“Some Egyptian royal love-liltSome Sidonian refrain,”in the villa above the bay. In the summer quantities of “Mex Lilies” (Amaryllis) grow on the hills and scent the air with their heavy perfume. A short time before the war an American archæologist made some valuable finds among the foundations of Cleopatra’s villa, and on several occasions coins have been unearthed in the neighbourhood.The present-day Greek colonists of Matruh are not very attractive people. They are very clever at their trade and seem to become prosperous in a remarkably short time. They make their money by squeezing the Arabs, who are forced to deal with them, as there is nobody else from whom they can buy necessities such as tea, sugar, rice, etc. The Greeks have the monopoly of trade and sell their goods at a prohibitive price, quite out of proportion to their worth, even considering the cost of transport. Their favourite system is to buy whole crops of barley from the Arabs before it is ripe, when the owner is particularly hard up. The Administration, to a certain extent, is able to check excessive profiteering, but there are innumerable ways in which the Greek is able to “do” the Arab. It seems a pity, because, in my estimation, the Arab is a much better man than the Greek trader. Not unnaturally, Greeks are very unpopular. Farther along the coast, in Tunis and Algeria, their place is taken by the Jews, but on the Western Desert there are no Jews—so the Greeks have it all their own way.There are generally two or three English officials at Matruh, and possibly their wives, so there isusually more going on there than at any other place on the coast; in fact, Matruh is a sort of metropolis of the desert, but at the same time it is very much a desert station. Lately, when I was staying there, there arrived one evening an enormous new American car containing two English officers on leave, and a very smartly dressed lady, wife of one of them. By amazing good luck they had managed to get through from Alexandria without mishap, stopping a nighten route. On arrival at Matruh they asked to be directed to the “Hotel,” which they had heard was “small, but very clean and comfortable.” They looked exceedingly blank when we told them there was no hotel—and never had been—but they were conducted to the rest house, where they settled down. Next day they complained that the rest house was neither clean nor comfortable. The greatest disadvantage, to my mind, in all the rest houses on the Western Desert is the multitude of fleas which nothing that one can do is able to destroy or even keep under. This car was not the kind used by the Administration on the desert; the party had brought no spare parts for it, no servant, no provisions except some biscuits and a tin or two of peaches, only a few glass bottles of water, which were naturally almost boiling after some hours in the heat of an August day, and none of them could speak any Arabic. At dinner that night they all appeared in full evening dress which they had brought with them, and, to everybody’s horror, they announced their intention of “running down to Siwa” on the nextday. We explained carefully that to reach Siwa they would have to cross 200 miles of waterless desert, and no car ever attempted the trip alone. But nothing seemed to daunt them. Finally, however, the Governor heard of their plan and forbade it forthwith; they started off to Alexandria on the following day, with an escort of two cars, and as they went they murmured indignantly about “red tape and absurd restrictions.” It is amazing what a strange idea of the desert some people seem to have.Matruh is the centre of the sponge fishing industry which is carried on during certain months of the year along the coast. The sponge fishers are mostly Italians, and a fine-looking lot of men. They have a little fleet of sailing-boats, and one steam-tug. The boats put out for several days at a time, working up and down the coast. They use no diving-bells, but when a man dives he holds on to a heavy stone, which sinks rapidly; he makes a jab at the sponges, cutting off one, and then lets go of the stone and rises to the surface. Sometimes the men seem to bound out of the water when they rise to the top. They are able to remain submerged for several minutes. But the work tells on their health; they are highly paid, but they say themselves that they usually die at about forty, and there is always the horrid possibility of being attacked by sharks, which are more plentiful in the Mediterranean than they used to be before the war. At Sollum there are several graves of sponge fishers who were killed inthis way. I never bought a single sponge myself during the whole time I was on the Western Desert. When I was at Sollum I used to ride out along the shore with a syce carrying a bag after every heavy storm and we would usually pick up about a dozen first-class sponges worth about half a guinea each at home. Fortunately, the Arabs had no use for such things as sponges. One found pumice stone lying about the shore also. During the war an enormous amount of wreckage was swept ashore and collected by patrols of Camel Corps for building purposes and firewood. Sometimes the whole coast would be littered with cotton from a wrecked ship carrying cotton to Europe; another time we collected stacks of good brown paper, which is still being used on the Western Desert, and another time a number of casks of wine and rum were picked up.Between Matruh and Sollum there is a little place called Sidi Barrani, which consists of a police barracks and a high gaunt building which is a rest house and office, and about half a dozen white bungalows belonging to Greek traders. Each of these places has either a British officer or, if it is not sufficiently important, an Egyptian mamur who is responsible for keeping order, etc. Barrani is a desolate place, but very beautiful in springtime when the country is ablaze with flowers and green budding corn. Rest houses in Egypt and the Sudan correspond to the Dak Bungalows in India. Those on the Western Desert are quite comfortably furnished and well provided with plate and linen. An old Sudanesesoldier looks after each rest house. It is a relief after trekking along the coast by car or camel to arrive at a place where everything is ready and, in winter-time, to get a roof over one’s head, though probably a leaky one.Two roads run from Barrani to Sollum; one goes along the coast among the strangely white sand-hills which are a feature of the district, and the other, which is less liable to be flooded in winter, is higher and farther inland. The country that one passes on the upper road between Barrani and Sollum, between the blue Mediterranean and the high rocky Scarp that runs parallel to the sea, is very attractive, especially in the soft evening light. In the heat of the day it looks dry and parched, except during a month or two immediately after the rains. One meets very few travellers on the narrow road that winds up and down, round low hills which are covered with heathery undergrowth, and often topped with rough stone cairns. Some places are very like a Scotch moor, or a stretch of Dartmoor. There is a certain plant which is the colour of purple heather, and another that looks from a distance like withered bracken. In summer-time, especially on the lower road, one is constantly deceived by the vivid mirage that hovers above some salt swamps close to the white sand-hills on the shore.Occasionally, one passes a party of Arabs, with their skirts tucked high above the knees, stalking along behind their woolly shuffling camels, orperhaps one meets a patrol of Camel Corps, black Sudanese, in khaki uniforms, trotting briskly along on fast riding camels; then an old bedouin sheikh, wrapped in his long silk shawl, ambles past on his Arab pony. Farther on, one smells the sharp sweet scent of burning brushwood that comes from the fires outside the low black tents where some Arabs are camping, and one can see them squatting round the flame in the tent doors, with their white woollen cloaks pulled over them, while in the distance a boy drives the camels and sheep close up to the camp for the night. On the lower road, near the shore, between Barrani and Sollum, there is a lonely little hill crowned by a rough block-house where there used to be a detachment of the Camel Corps. This place is called Bagbag and was used as a frontier post before the war in Tripoli between the Italians and the Turks. As one approaches Sollum the escarpment on the left comes nearer, the foot-hills cease, and the road runs across a mile or two of flat country within sound and sight of the sea right at the foot of the towering cliffs. Before arriving at the camp the road crosses several deep water-courses which come “from thymy hills down to the sea-beat shore” through rocky ravines in the Scarp; they are dry and sandy in summer, but during the rains they become rushing torrents, quite impossible to cross in a car. Riding home in the evening, one sees a number of twinkling fires in the bedouin camp, and above them, sharply outlined against the primrose-coloured sky, is the top of the great rockyScarp, like a dark wall that one has to ascend before reaching the desert.Sollum consists of about a score of little buildings, and a large bedouin encampment, situated on the shore of a bay in an angle made by the sea and the Scarp which rises to a height of over 600 feet immediately behind the camp, and juts out into the sea in a rocky promontory. There are several wells at Sollum and one little orchard of fig-trees which breaks the monotony of the brown-coloured soil. Most of the buildings, including a large Camel Corps barracks, were erected since the war. There are one or two little shops, owned by Greeks, and a rough native café presided over by an evil-looking, one-eyed Egyptian, who is also the barber of the place. For a long time there was a British garrison, but this was recently withdrawn, leaving a force of Camel Corps and a small detachment of Light Cars in the old Turkish fort on the top of the cliffs above the bay. At one time there were about a dozen officers quartered here, and five or six of them had their wives with them. Sollum became quite like an Indian hill station—perhaps even worse, and when a certain elderly general, well known as a misogynist, inspected the place, he stated in his report that there were six officers’ wives and six different sets, the result being that they were very shortly moved and replaced by unmarried officers.One gets to feel hemmed in at Sollum. On the north lies the sea, and on the south and west rise the rocky cliffs of the Scarp. The only open country isalong the coast towards the east. A steep twisting motor road, like a Swiss mountain pass, leads up the face of the cliff on the track of an old Roman road, and several very precipitous paths ascend the Scarp behind the camp to the high table-land above. But once one has climbed the Scarp and reached the top there is a great flat plain stretching out into the distance, which is good country for riding, and full of hares and gazelle. This is the bedouins’ grazing ground, and every few miles one comes across great herds of camel and sheep, and large camps of Arabs. There are a few rock cisterns on the northern edge of the plateau and from these the Arabs get their water. They often camp 10 or 15 miles away from a well and send in a party of women and boys to fill the water-skins every other day. Arabs seldom bathe, even when they are camped close to the sea, but fortunately the sun is a wonderful purifier.The nomad Arabs of the Western Desert are a hardy, picturesque race, very different from the fellahin of Egypt. Their active open-air life makes them strong and healthy. Patriarchalism is a dominant system among them; they are divided into a number of tribes and sub-tribes, each under its own sheikh who is responsible to the Government for the good behaviour of his people.These tribal divisions breed factions, enmities and lifelong feuds, which result in occasional raids and forays on neighbouring tribes, and the carrying off of camels. Another source of dispute are the rightsand ownerships of wells, which cause frequent fights, so a District Officer on the coast needs to be well acquainted with the tribal politics of the Arabs in his area. One of the greatest grievances of the Arabs on the Egyptian side of the frontier is the fact that, since the Senussi rebellion in 1916, they are not allowed to be in possession of fire-arms, but their neighbours, over the border in Tripoli, are under no such restrictions. The Arabs on the Egyptian desert argue, quite rightly, that they are liable to suffer from raids by the western Arabs who can dash across the frontier, drive off a herd of camels, and retire again into Tripoli where they will be safe from pursuit, as the Italians have very little influence outside their coastal towns, and of course if anybody belonging to the Egyptian Administration ventured across the frontier without an invitation, and was caught, it might almost lead to international complications. But the Egyptian Government considers that the forces of the Administration are sufficient to keep order on the frontier and protect the Arabs. (The situation is not dissimilar to that in Ireland during 1920.)The Arabs are a pastoral people. As the Siwans depend almost entirely upon their date palms, so do the Arabs depend on their camels and sheep, and to a lesser