Chapter II

FOR the first few miles the line ran over the floor of the Nile Valley. Some twenty-eight miles from Qara, we emerged from the wady through which the railway ran on to the plateau above. _Jebel_, the word generally used in Egypt to signify desert, means literally mountain; the desert near the Nile Valley consisting of the plateau through which the Nile has cut its course.

The view on the plateau was impressive in its utter barrenness—no single plant, not even dried grass, was to be seen. Though the actual surface of the desert was very uneven, the general level was extremely uniform. The whole plateau consisted of limestone, in the slight hollows and inequalities of which patches of sand and gravel had collected. Here and there very low limestone hills, or rather mounds, were to be seen, none of them probably exceeding twenty feet in height. Everywhere on the plateau the effect of the sand erosion was most marked. The various types of surface produced being known to the natives as _rusuf_, _kharafish_, _kharashef_ and _battikh_, or “water melon” desert, the nature of which will best be seen from the photographs.

The descent from the plateau into the depression in which Kharga Oasis lies, lay, like the ascent from the Nile Valley on to the plateau, through a wady. Kharga Oasis was at that time very little known to Europeans. Until the advent in the district of the company who had constructed the railway, the oasis had only been visited, I believe, by a few scientists and Government officials.

The desert beyond it had been so little explored that, within about a day’s journey from the oasis, I found a perfect labyrinth—several hundred square miles in extent—of little depressions, two or three hundred feet in depth, opening out of each other, that completely honeycombed what had previously been considered to be a part of the solid limestone plateau. Unfortunately, I was never able entirely to explore this curious district. It almost certainly contains at least two wells, or perhaps small oases—’Ain Hamur and ’Ain Embarres.

It is difficult to convey to anyone who has not seen them a clear idea of these oases in the Libyan Desert. Kharga is an oblong tract of country measuring roughly a hundred and forty miles from north to south by twenty from east to west. It is bounded on the east, north and west by huge cliffs or hills. Only about a hundred and fiftieth of its area, in the neighbourhood of the various villages, hamlets and farms scattered over its surface, is under cultivation. These cultivated areas are irrigated by artesian wells, many of which date back to a very remote period. But Kharga Oasis and its antiquities have already been described by two or three writers, so no lengthy account of them is necessary. It contains a number of temples and other ruins, the most important of which is the Temple of Hibis.

The temple has an excellent mummy story connected with it. Those engaged in excavating the temples and tombs of Egypt—an occupation locally known as “body snatching”—are well aware that in their work they always have “the dead agin them,” and there are few places where this has been so well exemplified as in the Temple of Hibis.

At the time of my arrival in Kharga it was being restored by an American archæologist, named W———. Before it was taken in hand, sand had drifted by the wind up against the walls, until it reached very nearly to their summit. In order to find out the extent of the buildings, W——— caused a trench to be dug parallel to one of the main walls.

Before this was completed, his men told him that they did not wish to continue working in that part, giving as their reason that a sheykh, i.e. a holy man, had been buried there, and since he was of exceptional holiness, lights had been seen hovering over his grave at night, and a man who had dug there before had fallen ill.

After some difficulty W——— succeeded in inducing the men to continue their work. But a sacred mummy is an uncanny thing to tackle. Sure enough, after his men had been digging a little longer, some earth slipped down into the trench, and with it came half the mummy, the other half remaining in the ground by the side of the trench. The men “downed tools” at once, and stood aghast at this calamity. The mummy’s feelings must have been seriously outraged for he lost no time in getting to work—the native who had actually dug him up was subject to fits, and had one and died _that night_.

The next morning the mummy had disappeared and all the men were back at work again, just as though nothing had happened. After some little time W——— began to make cautious enquiries as to what had happened to the mummy; but he elicited no information whatever. His enquiries were met with a blank stare of surprise—“mummy? What mummy? There had been no mummy there.” When a native knows nothing like that, it is quite hopeless to try and get anything out of him.

