. We continued to follow an easterly course till the middle of the next morning, when, on reaching the edge of the dune belt that runs along the western boundary of Dakhla, we turned up north towards Mut, and coasted along it.

The road was almost featureless. A few low rocky hills were seen on the lower ground for a while after leaving the “Valley of the Rat,” but even these soon ceased. From this point onwards we saw nothing of interest, with the exception of some pieces of petrified wood, lying on a greenish clay, until we reached our destination at Mut, in Dakhla Oasis. In the desert round about Kharga and Dakhla we several times came across the petrified remains of trees, though they never occurred in large patches.

Qway proved to be right in his forebodings of hot weather, and we had two days of fairly warm simum wind. We, however, managed to get in without suffering unduly from thirst—but I felt rather glad that we had not tried to reach that valley.

The state of my caravan necessitated my giving them some days’ rest, to enable them to recover their condition, and to allow their feet to get right again after the hard usage they had received on the sharp rocks of the plateau, before setting out again into the desert.

In the meantime I conducted an experiment to try and locate the position of the place from which the palm doves—the kimri sifi—were said to come. Their migration was just at its height, and several times, while on the plateau, we put them up from the rocks on which they had alighted to rest during their flight.

The kimri sifi always arrived in the oasis just before sunset, and as they generally made for a particular well to the south-west of Mut, I went there one evening with a compass and gun to wait for them. I took the bearing with my compass to the direction in which a number of them came. These bearings tallied very closely, the average of them being 217° mag.

I then shot a few of them just as they were alighting, and cut them open. They had all been feeding on seeds—grass seeds apparently—and olives. The seeds were in an almost perfect condition, but the olives were in such an advanced state of digestion as to be hardly recognisable.

I next bought some doves of the ordinary kind kept in the oasis from the villagers, and confined them in a cage. At sunrise the following morning I fed them on olives and then, towards midday, took them out one by one, at intervals of an hour, killed them, and cut them open to see the state of the olives. Those of the one killed at three o’clock seemed in the state most resembling those taken from the kimri sifi I had shot, showing that it required about nine hours’ digestion to reduce them to that condition.

The kimri sifi is a weak-flighted bird, and, judging from the numbers we put up in the desert from places where they had settled down to rest, spends a considerable part of the day during the flight to Mut from the oasis where the olives grow, resting upon rocks in the desert. I consequently concluded that its average speed, including the rests, during its journey from the olive oasis, would be about twenty-five miles an hour.

Applying the principles of Sherlock Holmes to the case I deduced—I believe that to be the correct word—that the oasis the kimri came from lay in the direction of the mean of the bearings I had taken, viz. 217° mag., at a distance of nine times twenty-five, or two hundred and twenty-five miles, and that it contained olive trees. Some years later an Arab told me that there was an oasis off there that contained large quantities of olive trees. Boy scouts will, I trust, copy!

CHAPTER VIII

HAVING given my caravan sufficient time to recover from their previous journey, I set out again into the desert. On this occasion the camels were much more heavily loaded, as I had determined to cover as much ground as possible.

But we had not proceeded for more than four hours from Mut when one of the camels fell dead lame again. As it was obviously hopeless to think of taking him along with us, and we had proceeded such a short distance, I decided to turn back and make a fresh start.

On reaching Mut we fired the camel and then the poor brute was cast loose. He hobbled painfully about for a few minutes, and then with a grunt knelt down on the ground. Musa, with the idea perhaps of relieving his sufferings, squatted on his heels in front of him, and proceeded to warble to him on his flute.

This was an expedient to which he often resorted in order to soothe the beasts under his charge. Frequently, after an unusually heavy day in the desert, when the camels had been fed, he would squat down among them and discourse wild music from his reed flute to them, till far into the night. As this generally had the effect of keeping me awake, I rather objected to the proceeding.

On this occasion his musical efforts seemed curiously to take effect. The camel for some time remained shuffling uneasily on the ground, probably in considerable pain. But after a time he became quieter, and before long he stretched his long neck out upon the ground and apparently went to sleep.

The day after our operation on the camel we started off again for the “Valley of the Mist” and Qway’s high black mountain.

The weather at the beginning of April is always variable. A strong northerly wind sprang up towards evening, on the third day out, and made things rather uncomfortable. The sky at dusk had a curious silvery appearance that I had noticed often preceded and followed a sand storm. It was presumably caused by fine sand particles in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The wind dropped after dark, as it frequently does in the desert, but it sprang up again in the morning with increased strength. During the night it worked round from north towards the east, and by morning had got round still farther, and was blowing a gale from the south, right into our teeth.

Soon after our start, we found considerable difficulty in making any headway against it, and before long we were marching into a furious gale. One of the beasts, which was perhaps rather overloaded, was several times brought to a standstill by a violent gust. An unusually powerful one that struck him fairly brought him down on his knees. We got him on his feet again, but had gone but a short way when another camel followed his example. Then the first one came down again and this time threw his load.

It was obviously useless to attempt to proceed, so having reloaded the camel, we retraced our steps to a hill at the foot of which we had camped. It was, of course, quite out of the question to pitch the tent, so it was left tied up in a bale, together with the other baggage, while we climbed up on to a ledge that ran round the hill, about twenty feet above its base. Here we were above the thickest of the clouds of sand that swept over the surface of the ground so densely that it was hardly possible to see more than a few yards in any direction.

Towards the afternoon the wind increased if anything in force, and small stones could be heard rattling about among the rocks on the hill. It veered round once more till it was blowing again from the north. The gale had considerably fallen off by sunset. I accordingly, rather to my subsequent regret, decided to spend the night at the bottom of the hill.

When I got out my bedding, I picked up a woollen burnus and shook it to get rid of the sand. It blazed all over with sparks. I put the end of my finger near my blankets, and drew from them a spark of such strength that I could very faintly feel it. When I took off the hat I was wearing I found that my hair was standing on end—this I hasten to state was only due to electricity.

The wind died out towards morning. I had, however, to get up several times before midnight to shake off the sand that had accumulated on my blankets, to prevent being buried alive, for it drifted to an extraordinary extent round the flanks of the hill.

We had started off some time the following morning before it struck me that there was something wrong with the baggage, and I found that the tent had been left behind. We found it at the foot of the hill completely buried by the sand that must have banked up during that gale to the height of two or three feet against the hill.

The horrors of a sand storm have been greatly overrated. An ordinary sand storm is hardly even troublesome, if one covers up one’s mouth and nose in the native fashion and keeps out of the sand. A certain amount of it gets into one’s eyes, which is unpleasant, but otherwise there is not much to complain about. On the other hand, there is an extraordinarily invigorating feeling in the air while a sand storm is blowing—due perhaps to the electrified condition of the sand grains, which, from some experiments I once made on the sand blown off a dune, carry a fairly high charge of positive electricity.

The storm I have described was certainly unpleasant, but it had one compensation—Musa left his reed flute lying on the sand, and my hagin promptly ate it! That camel seemed to be omnivorous. Feathers, tent pegs and gun stocks all figured at various times in his bill of fare. But bones were his favourite delicacy; a camel’s skeleton or skull by the roadside invariably drew him off the track to investigate, and he seldom returned to his place without taking a mouthful. In consequence, among the numerous names by which he was known in the caravan—they were all abusive, for his habits were vile—was that of the ghul, or cannibal.

We got off at five in the morning the day following the sand storm, and, after a six hours’ march, reached the sacks of grain in the “Valley of the Rat.” As the day was rather warm, we rested the camels here for four hours and then pushed on for Qway’s “high black mountain” and the “Valley of the Mist.”

I had hoped great things from Qway’s description of them, but unfortunately I had not taken into account the want of proportion of the bedawin Arabs. The “high black mountain” was certainly black, but it was only seventy feet high!

From the top of this “mountain” we were able to look down into the “Valley of the Mist.” Here, too, great disappointment met me. The wady was there all right—it was an enormous depression, about two hundred and fifty feet lower than the plateau. But the vegetation and the huge oasis, that I had been expecting from Qway’s account of the “mist,” were only conspicuous by their absence. The wady was as bare as the plateau; and considering the porous nature of the sand that covered its floor, and the height above sea-level as compared with the other oases, it could hardly have been otherwise. It was clearly, however, of enormous size, for it stretched as far as we could see south of an east and west line, as a vast expanse of smooth sand, studded towards the south and east by a few low rocky hills, but absolutely featureless to the south-west and west.

The “mist,” upon which Qway laid such stress, I found was not due to moisture at all, but to refraction, or rather to the absence of it. The hot sun blazing down on to a flat stony desert, such as the plateau over which we had been travelling, causes a hazy appearance in the nature of a mirage on the distant horizon. But, when looking from the top of a tableland over a deep depression some distance away, this hazy appearance is absent, as the line of sight of the spectator lies the height of the cliff above the floor of the depression, instead of being only a few feet above it. Though the “Valley of the Mist” was invisible from the point where Qway had first seen his “high black mountain,” his experienced eye had seen that a depression lay beyond it, owing to the absence of this haze, which, however, is only to be seen under certain conditions.

With some difficulty we managed to get the caravan down from the plateau on to the lower ground, and then coasted along towards the west, under the cliff, in order to survey it. This scarp ran practically due east and west, without a break or indentation until we came to a belt of dunes which poured over it, forming an easy ascent on to the plateau, up which we proceeded to climb.

At the top the sand belt passed between two black sandstone hills, from the summit of one of which a very extensive view over the depression was obtainable. It was at once clear that there was no prospect of finding water—still less an oasis—for at least two days’ journey farther to the south, for there was nothing whatever to break the monotony of the sand-covered plain below us. As the water supply was insufficient to warrant any further advance from Mut, we had to return—always a depressing performance.

We found, however, one hopeful sign. The pass that led over the dune belt on to the plateau—the “Bab es Sabah,” or “gate of the morning,” as the poetical Khalil called it, because we first sighted it soon after dawn—had at its foot an ’alem. When I plotted our route on the map, I found that this ’alem lay almost exactly in line with the old road we had followed on our first journey out from Mut, showing that the pass had been the point for which it had been making. The place to which this road led would consequently be sure to lie near, or on the continuation of the bearing from the pass to the place where we had seen the two first ’alems. This was a point of considerable importance, as there seemed to be little chance of finding any remains of the road itself on the sandy soil of the depression, unless we should happen to land on another ’alem. The bearing we had been marching on before was such a short one that there was always the risk that, owing to the obstruction to the direct road of some natural feature, the short section of it, along which the bearing was taken, was not running directly towards its ultimate destination.

While hunting round about the camp, I found embedded in the sand two pieces of dried grass, much frayed and battered. So on leaving the camp next day, we followed the line of the sand belt to the north, as showing the direction of the prevailing wind, in hopes of finding the place from which the dried grass embedded in the dune had come.

View near Rashida.

Note the wooded height in the background and the scrub-lined stream in foreground from the well under the large tree on the right. ([p. 49]).

A Conspicuous Road—to an Arab.

Two small piles of stone, or ’alems can, with difficulty, be seen. Arabs can march for hundreds of miles through a waterless desert, relying on landmarks such as these. ([p. 86]).

Battikh.

A type of sand erosion, known as battikh or “watermelon” desert. ([p. 308]).

We left the camp about half-past seven. Soon after four we entered what is known as a redir—that is to say, a place where water will collect after one of the rare desert rains. It was a very shallow saucer-like hollow, a few feet in depth, the floor of which consisted of clay. The farther side of this was covered with sand, and here we found the grass for which we had been searching.

It was very thinly scattered over an area a few hundred yards in diameter. It was quite shrivelled and to all appearances completely dead. But it was the first vegetation we had seen on the plateau to the south-west of Dakhla. This redir showed a noticeable number of tracks of the desert rats, and was probably one of their favourite feeding grounds.

Having solved the problem of the grass, as our water supply was getting low, we turned off in a north-easterly direction, making for Dakhla. The plateau surface changed for the worse, and a considerable amount of sofut had to be crossed; but fortunately the camels held out. We crossed two old roads running up north, apparently to Bu Mungar and Iddaila. Here and there along these old disused roads we saw circles, four or five feet in diameter, sparsely covered with stones about the size of a hen’s egg, scattered on the sandy surface, that obviously had been placed there by human agency. Qway explained that these were the places where the old slave traders, who used these roads, had been in the habit of laying their water-skins. A gurba, raised slightly off the ground in this way, so that the air can circulate round it, keeps the water much cooler than when laid with a large part of its surface in contact with the ground.

Other evidence of the old users of these roads were to be seen in an occasional specimen of an oval, slightly dished stone about two feet long, known as a markaka, on which they used to grind, or rather crush, their grain with the help of a smaller hand stone, and also in the quantities of broken ostrich shells that were frequently seen. These shells can be found in many parts of the desert, and are said to be the remains of fresh eggs brought by old travellers from the Sudan to act as food on the journey. It has been argued, from their existence, that ostriches ran wild in these deserts. But it is difficult to see upon what food such a large bird could have subsisted.

On the second day after leaving the redir, we got on to another old road, and continued to follow it all day. This road eventually took us to a clump of four or five green terfa bushes, and a second one of about the same size was reached soon afterwards. These little clusters of bushes proved afterwards to be of the greatest assistance to us, as they not only afforded the camels a bite of green food, but were the source from which came most of the firewood that we used in the desert. Evidently others had found them useful too in the past, for no less than four old roads converged on to them—a striking instance of the value of green food and firewood in the desert. Some broken red pottery was found amongst these bushes.

Shortly after leaving them we found the track of a single camel going to the west—obviously to Kufara. But beyond this single track, and that of the five camels we had seen on our first journey from Mut, we never saw any modern traces of human beings on the plateau.

The weather, which had been very hot, fortunately grew suddenly cool, and once or twice a few drops of rain fell. This change in the temperature was most welcome, as the camels were becoming exhausted with their long journey away from water, and showing unmistakable signs of distress. The change to colder weather, however, revived them wonderfully.

The road, unluckily, became much worse, and we got on to a part of the plateau thickly covered by loose slabs of purplish-black sandstone, many of which tinkled like a bell when kicked.

On the day before we reached Dakhla there was a slight shower in the morning just after we started, and the weather remained cool, with a cold north wind and overcast sky all day. We were consequently able to make good progress, and by the evening had reached the north-east corner of the plateau and were within a day’s journey of Mut.

Just before camping there was a sharp shower accompanied by thunder and lightning, enough rain falling during the few minutes it lasted to make my clothing feel thoroughly damp.

The tent was pitched on a sandy patch, and had hardly been erected before the rain, for about a quarter of an hour, came down in torrents, with repeated flashes of vivid lightning, which had a very grand effect over the darkened desert.

I was just going to turn in about an hour afterwards when my attention was attracted by a queer droning sound occurring at intervals. At first I thought little of it, attributing it to the wind blowing in the tent ropes, which the heavy rain had shrunk till they were as taut as harp strings. The sound died away, and for a few minutes I did not hear it.

Then again it swelled up much louder than before and with a different note. At first it sounded like the wind blowing in a telegraph wire; but this time it was a much deeper tone, rather resembling the after reverberation of a great bell.

I stepped out of the tent to try and discover the cause. It was at once clear that it could not be due to the wind in the tent ropes, for it was a perfectly calm night. The thunder still growled occasionally in the distance and the lightning flickered in the sky to the north. After the hot scorching weather we had experienced, the air felt damp and chilly enough to make one shiver.

The sound was not quite so distinctly audible outside the tent as inside it, presumably owing to the fact that the rain had so tightened the ropes and canvas that the tent acted as a sounding board. At times it died away altogether, then it would swell up again into a weird musical note.

Thinking that possibly it might be due to a singing in my ears, I called out to my men to ask if they could hear anything.

Abd er Rahman, whose hearing was not so keen as his eyesight, declared that he could hear nothing at all. But Khalil and Qway both said they could hear the sound, Qway adding that it was only the wind in the mountain. It then flashed across me that I must be listening to the “song of the sands,” that, though I had often read of, I had never actually heard.

This “song of the sands” was singularly difficult to locate. It appeared to come from about half a mile away to the west, where the sand came over a cliff. It was a rather eerie experience altogether.

Musical sands are not very uncommon. The sound they emit is sometimes attributed, by the natives, to the beating of drums by a class of subterranean spirits that inhabit the dunes. In addition to those sands that give out a sound of their own accord, there is another kind that rings like a bell when struck. A patch of sand of this kind is said to exist on the plateau to the north of Dakhla Oasis. I never personally came across any sand of this description, but much of the Nubian sandstone we found on the plateau to the south-west of Dakhla Oasis gave out a distinctly musical sound when kicked, and in the gully that leads up to the plateau at the Dakhla end of the ’Ain Amur road, I passed a shoulder of rock that emitted a slight humming sound as a strong south wind blew round it.

The following day we reached Mut without any further incident. We, however, only just got in in time as our water-tanks were completely empty, after our journey of eleven days in the desert.

Knowing that many of the natives in Dakhla suspected me of being engaged on a treasure hunt, and of looking for the oasis of Zerzura, I had played up to the theory by continually asking for information on the subject. On our return from such a long journey into the desert several natives, assuming that we must have found something, came round to enquire whether I had actually found the oasis.

Khalil, who had heard the account in the “Book of Treasure,” called my attention to the fact that the road we had followed on our return journey, until it lost itself in the sand dunes on the outskirts of Dakhla, at that time was leading straight for the Der el Seba’a Banat, and gave it as his opinion that, if we only followed the road far enough in the opposite direction, it would be bound to lead us to Zerzura. For the benefit of any treasure seekers who wish to look for that oasis, to embark on a treasure hunt, I will mention another and still more significant fact—that road exactly follows the line of the great bird immigration in the spring—showing that it leads to a fertile district, and moreover—most significant fact of all—many of those birds are wild geese!

CHAPTER IX

IN the journey from which we had just returned, we had been a rather long time away from water for that time of year, and the camels were in a very exhausted condition from the hard travelling in the heat on a short allowance of water. It was then May, and March is usually considered in Egypt as being the last month for field work, so I decided to give them a rest to recover their condition, and then go back to Kharga Oasis and the Nile Valley.

The men, with the exception of Khalil, had all settled down to the routine of desert travelling, and were working well. The mainstay of the caravan was Qway. He was a magnificent man in the desert, and was hardly ever at fault.

Finding that the caravan was rather overloaded at our start for our third journey, I left, on our second day out, a tank of water and two sacks of grain in the desert, to be picked up on our way back to Mut. From that point we had gone three days to the south. We had then gone two days south-west; then two days west; another day towards the north-west, and then three days north-east. All but the first four days of this journey had been over ground which was quite unknown to him; but when at the end of this roundabout route I asked him to point out to me where our tank and sacks had been laid, he was able to indicate its position without the slightest uncertainty.

At first sight the faculty that a good desert guide has of finding his way about a trackless desert seems little short of miraculous. But he has only developed to an unusual degree the powers that even the most civilised individual possesses in a rudimentary state.

