BOY WITH CROSS-BOW, FARAFRA.
BOY WITH CROSS-BOW, FARAFRA.
BOY WITH CROSS-BOW, FARAFRA.
The interior of the tower was a perfect labyrinth of breakneck stairways and little rooms opening out of narrow dark passages. After scrambling up several sets of steps and repeatedly banging my head in the dark against the low roof, we at length emerged into a sort of courtyard at the top, surrounded by two tiers of small chambers, each provided with its own locked door. Some further scrambling landed us on the roof that covered the rooms and formed a kind of platform surrounding the courtyard. From here a wide view could be obtained over the oasis and depression.
There was not much of consequence to be seen. Below lay the village, looking, when viewed from above, even more squalid than from below. Scattered round it, within a radius of a few miles, lay a number of small patches of cultivation, showing the positions of the various wells and springs. Seven or eight miles away to the west was a cliff of considerable height, forming the scarpment of the Guss Abu Said—an isolated plateau beyond which, though invisible from the tower, lay a well, “Bir Labayat,” and the little oases of Iddaila and Nesla, in another large depression, the dimensions of which were unknown. Here and there on the floor of the depression a few isolated hills stood up to break the level monotony, the most conspicuous amongst them being Jebel Gunna el Bahari, about fifteen miles to the north-east. Otherwise the view over the depression was singularly monotonous. The only other noticeable features being the cliffs in the far distance to the north and east that marked the limits of the higher plateau.
On descending from the tower the’omdatook me round the village. Except for its poverty-stricken appearance, it differed little from those in Dakhla and Kharga Oases. There seemed to be few houses with a second storey, and the palm leaf hedges, that usually topped the wall surrounding the flat roofs in the other oases, were seldom visible.
Having completed our survey of the village, the’omdatook us to his house. It was a very poor residence for a man of his position in the village, and was overrun with fowls, goats and filthy little children, mostly suffering from ringworm. He gave us some dates and very bad tea, but no cigarettes were produced, probably because, like most of the inhabitants of the place, he “followed the Sheykh.”
In the afternoon I went with Abd er Rahman and the’omdato see the winch of a boring machine that had been given to thezawiaby a wealthy Egyptian in Cairo, in order that they could sink a new well. They wanted my opinion on it, as two of the cog wheels had been broken and the work of sinking the well had had to stop in consequence.It was obvious that there was nothing to be done, except to replace the wheels. I took measurements of the broken parts and promised to have duplicates of them made in Cairo, when I got back, and to have them sent to the oasis.
I was engaged in noting down their dimensions, when Abd er Rahman informed me that the Senussi sheykhs from thezawiawere coming, and I caught sight of two men, with Qwaytin in their train, stalking along in my direction.
Thezawiawas run by three sheykhs who were brothers, the eldest was, however, at that time away in Cairo. The other two were not a prepossessing-looking couple. Sheykh Ibn ed Dris, the elder, was a fine-looking Arab, and would have been even handsome if his face had not been marred by its dour, truculent expression. His youngest brother, Sheykh Mohammed, was apparently hardly out of his ’teens, and seemed to be somewhat of a cipher, being completely swamped by the aggressive personality of the elder sheykh. The only impression he made was one of extreme sulkiness. Qwaytin told me that they had come to take me for a walk round the plantations that surrounded the village, adding that as I was a stranger in the oasis they felt that they ought to entertain me.
They did not seem to relish the job very much. Sheykh Ibn ed Dris was extremely taciturn, and his brother never opened his mouth during the whole of our tour of inspection.
Compared with the other Egyptian oases, the plantations in Farafra contained comparatively few palms and a much larger proportion of other fruit trees—olives, vines, apricots, white mulberries, figs, pomegranates, limes, sweet lemons, a few orange trees and a small apple, which, being regarded as a rarity, was very highly prized. Formerly there used to be a considerable export of olive oil to the Nile Valley, but for some reason, perhaps because the trees were getting too old, the crop was said to have diminished considerably, and barely to suffice for the wants of the oasis.
The fields surrounding the plantations were planted sofar as I saw only with wheat, barley and onions, but durra and rice are also said to be grown in the oasis. The areas under cultivation seemed small, but the plants all looked healthy, and even luxuriant. I saw no patches of salty ground, such as were often to be seen in Dakhla.
A Bride and her Pottery.A bride from the poorer classes can only contribute a small amount of earthenware towards furnishing her new home. In her wedding procession she carries this on a chair on her head. Note the sequins on the front of her dress. (p. 253).