extent on the barley crop. Their tents, called “kreish,” in which they live, are made of camel wool, woven into long strips and fastened together, supported in the middle by two poles about 6 feet high, sloping down to about 3 feetabove the ground, with a movable fringe hung round the sides from the bottom of the roof-piece. These tents are very comfortable, especially in summer-time when the sides are kept open, propped up with short poles. There is no furniture inside them, but the floor is covered with matting and bedouin carpets, which are made of finely spun wool, white sheep’s wool—sometimes dyed scarlet, brown, grey—yellow camel’s wool, and black goat’s hair. They are woven in stripes and geometrical designs, and ornamented with black and red tassels. The largest tents are often 20 or 30 feet long and 10 feet wide, sometimes divided into two parts by a striped Tripoli blanket which is hung across the middle. One can be very comfortable in one of these tents, with no furniture except a heap of carpets and rugs.Each bedouin has two sets of tents, a thin summer one, and a thicker one which is used during the winter; the latter is lined with a wonderful patchwork made from pieces of coloured cotton and linen, like an old-fashioned patchwork quilt. When it rains the wool of the roof swells and tightens, and the water slides off the steep sides of the tent as it does from the proverbial duck’s back. Being so low they are not torn up by the wind, and I have seen a whole camp of army tents laid flat by a hurricane which tore many of them to pieces, while the Arab ones remained standing and dry within.In appearance the Western Desert Arabs are fairer than the Arabs of Arabia and Palestine. Thisis probably due to the fact that when they originally took the country it was occupied by Berbers, a blue-eyed, fair-haired type, who are supposed to have crossed over from Europe into Africa at some remote period several thousand years ago. The Arabs are slightly darker than the Egyptians with features that are distinctly Semitic, expressing more intelligence than the fellahin. They are of a finer build and more wiry. Some of the Arab women are very handsome, and their costume is particularly becoming. They usually wear a long black robe with full sleeves, but on special occasions the robe is of striped silk, and a red woollen belt, several yards long, twisted round the waist like a cummerbund. Their head-dress consists of a coloured silk handkerchief tied tightly over the head, but allowing two coils of braided hair to appear on both sides of the face, then, above this, a long black scarf with a coloured fringe and a red and yellow border twisted into a high head-dress, folded like a mediæval coif below the chin, with the fringed ends hanging down behind. Soft scarlet leather boots complete the costume. Almost all the women tattoo their chins and often their foreheads with a blue pattern; this is considered by them to be very ornamental, but to European eyes it is singularly ugly. Old women dye their hair a brilliant orange colour, and men sometimes tint the tips of their beards, as well as their horses’ tails, with henna, presumably following what one sees advertised as “The henna cult of beauty.”As in most Eastern countries when an Arabmarries he pays “marriage money” to the parents or guardians of the bride. So a daughter is a source of riches to her parents if she is attractive enough to be worth a handsome dowry. The amount varies on the Western Desert from about five to a hundred pounds, according to the age, appearance and position of the girl. Half is paid on marriage, and the remainder is paid later by instalments, and it is liable to be forfeited if the wife does not behave well, but if the husband divorces the wife he must pay up the residue of the money to her parents. This makes a man very careful in the choice of a wife. In many ways the plan of buying a wife on the instalment system is a good one. Arabs have more freedom in these matters than many other Orientals. Women are not veiled, and men and girls have plenty of opportunities of seeing each other, and even speaking together, before marriage, though the actual negotiations are always carried out by a third person representing each party. Arabs rarely have more than two wives, though their religion allows them to have four, and divorce is not so very common among them. The women have a certain amount of influence which they exert without the men quite knowing it, but although their position is better than that of the Egyptian women, and infinitely better than that of Siwan women, they have a very hard time. They weave wool and make tents and carpets; they milk the flocks and make butter and cheese; they grind corn on rough mill-stones for making bread; they fetch water, often from a well many milesdistant; and they collect wood every day for the camp fires; all this in addition to looking after their children and cooking. Mohammedan women of all classes are not expected to concern themselves with religion; they are not allowed to enter mosques, except on one day of the year, and during seven years in the Sudan and Egypt I only twice saw a Mohammedan woman praying in public. There are very definite social divisions among the Arabs, especially among their women. The wives of respectable Arabs never associate with or speak to women whose morals are considered doubtful. These ladies of thedemi-mondeinhabit tents, generally on the outskirts of the camps, and are conspicuous, as in every part of the world, by the brilliant colours of their clothes, and their many ornaments.The Arabs are a kindly, hospitable people, not phlegmatic like the fellahin, but easily moved. I had some very good friends among them. When I was out on trek, if I came across an encampment, they would see us from a long distance off and invariably come out and invite me to dismount and rest awhile, and “fadhl” in their camp. “Fadhl” is an untranslatable word which means roughly “Stop and pass the time of day.” Sometimes I used to accept their hospitality for a few hours in the heat of the day, and rest in a cool dark tent, or wait talking in the tents in the evening while my men rode on ahead and prepared my camp a little distance away. One could never camp near bedouins, as their camels generally had mange, which is very catching, andtheir dogs were a nuisance at night, being “snappers up of unconsidered trifles” in the way of food, etc., and not always “unconsidered” either. These dogs are white or yellow woolly creatures who guard the flocks with great apparent courage, and attack any stranger, but when threatened they run yelping away with their tails between their legs. When I dismounted I would wait for a minute or so talking to the men, so as to give the Arabs a chance to arrange things. Women would run frantically from tent to tent carrying mats and carpets, and shooing away sheep and goats and small brown children; then the sheikh would lead me to the largest tent, spread with black and scarlet carpets, with probably a long striped blanket hung across the centre and screening one side of it. Or on warm summer nights the carpets were spread in front of the tents, on the open desert under the stars. Unless I specially asked to be excused the finest kid of the herd would be caught and killed and an hour or so later it would be brought in, boiled, on an enormous wooden dish, and I would be expected to eat “heavily” of this, also of the “asida” that followed. Asida, a dish which I always had the greatest difficulty in pretending to eat, consists of lightly cooked flour dough, with a hole scooped in the middle full of oil or melted fat and sugar, however,de gustibus non disputandum. The sheikh, and perhaps one or two of his relations, would join in the feast, watched with the greatest interest by the ladies of the camp who would collect on the other side of the curtain, and gaze firmly atme from underneath it, whispering, giggling and tinkling their bangles and ornaments as they moved. If I knew the people well they would not bother about hanging up a curtain, and women and children would creep into the tent and sit staring from the far end, or carry on their usual occupations—milking goats, spinning or making semna—but no woman would ever eat in the presence of a man out of respect to him, and a son would never think of sitting down and eating with his father unless he was specially invited to do so. Generally the sons waited on the party, and ate afterwards.Semna is a kind of cheese made from goat’s milk. In the morning the sheep and goats are milked into wooden bowls, the milk is poured into a water-skin and rolled vigorously up and down by two women seated on the ground till it thickens into a sort of butter. The addition of a certain herb is needed if it is to be made into cheese. One kind of white butter made by the Arabs is very good and forms an excellent substitute for real butter, and a change from the tinned species.Arabs are very free in their conversation, and personal remarks are not considered to be ill-mannered. They usually ask one’s age, and inquire whether people are married or not. The idea of a man being over twenty and still unmarried surprises them enormously; they think that he can’t afford to buy a wife. They always show a keen interest in what they consider the peculiar habits of Europeans. Hardly any of them can read or write, and very fewhave ever been off the desert. When a bedouin gets to Alexandria he is like a countryman in London. The bedouin are superstitious, but not as intensely so as the oasis dwellers. In every tent one notices a little bundle of charms hung on one of the tent poles to avert the Evil Eye. One such collection would consist of a black cock’s leg, a red rag, a dried frog, two bones, and a little leather charm, tied together and hung on the pole.One day I was sitting talking to some Arabs in a tent when suddenly I realized that everybody was staring in a fascinated way at my mouth. I wondered what was the matter. Then I heard the women whispering to themselves: “He must be a very wealthy one; see how he adorns himself with gold.” I couldn’t imagine what they meant as I was only wearing a shirt, shorts and stockings, nothing very remarkable in the way of clothes. Then I heard something about “Gold tooth,” and I realized that their attention had been caught by a hideous gold crown that had been put over one of my front teeth in a great hurry just before I left Cairo the last time I was on leave. They thought it a most attractive and novel form of decoration.When Arabs get money they either invest it in sheep and camels or bury it in the ground. Some of these men who lead the most primitive lives, living in a tent and feeding on a meagre diet of milk, bread, rice and dates, are the owners of many thousands of sheep and hundreds of camels. Sheep are generally worth two or three pounds, and camels about fifteenpounds each. Besides this, they often have a little bag of gold buried somewhere in the desert. They never spend their money on creature comforts, and the poorest and the richest men live practically in the same way. My Sudanese Camel Corps men used to criticize them, saying what a waste it seemed that they had so much money, and apparently didn’t know how to enjoy it, whereas in the Sudan when a man made money he would build a house, feed better and live in a more comfortable way than his neighbours. An Arab when he was “mabsout” (well off) didn’t seem to know how to be “mabsout”—meaning also “happy.”Once I was camped near some Arabs and one of them, an old sheikh, was ill and considered by his relations likely to die. He was known to possess some money buried somewhere in the neighbourhood, and his relatives were most anxious that he should not die until he had disclosed the hiding-place. But the old man obstinately refused to tell them where it was. A deputation of his heirs called on me and asked me to make him speak. I agreed that it was unfortunate for them, but I could do nothing. When I suggested that they should take him to the hospital at Sollum, they were quite indignant and said that evidently Allah willed that he should die; the only distressing thing was his obstinacy about the money. This went on for several days, and then, to every one’s surprise, the old gentleman suddenly recovered. Some of his relations seemed sorry, and some relieved. When Ilast saw him he was watching a “fantasia” which was being held in honour of his recovery, with a pleased, benignant expression. Personally, I always had a faint idea that the money never existed, but all his people firmly believe in it, and he has kept the secret to this day.A FALCONER OUTSIDE A BEDOUIN CAMPOne rather associates the idea of an Arab with his steed, a wonderful fiery creature that skims across the desert like a bird. The ponies on the Western Desert are a somewhat sorry collection. Only a few of the well-to-do Arabs keep horses. They are small hardy ponies very unlike the Arab steed of fiction. But they look better when they are ridden, with their high scarlet saddles, great iron stirrups and gaily tasselled bridles. The Arabs ride them either at an uncomfortable jog trot or at a tearing gallop. They have some curious ideas on the “points” of a pony; certain things are considered lucky or unlucky; for instance, if a pony has white stockings on both forelegs it is much esteemed, but a white stocking on one fore and one hind leg is exceedingly