Chapter VII

THE first dune we had to negotiate was only about eight feet high and, as the sand at this point was crusted hard, in a minute or two, without the slightest difficulty, we were across the first sand hill of that field of “impassable dunes”—and the last!

We at once found ourselves on a sand-free patch lying between the dunes. By following a winding course across the belt we were able to reach its farther side in about an hour and a half, without having to negotiate any further sand. The sand hills were not nearly so closely packed together as they appeared to be from a distance.

We emerged into a long lane between the dunes quite free from drift sand, running parallel with the sand belt and stretching away to the south, till it ended in the distance in a hill on the skyline. On the far side of this lane was another belt of sand hills, which, being closely packed together and of considerable height, would have caused some difficulty to cross. So instead of keeping a south-westerly direction, which would have necessitated crossing these difficult dunes, I followed the sand-free lane to the south and coasted along them, hoping to find an easier place where the dunes had become lower or more scattered. An old disused road ran west from Mut into the dunes, presumably leading direct to Kufara. We found the continuation of this road where it crossed the lane and again ran under the dunes to the west of it. At that point it bore 265° mag.

We soon joined the tracks of five camels proceeding in the same direction as ourselves, and apparently only three or four days old. We followed these tracks, which ran along the lane between the dunes and presently, to everyone’s profound astonishment, came upon the unmistakable track of a two-wheeled cart. They eventually led us to a very low gritstone hill.

As wheeled conveyances are entirely unknown in the oasis the presence of the tracks was a perfect mystery. It was not till my return to the oasis that I learnt their history. At least forty years before, the father of the _’omda_ of Rashida had imported a cart into the oasis from the Nile Valley, in order to fetch from the gritstone hill two millstones we had seen in a mill in his village.

The permanence of tracks in certain kinds of desert is well known to anyone with any experience of desert life. The marks in this case ran over a level sandy surface thinly covered with darker pebbles. The cart must have crushed the pebbles deeply into the soft sand on which they lay, and the ruts thus formed rapidly filled up again with drift sand during the first sandstorm, showing as two conspicuous white lines, owing to the absence along the tracks of the darker pebbles, and forming marks that might easily last for a century, unless they happened to be situated in a part of the desert where the sand erosion was gradually wearing away the surface of the ground.

Close by the hill from which the millstones had been quarried the tracks of the five camels we had seen turned off towards the west. As the lane we had been following ran up north in the direction of Qasr Dakhl and the only camels in the oasis were those kept by the Senussi living there, there was little doubt that the tracks we had seen were those of a party of Senussi from the _zawia_ on their way, probably with letters, to Kufara.

The Senussi invariably conducted their visits to and from their headquarters with the greatest secrecy, for fear that, when proceeding there, they might be followed and the road that they took might thus become known. The route followed by this party was eminently well suited to preserve their secret, as, while following the lane, they must have been entirely concealed from the inhabitants of the oasis by the intervening line of dunes that we crossed. So we had evidently stumbled upon one of their secret roads to Kufara.

About four o’clock we reached the hill we had seen on the skyline at the end of the lane between the dunes, and as it was the highest in the neighbourhood I climbed to its top with Qway and Abd er Rahman, sending the caravan round its base to wait for me on its southern side.

From the summit we could see over a wide range of country. In the far north lay Dakhla Oasis with the scarp behind it. The continuation of this cliff beyond Qasr Dakhl could be seen stretching far away to the west as a faint blue line that appeared to get lower towards the west.

The desert to the west of Dakhla was almost entirely covered by dunes, which seemed to be higher farther to the north and in the extreme west, where they were noticeably redder in colour than the cream-coloured sand hills in the neighbourhood of the oasis.

Everywhere to the south-west, in the direction in which we were going, the desert was very level, and to my great surprise entirely free from drift sand, with the exception of one or two isolated dunes that could be seen in the distance. Instead of the sand-covered desert to the south-west of Dakhla shown on the maps, the whole surface consisted of bare Nubian sandstone—there was no sign of the limestone that caps the plateau near the Nile Valley. The hill on which we stood was considerably higher than Dakhla, and from our elevated position we could see a great distance; but not a trace was there to be seen of the “great sea of impassable sand” that was shown on the maps of the south-west of the oasis. Never had an unsuspecting traveller been so hopelessly misled by an imaginative geographer. The great area covered with huge dunes that was supposed to exist here, extending to thousands upon thousands of square miles, simply did not exist at all. It was an absolute myth!