W———’s men went on with their work as though nothing had happened. One of them had atoned for the little accident to the mummy, so they knew that the rest of them were safe . . . but they seemed solicitous about W———’s health, and W——— soon found that he had not done with that mummy. Before the end of the season, he and the European working with him, who had had most to do with the mummy, went down with very bad Kharga fever—a virulent form of malaria—from which W——— himself nearly died.

Some time afterwards he discovered that his men had gone down before him, on the night the mummy had been dug up, and had collected his remains and given him a decent Mohammedan burial. He found out where he was buried and built a really magnificent tomb-top over his grave. It must be nearly ten feet long, six feet wide and two feet high. It was built of the very best mud bricks the oasis could produce—and he even whitewashed it. Since then the mummy has been pacified and has left W——— in peace.

When I found out where the mummy was buried, I _bakhshished_ him, by shoving a five-piastre piece into the ground by the side of his grave—a proceeding that met with Dahab’s highest approval—and I had a more successful trip that year than any other. But it doesn’t say much for the intelligence of the mummy, for that five-piastre piece was a bad one.

For the benefit of the sceptical, I wish to add that this story is true—_absolutely true_—any native in Kharga will tell you that—besides there is the whited sepulchre to prove it; so for a mummy story it is very true indeed.

After a stay of some days in Kharga to allow the caravan to come through from the Nile Valley, we started off for our journey to Dakhla Oasis. Our road at first ran roughly from east to west. Shortly after our start it passed through a patch some two miles wide of curious clay ridges. These, which seemed all to be under twenty feet high, were evidently formed by the erosion of the earth by the wind-driven sand, for they all ran from north to south, in the direction of the prevailing wind. Just before reaching the western side of the oasis, our road passed through a gap in a belt of sand dunes, which, like the clay ridges, also ran in the same north to south direction of the prevailing wind.

These sand belts consist of long narrow areas covered with dunes, running across the desert in almost straight lines, roughly from north to south. This Abu Moharik belt, through which our road ran, has a length which cannot be much less than four hundred miles; but, though it varies somewhat in width at different points along its course, its average breadth is probably not much more than five miles, that is to say, about an eightieth of its total length. These belts consist almost entirely of more or less crescent-shaped dunes. In places the sand hills of which they are composed are scattered and stand isolated from each other, with areas of sand-free desert between them. In other parts the dunes are more closely packed; many of the crescents join together to form large clusters, and the spaces between the dunes are also sometimes covered with sand.

Beyond the dune belt, we turned sharply towards the south and soon came on to the northern end of the cultivated area surrounding Kharga village. From Kharga we journeyed southward to the village of Bulaq, passing on our way the sandstone temples of Qasr el Guehda—or Wehda, as it is often locally pronounced—and Qasr Zaiyan. Both were surrounded by a mudbrick enclosure filled with the remains of a labyrinth of small ruined brick buildings and contained some hieroglyphics and some fine capitals to the pillars.

Shortly after leaving Qasr Zaiyan, we entered a sandy patch covered with vegetation consisting of graceful branched Dom palms, acacias, palm scrub and grasses, in which some of the cattle of the breed, for which the oasis was noted, were grazing. Half an hour’s journey through this scrub-covered area brought us to the palm groves and village of Bulaq, on the south side of which I pitched my camp. Bulaq, though one of the largest villages of the oasis, with a population of about one thousand, is quite uninteresting. Its palm groves and cultivated land lie on its eastern side; on the north, south and west it is bounded by open sandy desert. It is chiefly noted as being the main centre in the oasis for the manufacture of mats and baskets, made chiefly from the leaves of the numerous Dom palms growing in the neighbourhood.

After breakfast the next day we struck camp and set off due west across the dune belt. It took us only an hour and a quarter to negotiate. Between the dunes were many interspaces entirely free from sand, so by keeping as much as possible to these and winding about, so as to cross the sand hills at their lowest points, we managed to get through the belt and emerged on to a gravelly sand-free desert beyond.