unlucky. There are many stretches of hard stony ground along the coast, so horses have to be shod; this is done by covering the whole of the foot with a flat piece of iron, and results in a terrific noise when they gallop over stony ground.There is very little sport to be had on this part of the desert. The only form that the Arabs indulge in is the ancient pastime of hawking. Certain men of each tribe are proficient in training and hunting with hawks. Skill as a falconer seems to be hereditary inthe same way as snake charming, fortune telling and various other practices. The Arabs prefer catching a full-grown bird and training it, to taking a young bird from the nest, which would appear to be the easiest plan. The method of trapping them is rather clever. When an Arab wants to catch a hawk, he takes a pigeon, slightly clips its wings to prevent its escape, and fastens a number of horsehair loops round its body, then he releases the pigeon, which flutters away. A hawk sights the pigeon, swoops down and becomes entangled in the meshes of the horsehair, so that the Arab is able to run up and secure it. The hawk takes many months to train. Gradually it becomes accustomed to its master, who invariably feeds it himself, and whistles when he gives it food in a way that it learns to know. Later he takes the bird on his wrist, hooded, and fastened by a leather thong; by degrees it becomes accustomed to his wrist and then he carries it about with him, still hooded. Finally he removes the hood and lets it tackle a hare or two which he brings to it, then one day he takes it out on to the desert and looses it at a running hare. The bird attacks the hare, brings it down, and sits on its prey till the master arrives, or if it flies up he draws it back by whistling and flinging a lump of meat into the air. Sometimes an Arab will catch over a dozen hares in a day’s hawking, but occasionally, after months of training, when he looses his bird for the first time it will fly away and never return. One sees a tethered hawk outside a tent in almost all the big encampments. A well-trainedbird is worth several pounds among the Arabs, and it is very difficult to persuade them to part with one; they are used to catch pigeons, quail and other birds, besides hares.Another sport which we went in for along the coast was coursing hares with Silugi dogs. These dogs are gazelle hounds and came originally from Arabia. There are now a certain number of them in Egypt, and all the officials on the Western Desert keep one or two. Silugis are very similar to greyhounds, generally white or pale coffee colour, with feathery tails and long-haired, silky ears. They are very fast indeed, but have no sense of scent, and hunt entirely by sight. They are rather delicate and very nervous, and in most cases they show little affection for human beings. At Matruh there was quite a pack which included a couple of fox-hounds, silugis, several terriers—of sorts—and a few nondescript bedouin pariahs. The Matruh pack specialized in foxes, but at Sollum there were more hares than foxes. The desert hares are rather smaller than the English ones, but they seemed to be faster.The open country above the Scarp stretches over alternate patches of hard stony ground, and strips covered with low vegetation where a certain plant that smells like thyme predominates. Generally two or three of us went hunting together, or if there were only two Englishmen we took a couple of Sudanese syces or servants, who thoroughly enjoy all forms of hunting, all mounted on ponies, and accompanied by four or five dogs. We rode in extended orderwith intervals of about thirty yards between each rider, the dogs generally trotting along in front. Whoever raised a hare gave a wild yell and galloped after it, “hell for leather,” the rest following. The hounds would sight the hare and fling themselves in pursuit. Quite often the hare got away before they saw it, or managed to reach a bit of cover well ahead of the hounds, and then they would slacken down, at a loss, and wait till the riders came up and scoured the country round to put up the hare again. It sounds rather unsporting, but the hare stood a very good chance; in fact, generally more than half of them got away, and it gave one some splendid long gallops across the country. Sometimes we would raise a gazelle, and give chase, but few dogs or ponies can catch up a gazelle when it gets a little start and is really moving. I think the scale of speed was, gazelle, silugi, hare and ponies. It was a primitive form of hunting, but one liked it none the less, and jugged hare made a welcome change in the menu.There were a certain number of gazelle on the desert quite close to the top of the Scarp and it was occasionally possible to get a shot at them, but they were very shy, and needed careful stalking over country that was almost without cover. When anybody went out specially to shoot gazelle none would appear, but when riding along on a camel one saw numbers of them; however, by the time one had dismounted and loaded the gazelle would be out of range, probably standing a long distance away “at gaze.” Gazelle do not mind camels if they have nopeople on them, and the Arabs sometimes get quite close to a gazelle by stalking it from among a number of grazing camels. At one time, after the war, the men of the Light Car Patrols took to hunting gazelle in Ford cars with a machine-gun; fortunately this practice was forbidden, but it scared the gazelle from the neighbourhood for a considerable time.Numbers of rock pigeons nested among the cliffs on the coast, and quantities of them collected round the camel lines and fed off the refuse grain. In the autumn thousands of quail arrived on the coast from Europe; they were often so exhausted that the Arab boys could catch them in their hands. The natives netted them for sale to the Greeks, who exported them alive in crates to Alexandria. One got very tired of eating quail during the month or two that they were in season; still, at first they were extremely good. Among the wadis in the Scarp there were occasional coveys of red-legged partridge, and lately there have been a few sand-grouse about the high country; once or twice I have seen duck on the marshes near the sea, and an occasional bustard, but, on the whole, there was very little to be had in the way of shooting.SILUGI HOUNDSA number of jackals and a few wild cats lived in the caves among the wadis in the Scarp. Their mournful wailings echoed through the rocky ravines, and owing to its eeriness at night the bedouins thought that it was haunted by evil spirits. But in the daytime they climbed about it quite unconcernedly, and their goats snatched a scanty pasturage amongthe rocks. During most of the year the Scarp looks harsh and forbidding, but after the rains a change comes over it; one notices a faint green tinge about the cliffs, and a closer examination shows that it is covered with blossoming flowers and rock plants. The slopes become gay with mauve, pink, yellow and blue flowers, saltworts, samphires, sea lavender, yellow nettle, campanulas, little irises, marigolds, ranunculas, Spanish broom, masses of night-scented stock and a quantity of other little flowering plants which clothe the grim rocks in a robe of brilliant colour. The flat country, too, blossoms out into colour. One sees scarlet poppies, mallows, and tall scabious among the budding corn, and fields of swaying asphodel, and the whole desert is scented in the evening by the night-scented stock.The rain that causes this transformation falls occasionally during the winter months from November till about March. During this time there are clouds in the sky, and sometimes terrific downpours. The Arabs greet the first rain of the season with great delight, the men sing and shout, and the women raise piercing shrieks to show their pleasure. Unless there is a good rainfall none of the barley grows, and the grazing on which the sheep and camels depend is insufficient. When it rains the wadis become rushing torrents, roads are impassable, every house leaks, and many of the roofs subside. The camels have to be led from their flooded lines to the higher ground where they stand shivering. Camels hate rain. If one is out on trek and a really stiffshower comes on the camels barrack down, with their backs towards the direction of the rain, and nothing will make them budge till it is over. One just has to wait till it stops. If the track is muddy and wet the camels slither and slide and one must dismount and lead them; they were made for hot, dry countries, not for a damp, wet climate. Hardly any of the houses at Matruh or Sollum are watertight, and it was nothing out of the ordinary when one called on a man to find him camped out in the middle of his most watertight room, surrounded by his perishable belongings, with a sort of canopy consisting of a waterproof sheet and a mackintosh or two stretched out above him. But though rain storms were very violent they did not last long, and the sun soon came out and dried everything up again. When, however, one was caught by a bad storm out on trek on the desert, with only a thin tent, and no change of clothes, it was very disagreeable.The word “house” is misleading. People imagine at least a large comfortable bungalow. But on the Western Desert the average house occupied by an English official, with possibly a wife, was a three-roomed stone hut, with plastered walls and a wooden roof, with a very thin layer of cement. The largest room would be about twelve feet square, the plaster invariably crumbled off the walls owing to the salt in it, and the cement invariably cracked in the summer so that the rain poured through the roof in the winter. Cement for some reason was almost impossible to get. One always heard that for “nextyear” the Administration had included the building of real houses for its officials in the Budget, but this item was always one of the first to be struck out on the grounds of economy. Nobody has yet discovered an ideal roofing for the Western Desert, where there are extremes of heat and cold and occasional terrific hurricanes and downpours. So far, the best type of abode seems to be the bedouin tent.One of the chief events on the coast was the arrival of the cruiser,Abdel Moneim, which came up from Alexandria about once every fortnight or three weeks bringing mails, supplies and sometimes high officials on tours of inspection. She spent a day or two in harbour at Matruh and Sollum on each trip. This little cruiser was built in Scotland for the Egyptian Government, and with two other boats comprises the navy of Egypt. She was a neat-looking grey ship, always very spick and span with fresh paint and shining brass, manned by a crew of Egyptians in white or blue sailors’ uniform and red tarbooshes. Her captain was an English bimbashi in the Egyptian Coastguards Administration, whose uniform was somewhat confusing, as he wore, besides the naval rank on his sleeve, a crown and star on his shoulder. The cruiser was carefully built so as to allow a spacious saloon and two state cabins, for the accommodation of the Director-General. Two machine-guns were posted fore and aft. TheAbdel Moneimhad the well-deserved reputation of being warranted to make the very best sailor seasick, even in comparatively calm weather. Sherolled and pitched simultaneously in a more horrid manner than any ship I have ever known. The result was that, when people went down the coast to Alexandria on leave, they arrived in Egypt looking and feeling like nothing on earth, and spent the first few days of their all too short leave recovering from the evil after-effects of the voyage. I have never yet met anyone who really enjoyed a trip on the cruiser. Personally, the only time that I felt comfortable on board was when we were firmly moored to the quay at Matruh or Sollum. When the high officials landed after a sea trip they were generally feeling so ill that their visits were not entirely a pleasure to the people who were being inspected.Occasionally misguided individuals, who knew nothing about it, got permission to go up to Sollum and back by cruiser, hoping for a pleasant little trip on the Mediterranean. Generally, when they arrived at Matruh, they inquired anxiously whether it was possible to return to Alexandria by car, or even by camel. Some queer visitors sometimes came on these “joy rides,” but very little joy was left in them by the time they reached Sollum. On one occasion, a Mr. B. of the Labour Corps, a Board School master in private life, arrived by cruiser at Matruh. He announced that he had come to study the coast and the Arabs. He was just the type that Kipling describes so well in his poems. The Governor invited him to lunch; he arrived in spurs, belt, etc., though it was the summer and every one else was wearing the fewest and thinnest clothes; however,that may have been politeness. There happened to be three or four other men present. At lunch Mr. B. proceeded to air his views on how the desert should be run; we heard some startling facts about it; he disapproved of the Administration, and told us so; he then proceeded to tell us about the Sudan, as he had lately spent one week in an hotel at Khartoum. The Governor had been recently transferred from the Sudan, where he had been Governor of one of the largest provinces, and as it happened every single man present had served there for some considerable time, so, naturally, we were interested