Anyone, for instance, can go into a room that he knows in the dark, walk straight across from the door to a table, say, from there to the mantelpiece, and back again to the door without any difficulty at all, thus showing the same sense of angles and distances that enabled Qway, after a circuitous journey of a hundred and sixty miles, to find his way straight back to his starting-point. The Arabs, however, have so developed this faculty that they can use it on a much larger scale.

The bedawin, accustomed to travelling over the wide desert plains, from one landmark to another, keep their eyes largely fixed on the horizon. You can always tell a desert man when you see him in a town. He is looking towards the end of the street, and appears to be oblivious of his immediate surroundings. This gives him that “far-away” look that is so much admired by lady novelists.

It would be rash, however, to assume that a desert guide does not also notice what is going on around him, for there is very little indeed that he does not see. He may be looking to the horizon to find his next landmark during a great part of his time, but he also scans most closely the ground over which he is travelling, and will not pass the faintest sign or footprint, without noticing it and drawing his own conclusions as to who has passed that way and where they were going. He may say nothing about them at the time; but he does not forget them.

Nor will he forget his landmarks, or fail to identify them when he sees them a second time; a good guide will remember his landmarks sufficiently well to be able to follow without hesitation, a road that he has been over many years before, and has not seen in the interval.

Frequently, after passing a conspicuous hill, I have seen Qway glance over his shoulder for a second or two, to see what it would look like when he approached it again on the return journey, and to note any small peculiarities that it possessed.

In addition to this sense of angles and distances, these desert men have in many cases a wonderfully accurate knowledge of the cardinal points of the compass. This seems at first sight to amount almost to an instinct. It is, however, probably produced by a recollection of the changes of direction in a day’s march which has, through long practice, become so habitual as to be almost subconscious.

A good guide can not only steer by the stars and sun, but is able to get on almost equally well without them. On the darkest and most overcast night, Qway never had the slightest doubt as to the direction in which our road lay—and this too in a part of the desert which he had previously never visited.

I often tested the sense of direction possessed by my men when we got into camp, by resting a rifle on the top of a sack of grain and telling them to aim it towards the north, afterwards testing their sighting by means of my compass.

Qway and Abd er Rahman were surprisingly consistent in their accuracy, and there was very little indeed to choose between them. There was considerable rivalry between them on this point in consequence. They were very seldom more than two degrees wrong on one side or the other of the true north.

Qway was an unusually intelligent specimen of the bedawin Arabs—a race who are by no means so stupid as they are sometimes represented. There was little that he did not know about the desert and its ways, and he was extraordinarily quick to pick up any little European dodges, such as map-making to scale, that I showed him; but on questions connected with irrigation, cultivation, building, or anything that had a bearing on the life of the fellahin, he was—or professed to be—entirely ignorant. He regarded them as an inferior race, and evidently considered it beneath his dignity to take any interest at all in them or their ways. He seldom alluded to them to me without adding some contemptuous remark. He never felt at home in the crowded life of the Nile Valley, declared that he got lost whenever he went into a town—this I believe to be the case with most bedawin—that the towns were filthy, the inhabitants all thieves, liars, “women” and worse, and that the drinking water was foul, and even the air was damp, impure, and not to be compared with that of his beloved desert.

The opinion of the Egyptians of the Nile Valley is equally unfavourable to the Arabs. They regard them as an overbearing, lawless, ignorant set of ruffians whom they pretend to despise—but they stand all the same very much in awe of them. After all, their views of each other are only natural; their characters have practically nothing in common, and criticism usually takes the form of “this man is different from me, so he must be wrong.”

Qway, in the caravan, was invariably treated with great respect. He was usually addressed to as “khal (uncle) Qway,” and he was not the man to allow any lapses from this attitude, which he considered his due as an Arab and as the head-man of the caravan. Any falling off in this respect was immediately followed by some caustic reference on his part to the inferiority of slaves, “black men,” or fellahin, as the case required.

Abd er Rahman and the camel men all did their work well, and the difficulties due to the sand and the attitude of the natives that I had been warned that I should have to face, all appeared to be greatly exaggerated. With Qway as my guide, I hoped with the experience I had already gained, to make an attempt the next year, with a reasonable prospect of success, to cross the desert, or at any rate to penetrate much farther into it than I had already done, and reach some portion that was inhabited.

But just when I was preparing to return to Egypt, an event happened that put an entirely new complexion upon things, and upset the whole of my plans.

During our absence in the desert, a new mamur arrived in Dakhla Oasis and came round to call on me. He was rather a smart-looking fellow, dressed in a suit considerably too tight for him, of that peculiar shade of ginger so much affected by the Europeanised Egyptians. He had the noisy boisterous manner common to his class, but he spoke excellent English and was evidently prepared to make himself pleasant.

Before he left, he informed me that the postman had just come in, and that news had arrived by the mail of the revolution in Turkey. This revolution had long been simmering, with the usual result that the scum—in the form of Tala’at and the Germanised Enver—had come up to the top. The Sultan had been deposed, and it was considered likely that he would be replaced by some sort of republic. The whole Moslem community was in a very excited state in consequence.

A day or two later the Coptic doctor dropped in. He told me that he had just seen Sheykh Ahmed, from the zawia at Qasr Dakhl—whose guest I had been at his ezba—who had told him that if the revolution in Turkey succeeded and the Sultan really were deposed, the Senussi Mahdi would reappear and invade Egypt. The Mahdi, it may be mentioned, is the great Moslem prophet, who according to Mohammedan prophecies, is to arise shortly before the end of the world, to convert the whole of mankind to the faith of Islam.

This, if it were true, was important news. The position was one fraught with considerable possibilities. In order to understand the situation some explanation may perhaps be useful to those unacquainted with Mohammedan politics.

Egypt at that time was a part of the Turkish Empire—our position in the country being, at any rate in theory, merely that of an occupation, with the support of a small military force. The Sultan of Turkey was consequently, nominally, still the ruler of the country.

But in addition to being Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid was also the Khalif of Islam—an office that made him a sort of Emperor-Pope of the whole of the Mohammedans. His claim to be the holder of this title was in reality of a somewhat flimsy character; but whatever his rights to it may have been according to the strict letter of the Moslem law, he was almost universally regarded by the members of the Sunni Mohammedans as their Khalif, that is to say, as the direct successor, as the head of Islam, of the Prophet Mohammed himself, in the same way that the Pope is regarded as the direct successor to St. Peter.

A revolution always loosens the hold that the central Government has over the outlying parts of a country, and in a widespread and uncivilised empire like that subject to the Sultan of Turkey, where centuries of misgovernment have produced a spirit—it might almost be said a habit—of revolt, serious trouble was bound to follow, if the Sultan should be deposed and his place be taken by a republic. Not only would Egypt and Tripoli be deprived of the ruler to whom they owed their allegiance, but the whole native population of North Africa, with the exception of an almost negligible minority, would be left without a spiritual head. This would have been clearly a situation that opened endless possibilities to such an enterprising sect as the Senussia, whose widespread influence through North Africa is shown by the numerous zawias they have planted in all the countries along the south of the Mediterranean and far into the interior of the continent.

Egypt, as the richest of these countries, was likely to offer the most promising prize. The fellahin of Egypt, when left to themselves, are far too much taken up in cultivating their land to trouble themselves about politics, and though of a religious turn of mind, are not fanatical. But, as recent events have shown, they are capable of being stirred up by agitators to a dangerous extent.

I several times heard the Senussi question discussed in Egypt. Opinions on its seriousness varied greatly. Some loudly and positively asserted that the threat of a Senussi invasion was only a bugbear, and, like every bugbear, more like its first syllable than its second. But there were others who relapsed into silence or changed the subject whenever it was mentioned. It was, however, certain that with the small force we at that time possessed in the country, an attempt to invade Egypt by the Senussi accompanied, as it was almost certain it would have been, by a rising engineered by them among the natives of the Nile Valley, would have caused a considerable amount of trouble.

The appearance of a Mahdi—if he is not scotched in time—may set a whole country in a ferment. Not infrequently some local religious celebrity will proclaim himself the Mahdi and gain perhaps a few followers; but his career is usually shortlived. Occasionally, however, one arrives on the scene, who presents a serious problem—such, for instance, as the well-known Mahdi of the Sudan, and the lesser known, but more formidable, Mahdi of the Senussi sect.

The latter, though he seems to have been a capable fellow, was a theatrical mountebank, who preferred to surround himself with an atmosphere of mystery; as it was this mysterious element that complicated the situation, some explanation of it is necessary.

Sidi Mohammed Ben Ali Senussi, the founder of the Senussi dervishes, while travelling, in 1830, from Morocco to Mecca, divorced his wife, Menna, who had proved unfruitful, with the result that, being wifeless, some natives of Biskra took compassion upon him and presented him with an Arab slave girl. This woman is supposed to have borne him a son—Sidi Ahmed el Biskri—who played a somewhat prominent part later on in the history of the Senussia. By another wife he had a son, Mohammed, whom he declared on his deathbed to be the long-expected Mahdi.

These two half-brothers, Mohammed and Ahmed, are said to have borne a striking resemblance to each other.

An old Senussi that I met in Dakhla, who professed to have seen them both, said that not only were they of the same height and figure, but that even their voices and manner were so much alike that no one could distinguish between them.

There seems to be little doubt that when the Senussi Mahdi did not wish to interview a visitor himself, he sent his double, Sidi Ahmed, to do so instead. This deception was made easy by the fact that the Senussi Mahdi, during the latter part of his life, was a veiled prophet who concealed his face whenever he appeared in public by covering his head with a shawl; it is reported that he never even showed his face to his most intimate followers.

The interviews that he accorded to his visitors were few and difficult to obtain. They were invariably short—the Mahdi himself timing the interview with his watch—and the conversation, so far as he was concerned, consisting of a few questions, followed, if necessary, by a decision; his remarks being made in the low dreamy voice of one who received his inspirations from on high—a method of procedure that could hardly fail to impress, as it was evidently intended to do, the credulous followers who came to see him with his extreme sanctity and importance.

This Mahdi was reported to have died some years prior to my visit to Dakhla, and although news of the happenings in the inaccessible parts of North Africa is apt to be unreliable, there was little doubt that he had.

The native version was that he had gone off into the desert and disappeared; but probably he only followed the example of Sheykh Shadhly, the founder of the great Shadhlia sect, and of several other noted Moslem saints, and went off into the desert to die, when he felt his end approaching.

There was, however, a pretty general feeling in the desert that the last of him had not been seen—an impression that the Senussi endeavoured to keep alive by the vague statement that he was “staying with Allah,” and hints that he might at any moment reappear.

There was never much love lost between the Senussia and the Turks. About a year before my visit to the desert, a Turkish official had been sent down to Kufara Oasis, with orders to formally assert the Sultan’s authority over the district, and to hoist the Turkish flag. The fanatical inhabitants, however, had hauled down the flag, torn it to ribbons, trampled it under foot, severely beaten the Turkish officer and expelled him from the oasis, so the annexation of any part of the Turkish Empire would have been a scheme well calculated to appeal to the Senussi.

Ahmed el Biskri—the Mahdi’s double—was also reported to have died. But nothing would have been easier than for the leading Senussi sheykhs to find someone to personate their veiled prophet on his return from “staying with Allah,” and to have used the immense prestige that their puppet would have obtained amongst their credulous followers to increase the influence of the sect, to attract new followers and to work upon their fanaticism. The “reappearance” of the Senussi Mahdi in this way is still a possibility that is worth remembering.

News as to the doings of the leaders amongst the Senussia living in the wilds of the Libyan Desert has always been very difficult to obtain; but at that time they were reported in Dakhla to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of Tibesti, which lay to the south-west of Dakhla Oasis, in the direction of the road we had been following, and it seemed likely, if they were really contemplating a descent upon Egypt, that they might attempt, if water existed upon this road, to make their way along it into Dakhla, and so on to the Nile Valley.

With these considerations in view, I decided to make another trip into the desert before returning to Egypt, to see if we could not manage to reach the well, or oasis, to which the road ran, and to ascertain if the road we had found was feasible for a large body of men.

I sent a note to one of the British officials I had met in Cairo to let the authorities have news of the rumoured invasion, for what it was worth, and set to work to prepare for the journey.

I had not calculated on staying out in the desert so late in the season, so my provisions had almost run out. The few tins of preserved meat that remained had all suffered considerably from the heat and were not fit for use. I had, however, still a few tins of sardines, which in spite of their pronounced tinniness were still quite edible, and a number of emergency rations, which had not suffered in the least from the heat. These with a large skin of Arab flour and a few pounds of mulberry jam, which Dahab made from some fruit that the good people of Rashida sent me, provided ample food for another journey.

After a few more days spent in feeding up the camels and restoring them to a suitable condition for a long desert journey during the hot weather, Qway thoroughly inspected the beasts, dug his thumb into their quarters to test the consistency of their flesh, expressed himself satisfied with the distended state of their tummies, buttered the red camel again for mange, and then, as he declared the beasts to be in first-rate condition, we prepared to start.

CHAPTER X

THE discovery of the five green bushes that we had made on our last journey, insignificant as it may appear, proved of the greatest value to us.

I calculated that by the time we reached the bushes we should have about consumed a camel-load of water and grain; so by taking with us just sufficient firewood to last us till we reached them, and then, loading up the unloaded camel with fuel from the bushes, we should be able to devote yet another camel to the water and grain—so on this journey we had three extra baggage beasts, in addition to my hagin, loaded with these indispensable commodities. We hoped in consequence to be able to cover considerably more ground than on our previous attempts.

I had already surveyed the route, and as a second mapping of the road was unnecessary, we were able to travel a great part of the time by night, when the temperature was at its lowest. By rapid marches we were able to reach the pass leading down into Khalil’s “Valley of the Mist” on the fifth day.

With hardly an exception, the numerous rocky hills that rose above the plateau were so shaped that it was quite impossible to find any shade under them during the middle of the day, so we were obliged to rig up such shelter as we could by stretching blankets or empty sacks from one water-tank to another, or by supporting them from any framework that could be rigged up on the spur of the moment. Qway usually tied one end of his blanket on to the pommels of his saddle and then stretched the other end over a tank or two that he placed on end, or else secured it on to his gun, which he fixed up as a kind of tent pole.

On descending from the plateau into the “Valley of the Mist,” we continued in the same line of march. The floor of the depression proved excellent going, consisting as it did of hard smooth sand, containing a sprinkling of rounded pebbles; there was hardly even a ripple to break the evenness of its surface. Here and there a few stones showed up above the sand that covered the remainder of the surface; from these it was clear that we were still on the same Nubian sandstone formation as the plateau. In one place we found a huge slab of the stone propped up to form an ’alem, and here and there we came across white pulverised bones, that from their size must have belonged to some camel that in the distant past had died in that part of the desert, all showing that we were still on the line of the road we had been following.

OLD ’ALEM, “VALLEY OF THE MIST.”

Soon after descending into the depression we sighted a double peaked hill almost straight ahead of us that, as it stood completely alone in the midst of the level sandy plain, promised to give a wide view from its summit. On sighting the hill, I suggested to Qway, who was riding alongside of me, that it might be a good plan to send Abd er Rahman to climb to the top, to see if anything were to be seen.

Qway looked at the hill doubtfully for a moment. “I think that hill is a long way off,” he said. “We shall not reach it before noon.”

But distances on these level plains, where there are no natural features with which the size of an object can be compared, are often extraordinarily deceptive—even Qway with all his experience was often taken in by them. We had not reached that hill by noon, and though we continued our march for two hours in the afternoon, at the end of the day it appeared to be no nearer—if anything it looked farther off than it had done in the morning. As there was nothing whatever to survey, we set off again at half-past eleven that night, and continued our journey towards the hill till four next morning.

Rather Thin.

Long journeys in the hot weather on a short water supply are very exhausting to the camels; the camel drivers did not consider this one to be in a very bad condition. ([p. 181]).

But at dawn the hill appeared to be no nearer, and as we continued our march it seemed actually to recede and became noticeably smaller.

Qway was completely puzzled by it, and declared that it must be an afrit. As we continued to advance, however, it suddenly appeared to come nearer; then after a time it receded again.

Qway seemed seriously to imagine there was something supernatural about it. The men, too, evidently began to think that they had got into a haunted part of the desert, for they stopped their usual chaffing and singing and trudged along in stolid silence. It certainly was rather uncanny.

It was an unusually bad piece of desert. The scorching noontide sun caused the whole horizon to dance with mirage, and it was impossible to tell where the horizon ended and the sky began—they seemed to merge gradually into each other—strips of the desert hanging some degrees above the horizon in the sky, while large patches of sky were brought down below the horizon, producing the appearance of sheets of water—the Bahr esh Shaytan, or “devil’s lake,” of the natives.

But that hill was no mirage. We reached it at noon on the third day after we had sighted it, and it proved to be about four hundred and twenty feet high above the plain, and not an optical illusion. On account of the peculiar way in which it seemed first to recede as we approached it, and then to leap suddenly towards us, only to recede again, the men gave it the name of the “Jebel Temelli Bayed”—“the ever distant hill”—which they afterwards abbreviated to Jebel el Bayed. I was for a long time puzzled by the way in which it seemed to alter its position as it was approached; but came to the conclusion that this effect was produced by the fact that the road, by which we were travelling over the desert, though apparently of a dead level, was in reality slightly undulating, while the hill itself was of a shape that merged very gradually into the surrounding desert.

Consequently, while standing in a position such as A (Fig. 2), on the top of one of the undulations, we were able to see over the next ridge, E, down to the line A, B (Fig. 1 and 2) almost to the foot of the hill. When, however, we got into a trough between two of the undulations, as at C, we could only see the portion of the hill showing above the line C, D (Figs. 1 and 2), and it consequently appeared to be much smaller, and so more distant, than when seen from A. But on reaching the top of the ridge E, the whole hill down to its base came into view, rapidly increasing in size, and so appearing to leap forward, as we ascended the slope from C to E.

DIAGRAM OF JEBEL EL BAYED.

I explained this view to Qway, who at once accepted it as correct, and was evidently much relieved, for, as he half laughingly admitted, he was beginning to believe that the hill had been enchanted, and did not like having anything to do with it.

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.

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.

Each Arab tribe has its own camel brand. The Wasm of the Senussi Dervishes is the word “Allah” branded on the neck. ([p. 24]).

Breadmaking in the Desert.

The bedawin roll their dough into a thin cake and toast it on an iron plate. ([p. 207]).

Sieving the Baby.

This baby is being shaken in a sieve, containing grain, etc., while a woman beats with a pestle on a mortar, to ensure that he shall not starve when he grows up or be afraid of noise, and shall become a fast runner. ([p. 249.])