This, my first experience of the dunes of the Libyan Desert, was distinctly encouraging. Not only were the sand hills much smaller than I had been led to suppose, but their surface was crusted hard, and we crossed them with little difficulty; on emerging on the farther side, I set out for Dakhla Oasis, feeling far more hopeful of being able to cross the heavy sand to the west of that oasis than I had ever been before.

After crossing the dune belt, we altered our course and turned up nearly due north so as to make for the well of ’Ain Amur. The desert over which we were travelling was of pebbly sand, with an occasional rocky hill or ridge of black sandstone, and presented few points of interest. We camped at five, and I had a good opportunity of studying the peculiarities of my men, and of the kit they had brought with them for the journey.

Qway’s equipment was about as near perfection for the desert as it was possible to get it. His camel saddle was a _rabiat_, over this was a red leather cushion on which he sat. On this he placed his _hurj_, or pair of saddle-bags, of strong carpet-like stuff, one of which hung down on either side; above this lay a folded red blanket, and over this again he spread his _furwa_, or black sheepskin—an indispensable part of a camel rider’s equipment, which he not only places over his saddle, where it forms a soft and comfortable seat, but on which he sits when dismounted, lies on or covers himself with at night and throws over his shoulders on a cold day. Over the camel’s withers in front of the saddle was a second small pad, also of red leather, on which to rest his legs as he crossed them in front of him as he rode, hanging from his _rabiat_ on either side was a sack of grain for his camel, the pockets of his _hurj_ resting on the top of the sacks.

Slung on to his saddle was a most miscellaneous collection of articles. A Martini-Henry rifle I had lent him, with a text from the Koran engraved on it in gold lettering, lay along his camel’s back under his _hurj_ on one side, and was balanced by a red parasol on the other. A goat-skin for carrying water, a small crock full of cheese, his camel’s nose-bag, or _mukhlia_, in which, when leaving an oasis he generally carried a few eggs packed in straw that he had managed to cadge from some village as we passed, his _’agal_, or camel hobble, and a skin of flour, were all tied on to some part or other of his saddle.

In his _hurj_ Qway carried a most extraordinary collection of things: a small circular mirror and a pair of folding nail scissors, with which at the end of a day’s march he frequently spent some time in trimming his beard and moustache—he was always spotlessly clean and neat—a clothes-brush, with which he always brushed his best clothes; his best shoes; an awl with the point stuck into a cork for operating on the camels; a packing needle and one or two sewing needles, with their points similarly protected, a little bag containing thread and buttons; a lump of soap; part of a cone of sugar; tea, salt, red pepper, pills and one or two other mysterious Arab medicines, all carefully tied up separately in different pieces of rag, some cartridges I had given him for his rifle, any onions he had been able to cadge in the last oasis, and a quantity of dried dates, constituted only a few of the miscellaneous assortment of things that his camel bags contained.

The kit of the camel drivers, who were of course on foot, was much more simple. Between them they brought a skin of flour, an enamelled iron basin to make their dough in; a slightly dished iron plate (_saj_) to bake their bread on, and two or three small tin canisters, in which they carried sugar, salt and tea, when they had any, and which were thrown into the ordinary sack in which they carried the small amount of surplus clothing they possessed.

Dahab carried his belongings in a bag rolled up in a rug on which he slept, his kit being of a very workmanlike nature. Khalil’s outfit, however, was largely of an ornamental character, including such trifles as a pink satiny pillow thickly studded with gold stars and covered with a pillow-case trimmed with lace!

In the rough usage inseparable from a desert journey everyone’s clothing becomes more or less damaged. The other men during our halts got their clothes patched and mended, but Khalil never repaired the numerous rents that soon began to appear in his garments. He ultimately became such a scarecrow that when, on one extremely hot day, he seated himself on a rock during our noontide halt, he sprang up again a great deal quicker than he sat down, the reason being that the rock was greatly heated, and, to put it poetically, he had not been “divided from the desert by the sewn.”