to be told a few facts about it!A couple of days later I happened to go down the coast with Mr. B. and a certain District Officer. The latter spent his whole time, when he wasn’t ill, telling Mr. B. the most outrageously impossible stories of camels, Arabs and the desert, which he swallowed unblinkingly and noted down in a copybook in order to give lectures, so he told us, at his club when he returned home. That club must have heard some startling stories. One of the facts—or fictions—that interested him particularly was a description of “watch camels which are posted by the Arabs round their flocks and when a stranger appears they gallop across to the camp and warn their masters.” Another very vivid story was the description of a whole herd of camels going mad from hydrophobia. It is wonderful how credulous some people can be, but I think he deserved it.CHAPTER IITHE DESERT“So on, ever on, spreads the path of the Desert,Wearily, wearily,Sand, ever sand—not a gleam of the fountain;Sun, ever sun—not a shade from the mountain;As a sea on a sea flows the width of the DesertDrearily, drearily.”THE Western Desert of Egypt is regulated by the Frontier Districts Administration, a comparatively new department of the Egyptian Government which was formed during the war and took over many of the duties of the old Egyptian Coastguards Administration. The F.D.A. is a military Administration with British officers, and is responsible for the Western Desert, Sinai and the country between the Red Sea coast and the Nile. In each of these provinces there is a Governor and several District Officers and officers of the Camel Corps. The Military Administrator at the head of the whole Administration is Colonel G. G. Hunter, C.B., C.M.G., and the Governor of the Western Desert is at present Colonel M. S. Macdonnell. The forces of the F.D.A. consist of a Sudanese Camel Corps and local police.On the Western Desert there is one company of Camel Corps, about 170 strong, divided into threesections, of which two are stationed on the coast and one in the Siwa oasis. The duties of the Camel Corps are practically those of mounted police, patrolling the coast and frontier, preventing smuggling and gun running, and keeping order among the Arabs in case of any disturbance or trouble. But since the successful termination of the British operations against the Senussi in 1917 the Western Desert has been very peaceable, and the Arabs seem to be thoroughly satisfied with the organization by which they are now governed. During all the trouble in Egypt in 1919-21, when the country was seething with anti-British agitations, there were absolutely no disturbances or demonstrations among the Arabs of the Western Desert, and I have heard them in their tents discussing, quite genuinely, the foolishness of the goings-on in Egypt.The F.D.A. Camel Corps was originally formed of Sudanese men from the Coastguard Camel Corps, with a large proportion of “yellow bellies” (Egyptians) who were gradually weeded out and replaced by Sudanese and Sudan Arabs, who were enlisted on the borders of Egypt, as the Sudan Government does not allow recruiting inside its territories except for the Egyptian Army. The F.D.A. Camel Corps is supposed to consist entirely of Sudanese, but a certain number of the men who were enlisted in the regions of Luxor and Kom Ombo are not real Sudanis. They are very well paid, provided with good uniforms and rations, and a certain percentage are allowed to have their wives with them on thecoast. Every camp has its “harimat”—married quarters—where the married men and their families live. But before a man is allowed to marry he has to pass a test in musketry. Many of the men marry Arab women, and this sometimes caused considerable trouble among the Sudanese wives, who are by no means fond of their Arab “sisters.” As they all live close together in rather cramped quarters they have a very lively time. One’s office hours are often occupied in endeavouring to pacify some irate old Sudanese lady who brings a furious complaint that the Arab wife of her next-door neighbour is “carrying on” with her husband. Or one gets a long involved case like the following story to inquire into, generally when there is a great deal of other work to be done.Ombashi (corporal) Suliman Hassan married an Arab lady called Halima bint—daughter of—Ahmed Abu Taleb; when she married her father gave her an old primus stove, a favourite possession of the Arabs at Sollum, which he had bought from the servant of one of the English officers—this incidentally caused another inquiry. The marriage was not a success, and after six months of unhappy married life Ombashi Suliman divorced his wife. Apparently he “celebrated” the divorce “not wisely but too well,” because on the next day he got a month’s hard labour for being drunk on duty. He took the primus with him when he went to prison. Halima retired to Bagbag with her goods and chattels, and after a suitable interval she married another CamelCorps man, this time a “naffer”—private—who brought her back with him to Sollum.Ombashi Suliman had also consoled himself, and presented the primus stove, now very worn and shaky, to his new wife, a buxom Sudanese. She sold it to her married sister. It exploded and set a tent on fire; so the sister gave it to her little girl Zumzum, a small black infant with tight curls and one pink garment. Then one day Halima saw the primus, her primus, in the hands of the small Zumzum, and remembered about it. She rushed home to her new husband and stirred him to action; so he arrived at my office with a long incoherent complaint, demanding justice and the return of the stove.I had to spend an entire morning unravelling this history and examining endless witnesses, who all wished to talk about any subject except the one I was getting at. When the present wife and the divorced wife of Ombashi Suliman met outside the office they were with difficulty restrained from fighting, and the lurid details which were wafted through the window, about the lives and antecedents of both ladies, were interesting, but quite unprintable. Eventually the small Zumzum, now in a state of inaudible terror, produced the primus, which was found to be worn out, irreparable, and absolutely useless.One of the features of Sollum is a little cluster of tents and huts, near the Camel Corps Camp, which is known as the “Booza Camp.” It is run by about a dozen elderly Sudanese widows and divorcees whomanufacture “marissa,” a drink made from barley. The men are allowed here at certain times and on holidays, as marissa is not permitted to be brewed in the camp. The wives have the strongest objection to this institution which attracts their husbands away from home, as a public-house does in England, though the dusky barmaids could not possibly be called attractive. One can rightly say of the Sudanese that their favourite diversions are wine, women and song.The Sudanis of the Camel Corps are a very likeable lot. They are thoroughly sporting and have a strong sense of humour, but in many ways they are very like children. They have an aptitude for drill and soldiering, but are useless without British officers owing to their lack of initiative. They are faithful and become very attached to Englishmen, but they have a keen sense of discrimination. Like all native troops there is a tendency for each man to consider himself a born leader, and offer his advice and opinion on all occasions; this takes a long time to subdue. But with careful training they become efficient soldiers, and they look very smart in their khaki uniform, which is rather similar to an Indian’s. Physically many of them are splendid men, very powerful and muscular, like bronze statues, but although the climate of their own country is intensely hot they are by no means immune from the effects of sun, and they seem to be almost more liable to catch fever than an Englishman.The three sections take it in turns to go to Siwa,where they generally remain from six to nine months. It is not a popular place, in spite of the fact that every man is allowed to marry, with no restrictions, such as first having to pass a musketry test. The men much prefer being on the coast where there is more going on, as they are at heart intensely sociable, and also, though living is cheap at Siwa, the climate has a bad reputation.The best time to go to Siwa is in the spring, when the weather is cool and there is probably water on the road. The trip needs a good deal of preparing for, especially as one has to take down stores for many months. A camel patrol from Siwa used to meet a patrol from the coast at the half-way point on the road once every month, and in this way the mails were sent down to the oasis. A car patrol was supposed to go down at certain intervals, but they were very irregular, and sometimes, on the few occasions when they did come, they forgot to bring the mail. One depended so much on letters at Siwa that this was an intense disappointment. The following is a rough diary of a trek down to Siwa in the hot weather.Saturday, July 24th.Spent a busy morning making final arrangements for the trip and seeing that everything was ready. We moved off from Sollum at 3.30 p.m., myself, 39 men, 50 camels, and one dog. The whole camp turned out to see us off, including many small black babies belonging to the men. Some of the men weptprofusely at parting with their wives, but almost before we were out of Sollum I heard them gaily discussing which of the Siwan ladies they would honour by marriage. Saturday is a fortunate day to start on a journey. Apparently the prophet Mohammed favoured Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but Saturdays most of all. Another good omen was the appearance of two crows which we passed just outside the camp; a single crow would have been cause for anxiety, and to see a running hare before camping at night is considered a very serious piece of ill-luck. I think this started from the idea that a running hare was a sign of people on the move close at hand, probably enemies.We marched along the bottom of the Scarp and reached Bir Augerin, where we camped for the night, at sunset. At Augerin there is one of the many rock cisterns that one finds on the coast. These cisterns are large rectangular underground tanks, often 40 feet square and 20 feet high, with one or two square holes in the roof large enough to admit a man. The Arabs draw the water up in leather buckets on the end of a rope, or if the supply is low one man goes down and fills the bucket which is drawn up by the man above. They are always built in the middle of a hollow with several stone runnels that carry the rain water down from the higher ground. Generally there is a mound near the well with a sheikh’s tomb on the top of it, a cairn surrounded by a low wall, ornamented with a few little white flags which are contributed by passing travellers as a thank-offeringfor the water. According to M. Maspero, the cisterns along the coast were built by the Romans in the second century A.D., and were in use until the middle or end of the fourth century. Most of them are now so out of repair that they only hold water for a very short time after the rains have ceased, and when they are dry they become the home of snakes, bats and owls; however, I believe it is proposed to restore several of the most useful of them.We camped near the well at Augerin. I had an indifferent dinner. My new cook, Abdel Aziz, seems to be a fool and unaccustomed to being on trek. He is a Berberin, a despised “gins”—race—but always considered to be good cooks. The men I have got with me are a fine lot, all “blacks” and mostly “Shaigis”—from the North Sudan. The old Bash-Shawish—sergeant-major—was previously in the Coastguards and knows the country well. I did not bother to put up a tent, but slept in the open under the stars, which were gorgeous. Not a very hot night.25th.Moved off at 4.30 a.m. by chilly but brilliant moonlight. Led the camels and walked for the first hour, then mounted and rode. The men made a long line riding along in file. Arrived at Bir Hamed, another cistern, at about 8 a.m. We stay here till to-morrow morning in order to give the camels a good day’s grazing and watering, as this is the last well beforethe real desert. Bir Hamed is a very wild, picturesque place among the rocky foot-hills below the Scarp. In the spring it becomes one mass of flowers, but now it looks dry and barren. The camels drank frantically and then went out to graze. There is still a fair amount of water in the well, which is icy cold and very refreshing. I, and almost all the men, had a bath, as it is the last opportunity till we get to Siwa. I spent a lazy day in my tent and the men slept most of the time. At four o’clock the camels were driven in to drink again, this time they were less eager to get to the water and sipped it in a mincing way like an affected old lady drinking tea.
“Some Egyptian royal love-liltSome Sidonian refrain,”
“Some Egyptian royal love-liltSome Sidonian refrain,”
“Some Egyptian royal love-liltSome Sidonian refrain,”
“Some Egyptian royal love-lilt
Some Sidonian refrain,”
in the villa above the bay. In the summer quantities of “Mex Lilies” (Amaryllis) grow on the hills and scent the air with their heavy perfume. A short time before the war an American archæologist made some valuable finds among the foundations of Cleopatra’s villa, and on several occasions coins have been unearthed in the neighbourhood.
