Chapter XXII

WE found Abd er Rahman and Qwaytin diligently engaged in grubbing about in the ground. In reply to my question as to whether they had seen anything of Bu Gerara, I was told that we were standing on it. Qwaytin pointed out the foundations of several walls that could just be seen showing above the sandy surface of the ground and a lot of broken pottery lying about on the desert. He then led me a few yards away to where a circular patch of unusually sandy soil, a few feet in diameter, was to be seen, which he said was the mouth of a well, and produced as the first instalment of the “treasure” to be found, a piece of broken purple glass, that had apparently once formed part of a cup or bowl, and a copper coin of the Ptolemaic period, which he had dug up.

The sight of that coin was too much for my men. It was all I could do to get them to unload the camels and pitch my tent, before they were all off digging away into the ground for dear life, expecting every moment to find the untold wealth that the book had described. They continued until it was too dark for them to see. They then set to work to cook their evening meal.

Qwaytin’s men were even more primitive in their culinary arrangements than Abd er Rahman and Ibrahim. Their food supply consisted of the usual leathern sack of flour, an earthenware jar, covered with raw hide, which contained clarified butter, that they slung on a camel, and several tin canisters containing a very anæmic-looking cheese. They mixed the flour, water, salt and butter together into a dough, which they rolled out into thick slabs with a stick about three-quarters of an inch in diameter on the top of one of my provision boxes. They then lighted a huge bonfire from the surrounding scrub, and when the sand was sufficiently heated and the wood was reduced to glowing embers, scraped the fire away, laid the slab of dough down on the heated sand and covered it over again with the cinders. After about a quarter of an hour’s baking the bread was considered to be ready to eat. My men cooked their dough on a slightly dished iron plate called a _saj_.

Qwaytin came into my tent in the evening, highly elated at having found Bu Gerara. To my disgust I discovered that he was not thinking of going on into Farafra at all, but was fairly off on a treasure hunt, and seemed to imagine that he was going to drag me all over the desert with him searching for buried riches. His book, he explained, not only described the road as far as Bu Gerara, but said that close by there was a hill to the west, standing in the same wady—Qwaytin pointed out a hill standing by itself to the west as a conclusive proof that his book was correct—and that a road ran past the foot of the hill that, if followed, led to a big hill, on the top of which was a well in which the treasures of three Sultans were buried. He said he had seen the road at the foot of the hill in the morning. He had never followed it to see where it led to; but he had seen a hill some years before in the direction of which the road was going, and had noticed a lot of pigeons alight on the top of it, and thought that perhaps it was the one the book referred to, and that they had gone there to drink from the well.

His mind was fairly obsessed with the idea of treasure, and I could get him to talk of nothing else.

I tried to get some information from him about Farafra and Iddaila—but it was of no use; he got round again to treasure at once. The last time he was in Farafra, he said, he was on his way back from Tibesti, where he said he had found a seam of diamond that stood up two feet above the ground like a wall, and ran for a long distance. He had chopped some lumps of diamond off and they cut glass. But the Senussi sheykhs had apropriated them for the benefit of the Senussia. He was clearly very sore on the subject.

I tried to switch him off on to the Bedayat country—but it was almost equally useless. He said he knew of a number of places there where there were ruins that probably contained treasure and asked to see my map.

He studied it for some time, asking me to read out the names and then declared that it was all wrong, and asked for a pencil and piece of paper, saying that he would draw me a better one. He laid the paper on the ground, sucked the end of the pencil and began to draw the roads joining the places he was going to tell about, now and then consulting a cheap bar compass to make sure that he had got them running in the right direction. This framework, when completed, looked more like a broken spider’s web than anything else.

He next proceeded to place on his “map” a number of enormous dots, to represent the positions of the places he wished to insert in it, and began to reel out a lot of names that are not found on any printed map. The conversation commenced to become interesting, and a good deal more in my line than fables relating to buried treasure.