A Bride and her Pottery.A bride from the poorer classes can only contribute a small amount of earthenware towards furnishing her new home. In her wedding procession she carries this on a chair on her head. Note the sequins on the front of her dress. (p. 253).
A Bride and her Pottery.A bride from the poorer classes can only contribute a small amount of earthenware towards furnishing her new home. In her wedding procession she carries this on a chair on her head. Note the sequins on the front of her dress. (p. 253).
A Bride and her Pottery.
A bride from the poorer classes can only contribute a small amount of earthenware towards furnishing her new home. In her wedding procession she carries this on a chair on her head. Note the sequins on the front of her dress. (p. 253).
Farafra is such a small place that administratively it is under Baharia, the nearest oasis, lying about three days’ journey away to the north-east. In the whole oasis of Farafra there are only about twenty wells, the two most important ones were said to be ’Ain Ebsay, lying four to five miles to the south of the village, which I did not visit, and ’Ain el Belad (the town well), both of which were said to be of Roman origin and to resemble those of Dakhla Oasis.
Some of the wells are said to be connected with long underground infiltration channels cut horizontally, at some depth below the surface, similar to those at ’Ain Um Debadib, but I had no opportunity of examining any of these. The ’Ain el Belad, that supplies the village, flowed into a large pool covered with green weed and to some extent surrounded by palm groves, that in the glow of the setting sun made a most lovely picture.
We ended our promenade at the door of Sheykh Ibn ed Dris’ house in thezawia. It was a gloomy mud-built building, without a trace of the European furniture that characterised thezawiaand houses of the Mawhub family in Dakhla. Here I took leave of my unpleasant companions, much, I fancy, to our mutual relief. As the sheykhs had to a slight extent thawed during our walk, I asked Ibn ed Dris to let me photograph him, to which, rather to my surprise, he grudgingly consented. He did not make a pretty picture. He was wearing his normal expression, a scowl that “never came off,” and nothing that I said would induce him to look pleasant.
Supplies of all kinds were very scarce in the oasis. No fruit or vegetables were procurable, and the only eatables to be bought were fowls, eggs and onions. Owing to nearly the whole of the inhabitants being members of the Senussia, tobacco was also very difficult to obtain, as the members of the sect are forbidden to smoke. The men had all run outof cigarettes, and were much upset at not being able to renew their supplies.
The morning after my walk with the sheykhs, Ibrahim, who was always keen on any kind of sport, told me that quail were beginning to arrive in the oasis, so I went out with him to try and shoot some. I only, however, saw two—one of which I succeeded in missing twice.
The natives of Qasr Farafra were so unfriendly that I was unable to see as much of the place as I should have wished, and I was only able to take a very few photos.
The next morning we packed up and set out to Bu Mungar. After an uneventful journey of about eight hours to the south-west, over a featureless level desert, we reached the little oasis of ’Ain Sheykh Murzuk—the only permanently inhabited spot, besides Qasr Farafra, in the whole depression.
Three or four men came to meet us as we approached the plantation, and greeted Qwaytin with enthusiasm. The oasis was a very small one, extending to only a few acres. The cultivation consisted of only a few palms and fruit trees and a field or two of grain. Among the palms were hidden two or three houses, which I, however, inspected only from a distance. One of them, I was told, was a Senussizawia.
WE started the next morning at dawn. Soon after leaving ’Ain Sheykh Murzuk, Qwaytin showed me a pass ascending the scarp of a small plateau, the Guss abu Said, on our right, over which, he said, passed a road to Iddaila. From Iddaila, he said, a road ran direct through Nesla and Bu Mungar to Dakhla Oasis.
Two hours after our start we reached a very small oasis, only an acre or two in extent, known as ’Ain el Agwa. It contained a few palms and evidently a well, though the place was so covered with drifted sand that the palms in some cases were buried nearly to their crowns, and the well was completely invisible.
About an hour farther on we reached a similar oasis, called ’Ain Khalif. There were no traces of inhabitants at either of these places; the dead leaves left hanging on the palms showed that they were entirely uncultivated, and at ’Ain el Agwa the trees themselves seemed to be dying.
These little places do not seem to have been previously reported, though Rohlfs’ route must have passed fairly close to where they were situated. From the size of the palms they seemed to be only about twenty years old, so possibly the wells were sunk since the time of his visit.