The bedawin Arabs, owing to their making so much use of the stars as guides during their night journeys, know them all, and have names, and often stories, to tell concerning them. The Pole Star, the one that they use most as a guide, is known as the Jidi, or he-goat, which the stars of the Great Bear—the Banat Nash, or daughters of Nash, are trying to steal, being prevented from doing so by the two ghaffirs (watchmen), which are known to us also—perhaps from this same Arab legend that has been forgotten—as the “guardians” of the Pole Star. In some parts the Great and Little Bear are known as the she-camel and her foal. The Pleiades are called “the daughters of the night.” Orion is a hunter with his belt and sword, who is followed by his dog (canis major), and is chasing a bagar el wahash (wild bull), i.e. the constellation of Taurus. Much of our astronomy originally came, I believe, from the Arabs, and many of the stars are still called by their Arabic names, such for instance as Altair, the bird, the name by which it is still known to the bedawin.

Shooting stars, which in the desert often blaze out with a brilliance difficult to realise by dwellers in a misty climate like England, are believed by Moslems to be arrows shot by the angels at the evil spirits to drive them away when they steal up to eavesdrop at the gate of heaven.

There are always certain events in a journey that impress themselves more indelibly on one’s memory than those perhaps of greater consequence, and that hurried return to the plateau was one of them.

Qway, as usual, rode alone fifty yards ahead of the caravan. I rode behind with the rest of the men, dozing occasionally in my saddle, and, in between, turning over in my mind some rather knotty problems—whether the Senussi were really coming; whether we were likely to run into them before reaching Mut; whether an oasis was to be seen from the top of that farthest hill, and, most frequently of all, whether we should meet Abd er Rahman.

Occasionally cold shivers would chase each other up and down my back when the idea occurred to me that perhaps the camels I had sent with him might go lame, or that something else might happen to stop him from coming out with the water that we so badly needed.

To tell the truth, I was distinctly doubtful whether the caravan would hold out until we reached him; for in pushing out so far with such a limited amount of water at the worst season of the year, and in sending him back single-handed to bring out fresh supplies, I knew I had broken the first rules in desert travelling, by running a serious risk without water supply.

A journey on a fine night in the desert is always an experience to remember, and the almost perfect silence in which we marched made it more impressive than usual. Hardly a sound was to be heard beyond the gentle shuffling of the camels’ feet on the smooth sand, the soft clinking of their chain bridles, the occasional creak of a rope against the baggage, and the hollow splashing of the water to and fro in the half empty tanks. Now and then, when the camels slackened their pace, Musa would shout out to them, his voice breaking the silence with startling suddenness, or he would break into one of the wild shrill songs that the camel drivers sometimes sing to their charges, and the beasts would at once quicken their pace.

A long night march seems interminable. The slow, monotonous stride of the camels, regular as the beat of a pendulum, produces an almost mesmeric effect as one plods along, mile after mile, hour after hour, beside them over the dreary waste of starlit desert.

The most trying part of a night march is the period just before dawn. Then one’s vitality is at its lowest, and one feels most the fatigue of the long night’s journey. A great silence falls over the caravan at these times. The whole desert seems dead and unutterably dull and dreary, and nothing at all seems in the least worth while. As the dawn approaches, the desert appears to stir in its sleep. A slight freshness comes into the air. A thin breeze—the dawn wind—springs up from the limitless waste, steals softly whispering over the sands and passes sighing into the distance. The false dawn creeps up into the sky, and then, with a suddenness that is almost startling, the sun springs up above the horizon, the elongated shadows of the long line of camels appear as “purple patches” on the level sand of the desert, like those puzzle writings that have to be looked at edgeways before they can be read, and one realises all of a sudden that another scorching day has dawned at last.

CHAPTER XI

TWO days after leaving the pass on to the plateau we reached our rendezvous with Abd er Rahman, where to our intense relief we found him waiting for us.

We had all, I think, been dreading that something might happen to prevent him from bringing out our indispensable water supply. To me, at any rate, the possibility that he might fail us had been something of a nightmare—when one is feeling a bit run down by the hot weather and unsuitable food, problems of this description are apt to assume quite alarming proportions, especially in the long night marches in the hour or two before the dawn.

To make quite sure of our water supply, I sent Abd er Rahman back again to Mut with all the empty tanks, telling him to come out again to meet us as soon as possible.

Our supplies of all descriptions were running short. Our firewood was almost completely consumed, our last match had been struck and, as my flint and steel were lost, getting a light was a matter of considerable difficulty. A fire was not only a necessity for the men to cook their bread in, but the whole caravan—with the exception of Qway—were confirmed smokers, and if a native is deprived of his tobacco he becomes discontented at once.

Musa had solved the difficulty of getting a light the evening before by tearing a piece of rag from his cotton clothing, rubbing it in gunpowder, and then firing it from his gun. Qway rushed forward, picked it up still smouldering, put it into a handful of dried grass which he had brought with him, fanned it into a flame, and by that means succeeded in lighting a fire from the last of our fuel.

The weather was very hot in the middle of the day, and I was considerably amused at the expedients that the men adopted to mitigate their discomfort. In the morning and afternoon, during the hot hours, they all tried to walk as close as they could to the camels, so as to be in their shadows. But when it became nearly noon, and the sun was almost vertically overhead, they threw the tails of their long shirts over their heads, which not only acted to some extent as a protection to their necks and spines, but also, by deflecting the wind, caused a draught to blow down their backs.

The men, hungry and surly, tramped along in silence for two or three hours. Then Qway, who as usual was riding ahead of the caravan, suddenly made his camel kneel, sprang to the ground and sang out to the others to join him. I called out to know what was the matter.

ABD ER RAHMAN’S WIND SCOOP.

“Tahl,” he shouted, “Tahl ya farah. Allah akbar. Allah kerim. El hamdl’illah. Barr.” (“Come, come. Oh, joy! Allah is most great. Allah is merciful. Praise be to Allah. Manure!”)

We had reached an old camping ground of ours on one of our former trips, and the ground was plentifully strewn with the camel droppings, that in the great heat had become thoroughly desiccated, making excellent fuel.

Though it was still early in the day, we unloaded the camels, and Khalil started to make a plentiful supply of dough. With the help of the last handful of dried grass, Musa and his gun produced the necessary blaze, and in half an hour the bread was being baked over a hot fire of barr. In the evening we reached the bushes, and the fuel difficulty was solved.

Our water was again at its lowest ebb. We had still a long day’s journey to make before meeting Abd er Rahman again, and had barely enough water for the purpose. We had watered the camels three times since leaving Mut, sixteen days before, but the total amount that we had been able to give them was far below their requirements.

But Abd er Rahman came in during the course of the evening. He was greatly perturbed to see the state to which the beasts that had remained with us had been reduced. We held a consultation with Qway, and concluded that the only possible way to ensure our being able to get them back again to the oasis was to give them all the water we could possibly spare, keeping only just enough for ourselves, and then to get back again as soon as possible, loading most of the baggage on to the camels that Abd er Rahman had brought with him from Mut, who having drunk their fill in the oasis were in fairly strong condition.

Early in the morning, when the contents of the tanks had had time to cool down, we watered the poor brutes and then, having allowed them an hour to settle their drink, packed up and moved off towards the oasis.

Not long after our start some of the baggage became disarranged, and we had to halt to adjust it. Khalil took the opportunity to sit down and declare that he was tired and had “bristers” on his feet, and could go no farther unless he was allowed to ride, adding that he was “not as these Arabs” and had been “delicutly nurchered!”

As it was less than an hour since we had left the camp, it was quite impossible that he could have been tired, and as for his blisters, when examined they proved to consist of a single small “brister” on his instep, which, as we were travelling over smooth sand and he, like all the rest of us, was walking barefoot, could not have caused him the slightest inconvenience.

I pointed this out to him and told him that if he stayed behind and left the caravan he would be certain to die of thirst.

“Never mind,” he replied heroically. “Never mind. I will stay behind and die. I cannot walk any more. I am tired. You go on, sir, and save yourselves. I will stay here and die in the desert.”

We had had many scenes of this kind with Khalil, and the bedawin never failed to enjoy them thoroughly.

“What is he saying?” asked Qway.

I translated as well as I could.

“Malaysh” (“it’s of no consequence”), replied Qway calmly. “Let him stay behind and die if he wants to. Whack the camels, Abd er Rahman, and let’s go. We can’t wait. We are in the desert, and short of water.”

“I shall die,” sobbed Khalil.

“Malaysh,” repeated Qway, without even troubling to look back at him.

I felt much inclined to tickle the aggravating brute up with my kurbaj, but it was against my principles to beat a native, so we went on and left him sitting alone in the desert.

“My wife will be a widow,” screamed Khalil after us—though how he expected that contingency to appeal to our sympathies was not quite clear. Musa shouted back some ribald remarks about the lady in question, and the caravan proceeded cheerfully—not to say uproariously—upon its way.

After we had gone some distance our road dipped down to a lower level, and we lost sight of Khalil for a while. I looked back just before we got out of sight, and saw him sitting exactly where we had left him. We travelled a considerable distance before a rise in the ground over which our road ran enabled us to see him again. On looking back through my glasses, I could just distinguish him sitting still where we had left him. I quite expected that by the time we had gone a few hundred yards—or at any rate as soon as we were out of sight—that Khalil would have got up and followed us. But the fellahin of Egypt are a queer-tempered race, who when they cannot get exactly what they want, will sometimes fall into a fit of suicidal sulks that is rather difficult to deal with. As Khalil appeared to have got into this sulky frame of mind I began to fear that he really intended to carry out his threat and to stay where he was until he either died of thirst, or had been so far left behind by the caravan that he would be unable to rejoin us, which would have led to the same result.

Qway, when I asked him how long it would take for us to reach the oasis, was most positive in saying that it would be all that we could do to get across the dunes before sunset the next day. The sand belt, though easy enough to cross in daylight, when we could see where we were going, would have presented a very serious obstacle in the dark. With the possibility of another day of scorching simum or, worse still, a violent sandstorm in our teeth, before we reached Dakhla, a delay that would cause us to camp the next night on the wrong side of the dunes, and so entail another twelve hours in the desert before reaching water, might have had very serious consequences.

“If we don’t cross the sand to-morrow,” said Qway impressively, “we may not reach Mut at all. Look at the camels. Look at our tanks. They are nearly empty. We must go on. We can’t wait.”

I couldn’t risk sacrificing the whole caravan for the sake of one malingerer; so I told Abd er Rahman to whack up the camels, and we left the “delicutly nurchered” Khalil to die in the desert.

Soon afterwards we lost sight of him altogether. We had started early in the morning and we went on throughout the day, with hardly a halt, till eight o’clock at night, when we were compelled to stop in order to rest the camels. We saw nothing more of Khalil and gave him up for lost. To give him a last chance we lighted a big fire and then composed ourselves to sleep as well as we could, on a wholly insufficient allowance of water.

Towards morning Khalil staggered into the camp amid the jeers and curses of the men, croaked a request for water and, having drunk, flung himself down to sleep, too dead beat even to eat.

That little episode cured Khalil of malingering, and he gave no further trouble on our journey to Mut. It just shows what a little tact will do in dealing with a native. Many brutal fellows would have beaten the poor man!

The next day luckily proved fairly cool, and we made better progress than we expected. We consequently struck the dune belt just after noon and, as we seemed to have found a low part of it, by Qway’s advice I decided to tackle it at that point.

But in coming to this decision I had overlooked a most important factor in the situation—the light. Curious as it may seem, dunes are sometimes almost as difficult to cross in the blazing sunshine at noon as they are in the dark. The intense glare at this time of day makes the almost white sand of which they are composed most painful to look at, and the total absence of any shade prevents their shape being seen and makes even the ripples practically invisible.

In consequence of this state of affairs, Qway, while riding ahead of the caravan to show the way, blundered without seeing where he was going, off the flat top of a dune on to the steep face below, was thrown, and he and his hagin only just escaped rolling down to the bottom, a fall of some thirty feet. After that, until we reached the farther side of the belt, he remained on foot, dragging his hagin behind him. Once across the dunes the rest of the journey was easy enough.

The news of affairs in Europe that we heard in Dakhla on our return was simply heartbreaking. The revolution in Turkey that had promised to be rather a big thing, had fizzled out entirely. The Sultan Abdul Hamid—“Abdul the Damned”—it is true had been deposed; but his brother, Mohammed V, had been made ruler in his stead, and was firmly seated on the rickety Turkish throne. The disturbance had quieted down in Turkey; there was no chance of there being a republic, and so the threatened invasion of Egypt by the Senussi, was not in the least likely to come off.

All the same, we felt fairly pleased with ourselves, for we had been for eighteen days in the desert away from water, with only seven camels, in the most trying time of the year, and had got back again without losing a single beast. But anyone who feels inclined to repeat this picnic is advised to take enough water and suitable food.

The Gubary road by which we travelled to Kharga followed the foot of the cliff that forms the southern boundary of the plateau upon which ’Ain Amur lies. It was very featureless and uninteresting. But though it contained no natural features of any importance, the bedawin have a number of landmarks along it to which they have given names and by which they divide the road up into various stages. It is curious to see how the necessity for naming places arises as soon as a district becomes frequented.

These little landmarks are often shown in maps in a very misleading way. One of those on the Gubary road is known as Bu el Agul. There is another Bu el Agul, or Abu el Agul, as it is sometimes called, on the Derb et Tawil, or “long road,” that runs from the Nile Valley, near Assiut, across the desert to Dakhla Oasis. I have often seen this place marked on maps in an atlas, the name being printed in the same type as that used for big mountains, or villages in the Nile Valley, and there was nothing whatever in the way in which it was shown on these maps to indicate its unimportance.

Now Bu el Agul is only a grave—what is more, it is not even a real grave, it is a bogus one. The commonest form of a native nickname is to christen a man the father of the thing for which he is best known among them. I was myself at one time known as “Abu Zerzura,” the “Father of Zerzura,” because I was supposed to be looking for that oasis, and later on as “Abu Ramal,” “the father of sand,” because I spent so much time among the dunes.

Bu el Agul means the “father of hobbles.” One of the greatest risks that an inexperienced Arab runs, when travelling alone in the desert, is that of allowing his camel to break loose and escape during the night. Then, unless he be near a well, having no beast to carry his water-skin, his fate is probably sealed. Many lives have been lost in this way.

With tragedies of this description constantly before their minds, the desert guides, as a reminder to their less experienced brethren to secure their beasts properly at night, have made an imitation grave about half-way along each of the desert roads. This grave is supposed to represent the last resting-place of the “father of hobbles,” who has lost his life owing to his not having tied up his camel securely at night. It is the custom of every traveller, who uses the road, to throw on to the “grave” as he passes it, a worn-out hobble or water-skin, or part of a broken water vessel, with the result that in time a considerable pile accumulates.

It was the end of June by the time we reached Kharga again. Anyone attempting to work in the desert at any distance away from water after March is severely handicapped by the high temperature. I had already experienced nearly three months of these conditions, and the prospect of doing any good in the desert during the remainder of the hot weather was so remote that I returned to England for the remainder of the summer.

CHAPTER XII

MY first season’s work in the desert had been sufficiently successful to warrant a second attempt, as I had carried out one of the objects on my programme by managing to cross the dune-field; so I determined to follow it up by another journey. The main piece of work that I planned for my second year was to push as far as possible along the old road to the south-west of Dakhla, that we had already followed for about one hundred and fifty miles. Before starting I heard rumours of a place that had not previously been reported called Owanat, that lay upon this road and was apparently the first point to which it went. But I was able to gather little information on the subject. I could not even hear whether it was inhabited or deserted. I was not even sure whether water was to be found there.

The journey to this place seemed likely to be of great length before water could be reached, and as the ultimate destination of the road was quite uncertain, and nothing was known of the part into which it led, the possibility of getting into an actively hostile district had to be considered, and arrangements to be made to make sure of our retreat into Egypt, in the event of our camels being taken from us and our finding it necessary to make the return journey on foot.

The distance we should have to travel from Dakhla Oasis, along the road, before we found water or reached an oasis could not, I imagined, be more than fifteen days’ journey at the most. I hoped, if we managed to cover this distance and no other difficulties arose, that we should be able to push on still farther, and eventually get right across the desert into the French Sudan, where the authorities had been warned to look out for me and to give me any assistance they could.

This old road from its size had at one time evidently been one of the main caravan routes across the desert. The Senussi, it was known, paid considerable attention to the improvement of the desert roads, and, from what the natives told me, under their able management, Kufara Oasis had become a focus to which most of the caravan routes of this part of the desert converged.

This road must always have been a difficult one, owing to the long waterless stretch that had to be crossed before the first oasis could be reached. So it seemed likely that it had been abandoned in consequence of another road to Kufara having been made easier by sinking of new wells.

My main object in this journey was to see if this route was still usable for caravans or, if not, whether it could not be made so by means of new wells, or by improving the road at difficult points.

A road running up from Wanjunga to Dakhla Oasis would have cut right across all the caravan routes, leading up to Kufara from the Bedayat country and the Eastern Sudan, and so might have diverted into Egypt a great deal of the traffic then going to Kufara and Tripoli. In addition some of the trade carried by the great north and south road, from the Central Sudan through Tikeru to Kufara, might also have been brought into Dakhla by reopening this old route. As the railway from the Nile Valley into Kharga could easily have been extended into Dakhla, that oasis might have supplanted Kufara as the main caravan centre of the Libyan Desert, and a comparatively large entrepôt trade might have been developed there, the merchandise being distributed by means of the railway into Egypt.

The total value of the goods carried across this district by caravan is not great; but still the trade is of sufficient importance to make it worth while to attempt to secure it, especially as, if that were done, it would give a considerable hold over the inaccessible tribes of the interior, and at the same time be a severe blow to the Senussi, who for some time had threatened to become rather a nuisance.

To meet the requirements of the long fifteen days’ journey to Owanat from Dakhla, or rather of our return in the event of our having to beat a hurried retreat on foot, I had thirty small tanks made of galvanised iron. These were placed in wooden boxes, a couple being in each box, and packed round with straw to keep the water cool and prevent them from shaking about in their cases.

Each pair of tanks contained enough water for the men and myself for one day, with a slight margin over to allow for contingencies. During the journey, one of these boxes could be left at the end of every day’s march, with sufficient food to carry us on to the next depot, in the event of our finding it necessary to retrace our steps. With a pair of tanks in each box, I felt as certain as it was possible to be that, even if one of them should leak and lose the whole of its contents, there would still be sufficient water in the second tank to last us till we reached the next depot. Even if all our zemzemias and gurbas had been lost, these tanks, even when full, were of a weight that could easily have been carried by a man during the day’s march. When empty they could be thrown away.

I went up to Assiut to get together a caravan for the journey, engaged a brother of Abd er Rahman’s, named Ibrahim, and also secured Dahab for the journey. Qway and Abd er Rahman joined me in Assiut, putting up at a picturesque old khan in the native town, and thus our party became complete. The attempts I had made to find a guide who knew the parts of the desert beyond the Senussi border had again proved fruitless.