But the names given to places by Arabs, Tibbus and Sudanese are not easily remembered, or even grasped, the first time they are heard. I allowed him to run on until he had completed his list, and then took the pencil from him and began to write opposite his dots the names of the places they stood for, and their distances and bearings from each other. Qwaytin at once became impatient, as I found he always did whenever I questioned him as to his statements, or he saw me writing them down, and I was not able to get more than two or three of the names before he took himself off in a huff.

He was a most exasperating man to get information from. If I questioned him about some part of the world that he had visited, he would very often give me no information at all. Sometimes a suggestion on my part that perhaps he did not know anything about it, would put him on his mettle and cause him to divulge some of his knowledge; but as often as not it only had the effect of making him reel out a lot of lying statements that probably appealed to his yokelish mind as being facetious, but which subsequent questioning showed to be incorrect—every statement that he made I had to check in order to guard against this peculiar sense of humour that he possessed.

I usually verified his information by getting him to repeat what he had said after an interval of a week or more, by which time I calculated that, if he had lied, he would have forgotten what he had said.

The first time I caught him misleading me, I pulled him up. But this proved to be quite the wrong line to take, and nearly had the effect of making him withhold his information altogether. He was greatly incensed, and for many days he would tell me nothing at all. Then late one night, while I was sitting up, waiting for a star to come on to the meridian in order to get a latitude, just when it had almost got there and I was going to take the observation, Qwaytin came quietly up and said that he would tell me about the country of the Bedayat. I had to give up the observation and go and sit down in the tent, where under a coat thrown over my knees, under pretence of feeling cold, so that he should not see me doing so, I took down all he said in writing.

The information that he volunteered in this way I found to be nearly always reliable—but he generally chose some time when I was going to bed, or in the middle of some other work, to come and impart his knowledge, and broke off at once if he saw me writing it down. During the day’s march, too, I would sometimes get him in a communicative mood, and he would describe to me the route that joined two places. The difficulty of writing all he said down before I forgot it was easily solved in this case, by stopping to take a compass bearing, as he had often seen me do before, and then by writing in my route book the information he had volunteered under pretence of keeping up the survey.

Collecting data from natives on which to base a map is not quite so simple as it sounds. The habit that so many _bedawin_ have of deliberately misleading one, makes it necessary to check the routes described most carefully. But even bona-fide information collected in this way will make a most inaccurate map unless some means for adjusting it can be found.

The plan I adopted was to get the data whenever possible, in the form of through routes, joining two places whose positions had been previously fixed. Roads so described can then be plotted on the map, their accuracy tested and the route as a whole adjusted, so as to fit the positions of the places that are already known. In this way the errors can be minimised as far as possible.

But collecting this information from Qwaytin was anything but easy. Like nearly all the _bedawin_ he was entirely illiterate, and so could not give me the spelling of the names of the places that he gave me in the Libyan Desert, the Sudan, Tibesti and Endi, and these could not be found on any map. Many of them were almost unpronounceable, and in some cases introduced sounds that could not be reproduced by even the Arabic alphabet. They were presumably those of the Tibbu or Bedayat languages—the latter being a tongue that Qway had described to me as sounding like “the chattering of monkeys.”

It will easily be imagined that to take down a long string of new names such as these, when rapidly reeled off, was a matter of some difficulty.

But it seemed worth taking some trouble to get them. I had been asked to get any information I could about the unknown parts of the desert, for the Senussi question was in the air—the Government were by no means so fast asleep as people were led to suppose—and at that time, moreover, a rod was being laid in pickle for ’Ali Dinar, the Sultan of Darfur, whose goings on did not always meet with the approval of the authorities; so information on these unknown parts was likely to be of some practical use, beyond spoiling the virginal whiteness of this part of the map of Africa.

Qwaytin’s knowledge of the least known parts of North and Central Africa was profound, and he had the great virtue, from my point of view, of being so densely stupid that he was unable to realise the value of all that he let out. Before I had done with him, he gave me enough data to form a fairly complete map of the unknown portions of the Libyan Desert, with a great deal of the Bedayat country and Endi. In addition I learnt from him much information of the orography of the desert and the distribution of the sand dunes. The map when completed contained the names of some seventy places that, I believe, had not previously been recorded; many of them have been found since, approximately in the position in which they were shown. Maps of this kind do not, of course, err on the side of accuracy, but they have their uses—principally in giving future travellers that definite objective to look for, that I had so greatly needed when starting work in this desert. If I had been able to collect during my first year the information I eventually obtained, mainly from Qwaytin, in my last, I should certainly have tackled the job in an entirely different way.