Though the sand had to some extent encroached on the oasis at ’Ain el Agwa, it had not done so to anything like the same extent as at ’Ain Khalif, and the feeble well, discharging into a tiny pool a few yards across, was still quite clear of sand.
As the water proved to be good, we stopped here for half an hour, while we refilled thegurbaand examined the oasis.
Shortly before sunset we reached a place where the road forked. A line of small stones had been laid across the right-hand track—a common sign among the Arabs that the road was not to be followed. Qwaytin took the left-hand branch and soon afterwards we came to the top of the descent into Bu Mungar. The path at this point was a narrow cleft, a few yards long and not more than a foot or two wide, that proved as difficult to negotiate as the very similar one leading from the ’Ain Amur plateau down towards Dakhla. Below it lay a sandy slope that extended to the bottom of the cliff and presented little difficulty.
On reaching the bottom of the slope we set out for Bu Mungar, which lay a short distance ahead of us. But on reaching thehattia, Qwaytin, as usual, got lost, and it was some time before we could find the well.
It had been a stiflingly hot day and we had marched for over thirteen hours, with only a short halt at ’Ain Khalif. I had done the whole distance on foot, so I was dog tired, and extremely thirsty. So, as the evening of our arrival was cloudy, and as to get in a set of observations would probably have meant that I should have had to sit up for several hours for the clouds to clear off, I put off the work until the following day, meaning to leave the place in the afternoon.
My tent was pitched on the extreme eastern end of thehattia. The cliff of the plateau formed a huge semicircular bay on our east, the southern point of which could be seen about twenty-five miles away to the south-east of the camp. In the middle of this bay lay a second large detached scrub-covered area.
Bu Mungar contains at least two wells, as in addition to the one near which we were camped, the men found a second one, about a quarter of a mile away to the south-west, the position of which was marked by a group of trees—acacias and palms, so far as I can remember.
The other well, that lay about two hundred yards to the north-west of the camp, seemed to be an artesian one, similar to those in the Egyptian oases. A little stream ran from it for a short distance till it lost itself in the sandy soil. So far as I was able to see the trees were larger andthe vegetation more luxuriant than in the Kairowinhattia.
To the south, a huge area covered as far as the horizon with sand dunes was visible. A large dune overhung the camp on its eastern side, and drift sand seemed to be encroaching in many places on the vegetation. In the neighbourhood of the camp was a praying place, or “desert mosque,” made according to Qwaytin after one of the Senussi models. This consisted of a line of stones laid out on the ground much in the shape of a button-hook, the straight portion of which pointed in the direction of Mecca, to indicate the direction in which worshippers should face when performing their devotions. It was the only praying place of the shape that I ever saw.
SENUSSI PRAYING PLACE, BU MUNGAR.
SENUSSI PRAYING PLACE, BU MUNGAR.
SENUSSI PRAYING PLACE, BU MUNGAR.
The wells of thehattiaperhaps dated from Roman times, as at a short distance to the south of the camp was a small mud building (der) which the natives attributed to that period. The remains of the vaulted roofs and the arched tops of the openings in the walls tended to confirm this view.
I managed the next day to get the necessary astronomical observations to fix the position of the place, but was not able to make a thorough examination of it, as complications with the Senussia that, from numerous indications I had seen since leaving Assiut, I had been expecting for some time suddenly came to a rather unpleasant head.
It was not until I got to Bu Mungar that I discovered that all the men in my caravan belonged to the Senussia. Qwaytin and his three men, I knew, had always been ofthat persuasion, and, while in Farafra, Abd er Rahman, Ibrahim and Dahab had all been so worked upon by Sheykh Ibn ed Dris that, just before we left that oasis, they too had joined the order, and showed all the fanaticism to be expected from new converts.
A party of thirty Tibbus, sent from Kufara for my entertainment, by Sheykh Ahmed Esh Sherif, at that time head of the Senussia, were hanging round somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bu Mungar, close enough for Qwaytin to start signalling to them by firing shots at imaginary pigeons and lighting an enormous and quite unnecessary bonfire at dusk—a well-known Arab signal.
Twenty more men had been sent from Kufara to reinforce the Mawhubs at theirezba, in the north-west corner of Dakhla, which I should have to pass in order to enter the oasis on my way to Egypt; while the inhabitants of Farafra—the only other oasis I could fall back upon with my small caravan—were members of the order almost to a man, and were on the look out for me if I returned that way. It was explained to me that they had allowed me to go to Bu Mungar instead of to Iddaila—my original intention—in order that I should leave Egypt, and then, as I had altered my plans, no one would know “where it happened!”
