Chapter XXV

THE police officer and the Government doctor—a Moslem this time—insisted on accompanying me across the oasis. They told me they had sent a messenger to Tenida to say that we intended to stay the night there, so as to give the _’omda_ time to prepare for us.

My little caravan of three camels and three men seemed extremely small after the one we had been accustomed to; but the men were in good spirits at the prospect of soon returning to their homes, and the camels were good ones and stepped out well.

As we left Smint, Sheykh Senussi, the poet from Mut, in a most excited state, rushed past us, waving his arms wildly in the air and called out to the policeman something that I could not catch.

On reaching Tenida we went to the _’omda’s_ house, lying a mile or two to the north of the town, where we drank the usual tea. Afterwards our host invited us to come and sit in his garden.

It was a large place covering several acres, enclosed by a wall and planted with a variety of palms and fruit trees, all looking extremely healthy. Judging from the size of the trees, they could not have been planted more than twenty years. There was a plentiful supply of water, as a small stream coming from a well, the Bir Mansura ’Abdulla, ran through the plantation with a babbling sound that was very grateful after our hot ride across the oasis. Altogether the garden was a delightfully shady place.

The _’omda_ led the way, directing my attention to the different kinds of trees we passed. Behind came a crowd of officials and the leading men of the district, laughing and chaffing each other in the usual noisy manner of Egyptians. Finding a smooth level place under a palm, with the stream running close beside it, I suggested that we might sit down there; but the _’omda_ declared that the best place was a little farther on, just beyond a thicket in front of us, and made way for me on the path to go in front.

The other natives suddenly all stopped talking and followed us in a most unnatural silence. I led the way, turned round the thicket—and found myself face to face with old Sheykh Mawhub!

He was sitting on a rug in the shade of a small fig tree, apparently engaged in pious meditation. It was an idyllic scene, to which a pergola covered with vines and roses that stood behind him made an effective background.

He was apparently prepared for a journey, his baggage consisting of a small sack containing only a few clothes showed that his wants were easily satisfied. A jug of water and a handful of dates, left over from his meal, showed that he had been demonstrating to the luxurious _fellahin_ of the oasis, the simple life that the Senussia lived in their _zawia_—with the help of a Turkish cook.

The situation was perfectly clear. The little ramp of the Senussia having missed fire, they were desperately anxious that it should be overlooked. So the natives of the oasis, with their usual kindly instincts, had arranged this meeting in order to “make the peace.” I was quite willing to fall in with their views—there was no use in raising the Senussi question.

Old Mawhub greeted me with a benevolent smile, that was almost fatherly in its friendliness. He patted the rug beside him, as an invitation to sit down, and we entered into conversation.

He expressed himself delighted to see me; but I noticed that he omitted the formality usually made to one returning from a journey, and did not praise Allah for my safety. He made no reference at all to my having been in the desert, beyond saying that his son, Sheykh Ahmed, was very angry, very angry indeed, that I had passed so close to his _ezba_ without partaking of his hospitality. I felt quite sure of his anger, but I rather doubted the cause of it.

Mawhub explained that he was on his way to Cairo to “sell some horses” he had with him. The fact that one of his rare visits to the Nile Valley happened once more to coincide with my return to civilisation after a bother in the Senussi country, was not one that I overlooked. I concluded that he would break his journey to Cairo at Assiut, so as to see Qwaytin through any complications that might arise in the _mudiria_—he did.

After ten minutes’ conversation, during which we both carefully avoided dangerous topics, his youngest son, ’Abd el Wahad, who was travelling with him, acting as a most attentive and devoted servant, intimated to me, in a whisper, that his father was tired, and as he was an old man and had a long journey before him on the morrow, wanted to sleep. So I took leave of him and we returned to the _’omda’s_ house, where a meal was served, after which I rode back to the camp for the night.

Shortly after dawn the next day, Mawhub’s caravan—a most wretched-looking collection, consisting of a couple of camels and a miserable horse, passed our camp in charge of two dejected-looking blacks. A few minutes afterwards old Mawhub himself rode up with his son, mounted on two sorry looking screws, that were apparently the horses he was taking into Cairo for sale.

They dismounted on reaching the camp, and the old sheykh suggested, as we were both of us travelling to Kharga, that we should join forces and make the journey together. He was an interesting old fellow, and I felt rather tempted to do so. But though I was ready to let bygones be bygones to a certain extent, I was not prepared to go to this length, so finding that he was intending to travel by the lower or Gubary road, I decided to take the route across the plateau via ’Ain Amur. Mawhub, apparently much disappointed, jumped up again in his saddle with a nimbleness surprising in a man of his age, and rode off wishing me most cordially _tarik es salaama_ (safe road, i.e. journey).

We kept a careful look-out at night and took no risks during our remaining time in the desert, but our precautions were probably quite unnecessary. Our journey to Kharga was entirely uneventful.

Here we found great changes. The English company that had been endeavouring to make the desert blossom like a rose, had only succeeded in gathering the thorns. A shortage in the water supply, leading to interference between the wells, the saline character of the ground, the drifting sand and tearing sandstorms had proved to be too much for them. The company was practically in liquidation. The European staff had mostly gone and taken up work elsewhere. Only one member of it remained, and he was busy in the final preparations necessary before leaving the place in the charge of a native. Finding himself thrown out of a job, he was looking round for a new one, and was hoping to have the old office of Inspector of the Oases revived in his favour—I found myself regarded, in consequence, with a somewhat jaundiced eye as being a possible rival.