I hesitated at first to take Ibrahim into the desert partly because—like many young Sudanese—I found him rather a handful, who required a good deal of licking into shape, but chiefly because he had not had much experience with camels, owing to his having acted for some time as a domestic servant in Kharga Oasis. What finally decided me to take him was one of those small straws that so often tell one the way of the wind when dealing with natives.

Once, while loading a camel, preparatory to moving camp, the baggage began to slip off his back and Ibrahim, as is usual with bedawin in the circumstances, immediately invoked the aid of his patron saint by singing out, “Ya! Sidi Abd es Salem.”

The saint that a native calls upon in these cases is nearly always the one that founded the dervish Order to which he belongs, and this Abd es Salem ben Mashish—to give him his full name—was the founder of the Mashishia dervishes and is perhaps still better known to Moslems as the religious instructor of Sheykh Shadhly, one of the most famous of all Mohammedan divines.

OLD KHAN IN ASSIUT.

The cardinal principle of the Mashishia is to abstain entirely from politics—a most useful character to have in a servant when going into the country of the Senussi. The same principle was adopted by the Shadhlia order and nearly all its numerous branches, and also by a set of dervishes which split from the Mashishia, that is known as the Madania—the old Madania, not the new Madania, which is of a very different character.

Ibrahim’s brother, Abd er Rahman, used to invoke Abd el Qader el Jilany, the founder of the great Qadria order of dervishes, the followers of which, as a rule, are about the least fanatical of Moslems.

Qway, though he made great protestations of keenness, I soon found to be obstructing my preparations, and he developed signs of dishonesty that I had not noticed in him before. What was worse, I found him secretly communicating with a member of the Senussi zawia in Qasr Dakhla, who, for some unexplained reason, had come to Assiut, and who seemed to be in frequent communication with him. This all pointed to some underhand dealing with the Senussi, who, until they were brought to their senses by being well beaten in the great war, always opposed any attempt to enter their country—usually by tampering with a traveller’s guides.

I concluded that I had better keep a closer watch upon the conduct of my guide than I had done before.

Having finished all arrangements in Assiut and dispatched the caravan by road to Kharga, I set out myself by train.

At Qara Station on the Western Oasis line, I found Nimr, Sheykh Suleyman’s brother. He brought up to me a jet black Sudani, about six feet three in height, who was so excessively lightly built that he could hardly have weighed more than eight stone. He answered to the name of “Abdullah abu Reesha”—“Abdulla the father of feathers,” a nickname given to him on account of his extreme thinness. He had, however, the reputation of being one of the best guides in the desert, and was always in request whenever a caravan went down to collect natron from Bir Natrun, where there was always a very fair chance of a scrap with the Bedayat. Nimr suggested that I should take him as a guide, and appeared to be greatly disappointed when I told him I had already engaged Qway. I promised, however, to bear him in mind, and, if I wanted another guide at any time, to write and ask Sheykh Suleyman to send him.

Nimr told me the rather unwelcome news that the bedawin, who had been pasturing their camels in Dakhla Oasis, were all scuttling back again with their beasts to the safety of the Nile Valley, as there was a report that a famous hashish runner and brigand, known as ’Abdul ’Ati, was coming in to raid the oasis. As I had counted on being able to hire some camels off these Arabs in the oasis, to supplement my own caravan when starting off on our fifteen days’ journey, this threatened raid was rather a nuisance and seemed likely somewhat to upset my plans.

This ’Abdul ’Ati was a well-known character in the desert, and if half the reports concerning him were true, he must have been a most formidable personage. He was rather badly wanted by the Frontier Guard (Camel Corps), as one of his principal occupations was that of smuggling hashish (Indian hemp), at which he had proved himself most successful. When business of this kind was slack, he occasionally indulged in a little brigandage, presumably just to keep his hand in.

Ibrahim, had the usual admiration for an outlaw common to youths of his age all over the world, and ’Abdul ’Ati was his idol, and he was a born hero-worshipper. He declared that he was a dead shot, and owned a rifle that carried two hours’ journey of a caravan, i.e. about five miles, and that he had no fear of anyone—not even of the Camel Corps.

When next I heard of ’Abdul ’Ati, he was very busy in Tripoli fighting against the Italians, and apparently making very good indeed. The Camel Corps shot him eventually.

My caravan reached Kharga a day or two after my arrival, having come across the desert from Assiut by a road that enters the oasis at its northern end.

In Kharga I met Sheykh Suleyman, and, as I was camped not far from his tent, rode over and spent an evening with him. Qway, of course, accompanied me in hopes of a free meal, but was most frigidly received by the sheykh, who treated him in the most contemptuous manner. We had supper, consisting of bread and treacle and hard boiled eggs, followed by coffee and cigarettes. After which we sat for a time and talked.

“You had better take me as a guide instead of Qway,” suddenly suggested Sheykh Suleyman.

Qway looked quickly up, evidently greatly annoyed, and the social atmosphere became distinctly electric.

I explained that I could not well do that as I had found Qway an excellent guide the year before, and had already signed an agreement to take him on again for the season. Qway rather hotly added some expostulation that I could not quite catch; but the gist of it apparently was that Sheykh Suleyman was not quite playing the game.

The sheykh laughed. “Maleysh” (never mind), he said, “if you want another guide, write me a letter, and I will send Abdulla abu Reesha. He’s a good man—better than Qway.”

Qway commenced a heated reply, only to be laughed at by Sheykh Suleyman. As the interview threatened to become distinctly stormy, I took the earliest opportunity of returning to camp.

The sheykh insisted on providing my breakfast the next morning. Qway, for once, effaced himself, while breakfast and the subsequent tea were in progress. He seemed to have seen as much of Sheykh Suleyman as he wanted for the moment.

We got off at about ten in the morning, and after a short march pitched our camp early in the day at Qasr Lebakha, a small square mud-built keep on a stone foundation, having circular towers at the four corners, all in a fairly good state of preservation. The walls at the top of the tower were built double, with a kind of parapet walk round the top, which may originally have been a mural passage of which the roof had fallen in.

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.

After this I gave him a thorough good dressing down, and then graciously forgave him and we drowned our enmity in the usual tea. I was not altogether dissatisfied with the transaction, for I felt that I had read the ’omda a lesson that he would not forget for some time. In this, however, as events turned out, I was to be grievously disappointed—my troubles with regard to the camels’ fodder had only just begun.

On our arrival in Mut, I went at once to the post office for letters, and finding that the upper story of the place was vacant, arranged to rent it during my stay in the oasis. It proved to be far better quarters than the old gloomy, scorpion-haunted store, and I found no reason to regret the change.

UPPER FLOOR OF POST OFFICE.

The man who tended the garden of the post office was quite a local celebrity. He was no other than the blind drummer who officiated in the band, when there was a wedding in the district. He was also the town crier, and I frequently met him in the streets, where, after beating a roll on his drum to attract attention, he would call out the news that he was engaged to spread.

Curiously, considering that he was totally blind, he had the reputation of being the best grower of vegetables in the neighbourhood, and his services as gardener were in great request in consequence. He was passionately fond of flowers, and was almost invariably seen with a rose, or a sprig of fruit blossom in his hand, which, as he made his way about the streets, he continually smelt. Once, when I happened to meet him, the supply of flowers must have run short, for he was inhaling, with evident gusto, the delicious perfume of an onion!

His sense of locality must have been wonderful, for he made his way about the streets almost as easily as though in full possession of perfect eyesight. Plants of all kinds seemed to be an obsession with him. He would squat down by the side of a bed of young vegetables he had planted, feel for the plants by running his hands rapidly over the soil, and, having found one, would tenderly finger it to see how it was growing. He would in this way rapidly examine each individual plant in the bed, and occasionally comment on the growth of some particular plant since he had last handled it. The loss of his eyesight had evidently greatly quickened his other faculties, for he could find any plant he wished without difficulty, and seemed to have a perfect recollection of the state in which he had last left them, never, I was told, making any mistake in their identity. The gratified smile that lighted up his blind, patient face, when his charges were doing well was quite pathetic.

While staying in the post office my camels were accommodated about a hundred yards away, in an open space under the lea of the high mud-built wall that surrounds the town, close to where a break had been made in it to allow free passage to the cultivation beyond. The choice of this site for the camping ground of the camels turned out to be unfortunate, for the locality was haunted. A man, it was said, had been killed near there while felling a tree, and his ghost—or as some said a ghul—frequently appeared there.

A night or two after our arrival, Ibrahim, who was sleeping there alone with the camels, came up to my room, just as I was getting into bed, and announced that he was not a bit afraid—and he did not seem in the least perturbed—but an afrit kept throwing clods of earth at the camels, which prevented them from sleeping, so he thought he had better come and tell me about it.

The clods came from over the wall, and several times he had rushed round the corner, through the gap, to try and see the afrit who was throwing them, but he had been unable to do so, so he wanted me to come down and attend to him.

BLIND TOWN CRIER, MUT.

It is not often that one gets the chance of interviewing a real ghost, so taking a candle and my revolver, I went down to the camel yard. Ibrahim showed me a pile of clods that had been thrown that he had collected—there must at least have been a dozen of them—and showed me the direction from which they had come.

It certainly was rather uncanny. On the other side of the wall was a flat open space, and there was nowhere within stone’s throw where any human being could possibly have hidden. I waited for some time to see if any more clods would be thrown; but as none came, I told Ibrahim in a loud voice to shoot any afrit he saw and gave him my revolver, and then in a lower tone told him that he was on no account to shoot at all, but that if anyone came he might threaten to do so.

Ibrahim was perfectly satisfied. It was not so much the possession of the revolver that reassured him as the fact that it was made of iron, and afrits, as of course is well known, are afraid of iron!

No more clods were thrown that night; but they began again on the following evening, and still Ibrahim was unable to see the culprit. The thing was becoming a nuisance and it had to be stopped. It was of no use going to the native officials; they would have been just as ready to believe in the afrit or ghul yarn as any of the natives of the oasis, so I decided to tackle the question myself.

Dahab, carrying a pot of whitewash and a brush, and I, with a sextant and the nautical almanac, repaired to the scene of the haunting in the afternoon. I wrote “Solomon” and “iron” in Arabic on the wall, drew two human eyes squinting diabolically, a little devil and the diagram of the configuration of Jupiter’s Satellites, taken from the nautical almanac—an extremely cabalistic-looking design. I then waved the sextant about and finally touched each of the marks I had drawn on the wall with it in turn.

By this time a small crowd had collected, and were watching the proceedings with considerable interest. A six-inch sextant, fitted with Reeve’s artificial horizon, is as awe-inspiring an instrument as any magician could show.

I told Dahab to explain to the crowd that I had just put a tulsim (talisman) on the wall, and that if it were an afrit that had been throwing the clods, the words, “Solomon” and “iron,” acting in conjunction with Jupiter’s Satellites, would certainly do for him completely. But if it were a human being who had been throwing the clods, the little devil and the eyes would get to work upon him at once.

The devil I explained was a particularly malignant little English imp that I had under my control, and if anyone threw any more clods at my camels, I had so arranged things, that the devil in the form of this tiny little black imp would crawl up his nostrils while he slept, and would stick the forked end of his tail into his brain and keep waggling it about, causing him the greatest suffering, until in a few years’ time he went mad. Then it would stamp with red-hot feet on the backs of his eyeballs till they fell out; after which the culprit would die in horrible agony.

Dahab, on the way back, said he thought my tulsim looked a very good one, but he did not at all believe in the afrit theory.

“Afrit,” he said in his funny English. “Never. Ibrahim he very fine man and women in Dakhla all bad, very bad, like pitch. One women he want speak Ibrahim.” This was very likely the size of it.

But I laid the ghost anyway. No more clods were thrown at my camels.

CHAPTER XIV

THERE had been a complete change in the officials of the oasis since we had last been there. The new doctor—Wissa by name—came round to call the day after my arrival. He was a Copt.

He belonged to a rich family, owning large landed estates in the neighbourhood of Assiut.

He spoke English almost perfectly, for like so many Egyptians he was a born linguist. He was, I believe, almost equally at home with French and German. His people being very well-to-do had given him an excellent education, part of which he had received in England and other European countries.

Like all the Egyptians who have been educated in Europe, he was an interesting mixture of East and West—and a very curious compound it was. He talked most learnedly on the subject of medicine, and appeared to have especially studied such local diseases as “dengue” and “bilharsia.” Whenever I allowed him to do so, he gave me most racy accounts of his life as a medical student in Europe.

But he was an ardent treasure seeker, and his favourite topic of conversation was occultism and magic, in all of which he had the native Egyptian’s profound belief. He, the Senussi sheykh, Ahmed el Mawhub, and the ’omda of Rashida, had formed a sort of partnership to search for treasure, agreeing to divide equally between them anything that they found.

He told me a good deal about the Mawhub family of the Senussi zawia at Qasr Dakhl. He said they were entirely neglecting their religious work in order to make money, and had then only got five pupils left in the zawia at Qasr Dakhl, where formerly they had had great numbers. Old Sheykh Mohammed el Mawhub, who was well over seventy, had just started, he said, for Kufara with one servant and three men, who had been sent from that oasis to fetch him.

Wissa professed to have collected information from some unknown source of treasure that was hidden in many places in or near the oasis. One place in which he said it was to be found was in a stone temple eighteen hours’ journey to the west of the village of Gedida. I afterwards met a native who said he had ridden out and found this place, so probably it exists—the temple, not the treasure. He was clearly badly bitten with the treasure-seeking mania.

He was, of course, the possessor of a “book of treasure.” In the triangle between Mut, Masara and Ezbet Sheykh Mufta there is, he said, an old brick building on a white stone foundation covered by a dome, known as the Der el Arais—I saw this place afterwards. In it, under the dome, the book said, is a staircase with seven flights of steps, at the bottom of which is a passage seven cubits long. At the end of the passage is a monk—painted, Wissa thought, on the wall. The book said that there is an iron ring let into the floor near his feet, and that by pulling the ring a door would be caused to appear—this Wissa concluded to be a trap-door. Below is a flight of steps, which the book said must be descended without fear. At the bottom of the stair is a small chamber in which a king is buried.

The king has a gold ring with a stone in it on his finger. This is a magic ring, and if it is immersed in water, which is then given to a sick person, he will at once be cured, no matter what the nature of his malady may be. In the chamber there is also a clock that goes for ever, and in addition a sagia (wheel for raising water) that contains the secret of Zerzura.

After I had got to know him better, he one day suggested that “as I was looking for Zerzura,” we should join together to search for the Der el Arais. He offered to let me keep the wonderful clock and sagia, and any treasure we might find, if I would only let him have the ring. With the help of that magic ring he felt certain that he would become the greatest doctor in the world—yet this was a man who had taken a diploma at the Qasr el ’Aini Hospital, spent a year at St. Thomas’s, six months at the Rotunda, and another six studying medicine between Paris and Geneva—and he wanted to cure his patients with a magic ring!

On leaving Dakhla, as he was an unusually capable native doctor, he was appointed to Luxor. Here he got into trouble. His sister contracted plague, and Wissa, without notifying the authorities, as he should have done, took her into his house, where he seems to have neglected the most elementary sanitary precautions. The last I heard of him he was, perhaps naturally, again in disgrace, and was on his way to take up an appointment at Sollum, where delinquents of his kind are sent when there is no room for them in the oases.

All this just shows what inestimable benefits an unusually intelligent native will reap from a highly expensive European education!

I had several times noticed in Mut a man dressed like a Tripolitan Arab in a long woollen blanket, but had never been able to get a good look at him, as he always avoided meeting me. On one occasion, when he saw me approaching, he even turned back and slunk round a corner to get out of my way.

Meeting Wissa one day, I asked him if he knew this Maghrabi Arab. He replied that he was not really an Arab at all, but a native of Smint, in Dakhla, and that he was a local magician he had often spoken to me about, who only wore the Tripolitan dress for effect, as the Western Arabs are noted as being the best sorcerers.

This man was a member of the Senussi—or as it was usually expressed “he followed the Sheykh.” I found that he was staying with Shekyh Senussi, the Clerk in Mut, and by a curious coincidence Qway also happened to be living in the same house.

I gathered that Qway was in the position of an honoured guest, for nearly every time I saw him he dilated upon Sheykh Senussi’s kindness to him. At times he became almost sentimental on the subject, declaring that he was like a brother to him. The reason for Qway’s affection evidently being that his camel, of which he was so proud, was being fed on the fat of the land and that he apparently was getting unlimited tea. This rapprochement between Qway and the Senussi, added to the rather secretive manner in which it was going on, made me suspect that this lavish hospitality had some ulterior object, though it was difficult to see what they were planning.

There were signs, too, that the Senussi were endeavouring to get round my other men, for when I went one morning to look at the camels, I saw an unpleasant-looking, pock-marked Arab skulking about in the yard to which Abd er Rahman had moved them to protect them from the wind—or the afrit. He kept dodging about behind the beasts and making for the entrance to the yard, evidently trying to avoid being seen. When I called him up and spoke to him, he told me he had come from “the north,” and tried to give the impression that he had recently left Assiut.

But on questioning Abd er Rahman about him afterwards I found that he was one of Sheykh Ahmed’s men, who had come down from his ezba in charge of two camels on some mysterious errand, the nature of which was not quite clear. Abd er Rahman, when I told him that he looked a disreputable scoundrel, was loud in his praise.

I managed to elicit one useful piece of information from him, as he told me that, owing to most of the camels belonging to the Senussi having gone with old Mawhub, on his journey to Kufara, they only had three left in the oasis. This was rather welcome news, as I was afraid that they might go out and tamper with the depots I was intending to make in the desert.

CHAPTER XV

AS soon as the camels had been got into good condition I sent Qway, Abd er Rahman and Ibrahim off with the caravan loaded with grain, which the two Sudanese were to deposit at Jebel el Bayed, the hill we had reached at the end of our last journey the season before.

Ibrahim had not been with me at all the previous season and, as Abd er Rahman had never even been within sight of the hill, as I had sent him back to Mut to bring out more water on the journey on which I reached it, I arranged that Qway should ride with them as far as the edge of the plateau, where he was to give Abd er Rahman directions to take him to Jebel el Bayed. Here, however, he was to leave the caravan and to ride west along the tableland and come back and report what he had seen.

Abd er Rahman, following the directions given him by Qway, easily found Jebel el Bayed, and left the grain to form the depot in the neighbourhood. Qway himself rejoined the caravan on their way back just before reaching Mut, so they all returned together.