It was a neat little trap that I had foolishly walked into; but it had its weak points. It was nearly dusk when Qwaytin fired his signal shots that led to my enquiries, and, better still, a howling sandstorm was blowing. If once we got out into the desert in these circumstances, I felt confident of getting away without difficulty. But the prospect of having the camp rushed before we could get off gave me such a bad attack of cold feet that I decided to start running as soon as possible in order to get them warm.
Qwaytin and his men, however, when told to do so, flatly refused to leave thehattia. But he and his crowd were such a feeble lot that I had little difficulty in reducing them to order. We lost so little time that I got the tanks filled and the caravan off just after sunset.
Before starting it occurred to me that I might borrow a trick from Abd er Rahman. So finding a sand-free spacenear the well, I scratched the Senussiwasmwith a stick deeply into the ground, and then, to mislead the Senussi when they came as to the direction in which we had gone, drew a line from it pointing towards the west—the direction in which I knew they feared that I should go—and then set out towards the south-east to Dakhla.
Almost immediately after leaving the camp we got on to the sand hills. I then left the road, and, to Qwaytin’s intense disgust, struck out into the dunes to the south, where the tearing gale that was blowing very quickly obliterated our tracks.
After marching for two and a half hours, the dunes became considerably larger, and, as the moon had set, travelling was attended with such great difficulty that we halted till daylight.
But after leaving Bu Mungar our journey to Mut began to get too much in the nature of “adventures” to be described in detail. It took me all that I had learnt, during seven seasons spent in the desert, to get my caravan into Dakhla, without creating that incident that I had been warned to avoid, and which might easily have resulted in something in the nature of a native rising.
No one in the caravan but Qwaytin had been over the road before, and he, of course, got hopelessly lost, and in any case was not reliable, so I had to take over his job and do the best I could as guide.
After leaving Bu Mungar our road for the first day lay all over the dunes. Late in the afternoon we came across threesifs—dunes with an A-shaped section running up and down wind—which, since they stretched across our path, gave us some difficulty. They were all under twenty feet in height, but their sides were at such a steep angle that the camels were quite unable to climb them, and the men had to scoop paths diagonally up the face of the dunes and down again on the farther side, over which the camels one by one with difficulty were forced. Small as thesesifswere they caused a considerable delay. But these three ridges proved to be the last of the dune belt, and the remainder of our road, till we reached the dunes near Dakhla, we found to be easy going.
A long cliff runs from Bu Mungar to Dakhla Oasis, the road between the two lying at its foot.
The sand dunes that form a long north and south belt to the south of the great hill—Jebel Edmondstone—that lies some fifteen miles to the west of Qasr Dakhl, gave us considerable trouble, not only on account of their height, but because of their extreme softness. The camels sank into them in places literally up to their hocks.
In the softest parts the caravan absolutely came to a standstill, being quite unable to make any progress without assistance. I had to put one man on either side of each camel, and make them take the weight of the loads on their backs, and lift them up with every step that the camels gave, in order to get them along at all. Then having got a beast through the soft places, I had to fetch the others across, one by one, in the same manner. Our rate of progress consequently fell to something like half a mile an hour.
On the evening of the fifth day after leaving Bu Mungar we arrived in Mut, having lost some of the baggage, two men and two out of our seven camels, and with the rest of the caravan pretty well foundered from over-driving.
During the journey down from Bu Mungar, my own men, as I expected, finding that, as members of the Senussia, they had to give up smoking, gradually came round and recovered from their attack of Senussism. So, before reaching Mut, we halted out of sight of the town, and I put Abd er Rahman up on a camel and sent him in to find out how the land lay in the oasis.
He returned extremely pleased with himself. He had left his camel tied up among the dunes and had then gone into Mut “like a thief,” as he expressed it, so that no one should see him and had gone to the house of a friend of his, who told him that some Tibbus had been several times into Mut, but had not been seen there recently. They had gone back to thezawiaat Qasr Dakhl. Here, as I afterwards heard, they were seen and photographed by a native who happened to have come into the oasis from the Nile Valley. His friend thought it would be quite safe for us to come into the oasis, as when once we had been seenthere, the Senussi would not dare to molest us. So we packed up our traps again and started.