The present-day Greek colonists of Matruh are not very attractive people. They are very clever at their trade and seem to become prosperous in a remarkably short time. They make their money by squeezing the Arabs, who are forced to deal with them, as there is nobody else from whom they can buy necessities such as tea, sugar, rice, etc. The Greeks have the monopoly of trade and sell their goods at a prohibitive price, quite out of proportion to their worth, even considering the cost of transport. Their favourite system is to buy whole crops of barley from the Arabs before it is ripe, when the owner is particularly hard up. The Administration, to a certain extent, is able to check excessive profiteering, but there are innumerable ways in which the Greek is able to “do” the Arab. It seems a pity, because, in my estimation, the Arab is a much better man than the Greek trader. Not unnaturally, Greeks are very unpopular. Farther along the coast, in Tunis and Algeria, their place is taken by the Jews, but on the Western Desert there are no Jews—so the Greeks have it all their own way.
There are generally two or three English officials at Matruh, and possibly their wives, so there isusually more going on there than at any other place on the coast; in fact, Matruh is a sort of metropolis of the desert, but at the same time it is very much a desert station. Lately, when I was staying there, there arrived one evening an enormous new American car containing two English officers on leave, and a very smartly dressed lady, wife of one of them. By amazing good luck they had managed to get through from Alexandria without mishap, stopping a nighten route. On arrival at Matruh they asked to be directed to the “Hotel,” which they had heard was “small, but very clean and comfortable.” They looked exceedingly blank when we told them there was no hotel—and never had been—but they were conducted to the rest house, where they settled down. Next day they complained that the rest house was neither clean nor comfortable. The greatest disadvantage, to my mind, in all the rest houses on the Western Desert is the multitude of fleas which nothing that one can do is able to destroy or even keep under. This car was not the kind used by the Administration on the desert; the party had brought no spare parts for it, no servant, no provisions except some biscuits and a tin or two of peaches, only a few glass bottles of water, which were naturally almost boiling after some hours in the heat of an August day, and none of them could speak any Arabic. At dinner that night they all appeared in full evening dress which they had brought with them, and, to everybody’s horror, they announced their intention of “running down to Siwa” on the nextday. We explained carefully that to reach Siwa they would have to cross 200 miles of waterless desert, and no car ever attempted the trip alone. But nothing seemed to daunt them. Finally, however, the Governor heard of their plan and forbade it forthwith; they started off to Alexandria on the following day, with an escort of two cars, and as they went they murmured indignantly about “red tape and absurd restrictions.” It is amazing what a strange idea of the desert some people seem to have.
Matruh is the centre of the sponge fishing industry which is carried on during certain months of the year along the coast. The sponge fishers are mostly Italians, and a fine-looking lot of men. They have a little fleet of sailing-boats, and one steam-tug. The boats put out for several days at a time, working up and down the coast. They use no diving-bells, but when a man dives he holds on to a heavy stone, which sinks rapidly; he makes a jab at the sponges, cutting off one, and then lets go of the stone and rises to the surface. Sometimes the men seem to bound out of the water when they rise to the top. They are able to remain submerged for several minutes. But the work tells on their health; they are highly paid, but they say themselves that they usually die at about forty, and there is always the horrid possibility of being attacked by sharks, which are more plentiful in the Mediterranean than they used to be before the war. At Sollum there are several graves of sponge fishers who were killed inthis way. I never bought a single sponge myself during the whole time I was on the Western Desert. When I was at Sollum I used to ride out along the shore with a syce carrying a bag after every heavy storm and we would usually pick up about a dozen first-class sponges worth about half a guinea each at home. Fortunately, the Arabs had no use for such things as sponges. One found pumice stone lying about the shore also. During the war an enormous amount of wreckage was swept ashore and collected by patrols of Camel Corps for building purposes and firewood. Sometimes the whole coast would be littered with cotton from a wrecked ship carrying cotton to Europe; another time we collected stacks of good brown paper, which is still being used on the Western Desert, and another time a number of casks of wine and rum were picked up.
Between Matruh and Sollum there is a little place called Sidi Barrani, which consists of a police barracks and a high gaunt building which is a rest house and office, and about half a dozen white bungalows belonging to Greek traders. Each of these places has either a British officer or, if it is not sufficiently important, an Egyptian mamur who is responsible for keeping order, etc. Barrani is a desolate place, but very beautiful in springtime when the country is ablaze with flowers and green budding corn. Rest houses in Egypt and the Sudan correspond to the Dak Bungalows in India. Those on the Western Desert are quite comfortably furnished and well provided with plate and linen. An old Sudanesesoldier looks after each rest house. It is a relief after trekking along the coast by car or camel to arrive at a place where everything is ready and, in winter-time, to get a roof over one’s head, though probably a leaky one.
Two roads run from Barrani to Sollum; one goes along the coast among the strangely white sand-hills which are a feature of the district, and the other, which is less liable to be flooded in winter, is higher and farther inland. The country that one passes on the upper road between Barrani and Sollum, between the blue Mediterranean and the high rocky Scarp that runs parallel to the sea, is very attractive, especially in the soft evening light. In the heat of the day it looks dry and parched, except during a month or two immediately after the rains. One meets very few travellers on the narrow road that winds up and down, round low hills which are covered with heathery undergrowth, and often topped with rough stone cairns. Some places are very like a Scotch moor, or a stretch of Dartmoor. There is a certain plant which is the colour of purple heather, and another that looks from a distance like withered bracken. In summer-time, especially on the lower road, one is constantly deceived by the vivid mirage that hovers above some salt swamps close to the white sand-hills on the shore.
Occasionally, one passes a party of Arabs, with their skirts tucked high above the knees, stalking along behind their woolly shuffling camels, orperhaps one meets a patrol of Camel Corps, black Sudanese, in khaki uniforms, trotting briskly along on fast riding camels; then an old bedouin sheikh, wrapped in his long silk shawl, ambles past on his Arab pony. Farther on, one smells the sharp sweet scent of burning brushwood that comes from the fires outside the low black tents where some Arabs are camping, and one can see them squatting round the flame in the tent doors, with their white woollen cloaks pulled over them, while in the distance a boy drives the camels and sheep close up to the camp for the night. On the lower road, near the shore, between Barrani and Sollum, there is a lonely little hill crowned by a rough block-house where there used to be a detachment of the Camel Corps. This place is called Bagbag and was used as a frontier post before the war in Tripoli between the Italians and the Turks. As one approaches Sollum the escarpment on the left comes nearer, the foot-hills cease, and the road runs across a mile or two of flat country within sound and sight of the sea right at the foot of the towering cliffs. Before arriving at the camp the road crosses several deep water-courses which come “from thymy hills down to the sea-beat shore” through rocky ravines in the Scarp; they are dry and sandy in summer, but during the rains they become rushing torrents, quite impossible to cross in a car. Riding home in the evening, one sees a number of twinkling fires in the bedouin camp, and above them, sharply outlined against the primrose-coloured sky, is the top of the great rockyScarp, like a dark wall that one has to ascend before reaching the desert.
Sollum consists of about a score of little buildings, and a large bedouin encampment, situated on the shore of a bay in an angle made by the sea and the Scarp which rises to a height of over 600 feet immediately behind the camp, and juts out into the sea in a rocky promontory. There are several wells at Sollum and one little orchard of fig-trees which breaks the monotony of the brown-coloured soil. Most of the buildings, including a large Camel Corps barracks, were erected since the war. There are one or two little shops, owned by Greeks, and a rough native café presided over by an evil-looking, one-eyed Egyptian, who is also the barber of the place. For a long time there was a British garrison, but this was recently withdrawn, leaving a force of Camel Corps and a small detachment of Light Cars in the old Turkish fort on the top of the cliffs above the bay. At one time there were about a dozen officers quartered here, and five or six of them had their wives with them. Sollum became quite like an Indian hill station—perhaps even worse, and when a certain elderly general, well known as a misogynist, inspected the place, he stated in his report that there were six officers’ wives and six different sets, the result being that they were very shortly moved and replaced by unmarried officers.
One gets to feel hemmed in at Sollum. On the north lies the sea, and on the south and west rise the rocky cliffs of the Scarp. The only open country isalong the coast towards the east. A steep twisting motor road, like a Swiss mountain pass, leads up the face of the cliff on the track of an old Roman road, and several very precipitous paths ascend the Scarp behind the camp to the high table-land above. But once one has climbed the Scarp and reached the top there is a great flat plain stretching out into the distance, which is good country for riding, and full of hares and gazelle. This is the bedouins’ grazing ground, and every few miles one comes across great herds of camel and sheep, and large camps of Arabs. There are a few rock cisterns on the northern edge of the plateau and from these the Arabs get their water. They often camp 10 or 15 miles away from a well and send in a party of women and boys to fill the water-skins every other day. Arabs seldom bathe, even when they are camped close to the sea, but fortunately the sun is a wonderful purifier.
The nomad Arabs of the Western Desert are a hardy, picturesque race, very different from the fellahin of Egypt. Their active open-air life makes them strong and healthy. Patriarchalism is a dominant system among them; they are divided into a number of tribes and sub-tribes, each under its own sheikh who is responsible to the Government for the good behaviour of his people.
These tribal divisions breed factions, enmities and lifelong feuds, which result in occasional raids and forays on neighbouring tribes, and the carrying off of camels. Another source of dispute are the rightsand ownerships of wells, which cause frequent fights, so a District Officer on the coast needs to be well acquainted with the tribal politics of the Arabs in his area. One of the greatest grievances of the Arabs on the Egyptian side of the frontier is the fact that, since the Senussi rebellion in 1916, they are not allowed to be in possession of fire-arms, but their neighbours, over the border in Tripoli, are under no such restrictions. The Arabs on the Egyptian desert argue, quite rightly, that they are liable to suffer from raids by the western Arabs who can dash across the frontier, drive off a herd of camels, and retire again into Tripoli where they will be safe from pursuit, as the Italians have very little influence outside their coastal towns, and of course if anybody belonging to the Egyptian Administration ventured across the frontier without an invitation, and was caught, it might almost lead to international complications. But the Egyptian Government considers that the forces of the Administration are sufficient to keep order on the frontier and protect the Arabs. (The situation is not dissimilar to that in Ireland during 1920.)
The Arabs are a pastoral people. As the Siwans depend almost entirely upon their date palms, so do the Arabs depend on their camels and sheep, and to a lesser extent on the barley crop. Their tents, called “kreish,” in which they live, are made of camel wool, woven into long strips and fastened together, supported in the middle by two poles about 6 feet high, sloping down to about 3 feetabove the ground, with a movable fringe hung round the sides from the bottom of the roof-piece. These tents are very comfortable, especially in summer-time when the sides are kept open, propped up with short poles. There is no furniture inside them, but the floor is covered with matting and bedouin carpets, which are made of finely spun wool, white sheep’s wool—sometimes dyed scarlet, brown, grey—yellow camel’s wool, and black goat’s hair. They are woven in stripes and geometrical designs, and ornamented with black and red tassels. The largest tents are often 20 or 30 feet long and 10 feet wide, sometimes divided into two parts by a striped Tripoli blanket which is hung across the middle. One can be very comfortable in one of these tents, with no furniture except a heap of carpets and rugs.