Qway, of course, had done practically nothing. It was difficult to see the best way of dealing with him. I could, of course, have discharged him, but drastic remedies are seldom the best, and to have done so would only have had the effect of playing straight into the hands of the Senussi, as he was a magnificent guide and they would have at once gained him as a wholehearted recruit. As he unfortunately knew the whole of my plans, the better scheme seemed to be to keep him with me and to tie him up in such a way that he could do no harm. In the circumstances I thought it best to send Sheykh Suleyman a letter, asking him to let me have Abdulla and the best hagin he could find. This, at any rate, would ensure my having a guide if Qway went wrong; and I hoped by stirring up a little friction between him and Abdulla to make the latter keep an eye upon his actions.

Soon after the return of the caravan the mamur left and I went round to see him off. On the way I looked into the enclosure where the camels were housed, and again caught Sheykh Ahmed’s pock-marked camel-man hobnobbing with my men, and saw that he was stabling his two camels in the neighbouring yard.

On reaching the mamur’s house I found him in a great state of excitement. The post hagan, with whom he was going to travel, had omitted, or forgotten, to bring any camels for his baggage. The mamur was in a terrible state about this, saying that he might have to send in to the Nile Valley for beasts before he could leave, and that he was due there himself in six days.

This was an opportunity too good to be lost. I told him there were two unusually fine camels in the yard next to my caravan, and suggested that as a Government official going back to the Nile on duty, he had the power to commandeer them and their drivers, and suggested that he should do so. No petty native official can resist the temptation to commandeer anything he has a right to in his district—it is a relic of the old corrupt Turkish rule. The mamur jumped at the idea and departed shortly after with a very sulky camel driver and two of the finest camels owned by the Senussi. It was with great relief that I saw the last of that pock-marked brute and his beasts, for their departure left the Senussi with only one camel until in about a month’s time, when old Mawhub was due to return from Kufara. I went back to my rooms feeling I had done a good morning’s work, and effectually prevented the Senussi from getting at the depot I was making near Jebel el Bayed.

Abdulla, whom I had asked Sheykh Suleyman to send, did not turn up on the day I had expected; but a day or two afterwards Nimr, Sheykh Suleyman’s brother, arrived in Mut on some business and came round to see me. Gorgeously arrayed with a revolver and silver-mounted sword, he looked a typical bedawi—he certainly behaved as one. He drank about a gallon of tea, ate half a pound of Turkish Delight and the best part of a cake that Dahab had made, and topped up, when I handed him a cigarette box for him to take one, by taking a handful. He then left, declaring that he was very mabsut (pleased) with me and promising to send Abdulla along as soon as he could, and to see that he had a good hagin. As he went downstairs he turned round, looking much amused, and asked how I was getting on with Qway!

While dressing one morning I heard Qway below greeting some old friend of his in the most cordial and affectionate manner; then I heard him bring him upstairs and, looking through the window, saw that Abdulla had arrived at last. Qway tapped at the door and, hardly waiting for me to answer, entered, beaming with satisfaction and apparently highly delighted at the new arrival—he was an admirable actor.

Abdulla looked taller and more “feathery” than ever. With a native-made straw hat on the back of his head and his slender waist tightly girthed up with a leather strap, he looked almost girlish in his slimness. But there was nothing very feminine about Abdulla—he was wiry to the last degree.

He carried an excellent double-barrelled hammer, ejector gun, broken in the small of the stock it is true, but with the fracture bound round and round with tin plates and strongly lashed with wire. His saddlery was irreproachable and hung round with the usual earthenware jars and leather bags for his food supply.

His hagin was a powerful old male and looked up to any amount of hard work. I told him to get up on his camel and show me his paces. Abdulla swung one of his legs, which looked about four feet long, over the cantle of his saddle and seated himself at once straight in the seat. He kicked his camel in the ribs and at once got him into a trot. The pace at which he made that beast move was something of a revelation and augured well for his capacity as a scout. He was certainly a very fine rider.

But when I made him take off the saddle I found, as is so often the case with bedawin camels, the beast had a sore back. There was a raw, festering place under the saddle on either side of the spine.

As Abdulla had a hard job before him, I had to see his camel put right before he started, so we went off to a new doctor, who had come to take Wissa’s place, to buy some iodoform and cotton-wool, and proceeded to doctor the hagin. But it was clear that it would take some days to heal.

It made, however, no difference as it turned out. For the caravan was unable to start as four ardebs[3] of barley that I had ordered from Belat, never turned up. The barley question was becoming a serious one; but by dint of sending the men round Mut from house to house I managed to buy in small quantities, of a few pounds at a time, an amount that when put together came to about three ardebs, with which I had for the moment to be content.

The sores on Abdulla’s hagin having sufficiently healed, I packed the whole caravan off again into the desert. Abd er Rahman and Ibrahim as before were to carry stores out to the depot at Jebel el Bayed. Abdulla’s work was to go on ahead of the caravan, following directions to be given him by Abd er Rahman, as I was afraid Qway might mislead him, till he reached Jebel el Bayed. There he was to climb to the top of the hill, whence he could see the one I had sighted in the distance the season before. This lay in practically the same line from Mut as Jebel el Bayed itself. Having in this way got its bearing, he was to go on to the farther hill, which he was also to climb and make a note of anything that was to be seen from the summit. He was then—provided the country ahead of him was not inhabited—to go on again as far as he could along the same bearing before returning to Dakhla.

I asked Abdulla how far out he thought he would be able to get. In a matter-of-fact tone he said he thought he could go four, or perhaps four and a half, days’ journey beyond Jebel el Bayed before he turned back. As he would be alone in a strange desert, I doubted somewhat if he would even reach Jebel el Bayed. But I did not know Abdulla then.

There really was nothing much for Qway to do, but, as I thought it better to send him off into the desert to keep him out of mischief, I told him to ride west again along the plateau.

Qway was rather subdued. Abdulla’s arrival had considerably upset him, in spite of his efforts to disguise the fact. He objected strongly to his going on ahead of the caravan to scout, but I declined to alter the arrangement. So to keep Abdulla in his place, Qway, with the usual high-handed manner of the Arabs, when dealing with Sudanese, collared a water tin of his for his own use. On hearing of this I went round to the camel-yard and gave Abdulla back his tin, and pitched into Qway before all the men. Having thus sown a little discord in the caravan, I told them they had to start in the morning.

I went round again later in the day and found all the Sudanese having their heads shaved by the village barber and being cupped on the back of their necks, preparatory for their journey. The cupping they declared kept the blood from their heads and made them strong!

This operation was performed by the barber, who made three or four cuts at the base of the skull on either side of the spine, to which he applied the wide end of a hollow cow’s horn, pressed this into the flesh and then sucked hard at a small hole in the point of the horn, afterwards spitting out the blood he had thus extracted. It seemed an insanitary method.

The Sudanese were all extremely dark. Abd er Rahman and Ibrahim even having black, or rather dark brown, patches on their gums. Their tongues and the palms of their hands, however, showed pink. Abdulla was even darker. He came up to my room the evening after his cupping and declared that he was ill. There was nothing whatever the matter with him, except that he wanted pills and eye-drops because they were to be had for nothing. But I made a pretence of examining him, took his temperature, felt his pulse, and then told him to show me his tongue.

The result of my modest request was rather staggering. He shot out about six inches of black leather, and I saw that not only his tongue was almost black, but also his gums and the palms of his hands as well. He was the most pronounced case of human melanism I ever saw.

Sofut.

Sand erosion producing sharp blades of rock very damaging to the soft feet of a camel. ([p. 87]).

The Descent into Dakhla Oasis.

This cliff was several hundred feet in height, but the sand drifted against it and made the descent easy. ([p. 36]).

A Made Road.

Made roads are practically unknown in the desert. This one was notched out of the side of the slope and led to the site of an unknown oasis, where treasure was said to be hidden. ([p. 205]).

CHAPTER XVI

THE caravan, with Abd er Rahman and Ibrahim, returned, dead beat, but safe. No less than four of the tanks they had taken out filled with water had leaked and had had to be brought back. They had had to race home by day and night marches all the way. But they had got in all right—we had extraordinary luck in this way.

As Abdulla did not come in till two days later, I began to fear that something had happened to him. He arrived with his camel in an awful state. The sores on his back, which appeared to have healed when he started, had broken out again and were very much worse than when he first reached Mut.

His camel had gone so badly, he said, that he had not been able to do half as much as he would have done if his mount had been in good condition, and he was very vexed about it indeed. He had followed Abd er Rahman’s directions and had found Jebel el Bayed without difficulty. He had climbed to the top and seen the second hill beyond. He had then gone on towards it—his camel going very badly indeed—for a day and a half over easy desert, after which he had crossed a belt of dunes that took about an hour to negotiate. Then after another half-day he managed to reach the second hill and had climbed to the top of it. To the south and south-west lay open desert with no dunes, falling towards the west, dotted with hills and stretching away as far as he could see. To the north he had been able to see the cliff on the south of the plateau—the pass down which we had descended into the “Valley of the Mist” being distinctly visible, though it must have been a good hundred and twenty miles away. After this he said he could do no more with such a wretched camel, so he had been obliged to return. He was very apologetic indeed for having done so little.

It never seemed to occur to this simple Sudani that he had made a most remarkable journey. Acting only on directions given him by Abd er Rahman, he had gone off entirely alone, into an absolutely waterless and barren desert, with which he was totally unacquainted, with a very sore-backed camel and riding only on a baggage saddle—his riding saddle had got broken before the start—but he had covered in thirteen days a distance, as the crow flies, of nearly four hundred miles, and more remarkable still had apologised for not having been able to do more! He got some bakhshish that surprised him—and greatly disgusted Qway who got none.

The fact that Abdulla saw the pass into the “Valley of the Mist” from the top of the hill he reached—Jebel Abdulla as the men called it—shows that the hill was of considerable height, for it, Jebel el Bayed and the pass, lay in practically a straight line, and the desert there was very level. The summit of the pass was about 1700 feet high—the cliff itself being about 250 feet. But it could not be seen from the top of Jebel el Bayed, which was 2150 feet, owing to a low intervening rise in the ground. A simple diagram will show that, as it was visible over this ridge from the top of Jebel Abdulla, the latter must have been at least 2700 feet high.

Qway, of course, though excellently mounted, had done practically nothing. There could be little doubt that he and the Senussi were hand in glove. He was always asking leave to go to places like Hindaw, Smint and Qalamun, where I knew the Senussi had zawias, and the Sheykh el Afrit at Smint and Sheykh Senussi, the poet in Mut, were his two intimate friends, and both of them members of the Senussia.

The Senussi had always been a nuisance to travellers wanting to go into their country. It was, however, difficult to see what they could do. They would not, I thought, dare to do anything openly in the oasis and, by getting rid of two out of their three camels I had rather tied them up for the time being, so far as the desert was concerned. So I went on with my preparations for our final journey with a fairly easy mind, making the fatal mistake of underestimating my opponents.

First I engaged the local tinsmith to patch up six tanks that had developed leaks. Then I sent Ibrahim round the town to see if he could not find some more weapons. He returned with a neat little battle axe, a spear and a six-foot gas-pipe gun with a flint-lock. All of which I bought as curiosities.

We then went out and tried the gun. It shot, it is true, a few feet to one side; but little trifles like that are nothing to a bedawi. The general opinion of the men was that it was a very good gun indeed. Abdulla said he had been in the camel corps and understood guns, and undertook to put it right. He shut one eye and looked along the barrel, then he rested the muzzle on the ground and stamped about half-way down the barrel to bend it. He repeated this process several times, then handed the gun back to Ibrahim, saying that he thought he had got it straight.

I got up a shooting match between the three Sudanese to test it. The target was a tin of bad meat at eighty yards, and Ibrahim with the flint-lock gun, with his second shot, hit the tin and won the ten piastres that I offered as a prize, beating Abd er Rahman and Abdulla armed with Martini’s.

Then I set to work to buy some more barley for our journey and difficulties at once arose. I sent Abd er Rahman and Abdulla with some camels to Belat, but the ’omda told them he had sold the whole of his grain; though they learnt in the oasis that he had not been able to sell any and still had huge stores of it left.

Abd er Rahman began dropping ponderous hints about Qway, the Senussi, “arrangements” and “intrigue”; but, as usual, declined to be more definite. Qway, when I told him of the difficulty of procuring grain, was sympathetic, but piously resigned. It was the will of Allah. Certainly the ’omda of Belat had none left—he knew this as a fact. It would be quite impossible, he said, to carry out my fifteen days’ journey with such a small quantity of grain and he thought the only thing for me to do was to abandon the idea of it altogether.

I told him I had no intention of giving the journey up in any circumstances. The only other plan he could think of was to buy the grain from the Senussi at Qasr Dakhl. They had plenty—excellent barley. I mentioned this to Dahab, who was extremely scornful, declaring that they would not sell me any, or if they did, that it would be poisoned, for he said it was well known that the Mawhubs thoroughly understood medicine.

The new mamur arrived in due course. The previous one, ’Omar Wahaby, had endeavoured to ayb me by not calling till I threatened him. The new one went one better—he sent for me—and had to be badly snubbed in consequence.

The natives of Egypt attach great importance to this kind of thing, and I was glad to see that my treatment of the mamur caused a great improvement in the attitude of the inhabitants of Mut towards me, which had been anything but friendly before.

The mamur himself must have been considerably impressed. He called and enquired about my men, and asked if I had any complaints to make against them. I told him Qway was working very badly and had got very lazy; so he said he thought, before I started, that he had better speak to them privately. I knew I should hear from my men what happened, so thinking it might have a good effect upon Qway, I sent them round in the afternoon to the merkaz.

They returned looking very serious—Abd er Rahman in particular seemed almost awed. I asked him what the mamur had said. He told me he had taken down all their names and addresses, and then had told them they must work their best for me, because, though he did not quite know exactly who I was, I was clearly a very important person indeed—all of which shows how very easily a fellah is impressed by a little side!—il faut se faire valoir in dealing with a native.

The mamur afterwards gave me his opinion of my men. His views on Dahab were worth repeating. He told me he had questioned him and come to the conclusion that he was honest, very honest—“In fact,” he said, “he is almost stupid!”

The barley boycott began to assume rather alarming proportions. The men could hear of no grain anywhere in the oasis, except at Belat, Tenida and the Mawhubs, and it really looked as though I should have to abandon my journey.

I could, of course, have tried to get some grain from Kharga, but it would have taken over a week to fetch. It was doubtful, too, whether I could have got as much as I wanted without going to the Nile Valley for it, and that would have wasted a fortnight at least. I was at my wits’ end to know what to do.

The Deus ex machina arrived in the form of the police officer—a rather unusual shape for it to take in the oases. He came round one afternoon to call. I was getting very bored with his conversation, when he aroused my interest by saying he was sending some men to get barley for the Government from the Senussi at Qasr Dakhl. From the way in which he was always talking about money and abusing the “avaricious” ’omdas, I felt pretty sure that he lost no chance of turning an honest piastre; so finding that the price he was going to pay was only seventy piastres the ardeb, I told him that I was paying hundred and twenty, and that, if he bought an extra four ardebs, I would take them off him at that price—and I omitted to make any suggestion as to what should be done with the balance of the purchase money.

As trading in Government stores is a criminal offence, I felt fairly sure that he would not tell the Senussi for what purpose that extra four ardebs was being bought.

The result of this transaction was that, in spite of the barley boycott that the Senussi had engineered against me, I was eventually able to start off again to explore the desert, whose secrets they were so jealously guarding, with my camels literally staggering under the weight of some really magnificent grain, bought, if they had only known it, from the Senussi themselves!

The plan for the journey was as follows: we were to leave Dakhla with every camel in the caravan, including the hagins, loaded to their maximum carrying capacity with water-tanks and grain. At the end of every day’s march a small depot was to be left, consisting of a pair of the small tanks I had had made for the journey, and sufficient barley for the camels and food for the men for a day’s supply. The reduction in the weight of the baggage entailed by the making of these depots, added to that of the water and grain consumed by the caravan on the journey, I calculated would leave two camels free by the time that we reached the five bushes.

Qway and Abdulla, who were to accompany the caravan up to this point, were then to go on ahead of the caravan with their hagins loaded with only enough water and grain to take them out to the main depot at Jebel el Bayed. Here they were to renew their supplies, go on for another day together and then separate. Qway was to follow Abdulla’s tracks out to the second hill—Jebel Abdulla as the men called it—that the Sudani had reached alone on his scouting journey, and was to go on as much farther as he felt was safe in the same direction, after which he was to retrace his steps until he met the caravan coming out along the same route, bringing out water and supplies for his relief. Abdulla’s instructions were to go due south when he parted from Qway for two or, if possible, three days. Then he was to strike off west till he cut Qway’s track, which we should be following, and return upon it till he met the caravan, which would then go on along the line of the old road we had found to complete our fifteen days’ journey, and, if possible, push on till we had got right across the desert into the French Sudan.

I was not expecting great results from Qway’s journey, but he knew too much about our plans and was too useful a man in the desert to make it advisable to leave him behind us in Dakhla, where the Senussi might have made great use of him. Abdulla was well armed, an experienced desert fighter, and, in spite of his “feathery” appearance, was a man with whom it would not be safe to trifle. As there was a considerable amount of friction between him and Qway, owing to the Arab’s overbearing attitude towards the Sudanese in general, I had little fear of their combining.

Abdulla, too, had special instructions to keep an eye on Qway, and, as there was not much love lost between them, I felt sure he would do so. While Abdulla was with him on the journey out to the depot, and for a day beyond, Qway, I felt, would be powerless; while if, after parting from him, he turned back to Jebel el Bayed to try and get at the depot, he would have us on top of him, as we should get there before him. When once the caravan had reached the depot we should pick up all the water and grain it contained and take it along with us following his tracks.

I had made him dependent on the caravan, by only giving him about five days’ water for his own use, and none at all for his camel. So long as he adhered to his programme he was quite safe, as we could water his camel as soon as he rejoined us. But if he tried to follow some plan of his own, he would at once run short of water and find himself in trouble.

I felt that the precautions I had taken would effectually prevent any attempt at foul play on his part. My whole scheme had been thought out very carefully, and had provided, I thought, for every possible contingency, but “the best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley”—especially when dealing with a Senussi guide.

CHAPTER XVII

AT the start everything went well. Qway, it is true, though he did his best to disguise the fact, was evidently greatly put out by my having been able to produce so much barley. But the rest of the men were in excellent spirits. Ibrahim, in particular, with the flint-lock gun slung over his back, was as pleased with himself as any boy would be when carrying his first gun. The camels, in spite of their heavy loads, went so well that on the evening of the second day we reached the bushes.

I found that a well which, without finding a trace of water, I had dug the year before to a depth of thirty feet had silted up to more than half its depth with sand. Here we cut what firewood we wanted, and on the following morning Abdulla and Qway left the caravan and went on ahead towards Jebel el Bayed.

I walked with them for a short distance as they left, to give them final instructions. I told them that we should closely follow their tracks. Having some experience of Qway’s sauntering ways when scouting by himself, I told him that he must make his camel put her best leg forward, and that if he did I would give him a big bakhshish at the end of the journey.