On reaching Mut, I again put up in the old store. Having seen my baggage safely deposited there, I went round to the post office to get my mail.
I found Sheykh Senussi—the poetical clerk of theqadi—had managed to get his son appointed as postmaster in the oasis, a position that must have been of considerable use to the Senussi, on account of the thinness of the envelopes used by the natives.
Though office hours, so far as they can be said to exist in Dakhla, were long over, the door of the office itself was open, and I entered without being heard. I found the intelligence department of the Senussi in the oasis, consisting of Sheykh Senussi and his son, hard at work examining the mails. They held each letter up in turn to the light, and, if the contents were of interest, read them through the envelope. A letter lying on the top of a basin of hot water had presumably been undecipherable in this way, and so the flap of the envelope had to be steamed open. A stick of wax and a bottle of gum, lying on the counter, seemed to indicate that sometimes they experienced some difficulty in reclosing the correspondence after it had been read.
I walked quietly away from the door, and then returned clearing my throat loudly and making as much noise as I could and asked for my mail. Sheykh Senussi welcomed me most cordially. The basin of water, the gum and the sealing wax had all disappeared. The postmaster was busily engaged in sorting the letters. But I fancy that I had just seen one of the many ways in which information gets known in Egypt!
Affairs in Mut I found to be in a very queer state. A newmamurhad arrived on the scene, who, according to reports, both drank and tookhashishto such an extent that he had gone practically mad. He had quarrelled so violently with the police officer, his understudy, that one day he had fired three revolver shots at him, from a window in his house, as he crossed the square by the mosque. I was shown the places where the bullets had ploughed up the ground, so something of the sort had probably happened.
Themamur, after this exhibition, shut himself up in his house and never went out even to themerkaz, and declined to see anyone. The policeman was doing his feeble best to keep things going; but as he was afraid to go to themerkaz, which lay close to themamur’shouse, for fear that he should be shot at again, he was somewhat handicapped in his work.
I passed once through the mosque square and caught a glimpse of themamurpeeping at me through the crack by the hinge of his half-opened door, but this was the only view I had of him.
He sent me, however, a roundabout message to the effect that he had seen me pass his house and he considered it anaybthat I had not called on him as he was the head of the Government in the oasis, and a much more important person than I was myself. He added that he expected me to do so at once. As my views as to our relative importance differed from his, I continued toaybhim in the same way till I left the oasis.
The day after our arrival, Qwaytin asked permission to go for the day to the village of Hindau. There was, I knew, a small Senussizawiathere, but it would have been useless for me to refuse him permission, so long as he was at liberty, and with the existing state of affairs in the oasis it was quite out of the question to try and get him arrested. So I thought it best to pretend I did not see what he was driving at and allowed him to go.
Later in the day I was in my room in the upper floor of the store when, rather to my surprise, I heard Qwaytin’s voice in the court below talking to Dahab and Abd er Rahman. As I had not expected him back so soon, I suspected that he was up to some mischief, so had no hesitation at all in listening to the conversation, especially as I wished to know more exactly the terms on which he stood with my men.
They were immediately below my window; but Qwaytin was speaking in such a low voice that I could only catch a word here and there of what he was saying. But I caught enough of the conversation to become greatly interested.
He was apparently giving them instructions from acertain Sheykh Ahmed, whose identity I was unable to ascertain. Repeatedly I heard him mention a certainkafir(infidel) and once a “dog,” of whose identity I entertained no doubt at all—listeners proverbially hear no good of themselves. Several times I heard him state “Sheykh Ahmed says—” something that was quite inaudible, followed by expostulations from Dahab and Abd er Rahman, and then again they were told that “Sheykh Ahmed says—” something else that thekafirwould have given a good deal to have heard.
Eventually, I heard Qwaytin take himself off, and, shortly afterwards, Dahab, looking terribly scared, came into the room, announcing that Dakhla was a very bad place indeed, and that we must get out of it as quickly as possible.
Abd er Rahman next burst unceremoniously in and asked abruptly when I intended to start. I told him I meant to get off as soon as I possibly could. He looked immensely relieved, and said that the sooner we started the better.
I tried to find out from them exactly what was in the wind, but native-like I could not get them to be in the least explicit.