Each bedouin has two sets of tents, a thin summer one, and a thicker one which is used during the winter; the latter is lined with a wonderful patchwork made from pieces of coloured cotton and linen, like an old-fashioned patchwork quilt. When it rains the wool of the roof swells and tightens, and the water slides off the steep sides of the tent as it does from the proverbial duck’s back. Being so low they are not torn up by the wind, and I have seen a whole camp of army tents laid flat by a hurricane which tore many of them to pieces, while the Arab ones remained standing and dry within.
In appearance the Western Desert Arabs are fairer than the Arabs of Arabia and Palestine. Thisis probably due to the fact that when they originally took the country it was occupied by Berbers, a blue-eyed, fair-haired type, who are supposed to have crossed over from Europe into Africa at some remote period several thousand years ago. The Arabs are slightly darker than the Egyptians with features that are distinctly Semitic, expressing more intelligence than the fellahin. They are of a finer build and more wiry. Some of the Arab women are very handsome, and their costume is particularly becoming. They usually wear a long black robe with full sleeves, but on special occasions the robe is of striped silk, and a red woollen belt, several yards long, twisted round the waist like a cummerbund. Their head-dress consists of a coloured silk handkerchief tied tightly over the head, but allowing two coils of braided hair to appear on both sides of the face, then, above this, a long black scarf with a coloured fringe and a red and yellow border twisted into a high head-dress, folded like a mediæval coif below the chin, with the fringed ends hanging down behind. Soft scarlet leather boots complete the costume. Almost all the women tattoo their chins and often their foreheads with a blue pattern; this is considered by them to be very ornamental, but to European eyes it is singularly ugly. Old women dye their hair a brilliant orange colour, and men sometimes tint the tips of their beards, as well as their horses’ tails, with henna, presumably following what one sees advertised as “The henna cult of beauty.”
As in most Eastern countries when an Arabmarries he pays “marriage money” to the parents or guardians of the bride. So a daughter is a source of riches to her parents if she is attractive enough to be worth a handsome dowry. The amount varies on the Western Desert from about five to a hundred pounds, according to the age, appearance and position of the girl. Half is paid on marriage, and the remainder is paid later by instalments, and it is liable to be forfeited if the wife does not behave well, but if the husband divorces the wife he must pay up the residue of the money to her parents. This makes a man very careful in the choice of a wife. In many ways the plan of buying a wife on the instalment system is a good one. Arabs have more freedom in these matters than many other Orientals. Women are not veiled, and men and girls have plenty of opportunities of seeing each other, and even speaking together, before marriage, though the actual negotiations are always carried out by a third person representing each party. Arabs rarely have more than two wives, though their religion allows them to have four, and divorce is not so very common among them. The women have a certain amount of influence which they exert without the men quite knowing it, but although their position is better than that of the Egyptian women, and infinitely better than that of Siwan women, they have a very hard time. They weave wool and make tents and carpets; they milk the flocks and make butter and cheese; they grind corn on rough mill-stones for making bread; they fetch water, often from a well many milesdistant; and they collect wood every day for the camp fires; all this in addition to looking after their children and cooking. Mohammedan women of all classes are not expected to concern themselves with religion; they are not allowed to enter mosques, except on one day of the year, and during seven years in the Sudan and Egypt I only twice saw a Mohammedan woman praying in public. There are very definite social divisions among the Arabs, especially among their women. The wives of respectable Arabs never associate with or speak to women whose morals are considered doubtful. These ladies of thedemi-mondeinhabit tents, generally on the outskirts of the camps, and are conspicuous, as in every part of the world, by the brilliant colours of their clothes, and their many ornaments.
The Arabs are a kindly, hospitable people, not phlegmatic like the fellahin, but easily moved. I had some very good friends among them. When I was out on trek, if I came across an encampment, they would see us from a long distance off and invariably come out and invite me to dismount and rest awhile, and “fadhl” in their camp. “Fadhl” is an untranslatable word which means roughly “Stop and pass the time of day.” Sometimes I used to accept their hospitality for a few hours in the heat of the day, and rest in a cool dark tent, or wait talking in the tents in the evening while my men rode on ahead and prepared my camp a little distance away. One could never camp near bedouins, as their camels generally had mange, which is very catching, andtheir dogs were a nuisance at night, being “snappers up of unconsidered trifles” in the way of food, etc., and not always “unconsidered” either. These dogs are white or yellow woolly creatures who guard the flocks with great apparent courage, and attack any stranger, but when threatened they run yelping away with their tails between their legs. When I dismounted I would wait for a minute or so talking to the men, so as to give the Arabs a chance to arrange things. Women would run frantically from tent to tent carrying mats and carpets, and shooing away sheep and goats and small brown children; then the sheikh would lead me to the largest tent, spread with black and scarlet carpets, with probably a long striped blanket hung across the centre and screening one side of it. Or on warm summer nights the carpets were spread in front of the tents, on the open desert under the stars. Unless I specially asked to be excused the finest kid of the herd would be caught and killed and an hour or so later it would be brought in, boiled, on an enormous wooden dish, and I would be expected to eat “heavily” of this, also of the “asida” that followed. Asida, a dish which I always had the greatest difficulty in pretending to eat, consists of lightly cooked flour dough, with a hole scooped in the middle full of oil or melted fat and sugar, however,de gustibus non disputandum. The sheikh, and perhaps one or two of his relations, would join in the feast, watched with the greatest interest by the ladies of the camp who would collect on the other side of the curtain, and gaze firmly atme from underneath it, whispering, giggling and tinkling their bangles and ornaments as they moved. If I knew the people well they would not bother about hanging up a curtain, and women and children would creep into the tent and sit staring from the far end, or carry on their usual occupations—milking goats, spinning or making semna—but no woman would ever eat in the presence of a man out of respect to him, and a son would never think of sitting down and eating with his father unless he was specially invited to do so. Generally the sons waited on the party, and ate afterwards.
Semna is a kind of cheese made from goat’s milk. In the morning the sheep and goats are milked into wooden bowls, the milk is poured into a water-skin and rolled vigorously up and down by two women seated on the ground till it thickens into a sort of butter. The addition of a certain herb is needed if it is to be made into cheese. One kind of white butter made by the Arabs is very good and forms an excellent substitute for real butter, and a change from the tinned species.
Arabs are very free in their conversation, and personal remarks are not considered to be ill-mannered. They usually ask one’s age, and inquire whether people are married or not. The idea of a man being over twenty and still unmarried surprises them enormously; they think that he can’t afford to buy a wife. They always show a keen interest in what they consider the peculiar habits of Europeans. Hardly any of them can read or write, and very fewhave ever been off the desert. When a bedouin gets to Alexandria he is like a countryman in London. The bedouin are superstitious, but not as intensely so as the oasis dwellers. In every tent one notices a little bundle of charms hung on one of the tent poles to avert the Evil Eye. One such collection would consist of a black cock’s leg, a red rag, a dried frog, two bones, and a little leather charm, tied together and hung on the pole.
One day I was sitting talking to some Arabs in a tent when suddenly I realized that everybody was staring in a fascinated way at my mouth. I wondered what was the matter. Then I heard the women whispering to themselves: “He must be a very wealthy one; see how he adorns himself with gold.” I couldn’t imagine what they meant as I was only wearing a shirt, shorts and stockings, nothing very remarkable in the way of clothes. Then I heard something about “Gold tooth,” and I realized that their attention had been caught by a hideous gold crown that had been put over one of my front teeth in a great hurry just before I left Cairo the last time I was on leave. They thought it a most attractive and novel form of decoration.
When Arabs get money they either invest it in sheep and camels or bury it in the ground. Some of these men who lead the most primitive lives, living in a tent and feeding on a meagre diet of milk, bread, rice and dates, are the owners of many thousands of sheep and hundreds of camels. Sheep are generally worth two or three pounds, and camels about fifteenpounds each. Besides this, they often have a little bag of gold buried somewhere in the desert. They never spend their money on creature comforts, and the poorest and the richest men live practically in the same way. My Sudanese Camel Corps men used to criticize them, saying what a waste it seemed that they had so much money, and apparently didn’t know how to enjoy it, whereas in the Sudan when a man made money he would build a house, feed better and live in a more comfortable way than his neighbours. An Arab when he was “mabsout” (well off) didn’t seem to know how to be “mabsout”—meaning also “happy.”
Once I was camped near some Arabs and one of them, an old sheikh, was ill and considered by his relations likely to die. He was known to possess some money buried somewhere in the neighbourhood, and his relatives were most anxious that he should not die until he had disclosed the hiding-place. But the old man obstinately refused to tell them where it was. A deputation of his heirs called on me and asked me to make him speak. I agreed that it was unfortunate for them, but I could do nothing. When I suggested that they should take him to the hospital at Sollum, they were quite indignant and said that evidently Allah willed that he should die; the only distressing thing was his obstinacy about the money. This went on for several days, and then, to every one’s surprise, the old gentleman suddenly recovered. Some of his relations seemed sorry, and some relieved. When Ilast saw him he was watching a “fantasia” which was being held in honour of his recovery, with a pleased, benignant expression. Personally, I always had a faint idea that the money never existed, but all his people firmly believe in it, and he has kept the secret to this day.
A FALCONER OUTSIDE A BEDOUIN CAMP
A FALCONER OUTSIDE A BEDOUIN CAMP
A FALCONER OUTSIDE A BEDOUIN CAMP
One rather associates the idea of an Arab with his steed, a wonderful fiery creature that skims across the desert like a bird. The ponies on the Western Desert are a somewhat sorry collection. Only a few of the well-to-do Arabs keep horses. They are small hardy ponies very unlike the Arab steed of fiction. But they look better when they are ridden, with their high scarlet saddles, great iron stirrups and gaily tasselled bridles. The Arabs ride them either at an uncomfortable jog trot or at a tearing gallop. They have some curious ideas on the “points” of a pony; certain things are considered lucky or unlucky; for instance, if a pony has white stockings on both forelegs it is much esteemed, but a white stocking on one fore and one hind leg is exceedingly unlucky. There are many stretches of hard stony ground along the coast, so horses have to be shod; this is done by covering the whole of the foot with a flat piece of iron, and results in a terrific noise when they gallop over stony ground.