He at once lost his temper. The camel was his, he said, and he was not going to override her, and he should go at whatever pace he choose. He was not working for me at all, but he was working for Allah. My obvious retort, that in that case there was no necessity for me to pay his wages, did not mend matters in the least, and he went off in a towering rage. The Senussi teach their followers that every moment of a man’s life should be devoted to the service of his Creator; consequently, though he may be working for an earthly master, he must first consider his duty towards Allah, as having the first claim upon his services—a Jesuitical argument that obviously puts great power into the hands of the Senussi sheykhs, who claim to be the interpreters of the will of Allah.

Abd er Rahman, who had been watching this little scene from a distance, looked very perturbed when I got back to the caravan. Qway, he said, was feeling marbut (tied) and that was very bad, because he was very cunning, and he prophesied that we should have a very difficult journey.

The Arabs are naturally a most undisciplined race, who kick at once at any kind of restraint. They are apt to get quite highfalutin on the subject of their independence, and will tell you that they want to be like the gazelle, at liberty to wander wherever they like, and to be as free as the wind that blows across their desert wastes, and all that kind of thing, and it makes them rather kittle cattle to handle.

Abd er Rahman was right; things began to go wrong almost at once. The first two days after leaving Mut had been cool, but a simum sprang up after we left the bushes and the day became stiflingly hot. Towards midday the internal pressure, caused by the expansion of the water and air in one of the tanks, restarted a leak that had been mended, and the water began to trickle out of the hole. We unloaded the camel and turned the tank round, so that the leak was uppermost and the dripping stopped. But soon a leak started in another of the mended tanks, and by the evening the water in most of those I had with me was oozing out from at least one point, and several of them leaked from two or more places.

When a tank had only sprung one leak, we were able to stop the wastage by hanging it with the crack uppermost; but when more than one was present, this was seldom possible. One of the tanks leaked so badly that we took it in turns to hold a tin underneath it, and, in that way, managed to save a considerable amount of water that we poured into a gurba.

On arriving in camp, I took the leaks in hand and stopped them with sealing-wax. This loss of water was a serious matter. Every morning I measured out the day’s allowance for each man by means of a small tin; in face of the leakage from the tanks, I thought it advisable to cut down the allowance considerably.

This called forth loud protests from Abd er Rahman, who declared that it was quite impossible for him to work in such heat on such a meagre supply.

I endeavoured to pacify him by pointing out that I was not asking him to do anything I was not prepared to do myself, and that, as a Sudani, he belonged to a race that prided themselves on being able to endure the hardships to be encountered in a desert journey. But he only got more excited, saying that he and Ibrahim did more work than I did, as they had to load and unload the camels and walked all day, while I occasionally rode. Dahab, he added, was of no use in the desert, as he was only a cook, and I could do without him, and, as we were short of water, we had better get rid of him. At the end he was fairly shouting at me with rage, and, as he was not in a state to listen to arguments, I walked away from the camp into the desert to give him time to cool down.

A Sudani at heart is a savage, and if a savage thinks he is deprived of the necessaries of life he is very apt to fall back upon primitive methods, and is quite capable of “getting rid” of anyone who stands between him and his water supply. Visions of the ghastly scenes that took place among the survivors of the shipwrecked “Medusa” and “Mignonette,” when they ran short of water, and of the terrible fate that overtook the survivors of the disastrous Flatters expedition, during their retreat to Algeria from the central Sahara, came up before my eyes, and, as I saw Abd er Rahman and Ibrahim earnestly consulting together, I felt the situation was not one to be trifled with.

I went back to the camp fully expecting to have to deal with something like a mutiny. I called Abd er Rahman up and told him he was never to speak to me again like that, and if he did I should fine him heavily. I said that we should find plenty of water in the depot at Jebel el Bayed and there was no need at all for any anxiety, but that, owing to the leakage from the tanks, we should have to be careful till we got there. I told him that I should help to load and unload the baggage, and would walk all day to show that the allowance of water was sufficient. As to Dahab, I pointed out that he had worked with him for two seasons in the desert, and that it was very treacherous for him to turn round and want to “get rid” of him directly there was a slight deficiency in the water supply.

Much to my surprise, I found him extremely penitent. He said I could drink all his water supply and Ibrahim’s as well if I wanted it; of course he could put up with a small water supply better than I could, he was very strong; and as for Dahab he was an excellent fellow and a friend of his; he had only been angry because he was thirsty. I told him that it was very easy for him to talk, but that I should like to see how much there was at the back of what he said, so I challenged him to see if he could do on less water than I could. A sporting offer of this sort generally appeals to a Sudani or an Arab. He accepted my challenge with a grin.

Ibrahim afterwards apologised for his brother, saying that he had been behaving like a woman.

The sealing-wax I had put on the leaks effectually closed them; but towards noon the increasing heat melted the wax and soon they were leaking as badly as ever; the other tanks, that had held out up to that point, also opened their seams in the heat, and, by the end of the day, every single tank that I had was dripping its precious contents on to the ground. Only the small ones that I had made for the depots remained waterproof.

As the sealing-wax proved ineffectual, I scraped it off in the evening, and, since the leaks were all in the seams of the tanks, I plugged them with some gutta-percha tooth stopping that I had fortunately brought with me, wedging it into the seams where they leaked with the blade of a knife. This was apparently unaffected by the heat, and, though it was liable to be loosened by rough usage, was a great improvement on the wax. But the leaks were plugged too late. During the two days while they were open, one tank had become almost entirely empty, and the others had all lost a considerable portion of their contents. Fortunately I had allowed an ample supply of water, most of which was in the depot at Jebel el Bayed, so with the small tanks to fall back on in case of need, we could count on being able to get out about twelve days instead of the fifteen I had arranged for, which I expected would more than take us to Owanat.

We continued our march, leaving a small depot behind us at each camp till we reached the main store. This I found had not been made, as I intended it should be, at the foot of Jebel el Bayed, but a good half-day’s journey to its north.

I was greatly relieved to see that the depot appeared to be quite in order; but Abd er Rahman was evidently suspicious, for leaving the unloading of the camels to Ibrahim and Dahab, he went off to the depot and began peering about and searching the neighbourhood for tracks.

Almost at once he returned with a very long face, announcing that a lot of water had been thrown away. I hurried up to the depot, and he pointed out two large patches of sand thickly crusted on the surface, showing that a very large amount of water had been spilt. We examined the depot itself. The sacks of grain were quite untouched, but every one of the large iron tanks was practically empty, with the exception of one which was about half full. The little tanks intended for the small depots did not appear to have been tampered with, perhaps because they would have required some time to empty.

The neighbourhood of the place where the water had been poured was covered with the great square footprints made by Qway’s leather sandals, and made it quite clear that it was he who had emptied the tanks. There was no trace of the more rounded sandals worn by Abdulla on that side of the depot.

We followed Qway’s footprints for a short distance. About two hundred yards away from the depot they joined on to Abdulla’s, the small neat marks of Qway’s camel overlaying the bigger prints of Abdulla’s hagin—showing clearly that Qway had been the last to leave. I then returned with Abd er Rahman to the camp to decide what was best to be done.

The heavy leakage from the tanks we had brought with us, coupled with the large amount of water thrown away by Qway, made it abundantly clear that all chance of carrying out the scheme for which I had been working for two seasons, of getting across the desert to the Sudan, or of even getting as far as Owanat, was completely out of the question. It was a nasty jar, but it was of no use wasting time in grousing about it.

Our own position gave cause for some anxiety. So far as I and the men with me were concerned we were, of course, in no danger at all. Mut, with its water supply, could easily have been reached in about a week—it was only about one hundred and fifty miles away—and we had sufficient water with us and in the depots to take us back there.

As for Qway, I felt he was quite capable of looking after himself, and I did not feel much inclined to bother about him. The difficulty was Abdulla. From his tracks it was clear that he had no hand in emptying the tanks, and I very much doubted whether he knew anything at all about it. Abd er Rahman’s explanation of what had occurred was, I felt sure, the correct one. His view was that Abdulla, though “very strong in the meat, was rather feeble in the head,” and that Qway had managed to get rid of him on some excuse and had stayed behind to empty the tanks, which he had then put back in their places, hoping perhaps that we should not notice that anything was wrong.

Abdulla, counting on me to bring him out water and provisions, had gone off for a six days’ journey, relying on meeting us at the end of that time. After going as far as he could to the south, he was to cut across on to Qway’s track and then to ride back along it to meet us. The man had served me well, and in any case I did not feel at all inclined to leave him to die of thirst, as he certainly would, if we did not go out to meet him. Obviously, we should have to follow up Qway’s track to relieve him—a course which also held out the alluring prospect of being able to get hold of Qway himself.

But our water was insufficient to enable the whole caravan to go on together, and it was urgently necessary to send back to Dakhla for a further supply. The difficulty was to know whom to send. There was always the risk that Qway might wheel round on us and try to get at our line of depots; and unfortunately he carried a Martini-Henri rifle I had lent him. My first idea was to go back with Dahab myself, as I could have found my way back to Mut without much difficulty, using my compass if necessary—the road was an easy one to follow—and to let the two Sudanese go on to relieve their fellow-tribesman, Abdulla; but this scheme seemed to be rather throwing the worst of the work on them—besides I wanted to go ahead in order to make the survey.

Abd er Rahman, of course, could have found his way back quite easily; but, though he carried a Martini-Henri carbine, he was a vile shot, even at close range, as he funked the kick; moreover, he stood in such awe of Qway that I was afraid, if they met, he would come off second best in the event of a row, even with Dahab to back him up.

Ibrahim, however, cared no more for Qway than he did for an afrit that threw clods, or for anyone else. With his flint-lock gun—bent straight by Abdulla—he was a very fair shot; but he was young and had had little experience of desert travelling, and I was very doubtful whether he would be able to find his way. When I questioned him on the subject, however, after a little hesitation and a long consultation with Abd er Rahman, he declared his willingness to try, and his brother said he thought he would be able to do it.

The next morning he set out with Dahab and the two worst camels, carrying all the empty tanks. His instructions were to get back as fast as possible to Mut, refill the tanks, and come out again as quickly as he could with a larger caravan, if he could raise one, and to beg, borrow or steal all the tanks and water-skins he could get hold of in the oasis, and to bring them all back filled with water. I gave him a note to the police officer, telling him what had happened and asking him to help him in any way he could. I gave him my second revolver and Dahab my gun, in case they should fall foul of Qway on the way, and then packed them off, though with considerable misgivings as to the result.

It was curious to see how the discovery that our tanks in the depot had been emptied, in spite of the difficulties that it created, cheered up the men. The feeling of suspense was over. We knew pretty well what we were up against, and everyone, I think, felt braced up by the crisis. Dahab looked a bit serious, but Ibrahim, with a gun over his shoulder, and suddenly promoted to the important post of guide to a caravan, even though it consisted of only two camels and an old Berberine cook, was in the highest spirits. I had impressed on him that the safety of his brother, his tribesman Abdulla and myself, rested entirely on his brawny shoulders, and that he had the chance of a lifetime of earning the much-coveted reputation among the bedawin of being a gada (sportsman)—and a gada Ibrahim meant to be, or die. I had no doubt at all of his intention of seeing the thing through, if he possibly could. I only hoped that he would not lose his way.

Having seen him off from the depot on the way back to Mut, I turned camel driver and, with the remainder of the camels and all the water we could carry, set out with Abd er Rahman to follow up Qway’s tracks to relieve Abdulla. Abd er Rahman, too, rose to the occasion and started off gaily singing in excellent spirits. I had told him that I wanted to see whether he or Qway was the better man in the desert, and the little Sudani had quite made up his mind that he was going to come out top-dog.

CHAPTER XVIII

ABD ER RAHMAN was an excellent tracker.

There had been no wind to speak of since Qway had left the depot, and the footprints on the sandy soil were as sharp and distinct as when they were first made. By following Qway’s tracks we were able to piece together the history of his journey with no uncertainty; and a very interesting job it proved.

We followed his footprints for three days, and there was mighty little that he did in that time that was not revealed by his tracks—Abd er Rahman even pointed out one place where Qway had spat on the ground while riding on his camel!

We could see where he had walked and led his mount, and where he had mounted again and ridden. We could see where he walked her and where he trotted; where he had curled himself up on the ground beside her and slept at night, and all along his track, at intervals, were the places where he had stopped to pray—the prints of his open hands where he bowed to the ground, and even the mark where he had pressed his forehead on the sand in prostration, were clearly visibly. The Moslem prayers are said at stated hours, and Qway was always extremely regular in his devotions. This prayerful habit of his was of the greatest assistance to us, as it told us the time at which he had passed each point.

Walking on foot he had led his camel behind him, when he left the depot, till he reached Abdulla’s trail. He had then mounted and gone forward at a slow shuffling trot. Abdulla also had left the depot on foot, leading his hagin, and the tracks of Qway’s camel occasionally crossed his spoor and overlaid them, showing that Abdulla and his hagin were in front.

Abdulla had continued at a walk until Qway overtook him—as shown by his tracks overlying those of Qway. Knowing the pace at which Qway must have trotted and at which Abdulla would have walked, by noting the time it took us to walk from the depot to where Qway caught Abdulla up, we were able to estimate that Qway could not have left the depot until Abdulla was nearly a mile and a half away, and consequently too far off to see what he was doing.

After Qway joined on to Abdulla, the two men had ridden on together till they reached Jebel el Bayed. Here, however, they had halted and evidently consulted together for some time before separating, as the ground all over a small area at this point was closely trampled. On separating, Abdulla had gone off at a trot, as arranged, towards the south, while Qway had sauntered leisurely along towards the second hill, two days’ away to the south-west, or Jebel Abdulla as the men had named it.

We concluded from Qway’s tracks, as dated by his praying places, that he must be rather more than a long day’s journey ahead of us.

We continued following his trail until the sun began to set, when, as we did not want to overlook any tracks in the dark, we halted for the night. We had got by that time into rather broken ground, cut up into ridges and hills about twenty feet high, at the foot of one of which we camped.

In spite of Abd er Rahman’s scandalised protests, I insisted on doing my share of the work in the caravan. I helped him to unload the camels, then, while he was feeding the beasts, I lit the fire and made the tea.

Abd er Rahman returned and made bread, and I opened a small tin of jam, which we shared together. Abd er Rahman then made some coffee, and very well he did it; and after eating some dates I produced a cigarette-case and we sat and smoked over the fire. The result of this informal treatment on my part being that Abd er Rahman became more communicative.

His views were those of a typical bedawi. He disapproved highly of the way in which Qway had behaved. If we had been a caravan of fellahin, he said, it would not have been so bad, but for a guide to behave in that way to us who knew the nijem was, he considered, the last word in treachery. To “know the nijem” (stars) by which the Arabs steer at night means to have a knowledge of desert craft, an accomplishment that forms perhaps the strongest possible recommendation to the true bedawin.

He told me that when the mamur had had them all round to the merkaz, and it came to be Qway’s turn to be questioned—the very man of whom I had complained—directly he heard his name, he told him he need give him no further details, as he knew all about him, and that he was to be trusted to do his duty; but he apparently omitted to specify what that duty was—the mamur was a nationalist.

When I asked if he felt afraid to go on with me after Qway, he laughed, saying that he was quite as clever as he was in the desert, having lived there nearly the whole of his life and had often travelled long distances alone. So long as he had enough water he did not care how far he went, provided I did not want to take him to the Bedayat. He even volunteered to go with me to within sight of their country, in order that I might be able to fix its position, provided he did not see any tracks of theirs before getting there. He was highly elated at having found Qway out, and very full of confidence in his own abilities.

He then began to tell me some of his experiences. Once he had been out in the desert with a single camel, when it had broken down a long way from water. He had tied the camel up, slung a gurba on his back, and, leaving his beast behind him, walked into the Nile Valley. He arrived with his gurba empty and half dead from thirst, but managed to crawl up to a watercourse, where he drank such an enormous amount that he immediately vomited it all up again. He managed to borrow another camel, with which he had taken water out to the one he had abandoned in the desert. The latter was almost dead on his arrival; but after drinking and resting for a day, had been able to get back to safety.

When Arabs are running short of water, but their camels are still able to travel, he said, they throw all their baggage down in the desert, where no one but the worst of haramin (robbers) would touch it, put all their water on to the camels and travel all through the night and cool part of the day, resting in the shade, if there be any, during the hot hours, and resuming their march as soon as it gets cool again in the evening. In this way, occasionally riding their beasts to rest, they can cover forty miles a day quite easily for several consecutive days.

I asked whether he had ever heard of a man, when in difficulties, cutting open his camel to drink the water from his stomach, according to the little tales of my childhood’s days. This caused Abd er Rahman considerable amusement. He pointed out that if a caravan were in great straits from thirst, there would not be any water in the stomachs of the camels. But he said he had heard of several cases where a man, reduced to the last extremity, had killed his camel, cut him open and got at the half-digested food in his interior and had wrung the gastric juices out of it and drank them. This fluid, he said, was so indescribably nasty, as to be hardly drinkable, but, though it made a man feel still more thirsty, it enabled him to last about another day without water.

While sitting over the fire with Abd er Rahman I heard a faint sound from the west that sounded like a stone being kicked in the distance. Abd er Rahman, who was, I believe, slightly deaf, was unable to hear anything. I put my ear to the ground and listened for some time, and at last heard the sound again, but apparently from a greater distance than before.

Leaving Abd er Rahman in charge of the camels and taking my rifle, I went off to see if anything was to be seen. The moon was too faint and low at the time for any tracks to be visible. The whole desert was bathed in a faint and ghostly light that made it impossible to see any distance; so after watching for some time, and hearing no further sounds, I returned and lay down for the night about a hundred yards from Abd er Rahman and his camels.

It is curious how easily, in the absolute calm of a desert night, the slightest sound is audible, and how quickly one wakes at the faintest unusual noise. About midnight I started up. The distant sound of a trotting camel approaching the camp was clearly audible, and the camel was being ridden very fast. By that time the moon was high in the heavens, making the surrounding desert visible for a considerable distance, and presently I saw a solitary rider come round the shoulder of the ridge near which we were camped, sending his camel along at a furious pace.

Instantly I heard Abd er Rahman’s sharp, threatening challenge and saw him slinging his carbine forward in readiness for an attack. The answer came back in a hoarse exhausted voice and was apparently satisfactory, for the camel man rode into the camp, his camel fell down on his knees, and the man got—or rather fell—off on to the ground.