I went out and interviewed Qwaytin and told him I intended to start the next day. He grinned and refused absolutely to let me have the camels. I felt inclined to take them, but a large trading caravan with severalbedawinhad come in during the day, and these men all hung round listening to our conversation in what seemed to be anything but a friendly frame of mind, and I thought it best not to make the attempt. I sounded one or two of the traders with a view to hiring their camels, but met with a surly refusal. I might, of course, have tried to get the Government authorities in the oasis to force Qwaytin to fulfil his arrangement with me; but it does not do, in a case of this sort, for a white man to appeal to a native official for assistance, so I had to look round for some other means of continuing our journey.
After some difficulty, I succeeded in hiring three other camels that were in the oasis. Then, having arranged toleave part of my baggage, for which I had no immediate use, in safe keeping in Mut till I could send for it, I prepared to start on the following morning.
I told Abd er Rahman to send his friend out into the village to gather information as to the Senussia. During our visits to Mut, this man on several occasions made himself considerably useful to us; but fearing to appear openly as being favourable to us, he always conducted his operations in a clandestine manner.
Abd er Rahman, who was always in his element in anything in the nature of an intrigue, introduced him secretly into the store in the middle of the night, and brought him up to my room. His information was entirely satisfactory. I was unable to get out of him exactly what scheme the Senussi had devised for our benefit, but he declared that our intention to make an early departure had entirely checkmated them, and that they were furiously angry in consequence.
But the Mawhubs, he said, were extremely cunning, and as we had now got the better of them, their one desire was that the whole episode should be forgotten and that they should now appear as our best friends. He said that, if we got away quickly, we had nothing to fear from them; but he emphasised the importance of not wasting any time. I sent him off with a thumpingbakhshish.
THE police officer and the Government doctor—a Moslem this time—insisted on accompanying me across the oasis. They told me they had sent a messenger to Tenida to say that we intended to stay the night there, so as to give the’omdatime to prepare for us.
My little caravan of three camels and three men seemed extremely small after the one we had been accustomed to; but the men were in good spirits at the prospect of soon returning to their homes, and the camels were good ones and stepped out well.
As we left Smint, Sheykh Senussi, the poet from Mut, in a most excited state, rushed past us, waving his arms wildly in the air and called out to the policeman something that I could not catch.
On reaching Tenida we went to the’omda’shouse, lying a mile or two to the north of the town, where we drank the usual tea. Afterwards our host invited us to come and sit in his garden.
It was a large place covering several acres, enclosed by a wall and planted with a variety of palms and fruit trees, all looking extremely healthy. Judging from the size of the trees, they could not have been planted more than twenty years. There was a plentiful supply of water, as a small stream coming from a well, the Bir Mansura ’Abdulla, ran through the plantation with a babbling sound that was very grateful after our hot ride across the oasis. Altogether the garden was a delightfully shady place.
The’omdaled the way, directing my attention to the different kinds of trees we passed. Behind came a crowd of officials and the leading men of the district, laughing and chaffing each other in the usual noisy manner of Egyptians. Finding a smooth level place under a palm,with the stream running close beside it, I suggested that we might sit down there; but the’omdadeclared that the best place was a little farther on, just beyond a thicket in front of us, and made way for me on the path to go in front.
The other natives suddenly all stopped talking and followed us in a most unnatural silence. I led the way, turned round the thicket—and found myself face to face with old Sheykh Mawhub!
He was sitting on a rug in the shade of a small fig tree, apparently engaged in pious meditation. It was an idyllic scene, to which a pergola covered with vines and roses that stood behind him made an effective background.
He was apparently prepared for a journey, his baggage consisting of a small sack containing only a few clothes showed that his wants were easily satisfied. A jug of water and a handful of dates, left over from his meal, showed that he had been demonstrating to the luxuriousfellahinof the oasis, the simple life that the Senussia lived in theirzawia—with the help of a Turkish cook.
The situation was perfectly clear. The little ramp of the Senussia having missed fire, they were desperately anxious that it should be overlooked. So the natives of the oasis, with their usual kindly instincts, had arranged this meeting in order to “make the peace.” I was quite willing to fall in with their views—there was no use in raising the Senussi question.
Old Mawhub greeted me with a benevolent smile, that was almost fatherly in its friendliness. He patted the rug beside him, as an invitation to sit down, and we entered into conversation.
He expressed himself delighted to see me; but I noticed that he omitted the formality usually made to one returning from a journey, and did not praise Allah for my safety. He made no reference at all to my having been in the desert, beyond saying that his son, Sheykh Ahmed, was very angry, very angry indeed, that I had passed so close to hisezbawithout partaking of his hospitality. I felt quite sure of his anger, but I rather doubted the cause of it.