There is very little sport to be had on this part of the desert. The only form that the Arabs indulge in is the ancient pastime of hawking. Certain men of each tribe are proficient in training and hunting with hawks. Skill as a falconer seems to be hereditary inthe same way as snake charming, fortune telling and various other practices. The Arabs prefer catching a full-grown bird and training it, to taking a young bird from the nest, which would appear to be the easiest plan. The method of trapping them is rather clever. When an Arab wants to catch a hawk, he takes a pigeon, slightly clips its wings to prevent its escape, and fastens a number of horsehair loops round its body, then he releases the pigeon, which flutters away. A hawk sights the pigeon, swoops down and becomes entangled in the meshes of the horsehair, so that the Arab is able to run up and secure it. The hawk takes many months to train. Gradually it becomes accustomed to its master, who invariably feeds it himself, and whistles when he gives it food in a way that it learns to know. Later he takes the bird on his wrist, hooded, and fastened by a leather thong; by degrees it becomes accustomed to his wrist and then he carries it about with him, still hooded. Finally he removes the hood and lets it tackle a hare or two which he brings to it, then one day he takes it out on to the desert and looses it at a running hare. The bird attacks the hare, brings it down, and sits on its prey till the master arrives, or if it flies up he draws it back by whistling and flinging a lump of meat into the air. Sometimes an Arab will catch over a dozen hares in a day’s hawking, but occasionally, after months of training, when he looses his bird for the first time it will fly away and never return. One sees a tethered hawk outside a tent in almost all the big encampments. A well-trainedbird is worth several pounds among the Arabs, and it is very difficult to persuade them to part with one; they are used to catch pigeons, quail and other birds, besides hares.
Another sport which we went in for along the coast was coursing hares with Silugi dogs. These dogs are gazelle hounds and came originally from Arabia. There are now a certain number of them in Egypt, and all the officials on the Western Desert keep one or two. Silugis are very similar to greyhounds, generally white or pale coffee colour, with feathery tails and long-haired, silky ears. They are very fast indeed, but have no sense of scent, and hunt entirely by sight. They are rather delicate and very nervous, and in most cases they show little affection for human beings. At Matruh there was quite a pack which included a couple of fox-hounds, silugis, several terriers—of sorts—and a few nondescript bedouin pariahs. The Matruh pack specialized in foxes, but at Sollum there were more hares than foxes. The desert hares are rather smaller than the English ones, but they seemed to be faster.
The open country above the Scarp stretches over alternate patches of hard stony ground, and strips covered with low vegetation where a certain plant that smells like thyme predominates. Generally two or three of us went hunting together, or if there were only two Englishmen we took a couple of Sudanese syces or servants, who thoroughly enjoy all forms of hunting, all mounted on ponies, and accompanied by four or five dogs. We rode in extended orderwith intervals of about thirty yards between each rider, the dogs generally trotting along in front. Whoever raised a hare gave a wild yell and galloped after it, “hell for leather,” the rest following. The hounds would sight the hare and fling themselves in pursuit. Quite often the hare got away before they saw it, or managed to reach a bit of cover well ahead of the hounds, and then they would slacken down, at a loss, and wait till the riders came up and scoured the country round to put up the hare again. It sounds rather unsporting, but the hare stood a very good chance; in fact, generally more than half of them got away, and it gave one some splendid long gallops across the country. Sometimes we would raise a gazelle, and give chase, but few dogs or ponies can catch up a gazelle when it gets a little start and is really moving. I think the scale of speed was, gazelle, silugi, hare and ponies. It was a primitive form of hunting, but one liked it none the less, and jugged hare made a welcome change in the menu.
There were a certain number of gazelle on the desert quite close to the top of the Scarp and it was occasionally possible to get a shot at them, but they were very shy, and needed careful stalking over country that was almost without cover. When anybody went out specially to shoot gazelle none would appear, but when riding along on a camel one saw numbers of them; however, by the time one had dismounted and loaded the gazelle would be out of range, probably standing a long distance away “at gaze.” Gazelle do not mind camels if they have nopeople on them, and the Arabs sometimes get quite close to a gazelle by stalking it from among a number of grazing camels. At one time, after the war, the men of the Light Car Patrols took to hunting gazelle in Ford cars with a machine-gun; fortunately this practice was forbidden, but it scared the gazelle from the neighbourhood for a considerable time.
Numbers of rock pigeons nested among the cliffs on the coast, and quantities of them collected round the camel lines and fed off the refuse grain. In the autumn thousands of quail arrived on the coast from Europe; they were often so exhausted that the Arab boys could catch them in their hands. The natives netted them for sale to the Greeks, who exported them alive in crates to Alexandria. One got very tired of eating quail during the month or two that they were in season; still, at first they were extremely good. Among the wadis in the Scarp there were occasional coveys of red-legged partridge, and lately there have been a few sand-grouse about the high country; once or twice I have seen duck on the marshes near the sea, and an occasional bustard, but, on the whole, there was very little to be had in the way of shooting.
SILUGI HOUNDS
SILUGI HOUNDS
SILUGI HOUNDS
A number of jackals and a few wild cats lived in the caves among the wadis in the Scarp. Their mournful wailings echoed through the rocky ravines, and owing to its eeriness at night the bedouins thought that it was haunted by evil spirits. But in the daytime they climbed about it quite unconcernedly, and their goats snatched a scanty pasturage amongthe rocks. During most of the year the Scarp looks harsh and forbidding, but after the rains a change comes over it; one notices a faint green tinge about the cliffs, and a closer examination shows that it is covered with blossoming flowers and rock plants. The slopes become gay with mauve, pink, yellow and blue flowers, saltworts, samphires, sea lavender, yellow nettle, campanulas, little irises, marigolds, ranunculas, Spanish broom, masses of night-scented stock and a quantity of other little flowering plants which clothe the grim rocks in a robe of brilliant colour. The flat country, too, blossoms out into colour. One sees scarlet poppies, mallows, and tall scabious among the budding corn, and fields of swaying asphodel, and the whole desert is scented in the evening by the night-scented stock.
The rain that causes this transformation falls occasionally during the winter months from November till about March. During this time there are clouds in the sky, and sometimes terrific downpours. The Arabs greet the first rain of the season with great delight, the men sing and shout, and the women raise piercing shrieks to show their pleasure. Unless there is a good rainfall none of the barley grows, and the grazing on which the sheep and camels depend is insufficient. When it rains the wadis become rushing torrents, roads are impassable, every house leaks, and many of the roofs subside. The camels have to be led from their flooded lines to the higher ground where they stand shivering. Camels hate rain. If one is out on trek and a really stiffshower comes on the camels barrack down, with their backs towards the direction of the rain, and nothing will make them budge till it is over. One just has to wait till it stops. If the track is muddy and wet the camels slither and slide and one must dismount and lead them; they were made for hot, dry countries, not for a damp, wet climate. Hardly any of the houses at Matruh or Sollum are watertight, and it was nothing out of the ordinary when one called on a man to find him camped out in the middle of his most watertight room, surrounded by his perishable belongings, with a sort of canopy consisting of a waterproof sheet and a mackintosh or two stretched out above him. But though rain storms were very violent they did not last long, and the sun soon came out and dried everything up again. When, however, one was caught by a bad storm out on trek on the desert, with only a thin tent, and no change of clothes, it was very disagreeable.
The word “house” is misleading. People imagine at least a large comfortable bungalow. But on the Western Desert the average house occupied by an English official, with possibly a wife, was a three-roomed stone hut, with plastered walls and a wooden roof, with a very thin layer of cement. The largest room would be about twelve feet square, the plaster invariably crumbled off the walls owing to the salt in it, and the cement invariably cracked in the summer so that the rain poured through the roof in the winter. Cement for some reason was almost impossible to get. One always heard that for “nextyear” the Administration had included the building of real houses for its officials in the Budget, but this item was always one of the first to be struck out on the grounds of economy. Nobody has yet discovered an ideal roofing for the Western Desert, where there are extremes of heat and cold and occasional terrific hurricanes and downpours. So far, the best type of abode seems to be the bedouin tent.
One of the chief events on the coast was the arrival of the cruiser,Abdel Moneim, which came up from Alexandria about once every fortnight or three weeks bringing mails, supplies and sometimes high officials on tours of inspection. She spent a day or two in harbour at Matruh and Sollum on each trip. This little cruiser was built in Scotland for the Egyptian Government, and with two other boats comprises the navy of Egypt. She was a neat-looking grey ship, always very spick and span with fresh paint and shining brass, manned by a crew of Egyptians in white or blue sailors’ uniform and red tarbooshes. Her captain was an English bimbashi in the Egyptian Coastguards Administration, whose uniform was somewhat confusing, as he wore, besides the naval rank on his sleeve, a crown and star on his shoulder. The cruiser was carefully built so as to allow a spacious saloon and two state cabins, for the accommodation of the Director-General. Two machine-guns were posted fore and aft. TheAbdel Moneimhad the well-deserved reputation of being warranted to make the very best sailor seasick, even in comparatively calm weather. Sherolled and pitched simultaneously in a more horrid manner than any ship I have ever known. The result was that, when people went down the coast to Alexandria on leave, they arrived in Egypt looking and feeling like nothing on earth, and spent the first few days of their all too short leave recovering from the evil after-effects of the voyage. I have never yet met anyone who really enjoyed a trip on the cruiser. Personally, the only time that I felt comfortable on board was when we were firmly moored to the quay at Matruh or Sollum. When the high officials landed after a sea trip they were generally feeling so ill that their visits were not entirely a pleasure to the people who were being inspected.
Occasionally misguided individuals, who knew nothing about it, got permission to go up to Sollum and back by cruiser, hoping for a pleasant little trip on the Mediterranean. Generally, when they arrived at Matruh, they inquired anxiously whether it was possible to return to Alexandria by car, or even by camel. Some queer visitors sometimes came on these “joy rides,” but very little joy was left in them by the time they reached Sollum. On one occasion, a Mr. B. of the Labour Corps, a Board School master in private life, arrived by cruiser at Matruh. He announced that he had come to study the coast and the Arabs. He was just the type that Kipling describes so well in his poems. The Governor invited him to lunch; he arrived in spurs, belt, etc., though it was the summer and every one else was wearing the fewest and thinnest clothes; however,that may have been politeness. There happened to be three or four other men present. At lunch Mr. B. proceeded to air his views on how the desert should be run; we heard some startling facts about it; he disapproved of the Administration, and told us so; he then proceeded to tell us about the Sudan, as he had lately spent one week in an hotel at Khartoum. The Governor had been recently transferred from the Sudan, where he had been Governor of one of the largest provinces, and as it happened every single man present had served there for some considerable time, so, naturally, we were interested to be told a few facts about it!