The morning after our arrival at Bu Gerara, the men fell seriously to work to dig about in the site, with the result that by midday a few pieces of broken pottery and glass and two or three more small copper coins had been unearthed. As I wished to ascertain whether any water was to be found in the well, in the afternoon, much to their disgust, I set the men to clear it out.

Qwaytin’s men, after they had been working for a short time, downed tools, declaring that that sort of work was a job that was only fit for the _fellahin_, and beneath the dignity of the Arabs. It was not until I pointed out that the well was the most likely place in which to look for treasure, and reminded them that the three Sultans were said to have buried theirs in the well on the top of the hill described in Qwaytin’s book, that they could be induced to resume their work. Then they fell to with a will and soon had the well cleared out to the bottom.

It was about nine feet in diameter, and eight feet deep. On the side towards the site of Bu Gerara, a ramp, cut in its side, led down to the bottom. The part of the desert in which it had been sunk was covered with a thin layer of rock, below which lay a bed of clay, extending down to another layer of rock, which formed the bottom of the well. Before we commenced to dig, the well was completely filled with sand that had drifted into it. About half-way down our expectations were raised by the sand becoming damp; but though the well was cleared out to the very bottom, and the sand got considerably damper as we descended, no water was to be seen. This was a considerable disappointment, as a well at this point on the long Derb et Tawil would have been of the greatest value to the travellers using the road.

The nut of a dom palm that I dug up, and the trunks of some palm trees that had been built into the walls, showed that, at one time, there must have been a plentiful supply of water in the neighbourhood. The place was probably a small fortified station built, or at all events occupied, during Ptolemaic times, to protect the well, which from its position on “the long road” must once have been of considerable importance.

The existence of fossilised tree-trunks and old river-beds in the Libyan Desert shows conclusively that, in the remote past, this portion of the world must have been a well-watered country. But whether this desiccation reached its limit before historical times, or whether it is still going on is one of the most disputed points in connection with this district. The failure of the well at Bu Gerara may, of course, have been due to some purely local cause, which was not apparent. But in the absence of some explanation as to its nature, this little abandoned settlement affords a very strong argument in favour of the view that the water supply—apart from that derived from the artesian wells—has failed appreciably in comparatively recent times, owing probably to a decrease in the rainfall. From this point of view, our discovery was of some importance, though the place itself was of no consequence at all.

But it was found by following instructions in Qwaytin’s book of treasure. Works of this description, to put it mildly, are regarded in Egypt with a considerable amount of incredulity. This scepticism, I own, I fully shared—until my discovery of Bu Gerara.

Since then, however, I have taken a different view of the case, and believe that the almost universal suspicion with which these books are regarded, may not, after all, be entirely justified, and that part of it at least is due to the strong prejudice that so often exists towards any native beliefs or customs that do not admit of a ready explanation, or that savour in any way of the occult, or of buried riches.

These books of treasure, it is true, are mostly written by natives of the astrologer class, who clearly expect their readers to rely largely upon charms and various occult means to discover the hidden riches to which they profess to give the key. Many of them lived in the Middle Ages, but the race has not died out. There are hundreds of the same class of men still to be found practising their arts on the credulous natives of Egypt, and one of the principal subjects upon which they are even now consulted is the recovery of buried treasure. There is a _sheykh el afrit_ (ruler of spirits) in almost every village, to whom the inhabitants resort to induce him by means of the pool of ink, or some similar method, to foretell the future or to guide them to where treasure has been buried. Some of them perhaps believe in their own powers, but the majority are probably little more than impostors. So far, so bad.

But there appears to be a very fair amount of grain among all the chaff contained in these books, for in many cases they not only refer to places, such as Esna, which are perfectly well known, but they describe the roads that lead to them, when these roads are still in use.