Mawhub explained that he was on his way to Cairo to “sell some horses” he had with him. The fact that oneof his rare visits to the Nile Valley happened once more to coincide with my return to civilisation after a bother in the Senussi country, was not one that I overlooked. I concluded that he would break his journey to Cairo at Assiut, so as to see Qwaytin through any complications that might arise in themudiria—he did.
After ten minutes’ conversation, during which we both carefully avoided dangerous topics, his youngest son, ’Abd el Wahad, who was travelling with him, acting as a most attentive and devoted servant, intimated to me, in a whisper, that his father was tired, and as he was an old man and had a long journey before him on the morrow, wanted to sleep. So I took leave of him and we returned to the’omda’shouse, where a meal was served, after which I rode back to the camp for the night.
Shortly after dawn the next day, Mawhub’s caravan—a most wretched-looking collection, consisting of a couple of camels and a miserable horse, passed our camp in charge of two dejected-looking blacks. A few minutes afterwards old Mawhub himself rode up with his son, mounted on two sorry looking screws, that were apparently the horses he was taking into Cairo for sale.
They dismounted on reaching the camp, and the old sheykh suggested, as we were both of us travelling to Kharga, that we should join forces and make the journey together. He was an interesting old fellow, and I felt rather tempted to do so. But though I was ready to let bygones be bygones to a certain extent, I was not prepared to go to this length, so finding that he was intending to travel by the lower or Gubary road, I decided to take the route across the plateau via ’Ain Amur. Mawhub, apparently much disappointed, jumped up again in his saddle with a nimbleness surprising in a man of his age, and rode off wishing me most cordiallytarik es salaama(safe road, i.e. journey).
We kept a careful look-out at night and took no risks during our remaining time in the desert, but our precautions were probably quite unnecessary. Our journey to Kharga was entirely uneventful.
Here we found great changes. The English company that had been endeavouring to make the desert blossomlike a rose, had only succeeded in gathering the thorns. A shortage in the water supply, leading to interference between the wells, the saline character of the ground, the drifting sand and tearing sandstorms had proved to be too much for them. The company was practically in liquidation. The European staff had mostly gone and taken up work elsewhere. Only one member of it remained, and he was busy in the final preparations necessary before leaving the place in the charge of a native. Finding himself thrown out of a job, he was looking round for a new one, and was hoping to have the old office of Inspector of the Oases revived in his favour—I found myself regarded, in consequence, with a somewhat jaundiced eye as being a possible rival.
He need, however, have had no anxiety on that account. One can put in a fairly interesting time in mapping the unknown parts of the desert, collecting weeds that no one wants, studying the natives’ habits and peculiarities, listening to their stories of buried treasure, and enchanted cities, and in chasing will-o’-the-wisp oases round and round the desert; but to settle down in these wretched oases for the term of my natural life, to seeing that the native officials did not extort more than a reasonable amount ofbakhshishfrom the wretchedfellahinunder their charge, and to settling disputes as to oranges that fall on the wrong side of a wall, was not one that greatly appealed to me.
The night’s rest that I got in Kharga was most welcome; there had not been a night since leaving Qasr Farafra, a fortnight before, when I had been able to get more than a very limited amount of sleep.
A sleeping man is so utterly defenceless that I had been put to great shifts to get any rest at all on the five days’ journey from Bu Mungar to Dakhla. It was not till we got to Mut that I felt I could trust my men enough to risk being caught by them asleep. Even while inhabiting the old store, Dahab and I took it in turns to keep watch during the night.
I awoke the next morning feeling more alive than I had done for some time, and in the train I continued my night’s rest at intervals during the journey.
On reaching Qara, the base of the railway on the edge of the Nile Valley, the train stayed for some minutes and I got out and walked along the platform. I found that I had been a fellow-passenger on the train with old Sheykh Mawhub. The train was packed with natives, but the compartment which he and his son occupied had been left entirely to them.
They were an unobtrusive looking couple. The old man sat huddled up in the far corner of the third-class carriage, on an old rusty looking sheepskin with agula(water bottle) and a handful of dates beside him on the wooden seat. Both he and his son were almost shabbily dressed as ordinarybedawin—his “glad rags” being probably contained in the patched and dilapidatedhurjhe carried with him. No one unacquainted with his identity would have troubled to look at him a second time. But for all that he was a man who probably had as much influence among the Mohammedans in Egypt as any other native.