I sang out to Abd er Rahman to ask who it was. He called back that it was Abdulla and, after bending for a few moments over his prostrate form, came running across to where I lay. Abdulla and his hagin were, he said, extremely exhausted; but he had told him that there was no danger and that we could do nothing before daylight and had begun a long statement about Qway having turned back, in the middle of which he had fallen asleep. I went over to the camp to look at him. His long attenuated form was stretched out along the ground, almost where he had dismounted, plunged in the deepest of slumbers; so, as I saw no object in disturbing him, and wanted him to be as fresh as possible on the morrow, I went back to my bed and followed his example, leaving Abd er Rahman to keep watch, till he woke me to take my turn at keeping guard later in the night.

Abdulla, on the following morning, looked hollow-eyed, and, if possible, thinner about the face than ever; but beyond having obviously had a severe fright, he seemed to be little worse for his ride; the Sudanese have wonderful recuperative powers. His hagin, however, was terribly tucked up, and he had evidently had to ride him extremely hard; but he was a fine beast, and otherwise did not seem to have suffered much from his exertions, for he was making a most hearty breakfast.

Abdulla’s nerves, however, seemed to have been very badly shaken. He spoke in a wild incoherent way, very different from his usual slow, rather drawling, speech. He rambled so much in his account of what had happened, and introduced so many abusive epithets directed at Qway, that at times it was rather difficult to follow him, and Abd er Rahman had to help me out occasionally by explaining his meaning.

Qway, in the depot, had dawdled so over his preparations for leaving the camp that Abdulla, with his eye probably on the bakhshish I had promised him, had become impatient at the delay. At the last moment, just before he was ready to start, Qway calmly sat down, lighted a fire and began to make tea. Abdulla expostulated at this delay, but Qway assured him that there was no immediate hurry, told him that as soon as he had finished his tea and filled his gurba, he would start, and suggested that he had better go on before him and that he would follow and catch him up.

After he had gone some distance, Abdulla looked back and saw Qway hauling the tanks about, which struck him at the time as a rather unnecessary performance; but as Qway explained, when he overtook him, that he had only been rearranging the depot and placing the sacks of barley so as more effectually to shade the tanks, his suspicions had been lulled. Just before they separated, Qway had told him that he intended to get out as far as he could, so as to earn a very big bakhshish, and he hoped to go three and a half days more before he turned back. He advised Abdulla to do the same.

For most of the first day after leaving Qway, Abdulla kept turning things very slowly over in his “feeble head,” and, towards the end of the second day, it began to occur to him that Qway’s long delay in the depot was rather suspicious; so before proceeding any farther along his route, he thought it advisable to ride across and have a look at the old track he had made himself on his previous journey, to make sure that Qway was keeping to his share of the arrangement, by following it towards Jebel Abdulla.

On reaching his track he saw no sign of Qway having passed that way, so becoming seriously uneasy, he rode back along it hoping to meet him. At a distance of only about a day from Jebel el Bayed he found the place where Qway had turned back, which as he had told him he intended to go for another two and a half days farther, convinced him that something was very seriously wrong. He then apparently became panic-stricken and came tearing back along his tracks to make sure that we were coming out to meet him and that the depot had not been interfered with.

Qway, he said, had returned along his tracks for some distance, until he had got within sight of Jebel el Bayed, when he had turned off towards the western side of the hill, apparently with the object of avoiding the caravan, which according to the arrangement, he knew would be following Abdulla’s track on its eastern side.

It struck me that as Qway’s track lay to the west of our camp, the sounds I had heard during the preceding evening from that direction had probably been caused by him as he rode past us in the dark, so I sent Abd er Rahman off to see if he could find anything, while Abdulla and I packed up and loaded the camels.

Abd er Rahman returned in great glee to announce that I had been right in my conjecture, and that he had found Qway’s track; so we started out to follow it. To the west of the camp was a ridge of ground that lay between our position and Qway’s footprints, and this may perhaps have prevented my seeing him, and certainly would have made it impossible for him to see either us or our fire.

Qway had passed us at a considerable distance, for it took us twenty-one minutes to reach his trail, which shows the extraordinary way in which even the slightest sounds carry in the desert on a still night.

As we followed his track we discussed the position. It was clear that, as Qway, when he left the depot, only had five days’ water in the two small tanks I had given him, he would be forced before long to renew his supply from our tanks, as he had already been three days away from the depot.

Abd er Rahman, instead of making our depot at Jebel el Bayed, as I had told him to do, on account of it being such a conspicuous landmark, had, fortunately as it turned out, made it about half a day to the north of the hill, in the middle of a very flat desert with no landmark of any kind in the neighbourhood. When the tanks and grain sacks composing the depot were all piled up they made a heap only about three feet high and, as the sacks, which had been laid on the top of the tanks to keep off the sun, were almost the colour of their sandy surroundings, our little store of water and grain was quite invisible, except at a very short distance to anyone not blessed with perfect sight, and Qway was rather deficient in this respect. He would consequently experience very great difficulty in finding that depot, unless he struck our tracks.

SKETCH PLAN OF TRACK ROUND JEBEL EL BAYED.

As we continued to follow his footprints, it became clear that this was what he was aiming at, for his route, that at first had been running nearly due north, gradually circled round Jebel el Bayed till it ran almost towards the east, evidently with the intention of cutting the tracks that we had made the day before. His trail went steadily on, circling round the great black hill behind us without a single halt to break the monotony of the journey.

We had been following his spoor for about three hours and a half when we reached the point where his trail met and crossed the one that we had made ourselves and, as Qway had not hesitated for a moment, it was clear that in the uncertain moonlight he had passed it unnoticed.

As we continued to follow his tracks, presently it became evident that he had been considerably perplexed. Several times he had halted to look round him from the top of some slight rise in the ground, and had then ridden on again in the same easterly direction and repeated the process.

Abd er Rahman, on seeing these tracks, was beside himself with delight. He slapped his thigh and burst out laughing, exclaiming that Qway was lost, and “Praise be to Allah” had only got five days’ water supply. Abdulla, if anything, seemed even more pleased.

After a time Qway apparently concluded that he would wait till daylight before proceeding any farther, for we found the place where he had lain down to sleep. That he had started off again before dawn was clear from the fact that he had not prayed where he slept, but nearly an hour’s journey farther on.

We followed him for a little farther, but as the afternoon was then far spent, I thought it best to return to the depot for the night, in case Qway should get there before us.

Frequently when out in the desert I had occasion to send Qway, or one of the men away from the caravan, to climb a hill to see if anything was to be seen from the summit, to scout ahead of the caravan, or for some other purpose, and as there was always a risk that the absentee might not get back to the caravan by dark I had a standing arrangement that if anyone got lost from this cause I would send up a rocket half an hour after sunset, and a second one a quarter of an hour later, to enable him to find the camp. These two rockets were accordingly fired from the depot and, moreover, as it was an absolutely windless night, a candle was lighted and left burning on the top of a pile of stones to attract his attention in the dark, if he were anywhere in the neighbourhood. I hoped by this means to induce him to come in and give himself up, in preference to risking a possible death by thirst—but he never materialised.

In the morning we set out again to follow his track. I could not exactly leave him to die of thirst, if he had really got lost, and I also wanted to know what he was doing. As the camels were getting into a very poor condition, owing to the hard work they had had and the short water allowance I had put them on, we left all the baggage in the depot, and took them along with us, carrying only sufficient water for our own use during the day.

We picked up Qway’s trail where we had left it and, after following it for some distance, found where he had reached the old faint footprints left by Abdulla on his first journey, when he had ridden out alone to Jebel Abdulla. They had clearly puzzled him extremely. He dismounted and stood for some time examining the track and scanning the surrounding desert, as was clear from the number of footprints he had left at the place and the number of directions in which they pointed.

After a considerable amount of hesitation, he again set off in the same easterly direction he had been previously following, probably still hoping to find the tracks of the caravan that he had crossed in the moonlight without seeing.

I wanted Abdulla to get on his hagin and follow his tracks at a trot, hoping that in that level country, as Qway was only travelling at a walk, he would be able to overtake him sufficiently to sight him from a distance. But he had not recovered his nerve from the fright he had experienced and flatly refused to leave us, so we continued to follow the tracks together.

After riding for some distance farther, Qway had again climbed to the crest of a low ridge. Here he had stood for some time, his footprints pointing in all directions, endeavouring to pick up the bearings of the depot and the route that he had followed when he had left it.

But that bit of desert might have been especially made for the purpose of confusing an erring guide. As far as could be seen in all directions stretched a practically level expanse of sandy soil, showing no landmark to guide him, except where the great black bulk of Jebel el Bayed heaved itself up from the monotonous surface. We could tell from his tracks that he had reached that point not much before midday, when, at that time of the year, the sun was almost directly overhead, and consequently of little use to indicate the points of the compass. From where he had stood, Jebel el Bayed itself would have been of little use to guide him, for though the hill had two summits lying roughly east and west of each other, the western one was from that point hidden by the eastern, which was of such a rounded form that it looked almost exactly the same shape from all angles on its eastern side.

Qway at last had evidently given up the problem. He had remounted his camel, ridden round a circle a hundred yards or so in diameter in a final attempt to pick up his bearings, and then had made off at a sharp trot towards the north. Abd er Rahman was in ecstasies.

“Qway’s lost. Qway’s lost.” He turned grinning delightedly to me. “I told you I was a better guide than Qway.” Then he suddenly grew solemn. Much as he hated the overbearing Arab, he had worked with him for two seasons, and, as he had said, there is a bond of union between those who “know the nijem.” “He will die. It is certain he will die. He only had five days’ water, and it is four days since he left the depot. He is not going where the water is, but he is making for the ‘Valley of the Rat.’ It is certain he will die of thirst. His camel has had no water for four days.”

Abdulla took a more hard-hearted view, and after the way in which Qway had treated him, he could hardly be blamed. “Let the cursed Arab die,” said the Sudani. “The son of a dog is only a traitor.”

We followed Qway’s footprints for a short distance. But he had been travelling very fast, and it was obvious that we should never catch him up. He was off on a non-stop run to Mut, and as our own water supply was by no means too plentiful, I thought we had better follow his example; so I told Abdulla to take us back to the depot. It was then about noon.

Abdulla looked at Jebel el Bayed, glanced at the sun and looked round the horizon, scratched his cheek in perplexity, and said he did not know where the depot was, but he thought it must be there—he pointed somewhere towards the north-west. Abd er Rahman, however, was emphatic in saying that that was not the right direction, and indicated a point about west as being its position.

After some discussion, as they were unable to agree, Abd er Rahman turned to me and asked me to look at my compass to decide the direction in which we were to go. Unfortunately, I had left the compass in camp and had not been making a traverse of Qway’s tracks, as I had done on the previous day. We had all been too keen on reading Qway’s spoor to pay much attention to the changes in its direction, and so found ourselves in the same dilemma as Qway.

It was a furiously hot still day, and the sun shining almost perpendicularly down made the whole horizon dance with mirage, producing the impression that we were standing on a low sand bank in a vast sheet of water, whose distant shores flickered continuously in the heat haze—a veritable “devil’s sea” as the natives call it.

I had only the vaguest idea as to where the depot lay, but as I had to decide in which direction to go, I told them I felt quite certain that it stood west north-west—about half-way between the two bearings pointed out by the men. It was a mere guess, based on the assumption that they were neither of them very far wrong, but that their errors lay on either side of the true direction. As luck would have it, I was much nearer right than either of the others, a fact that greatly increased their respect for my knowledge of the nijem!

After marching for a couple of hours or so, Abd er Rahman peered for a moment into the distance and announced that he saw the depot ahead of us. Neither Abdulla nor I could see anything. After some difficulty, however, I managed to identify the object to which Abd er Rahman was pointing, but all I could make out was an indistinct and shapeless blur, dancing and continually changing its shape in the mirage. Abd er Rahman, however, was most positive that it was the goal for which we were making, and, as I knew his extraordinary powers for identifying objects in similar circumstances, we made towards it and found that he had been correct.

We rested in the depot until sunset. Just before starting, it struck us that possibly we might pass Ibrahim and Dahab on the road. The arrangement I had made with them was that, if they failed to see us before reaching the depot, they were to leave as much water there as they could and return at once to Mut. But I wanted to arrange some means by which they should know where we had gone in the event of their reaching the depot. A letter was the obvious method, but Dahab was the only man in the caravan who could read or write, and I was doubtful whether he would come out again, as I had told him not to do so if he got at all knocked up on the journey back to Mut. Ibrahim, of course, was wholly illiterate, like the other two Sudanese, so it was difficult to see how I could communicate with him, if he came out alone. Abd er Rahman, however, was quite equal to the emergency. He told me that he would write Ibrahim a “letter” that he would understand, and, taking a stick scratched his wasm (tribe mark) deeply into the soil, and then drew a line from it in the direction of Dakhla, the “letter” when finished being as follows:

, the mark

being his wasm. This letter, Abd er Rahman said, meant, “I, belonging to the tribe who use this wasm, have gone in the direction of the line I have drawn from it.” This important communication having been completed, we set out on our return journey.

CHAPTER XIX

WE travelled after the manner described by Abd er Rahman as that of the Arabs when in difficulties in the desert. We rested, that is, in the middle of the day, marching throughout the morning and through most of the night.

At our last noon halt before reaching the bushes I overhauled the caravan. With the exception of the one big camel the whole of the beasts by this time were in a deplorable condition. My hagin was so weak that he was unable even to carry my hurj. Another brute that Abd er Rahman called the “rather meskin” (feeble) camel, was very emaciated; while one that he called the meskin beast, par excellence, was so excessively attenuated, that, in the photograph I took of him, only the desert appeared!

It was the big camel that pulled us through. The loads of the meskin and the “rather meskin” camels were both put on to his back, in addition to his ordinary burden, and my hurj was added to the pile. Moreover, whenever any of us wanted a lift we rode him—and he seemed to like it!

Ibrahim was two days overdue, and, as nothing had been seen of him, I was beginning to feel rather anxious and to fear he had passed us in the dark without our seeing him. During one noon halt, however, Abdulla, who was still rather jumpy, raised the alarm of haramin (robbers). We immediately collected our ironmongery and turned out to receive them. But to our great relief we found it was only Ibrahim approaching with three camels and another man.

Dahab and one of my camels, we found, had knocked up on the journey to Mut and had had to be left behind. It had taken Ibrahim two days to get more beasts and someone to fill Dahab’s place. The new-comer was an elderly Sudani, who had been at Qasr Dakhl with two camels on Ibrahim’s arrival at Mut. He went by the name of Abeh Abdulla.

I was considerably prejudiced in his favour by hearing him invoke the aid of a certain “Sidi Mahmed,” or Mahmed ben Abd er Rahman Bu Zian, to give him his full name, the founder of the Ziania dervishes, a branch of the great Shadhlia order, that plays the rôle of protector of travellers. It is, I believe, better known in north-west Africa than on the Egyptian side. In the Western Sahara “Sidi Bu Zian,” as he is sometimes called, may almost be termed the patron saint of wayfarers in the desert.

Abdulla, when he got into difficulties, used to invoke a certain “Sidi Abd el Jaud,” whose identity I was never able to discover.

Ibrahim had done his job splendidly. During the two days in Mut, he had had the leaking tanks repaired and had borrowed some others from the native officials. He had brought them all out filled to the brim. We watered all the camels, and, when we had given them time to absorb their drink, made a fresh start for the bushes.

When we reached Mut it was evening, and I walked to my lodgings through the quaint old town, stumbling over the uneven surface of the tunnelled street, whose darkness in the gathering dusk was only broken here and there by a gleam of firelight, through some half-opened door. The familiar smell of wood fires, whose smoke hung heavily in the streets, the scraping drone of the small hand-mills that the women were using to grind their flour, and the monotonous thudding as they pounded their rice inside their houses, had a wonderful effect in making me feel at home.

Soon after my arrival the usual boring deputation of the Government officials turned up to felicitate me in conventional terms on my safe return. After thanking them for the loan of the tanks, I asked the mamur whether anything had been heard of Qway. He professed to a total ignorance on the subject and wanted to have full details of what he had been doing. I gave him an account of Qway’s conduct as shown by his tracks and the empty tanks and asked, as he had nearly done for Abdulla, that he should be immediately arrested.

The mamur hesitated for a moment, then burst out with a passionate “Never! Qway is a gada” (sportsman). I pointed out the gada had, at any rate, walked off with a rifle and telescope of mine, and that I felt certain he had come into the oasis and was hiding. The mamur did not think he was hiding, but that he would turn up as soon as he heard I had got back—and anyway he declined to send out men to look for him or to have him arrested. I insisted that it was his duty both to find and arrest him, and, after a considerable amount of pressing, he at length gave way to the extent of promising, if Qway did not turn up, to send a man to look for him “the day after to-morrow.”

This must have constituted a record in energy for an oasis official, and seemed to exhaust his powers altogether. He refused to send a message round to the ’omdas to have him detained if he appeared, and shortly after said something about supper and departed.

I was left to reflections that were not over-pleasant. There was no doubt that I had made a great mistake in asking to have Qway arrested, for, even if I could get him tried for the offence, I should have to find some motive for his actions, and I could not see how that could be done without raising the Senussi question in an oasis where, though their numbers were few, they possessed enormous influence. I decided it would be best to confine my accusation against him to that of stealing the rifle and telescope.

The possibility of my being able to secure him seemed extremely remote. The attitude towards me of the natives of the oasis left no doubt in my mind that they would all shield him. The Government officials were obviously of the same frame of mind, and though they might make some show of attempting to arrest him, I felt certain that they would be surreptitiously endeavouring to aid him in his escape. In the background I knew would be the Senussi, using all the great influence they possessed in the oasis, in order to shield their puppet, Qway, and to prevent his capture.

With only three Sudanese and an old Berberine cook at my back, it was difficult to see what I could do. Still, as I had foolishly insisted on his being brought to justice, I had to see it done. The task was not altogether hopeless, for in cases of this description one Sudani is worth a thousand fellahin. But for the time being the only thing to be done in the circumstances was to lie low and await developments.

They soon came. As is often the case when dealing with natives they were rather of the comic opera type. I first located Qway as staying in the Senussi zawia in Smint. But the clerk to the qadi in Mut, Sheykh Senussi, whom Qway had told me was “like a brother to him,” finding that I was hot on his trail, and fearing that the Senussia might become involved, moved him on to Rashida, and then, like the mean sneak that he was, came round, and, to curry favour with me, told me where he was.

I went off at once and saw the mamur; told him I had heard that Qway was in Rashida, reminded him that this was “the day after to-morrow,” on which he had promised to send “a man” to look for him, and called on him to carry out his promise.

The mamur endeavoured to avoid doing so; but after some trouble, I at length managed to get him to send a man at once.

I was in the merkaz the next day when he returned. He rode pattering up on a donkey, dismounted, shuffled into the room, saluted clumsily and made his report. According to instructions he had gone to Rashida and seen Qway, and given him the mamur’s message that he was to come into Mut. But Qway had said that he did not want to come. The man had argued with him, and had done his best to persuade him to come; but Qway had stuck to it that he really did not want to, so he had climbed again on to his donkey and ridden back to Mut to report progress.