For this reason I think they are worth careful—or perhaps it would be better to say cautious—consideration. It is true that in many cases they mention places and describe roads which perhaps were perfectly well known at the time when the books were written, but that cannot now be identified; but this proves nothing. There are many old sanded-up wells, little deserted oases and small outpost stations of the Roman and other periods, such, for instance, as Bu Gerara, scattered about in the desert, and the vestiges of many old roads are still to be seen, whose ultimate destination is now unknown, but which, I believe, lead to these abandoned oases, which very probably, in the fifteenth century, when the book of Johnson Pasha’s that has already been referred to was written, were populous villages and oases; but which, owing to failure of the water supply, the encroachment of the sand, or to some other cause, have long since become deserted.

On these grounds I believe these books contain—among a great deal that is useless except as a curiosity—some valuable information as to old places in the desert that have long since been lost to sight, and whose very names may now be forgotten, information that is of a geographical character.

Why not? Is it the age of the book, or the fact that the descriptions in it are associated with magic and hidden treasure, that presents the difficulty? If it be the former, ask any archæologist whether he would hesitate to look for the site of some ancient city, because the only references to it were to be found in some old papyrus or temple hieroglyphics; besides, did not the Royal Geographical Society have a paper read before them on the identity of the Garden of Eden with Mesopotamia? The description that led to the identification being taken from the Book of Genesis, which was written long before any of these books were thought about.

If it be the treasure that presents the difficulty, has there not been endless discussion among geographers as to the identity of the Wakwak Islands and other places, mentioned in the “Arabian Nights,” a large proportion of the stories in which have no pretensions to be anything more than fairy-tales—and certainly there is enough buried treasure mentioned in them to satisfy the most ardent fortune hunter in Egypt.

Are not educated Europeans, even now, continually setting out to look for the fabulous riches hidden, a hundred or two years ago, by some old pirate or buccaneer, usually on an island—say, in the West Indies? Of the identity of the island there is generally no doubt at all—but the treasure does not seem to be often found!

We stayed for a day or two more at Bu Gerara, during which time the men found a small earthenware pot, some broken fragments of glass and pottery and one or two more copper coins—and that was all! Then as we had drawn a blank, so far as treasure was concerned at Bu Gerara, the men all wanted to be taken off to the hill where the riches of the three Sultans was buried with the least possible delay. Qwaytin was the most insistent of them all, evidently assuming that I had given up my plan of going to Farafra and had committed myself to a whole season’s treasure hunting instead.

The hill where the mystical Sultans had buried their riches was not far off, though it did not lie in the direction in which I had intended to go; but it was in a part of the desert that had never been mapped, so I thought it best to humour him once more and let him take me there.

We got off early the next morning. Qwaytin led us straight towards the hill in the wady, near the foot of which we found the promised road.

As we increased our distance from the cliff lying to the north of Bu Gerara, the surroundings of the place could be better seen. The view to the north was, of course, cut off by the cliff, which as soon as we had got some distance from it, could be seen stretching away for many miles to the east, forming the continuation of the escarpment that bounded the Kharga depression on its northern side.

To the south-east was a considerable expanse of elevated ground, evidently the plateau in which lay some small depressions I had found to the north of ’Ain Amur. So far as I could see, there was no cliff on the northern side of this tableland, the ground only sloping up to it from the lower level. A well—’Ain Embares—that I had tried to reach by way of the chain of small depressions, with little doubt was situated between the foot of the scarp of the main plateau and this high ground that lay to its south.

On the west, the scarp of the plateau was visible for a long way. Qwaytin’s old road led us in a southerly direction, roughly parallel to the cliff of a detached plateau. It was chiefly noticeable for the large number of small patches of bushes, known as _roadhs_, that were scattered along it. These seemed to be a favourite feeding ground for gazelle, to judge from the number of tracks we saw, most of which, however, were fairly old ones. In one place, instead of the usual small bushes, a couple of small acacia (_sunt_) trees were seen.

We sighted the hill we were in search of in the afternoon, and, an hour before camping, reached the top of a steep descent on to lower ground, about two hundred and fifty feet below us, that Qwaytin said was called in his book the “Negeb er Rumi” (descent of the European). The road down to the valley below was obviously to some extent an artificial one, and, though extremely steep, was negotiated without difficulty. We pitched our camp below.