A couple of days later I happened to go down the coast with Mr. B. and a certain District Officer. The latter spent his whole time, when he wasn’t ill, telling Mr. B. the most outrageously impossible stories of camels, Arabs and the desert, which he swallowed unblinkingly and noted down in a copybook in order to give lectures, so he told us, at his club when he returned home. That club must have heard some startling stories. One of the facts—or fictions—that interested him particularly was a description of “watch camels which are posted by the Arabs round their flocks and when a stranger appears they gallop across to the camp and warn their masters.” Another very vivid story was the description of a whole herd of camels going mad from hydrophobia. It is wonderful how credulous some people can be, but I think he deserved it.
THE DESERT
“So on, ever on, spreads the path of the Desert,Wearily, wearily,Sand, ever sand—not a gleam of the fountain;Sun, ever sun—not a shade from the mountain;As a sea on a sea flows the width of the DesertDrearily, drearily.”
“So on, ever on, spreads the path of the Desert,Wearily, wearily,Sand, ever sand—not a gleam of the fountain;Sun, ever sun—not a shade from the mountain;As a sea on a sea flows the width of the DesertDrearily, drearily.”
“So on, ever on, spreads the path of the Desert,Wearily, wearily,Sand, ever sand—not a gleam of the fountain;Sun, ever sun—not a shade from the mountain;As a sea on a sea flows the width of the DesertDrearily, drearily.”
“So on, ever on, spreads the path of the Desert,
Wearily, wearily,
Sand, ever sand—not a gleam of the fountain;
Sun, ever sun—not a shade from the mountain;
As a sea on a sea flows the width of the Desert
Drearily, drearily.”
THE Western Desert of Egypt is regulated by the Frontier Districts Administration, a comparatively new department of the Egyptian Government which was formed during the war and took over many of the duties of the old Egyptian Coastguards Administration. The F.D.A. is a military Administration with British officers, and is responsible for the Western Desert, Sinai and the country between the Red Sea coast and the Nile. In each of these provinces there is a Governor and several District Officers and officers of the Camel Corps. The Military Administrator at the head of the whole Administration is Colonel G. G. Hunter, C.B., C.M.G., and the Governor of the Western Desert is at present Colonel M. S. Macdonnell. The forces of the F.D.A. consist of a Sudanese Camel Corps and local police.
On the Western Desert there is one company of Camel Corps, about 170 strong, divided into threesections, of which two are stationed on the coast and one in the Siwa oasis. The duties of the Camel Corps are practically those of mounted police, patrolling the coast and frontier, preventing smuggling and gun running, and keeping order among the Arabs in case of any disturbance or trouble. But since the successful termination of the British operations against the Senussi in 1917 the Western Desert has been very peaceable, and the Arabs seem to be thoroughly satisfied with the organization by which they are now governed. During all the trouble in Egypt in 1919-21, when the country was seething with anti-British agitations, there were absolutely no disturbances or demonstrations among the Arabs of the Western Desert, and I have heard them in their tents discussing, quite genuinely, the foolishness of the goings-on in Egypt.
The F.D.A. Camel Corps was originally formed of Sudanese men from the Coastguard Camel Corps, with a large proportion of “yellow bellies” (Egyptians) who were gradually weeded out and replaced by Sudanese and Sudan Arabs, who were enlisted on the borders of Egypt, as the Sudan Government does not allow recruiting inside its territories except for the Egyptian Army. The F.D.A. Camel Corps is supposed to consist entirely of Sudanese, but a certain number of the men who were enlisted in the regions of Luxor and Kom Ombo are not real Sudanis. They are very well paid, provided with good uniforms and rations, and a certain percentage are allowed to have their wives with them on thecoast. Every camp has its “harimat”—married quarters—where the married men and their families live. But before a man is allowed to marry he has to pass a test in musketry. Many of the men marry Arab women, and this sometimes caused considerable trouble among the Sudanese wives, who are by no means fond of their Arab “sisters.” As they all live close together in rather cramped quarters they have a very lively time. One’s office hours are often occupied in endeavouring to pacify some irate old Sudanese lady who brings a furious complaint that the Arab wife of her next-door neighbour is “carrying on” with her husband. Or one gets a long involved case like the following story to inquire into, generally when there is a great deal of other work to be done.
Ombashi (corporal) Suliman Hassan married an Arab lady called Halima bint—daughter of—Ahmed Abu Taleb; when she married her father gave her an old primus stove, a favourite possession of the Arabs at Sollum, which he had bought from the servant of one of the English officers—this incidentally caused another inquiry. The marriage was not a success, and after six months of unhappy married life Ombashi Suliman divorced his wife. Apparently he “celebrated” the divorce “not wisely but too well,” because on the next day he got a month’s hard labour for being drunk on duty. He took the primus with him when he went to prison. Halima retired to Bagbag with her goods and chattels, and after a suitable interval she married another CamelCorps man, this time a “naffer”—private—who brought her back with him to Sollum.
Ombashi Suliman had also consoled himself, and presented the primus stove, now very worn and shaky, to his new wife, a buxom Sudanese. She sold it to her married sister. It exploded and set a tent on fire; so the sister gave it to her little girl Zumzum, a small black infant with tight curls and one pink garment. Then one day Halima saw the primus, her primus, in the hands of the small Zumzum, and remembered about it. She rushed home to her new husband and stirred him to action; so he arrived at my office with a long incoherent complaint, demanding justice and the return of the stove.
I had to spend an entire morning unravelling this history and examining endless witnesses, who all wished to talk about any subject except the one I was getting at. When the present wife and the divorced wife of Ombashi Suliman met outside the office they were with difficulty restrained from fighting, and the lurid details which were wafted through the window, about the lives and antecedents of both ladies, were interesting, but quite unprintable. Eventually the small Zumzum, now in a state of inaudible terror, produced the primus, which was found to be worn out, irreparable, and absolutely useless.
One of the features of Sollum is a little cluster of tents and huts, near the Camel Corps Camp, which is known as the “Booza Camp.” It is run by about a dozen elderly Sudanese widows and divorcees whomanufacture “marissa,” a drink made from barley. The men are allowed here at certain times and on holidays, as marissa is not permitted to be brewed in the camp. The wives have the strongest objection to this institution which attracts their husbands away from home, as a public-house does in England, though the dusky barmaids could not possibly be called attractive. One can rightly say of the Sudanese that their favourite diversions are wine, women and song.
The Sudanis of the Camel Corps are a very likeable lot. They are thoroughly sporting and have a strong sense of humour, but in many ways they are very like children. They have an aptitude for drill and soldiering, but are useless without British officers owing to their lack of initiative. They are faithful and become very attached to Englishmen, but they have a keen sense of discrimination. Like all native troops there is a tendency for each man to consider himself a born leader, and offer his advice and opinion on all occasions; this takes a long time to subdue. But with careful training they become efficient soldiers, and they look very smart in their khaki uniform, which is rather similar to an Indian’s. Physically many of them are splendid men, very powerful and muscular, like bronze statues, but although the climate of their own country is intensely hot they are by no means immune from the effects of sun, and they seem to be almost more liable to catch fever than an Englishman.
The three sections take it in turns to go to Siwa,where they generally remain from six to nine months. It is not a popular place, in spite of the fact that every man is allowed to marry, with no restrictions, such as first having to pass a musketry test. The men much prefer being on the coast where there is more going on, as they are at heart intensely sociable, and also, though living is cheap at Siwa, the climate has a bad reputation.
The best time to go to Siwa is in the spring, when the weather is cool and there is probably water on the road. The trip needs a good deal of preparing for, especially as one has to take down stores for many months. A camel patrol from Siwa used to meet a patrol from the coast at the half-way point on the road once every month, and in this way the mails were sent down to the oasis. A car patrol was supposed to go down at certain intervals, but they were very irregular, and sometimes, on the few occasions when they did come, they forgot to bring the mail. One depended so much on letters at Siwa that this was an intense disappointment. The following is a rough diary of a trek down to Siwa in the hot weather.
Saturday, July 24th.
Spent a busy morning making final arrangements for the trip and seeing that everything was ready. We moved off from Sollum at 3.30 p.m., myself, 39 men, 50 camels, and one dog. The whole camp turned out to see us off, including many small black babies belonging to the men. Some of the men weptprofusely at parting with their wives, but almost before we were out of Sollum I heard them gaily discussing which of the Siwan ladies they would honour by marriage. Saturday is a fortunate day to start on a journey. Apparently the prophet Mohammed favoured Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but Saturdays most of all. Another good omen was the appearance of two crows which we passed just outside the camp; a single crow would have been cause for anxiety, and to see a running hare before camping at night is considered a very serious piece of ill-luck. I think this started from the idea that a running hare was a sign of people on the move close at hand, probably enemies.
We marched along the bottom of the Scarp and reached Bir Augerin, where we camped for the night, at sunset. At Augerin there is one of the many rock cisterns that one finds on the coast. These cisterns are large rectangular underground tanks, often 40 feet square and 20 feet high, with one or two square holes in the roof large enough to admit a man. The Arabs draw the water up in leather buckets on the end of a rope, or if the supply is low one man goes down and fills the bucket which is drawn up by the man above. They are always built in the middle of a hollow with several stone runnels that carry the rain water down from the higher ground. Generally there is a mound near the well with a sheikh’s tomb on the top of it, a cairn surrounded by a low wall, ornamented with a few little white flags which are contributed by passing travellers as a thank-offeringfor the water. According to M. Maspero, the cisterns along the coast were built by the Romans in the second century A.D., and were in use until the middle or end of the fourth century. Most of them are now so out of repair that they only hold water for a very short time after the rains have ceased, and when they are dry they become the home of snakes, bats and owls; however, I believe it is proposed to restore several of the most useful of them.
We camped near the well at Augerin. I had an indifferent dinner. My new cook, Abdel Aziz, seems to be a fool and unaccustomed to being on trek. He is a Berberin, a despised “gins”—race—but always considered to be good cooks. The men I have got with me are a fine lot, all “blacks” and mostly “Shaigis”—from the North Sudan. The old Bash-Shawish—sergeant-major—was previously in the Coastguards and knows the country well. I did not bother to put up a tent, but slept in the open under the stars, which were gorgeous. Not a very hot night.
25th.
Moved off at 4.30 a.m. by chilly but brilliant moonlight. Led the camels and walked for the first hour, then mounted and rode. The men made a long line riding along in file. Arrived at Bir Hamed, another cistern, at about 8 a.m. We stay here till to-morrow morning in order to give the camels a good day’s grazing and watering, as this is the last well beforethe real desert. Bir Hamed is a very wild, picturesque place among the rocky foot-hills below the Scarp. In the spring it becomes one mass of flowers, but now it looks dry and barren. The camels drank frantically and then went out to graze. There is still a fair amount of water in the well, which is icy cold and very refreshing. I, and almost all the men, had a bath, as it is the last opportunity till we get to Siwa. I spent a lazy day in my tent and the men slept most of the time. At four o’clock the camels were driven in to drink again, this time they were less eager to get to the water and sipped it in a mincing way like an affected old lady drinking tea.