He was still travelling in his character of a horse dealer, and sold one of his screws to the engineer in charge of the line for £5—it looked a stiff price.
Shortly afterwards, Abdulla Kahal, an old thief of a carpet merchant, living up in the native quarter of Cairo, who acted as head sheykh of the Senussia in Egypt, was removed by them from his office and Sheykh Mawhub was appointed in his place. If there were any emoluments attached to the job, I have sometimes wondered if I could not have made out a claim to some sort of commission on them.
I stopped a few nights with a hospitable friend, on the way to Assiut, to allow Qwaytin time to get through from Dakhla. As I slept most of the time, I must have been a remarkably dull guest. I then went on to Assiut to have it out with my guide.
Having arranged that matter fairly satisfactorily, I took the train for Cairo, left the “romantic desert” to look after itself, and exchanged the heated atmosphere of the “Arabian Nights” for the saner one of Europe.
· · · · · · ·
The following are the main results of my visits to the Libyan Desert:
1. A map of practically the whole desert was compiled from information collected from natives. This contained the names of about seventy new places, not shown on any previous maps. It also showed the distribution of the sand dunes and many unknown hill features.[5]
2. The farthest point that was reached to the south-west of Dakhla was practically the centre of the desert. This journey showed that the pre-existing ideas of this district were entirely wrong, and that the hundreds of thousands of square miles, shown in this part on the old maps as being covered with gigantic dunes, were in reality practically free from drift sand, and that the large dune-field lying to the west of the Egyptian frontier, that Rohlfs had found such an impassable obstruction, came to an end about a day’s march to the south of his route, the sand being all banked up by the high sandstone plateau that we found occupying the centre of the desert.[6]
3. The position of Bu Mungarhattiawas astronomically fixed, and the cliff running from there to Dakhla was mapped for the first time.[7]
4. The cliff forming the eastern boundary of the Farafra depression was mapped, thus showing that the escarpment of the east and north of Kharga is a continuation of the cliff that runs west from Iddaila Oasis, the whole escarpment—except for a narrow break to the north of Farafra—is consequently continuous and runs for some 450 miles. It forms the southern limit of the limestone plateau, and is the main hill feature of this part of the desert.[7]
5. Two small new oases—’Ain el Agwa and ’Ain Khalif—were found in the western portion of the Farafra depression. The site of Bu Gerara was also discovered, and most ofthe isolated little plateau that lies on its south-west was mapped.[8]
6. A survey of the desert to the north of ’Ain Amur showed that the plateau there was riddled with a curious network of little depressions.[9]
7. Several months were spent in studying the sand dunes and their method of formation.[10]
8. A considerable amount of material was collected on the manners, customs, legends, measurements and superstitions of the natives.[11]
9. Notes were also made upon their methods of well sinking, and dividing the flow from the wells.[12]
10. Over 240 characters and inscriptions of the “Libyan” type were found and copied.
11. A number of plants growing in the desert and oases were collected and their geographical distribution worked out.[13]
12. A zoological collection, mainly of insects, was also made.
CUSTOMS, SUPERSTITIONS AND MAGIC
THE natives of the oases in Egypt are known as the Wahatys, and are a feeble lot as compared with the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, with whom they seem racially to be intimately connected. This deterioration in the race is probably due to their poverty, insufficient food, poorer housing accommodation and to the prevalence of the serious form of malaria known as oasis fever.
In their customs the inhabitants of the oases closely resemble the natives of the Nile Valley; but in some respects they are peculiar. Until the railway into Kharga was constructed, the oases were very much more cut off from the outside world than at present. Consequently the inhabitants are in many ways much more primitive than thefellahinof the Nile Valley, and still follow customs which in some cases may have been followed there, but which have long since become obsolete. Many of their peculiarities in this respect are probably confined to the oases, and may never have existed elsewhere.
As an example of the primitive conditions of life in Kharga, it may be noted that the old method of producing fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together is still used by some of the older inhabitants, though the introduction of matches is causing it to die out. Fire is produced in this way by two methods. In one, a stick is held vertically upon a block of wood and rapidly twirled between the palms of the hands; in the other it is rubbed backwards and forwards in a groove on the block with the action of a carpenter sharpening a chisel on a hone. In both cases a pinch of fine sand is sometimes placed between the two pieces of wood in order to increase the friction.