This lower ground was so covered with sand and pebbles that I was unable to see whether we were still on the limestone. But the ground level rose again considerably as we neared the hill, and for the last part of the way the limestone was showing again on the surface. Possibly a fault exists in the neighbourhood.

We reached the hill itself at noon, and camped on its southern side. It was a small limestone-capped hill, chiefly remarkable for the extent to which the limestone was honeycombed by the wind-driven sand. At the foot of the hill, near the camp, was a boulder that had evidently rolled down from the top. It was almost four feet in diameter, and literally riddled with holes like a sponge.

As soon as the camp was pitched, the men rushed up the hill and began minutely searching every nook and cranny for the reported well, while Qwaytin wandered disconsolately along its base, vainly searching for the broken glass that his book had foretold would be found there. He thought that perhaps he had mistaken the hill, and said, if we could not find the well or any glass, that we had better follow the road farther, to see if there was not another hill upon it that might be the one referred to in his book; but to waste any more time in looking for that hill was the last thing I intended to do.

By sunset the well had not been found, though every inch of that hill must have been most carefully examined several times.

This was a serious blow to Qwaytin’s hopes, and a distinct wet blanket to the whole caravan with the exception of Ibrahim, who, as he explained to me, would not have minded a little _bakhshish_, but would not in the least know what to do with sacks of gold, or diamonds, even if he found them.

In the evening Qwaytin, Abd er Rahman, Dahab and I held a serious consultation. The position of the hill tallied so well with the description of it in Qwaytin’s book that he felt sure that it was the right one; but he was terribly worried over the failure to find the well.

Dahab said that he thought that probably it was there all right, but that it was hidden by enchantment, and that it would be necessary for us to burn some incense before it would become visible.

Qwaytin cheered up rather at this idea; but said that we had no incense with us, and added it was awkward stuff to play with, as it was most important that we should have the right kind, and should be quite sure that we knew how to use it.

Abd er Rahman agreed with this, and was very emphatic in saying that we ought to be quite sure that we had enough of it, as he had heard a story of a Maghrabi Arab, who had joined with two _fellahin_ in a search for treasure that was buried in some tombs in the side of a hill that had a spell over them, and so could not be opened without proper formalities. They found the place where the tombs were hidden, and then had gone through the necessary incantations and burnt some incense and the tombs immediately opened. The two _fellahin_ had then gone in to collect the treasure while the Maghrabi had remained outside to look after their camels and to keep the incense burning. Unfortunately the incense ran short, and, as soon as the last of it had been burnt, the tombs closed again with a bang, burying the two unfortunate _fellahin_ alive. The Maghrabi had then gone home with their camels, and Abd er Rahman was clearly of opinion that that Arab had done something that was quite exceptionally clever.

He suggested that, to be on the safe side, we had better go and fetch Sheykh Ibrahim, the _Sheykh el Afrit_ from Dakhla, to come out and do the necessary incantations. But this did not meet with Qwaytin’s approval at all. Sheykh Ibrahim, he said, was a member of the Senussia and he knew all about him. He had the right books and the proper incense and was very clever at his work. But he was such a bad man that sometimes the spirits would not obey him; and he pointed out that if an _afrit_ went on strike in the middle of the performance, we might find ourselves rather badly in the soup.

After much serious discussion, we came to the conclusion that, in the circumstances, it was no use for us to waste any more time in examining the hill, but that at the end of the trip we would go and get a really first-class highly certificated magician from Cairo, or some big town, and get him to come out and do the job. In the meantime, as Qwaytin had told me that there were some mounds in the Kairowin _hattia_, that we should go there through the eastern part of the Farafra depression and see if they did not contain treasure. Qwaytin had heard that they contained buildings, and so thought that it would be a likely place for buried riches, though, as he said lugubriously, he did not expect that we should find anything like what we might have done if we had discovered the treasure of those three Sultans. The following morning a rather crestfallen caravan set out for the eastern side of Farafra.