While in the Valley, Khalil had been quite a success, for he made a very fair interpreter. But no sooner did he get into the desert, than he appeared at once in his true character, of a dragoman of the deepest die. He was a sore trial, until I got rid of him.

The first few days in the desert with a new caravan are always trying. The men have not got into their work, and the camels, being strangers to each other, spend most of their time in fighting. A savage camel is a dangerous beast and it is of no use playing with him. The right place to hit him is his neck. Hit him hard with something heavy, and go on doing it and he becomes partially stunned and is then amenable to reason. Still, as the gifted author of “Eothen” put it, “you soon learn to love a camel for the sake of her gentle womanish ways.”

The Arabs have different names that they apply to camels according to their age—a one-year-old beast is called _ibn esh Sha’ar_, or sometimes _ibn es Sena_; a two-year-old, _ibn Lebun_; a three-year-old, _Heg_; a four-year-old, _Thenni_; a five-year-old, _Jedda_; a six-year-old, _Raba’a_; a seven-year-old, _Sedis_; and an eight-year-old, _Fahal_. The names apply to both male and female beasts. After eight years a male is called _jemel_ (camel) simply, and the female _naga_.

On some very bad roads, where there is much rock surface to be crossed, many of the caravan guides carry an awl, string and pieces of leather, for the purpose of resoling a camel’s foot should the whole skin of it peel off, as it sometimes will. Qway resoled a foot of one of my camels once that went dead lame from this cause.

The operation was a simple one and seemed to be quite painless. He bored holes diagonally upwards through the thick skin on the edge of the sole of the foot, cut out a piece of leather slightly larger than the camel’s footprint, and then passed pieces of string through the holes he had bored, and through corresponding holes in the piece of leather and tied the ends of the string together. One or two of the strings got cut through by the rock and had to be replaced. The camel, however, without much difficulty was able to hobble back into the oasis, and after some weeks’ rest to allow the skin on the sole of his foot to grow again, completely recovered.

Camels vary considerably in colour. Among those I bought in my first season in Egypt were a beast of a rather unusual chestnut colour and two other fawn-coloured brutes, one of which had a shade of grey in its complexion, and the other was inclined towards a roan tint. These were called by my men the red, blue and green camels respectively.

The “green” beast was the one I used to ride. He was not a bad mount, but as he had not been ridden before I bought him, and guiding a camel by means of a single rein is always rather like trying to steer a boa-constrictor with a string, my stick at first had to be used pretty often.

In the afternoon of our third day, after leaving Kharga, we passed a mass of eroded chalk jutting up above the sandy ground, which, being a recognised landmark was known to natives from its shape as _Abu el Hul_—“the Sphinx.” From there we proceeded to the well of ’Ain Amur, close to which I found a few patches of light blue sand.

A journey of a day and a half westwards over the tableland, on the north cliff of which ’Ain Amur is placed, brought us to the top of the slope from the level of the plateau to Dakhla Oasis.

This _negeb_, or descent, proved to be rather difficult to negotiate. The sand had drifted up against the cliff we had to climb down, and once on the bank of sand the camels, by walking diagonally down the slope, were able to reach the bottom without difficulty. But at the top of the sand bank, the rocks of which the cliff was composed, overhung to form a sort of cornice, and the path on to the sand slope below it lay through a cleft in the cornice, so narrow that the baggage had to be lifted temporarily up from the camels’ backs to enable them to pass through the passage.

It took us half an hour to negotiate this place; but having at length managed it without any catastrophe, we camped in a bay in the cliff soon after reaching the bottom.

Soon after sunset a wild goose flew over the camp on to the plateau, coming from the south-west. Many were the speculations as to where it had come from, as no water was known to exist in the desert from which it came anywhere nearer than the Sudan.