The mamur was greatly relieved. He had done everything I had asked him to do. He had sent a man on a Government donkey to fetch Qway; but Qway did not want to come. What more could he do? It was of no use asking Qway to come if he did not wish to. He was very sorry, but he had done the most he could.

I suggested that perhaps he might send a policeman—a real policeman in uniform with a rifle, not a ghaffir—and give him instructions that, if Qway again refused to come, he was to BRING him. But the mamur did not see his way to doing this. Why should he arrest Qway? What had he done? Stolen a rifle had he? Had he any cartridges? He still had twenty cartridges and a rifle had he? No, he could not possibly arrest him. Qway might be old, but the Arabs were very wild fellows, and he had no troops—only a few armed police.

A long discussion followed, and at last a solution of the difficulty occurred to the mamur. He said he could not arrest Qway, but he would send a policeman to bring back the rifle and cartridges. Did that satisfy me? It didn’t. I said I must have Qway as well. After a long discussion he at last agreed to send to fetch him, if I would send a message by the policeman to tell Qway that he was not to shoot him!

The next day the mamur came round to see me, looking immensely relieved. He said that the policeman had gone to Rashida to fetch Qway, but found that he had left the village, so now there was nothing more to be done. He evidently felt that he was now clear of all responsibility in the matter.

I had thus lost track of Qway, and began to despair of ever being able to get hold of him. But the next day Abd er Rahman, who all along had been indefatigable in trying to pick up information of his whereabouts, told me that Qway had been seen near Tenida dressed up as a fellah[4]—a fact that caused the little Sudani the keenest amusement.

So I sent Abdulla to go off on his hagin to Tenida, under pretence of buying barley, and to try and find Qway, and, if he succeeded, to tell him from me to come at once to Mut.

The next day I went down to the merkaz to enquire whether there was any news. I saw the police officer, who told me that he had just had certain news that Qway had left the oasis and taken the road to the Nile Valley. So, as he was now out of his jurisdiction—which seemed to greatly relieve him—he was in a position to draw up the proces verbal about the telescope and gun that he had stolen, a piece of information that was distinctly depressing. I began to wonder what was the best thing to do next.

This problem, however, solved itself. I had just finished lunch when a timid knock came at the door, and in walked Qway!

The old brute had evidently had a terrible time of it. He had allowed himself to become the tool of the Senussi, but his plans having miscarried, he had got lost and nearly died of thirst in the desert, for, as I afterwards discovered, he had been nearly two days without any water—and two very hot days they had been—and it had only been the excellence of his camel that had pulled him through.

He looked ten years older. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot, his cheeks sunken, his lips parched and cracked, his beard untrimmed, and he had an unkempt, almost dirty, appearance.

He laid the rifle and telescope on my bed, fumbled in his voluminous clothing and produced a handful of cartridges, took some more out of his pocket, from which he also produced a rosary—the Senussi mostly carry their beads in this way and not round their neck as in the case of most Moslems. He then unknotted a corner of his handkerchief and took out two or three more cartridges and laid them all on the table.

“Count them, Your Excellency,” he said. “They are all there.” I found that the tale of them was complete.

He looked sadly down to the ground and sighed profoundly. “I have been working very badly,” he said, “very badly indeed. I am a broken thing. I am the flesh and you are the knife.” It certainly looked remarkably like it.

I asked him what excuse he had to make for his conduct. He looked at me for a moment to see what line he had better take, and the one that he took was not particularly complimentary to my intelligence.

“It was very hot, Your Excellency—very hot indeed. And I was alone and an afrit climbed up on to my camel.”

At this point I thought it might be advisable to have a witness, so I sang out for Dahab.

“No, Effendim, not Dahab. Don’t call Dahab,” said Qway in a much perturbed voice. Presumably he thought Dahab would be less likely to be convinced by his story than I would. Dahab entered the room with surprising promptness—the doors in the oasis are not sound-proof.

I told Qway to get on with his story of the afrit, which promised to be a good one.

“There was an afrit, Your Excellency, that got up behind me on my camel and kept on telling me to go there and to do this, and I had to do it. It was not my fault the water was upset. It was the afrit. I had to do what he told me.” Then, hearing a snort from Dahab, he added that there was not only one afrit, but many, and that that part of the desert was full of them.

I thought it time to stop him. I told him I had heard quite enough, and that he had to come round with me to the merkaz. This upset him terribly.

“No, not the merkaz, Your Excellency. Not the merkaz. In the name of Allah do not take me to the merkaz. Take everything I have got, but do not take me to the merkaz.”

But to the merkaz he had to go. We called in at the camel yard to pick up the other men, as they might be wanted as witnesses, and then proceeded in a body to the Government office, Qway all the way attempting to bribe me to let him off by offering me his belongings, among which, with an obvious pang, he expressly offered me his camel.

We met the mamur at the door of the merkaz, and Qway immediately rushed forward to try and kiss his hand. The mamur, however, would have nothing to do with him. Like nearly all the fellahin he backed the winner, and I for the moment had come out on top.

“This man is a traitor, a regular traitor,” said the judge, who had not yet tried him and who had previously told me he was a sportsman; but I had got the best of the deal, and, moreover, was shortly returning to Egypt and might report on him to one of the inspectors; so he determined to show me how an Egyptian official can do justice when he takes off his coat for the job. He bustled in to the office and began arranging the papers fussily on his table. The police officer also came in and prepared to take down the depositions.

Having got things to his satisfaction, the mamur ordered the prisoner to be brought in. He arrived between two wooden-looking policemen.

“Well, traitor, what have you got to say for yourself?” Then, as it occurred to him that he had overlooked one of the formalities, he asked Qway his name.

“Qway, Effendim.”

“Qway what?” asked the mamur irritably.

“Qway Hassan Qway, Your Presence. My grandfather was a Bey.”

“A Bey?” snorted the mamur.

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“Where did he live?”

“Near Assiut, Your Excellency. Perhaps he wasn’t a Bey. I don’t know. Perhaps he was a mamur or a police officer. I don’t quite know what he was, but he worked for the Government.”

“Bey!” repeated the mamur contemptuously. “Mr. Harden Keen says you upset some water. What do you say to it?”

“Yes, I upset the water. But I could not help it. It was a very hot day . . .”

“Liar!” said the mamur.

“Na’am?” said Qway, rather taken aback.

“I said liar,” shouted the mamur, thumping the table. Qway, who was a high-spirited old fellow, found this more than he could stand, and began to get nettled. It was entirely characteristic of our position in Egypt at that time that at this juncture, Qway, the accused, should turn to me, the accuser, for protection from the judge.

“It was a hot day, Effendim, wasn’t it?”

Badly as he had behaved, I was getting to be very sorry for him, and I had taken a strong dislike to that mamur. So I replied that it was one of the hottest days that I ever remembered.

The mamur could not contradict me, but looked distinctly uncomfortable and shifted uneasily in his chair. He told Qway to go on. Qway, who was beginning to recover his composure, proceeded to make the most of the victory he had gained over him.

“As I said, Effendim, it was a hot day—very hot, and I am an old man and perhaps it was the sun. I don’t know what it was, but an afrit—”

“Allah!” said the mamur, spreading out his hands, “an afrit?” Qway began to get a bit flurried.

“Yes, Effendim, an afrit.”

“Liar,” repeated the mamur. “I said you were a liar.”

Qway looked round again for help, but I was not going to bolster up that statement. The mamur began to examine him as to the exact nature of that afrit. Qway broke down, stammered and generally got into a terrible mess. At the last the mamur, having elicited from him in turn the fact that there was one afrit, that there were two, that there had been a crowd of them, and finally that there were none at all, went on to the next stage and asked what had happened afterwards.

Qway explained that after leaving the depot he had ridden for two days to the south-west, and then had turned back and circled round Jebel el Bayed and finally ridden off to the east.

“The east?” said the mamur. “I thought Dakhla lay to the north.”

“The north-east, Effendim,” corrected Qway. “Rather north of north-east.”

“Then why did you go to the east? Were you lost?”

Qway stammered worse than ever. The mamur repeated his question. Two tears began to roll down Qway’s cheeks and his great gnarled hand went up to hide his twitching lips.

“Yes,” he said, with a great effort. “I was lost.” Being an Arab he did not lie—at least not often.

“But you are a guide. And you got lost!”

“Yes,” stammered Qway. To have to own to a mere fellah that he, the great desert guide, had lost his way, must have been most intensely humiliating; for the favourite gibe of the bedawin to the fellahin is that they are “like women,” and get lost directly they go in the desert.

No Egyptian could have resisted such a chance. The mamur began to question Qway minutely as to where, how and when he had got lost, and to the exact degree of lostness at each stage of the proceedings; and Qway, to his credit be it said, answered quite truthfully.

When he could rub it in no further, the mamur began to question him as to the remainder of his journey. Qway described how he had had to go two days without water and had almost ridden his camel to death in order to get back to our tracks, and how he and his camel had eventually managed to get back to Dakhla more dead than alive.

“You were hiding when you got back. Where did you hide?”

Qway hesitated a moment, then asked him in a low voice if he need answer. The mamur did not press that question. It was a distinctly ill-advised one. Qway had been in the Senussi zawia at Smint. He put a few more questions to him, then told him again that he was a traitor and that his work had been “like pitch,” and asked me what I wanted done next. I suggested that he might perhaps call a few witnesses, so Abdulla was brought in.

Abdulla had entirely recovered from the scare he had had in the desert, and, though Qway had tried to let him down, the mamur’s treatment of him seemed to have softened his views towards him. There is a bond of union between those who “know the nijem” and Qway, too, was in difficulties, and Mohammedans are usually sympathetic towards each other in those circumstances, so Abdulla tried to get Qway off.

The mamur asked him what he knew about the case.

“Effendim,” he said, “I think Qway went mad.”

The mamur flung himself back in his chair and spread out his hands.

“Allah!” he exclaimed. “Are you a doctor?”

This little pantomime was completely thrown away on the stolid Abdulla. He looked at the mamur with the amused curiosity that he would have shown to a performing monkey.

“No,” he said, in his slow stupid way. “I am not a doctor, of course—but I know a fool when I see one!”

The mamur concluded that he had heard enough of Abdulla’s evidence. I began to wonder if the Sudani was quite so “feeble in the head” as he had been represented!

“I find that Qway is a traitor. His work has been like pitch. What do you want me to do with him?” asked the judge.

I suggested, as delicately as I could, that that was a question to be decided by the court, and not by the accuser. After a whispered conversation with the police officer across the table, the mamur announced that he intended to put him in prison and send him, when the camel-postman went, in about a week’s time, to Assiut to be tried.

The attitude of the men towards Qway changed completely after his trial. There was no longer any need to be afraid of him. Their resentment at his conduct in the desert had had time to cool down. He had been bullied by a fellah mamur, been forced to confess in public that he had disgraced himself by getting lost in the desert, had been arrested by a Sudani and publicly paraded through the oasis dressed as a fellah. His humiliation was complete and could scarcely have been more thorough. The bedawin instinct for revenge had been amply satisfied. Hatred is generally largely composed of fear, or jealousy, and there was certainly no room for either where Qway was concerned. Moreover, the men had the usual feeling of compassion for those in adversity that forms one of the finest traits in the Mohammedan character.

So far as I was concerned, I was feeling rather sorry for my erring guide, to whom I had taken a strong liking from the start, for he had only been made a tool by the Senussi, who were the real culprits. So having once got him convicted, I told the mamur I did not want him to be severely punished, provided that “the quality of mercy was not strained.”

Dahab told me Qway was confined in irons and being fed only on bread and water. So I sent him some tea and sugar, with a message to the police that they might take the irons off and that I would “see them” before I left the oasis. Dahab asked for money to buy a quite unnecessary number of eggs for my consumption. I never enquired what became of them all; but the same evening he asked for leave to go to the doctor’s house, and started off with bulging pockets in the direction of the merkaz. He came back again with them empty shortly afterwards, saying that he had been told that Qway was resigned and very prayerful. The Sudanese, as I afterwards heard, sent him some cheese and lentils, to which Abdulla added a handful of onions, so altogether Qway must have rather enjoyed himself in prison.

CHAPTER XX

HAVING disposed of the question of Qway, I went off to Rashida for the fête of Shem en Nessim (the smelling of the breeze). The officials of the oasis were also there, and we celebrated the day in the usual manner. In the morning we put on clean clothes and took our breakfast out of doors to “smell the breeze.” Then we went up among the palm plantations to a primitive swimming bath the ’omda had made by damming up a stream from one of his wells. The natives stripped and disported themselves in the water, swimming about, splashing each other and enjoying themselves immensely.

After the bath they dressed again and we lay about under the palms till lunch was brought out to us. We lounged about on the ground, sleeping and talking till late in the afternoon, when a woman from the village appeared, who had been engaged by the ’omda to dance. A carpet was spread for her to perform on, and we lay round and watched her. She looked quite a respectable woman, and it was certainly a quite respectable dance that would have been an addition to “Chu-Chin-Chow,” but the mamur took occasion to be shocked at it. He sat with his back half turned to the woman, watching her out of the corner of his eye, however, and apparently enjoying the performance. Though I was unable to detect anything in the slightest degree wrong in the dance, the delicate susceptibilities of the mamur were so outraged that—as he was not on good terms with the ’omda of Rashida—he felt it his duty to report him to the Inspector in Assiut for having an immoral performance in his private grounds. Government under the Egyptian mamurs is a wonderful institution!

The next day I returned to Mut to pack up. A number of callers came round to see me during the short remaining time I stayed in the town. For since I had come out on top, the whole oasis had become wonderfully friendly.

Among them was the Sheykh el Afrit from Smint. He was extremely oily in his manner and kept on addressing me as “Your Presence the Bey!” He gave me a lot of information about afrits. He spoke in the tone of a man who had had a lifelong experience in the matter. It was most important, he said, to use the right kind of incense when invoking them, as if the wrong sort were used the afrit always became very angry and killed the magician—it seemed to be a dangerous trade.

He told me a lot of information of the same nature and gave me a number of instances of encounters with afrits to illustrate his remarks. Among them he mentioned—quite casually—that it had been an afrit that had led Qway astray. The object of his visit had apparently been to put this opinion, as an experienced magician, before me, for he left almost immediately afterwards.

Among my other visitors was the ’omda of Rashida, who said he had come into Mut as he had a case to bring before the mamur against his cousin Haggi Smain. He, too, stood up for Qway. He was the only native of the oasis who had the backbone to openly champion his cause.

Some time after he had gone, I had to go round to the merkaz. I could hear a tremendous row going on inside as I approached. Someone kept thumping a table and two or three men were shouting and bawling at each other and, judging from the sounds that proceeded from the court, all Bedlam might have been let loose there.

But I found that it was only the mamur “making the peace” among the Rashida people. The ’omda of Rashida and two of his brothers were bringing an action against their cousin, Haggi Smain, who owned part of the same village. The row stopped for a while as I came in, and the proceedings were conducted for a few minutes in an orderly manner. Then they went at it again, hammer and tongs, bawling and shouting at each other, and at the mamur, who was endeavouring to effect a reconciliation, at the top of their voices. The mamur at first spoke in a quiet persuasive tone, but soon he lost his temper and was as bad as they were. He banged with his fist on the table and yelled to them to be silent and listen to what he had to say. The ’omda shouted back that it was not he, but Haggi Smain that was interrupting the proceedings, while Haggi Smain himself foaming at the mouth and at times almost inarticulate with rage, screamed back that it was the ’omda who was making all the noise.

The cause of all this hullabaloo was as follows: Haggi Smain had an orange tree growing on his property, one branch of which projected beyond his boundary and overhung some land belonging to the ’omda. Three oranges had fallen off this branch on to the ’omda’s territory and the case had been brought to decide to whom these three oranges belonged. Their total value was a farthing at the outside.

I left next day for Egypt. As I got on my camel to start, the mamur and Co. announced that they intended to walk with me for part of the way. As this was calculated to increase my prestige with the other natives, I decided to keep them with me for some time.

I rode—and the mamur walked—which was quite as it should have been, for these little distinctions carry great weight among these simple natives. The mamur, I was glad to see, was wearing a pair of new brown boots fastened with a metal clasp over the instep, and having soles about as thin as dancing pumps. The road was rough and baked very hard by the sun in those places where it was not boggy. The mamur, I fancy, was not used to much pedestrian exercise and soon became very obviously footsore.

I saw him look longingly at an unloaded camel, so told Dahab to get up on it and ride. Several times he hinted that he had come far enough, but I merely had to look surprised and displeased to keep him trotting along beside me for another mile. He had not shown up well while I had been in the oasis, and he realised that in a very few days I should be seeing one of the Inspectors about Qway, so was desperately anxious not to do anything to displease me.

At last I decided to take a short cut. We left the road, such as it was, and went straight across country over a very rough stretch of desert. I called out to Abdulla to hurry up the camels, as they were going too slowly, with the result that the limping mamur and the fat old qadi began to fall behind. The farce was becoming so obvious that all my men were grinning at them and Abd er Rahman sarcastically whispered to me that he thought the mamur must be getting tired.

When I had got them well away from the road, and two or three miles from any habitation, I looked back and suddenly discovered the mamur was limping, and asked him why on earth he had not told me before that his feet were all covered with blisters. I insisted that he should go back at once to Mut.

On the way to Assiut, in the train, I saw old Sheykh Mawhub, the Senussi, going, as he said, to Cairo. But I was not in the least surprised to find that he broke his journey at Assiut, where he lay doggo in the native town, pulling strings in the mudiria to get his catspaw, Qway, out of his difficulties—unfortunately with considerable success.

I went round to the mudiria as soon as I got to the town, only to find that the English Inspector was away, so I asked to see the mudir (native governor of the province). The mudir did not think Qway had been tried, but would I go up into the town and ask at the mamur’s office? There I was requested to wait while they made enquiries. They made them for about three-quarters of an hour, and then a man came in with an ill-concealed grin and announced that Qway had just that moment been tried and had been acquitted!

I went round to interview the mudir again—rather indignantly this time. He was bland and courteous—but firm. He had been acquitted, he said because I had said that I did not want him to be severely punished, and because I had given him a good character the year before. The course of true law never did run smooth in Egypt!

I tried to get this decision reversed by applying to a very exalted personage. He told me, however, that the Government did not want to raise the Senussi question and were anxious to avoid an incident on the frontier, and he was afraid that he could not take the matter up.

I had to get the best of Qway somehow and, as the regulation methods of dealing with him had failed me, I took the law into my own hands—which is quite the best place to keep it in Egypt—and fined him the balance of his pay, which amounted to about twenty pounds. I afterwards heard that the Senussi, in order to prevent Qway from having a grievance against them, had bakhshished him £42 worth of cotton; so I got at the real culprits in the end; but it was a roundabout way of doing it.