He need, however, have had no anxiety on that account. One can put in a fairly interesting time in mapping the unknown parts of the desert, collecting weeds that no one wants, studying the natives’ habits and peculiarities, listening to their stories of buried treasure, and enchanted cities, and in chasing will-o’-the-wisp oases round and round the desert; but to settle down in these wretched oases for the term of my natural life, to seeing that the native officials did not extort more than a reasonable amount of _bakhshish_ from the wretched _fellahin_ under their charge, and to settling disputes as to oranges that fall on the wrong side of a wall, was not one that greatly appealed to me.

The night’s rest that I got in Kharga was most welcome; there had not been a night since leaving Qasr Farafra, a fortnight before, when I had been able to get more than a very limited amount of sleep.

A sleeping man is so utterly defenceless that I had been put to great shifts to get any rest at all on the five days’ journey from Bu Mungar to Dakhla. It was not till we got to Mut that I felt I could trust my men enough to risk being caught by them asleep. Even while inhabiting the old store, Dahab and I took it in turns to keep watch during the night.

I awoke the next morning feeling more alive than I had done for some time, and in the train I continued my night’s rest at intervals during the journey.

On reaching Qara, the base of the railway on the edge of the Nile Valley, the train stayed for some minutes and I got out and walked along the platform. I found that I had been a fellow-passenger on the train with old Sheykh Mawhub. The train was packed with natives, but the compartment which he and his son occupied had been left entirely to them.

They were an unobtrusive looking couple. The old man sat huddled up in the far corner of the third-class carriage, on an old rusty looking sheepskin with a _gula_ (water bottle) and a handful of dates beside him on the wooden seat. Both he and his son were almost shabbily dressed as ordinary _bedawin_—his “glad rags” being probably contained in the patched and dilapidated _hurj_ he carried with him. No one unacquainted with his identity would have troubled to look at him a second time. But for all that he was a man who probably had as much influence among the Mohammedans in Egypt as any other native.

He was still travelling in his character of a horse dealer, and sold one of his screws to the engineer in charge of the line for £5—it looked a stiff price.

Shortly afterwards, Abdulla Kahal, an old thief of a carpet merchant, living up in the native quarter of Cairo, who acted as head sheykh of the Senussia in Egypt, was removed by them from his office and Sheykh Mawhub was appointed in his place. If there were any emoluments attached to the job, I have sometimes wondered if I could not have made out a claim to some sort of commission on them.

I stopped a few nights with a hospitable friend, on the way to Assiut, to allow Qwaytin time to get through from Dakhla. As I slept most of the time, I must have been a remarkably dull guest. I then went on to Assiut to have it out with my guide.

Having arranged that matter fairly satisfactorily, I took the train for Cairo, left the “romantic desert” to look after itself, and exchanged the heated atmosphere of the “Arabian Nights” for the saner one of Europe.

· · · · · · ·

The following are the main results of my visits to the Libyan Desert:

1. A map of practically the whole desert was compiled from information collected from natives. This contained the names of about seventy new places, not shown on any previous maps. It also showed the distribution of the sand dunes and many unknown hill features.[5]

2. The farthest point that was reached to the south-west of Dakhla was practically the centre of the desert. This journey showed that the pre-existing ideas of this district were entirely wrong, and that the hundreds of thousands of square miles, shown in this part on the old maps as being covered with gigantic dunes, were in reality practically free from drift sand, and that the large dune-field lying to the west of the Egyptian frontier, that Rohlfs had found such an impassable obstruction, came to an end about a day’s march to the south of his route, the sand being all banked up by the high sandstone plateau that we found occupying the centre of the desert.[6]

3. The position of Bu Mungar _hattia_ was astronomically fixed, and the cliff running from there to Dakhla was mapped for the first time.[7]

4. The cliff forming the eastern boundary of the Farafra depression was mapped, thus showing that the escarpment of the east and north of Kharga is a continuation of the cliff that runs west from Iddaila Oasis, the whole escarpment—except for a narrow break to the north of Farafra—is consequently continuous and runs for some 450 miles. It forms the southern limit of the limestone plateau, and is the main hill feature of this part of the desert.[7]

5. Two small new oases—’Ain el Agwa and ’Ain Khalif—were found in the western portion of the Farafra depression. The site of Bu Gerara was also discovered, and most of the isolated little plateau that lies on its south-west was mapped.[8]

6. A survey of the desert to the north of ’Ain Amur showed that the plateau there was riddled with a curious network of little depressions.[9]

7. Several months were spent in studying the sand dunes and their method of formation.[10]

8. A considerable amount of material was collected on the manners, customs, legends, measurements and superstitions of the natives.[11]

9. Notes were also made upon their methods of well sinking, and dividing the flow from the wells.[12]

10. Over 240 characters and inscriptions of the “Libyan” type were found and copied.

11. A number of plants growing in the desert and oases were collected and their geographical distribution worked out.[13]

12. A zoological collection, mainly of insects, was also made.