Chapter VIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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