The sand belts of this desert creep forward towards the south under the influence of the prevailing north wind—not as I once saw stated in a novel at the rate of many miles in the course of a night—but with a steady advance of, say, twenty yards in a year. Long belts, like the Abu Moharik already referred to, are known to extend for hundreds of miles, and it had consequently been assumed that the dunes that Rohlfs had found ran for a similar distance.

From where we stood the reason that these belts were so curtailed was perfectly clear. The ground level rose fairly rapidly all the way from Dakhla, and the area lying to the south-west of our position constituted an elevated plateau, along the northern edge of which ran a chain of hills of considerable height. The sand belts found by Rohlfs had all banked up against these hills, except in one or two places where a line of isolated crescent dunes had crept through a gap in the range and emerged on to the plateau.

The contrast between this part of the desert, as shown on the map, entirely covered with these “impassable” dunes, to cross which was a problem that during the past few months I had been racking my brains in attempts to solve, and the desert as it existed in reality—with only one small ridge of sand about eight feet high and perhaps forty yards broad to be crossed, which had presented no difficulty at all, could hardly have been greater. I felt considerably annoyed with the compilers of those maps for causing me so much wasted scheming. The discovery, however, of the sand-free character of the desert, was of the greatest importance for the purpose of my journey, as it naturally made our road far easier to traverse.

As the “impassable sea of sand” had proved to be a myth, and the Senussi did not appear to be anything like as fanatical as I had been led to expect, I began to hope that the other unsurmountable difficulties foretold would also vanish in the same way, and that I should have no other impediments to surmount than the shortage of water and other problems that always have to be faced in every desert journey.

Abd er Rahman had been minutely examining the whole desert towards the south-west from the top of the hill. Suddenly he touched my arm and drew my attention to two _’alems_ (landmarks) lying in the distance.

I looked through my glass in the direction that he indicated, but could see no _’alem_ at all. However, as he persisted they were there, we went down to the bottom of the hill to look for them.

For a long way from the foot of the hill, the whole surface of the desert was covered with loose slabs of sandstone rock. Abd er Rahman led us across this up to a little pile of three stones about a foot high that, with the keen sightedness of the _bedawin_, he had spotted from a distance of some two hundred yards, although it lay on the ground so covered with loose slabs of stone that I had not been able to see it myself, even when pointed out by Abd er Rahman, until I got within a few yards of it.

These little heaps of stone, sometimes only a few inches high, are placed at intervals along the desert roads to act as landmarks to those who use them. Occasionally, instead of being placed on the road itself, they are erected on a hill, or rising ground, close by it. The _bedawin_, even if unacquainted with the district, will often travel great distances, relying for their guidance on the _’alems_ erected along the roads by previous travellers.

Some hundred yards farther on we found the second _’alem_ that Abd er Rahman had seen. It consisted of a similar pile of stones. I took a bearing along the line of the two and then we proceeded to march along it. But the road proved to be very bad going, the camels slipped and tripped over the loose stone slabs, till once or twice I thought one would be down. But after a time we got on to easier ground, and began to make better progress.

In making a compass traverse, it is, I believe, usual to estimate the speed at which the caravan is travelling for each section of the road. I personally found this method so unsatisfactory that, after many attempts, I at length was forced to abandon it and to keep my route book on a method of my own, which I found to give much better results.

I assumed a uniform speed of two and a half miles per hour, which is about the rate of a caravan of loaded camels over normal ground. Then, after having passed over an unusually difficult section of the road, where I knew we had not been marching up to our standard speed, I estimated the amount of time we had lost, and entered it in the route book as a “halt,” to be deducted from the amount of time actually occupied in crossing it. I found that a compass traverse, booked in this way, not only fitted considerably closer to the astronomical positions I found, but the actual plotting of the traverse itself was very much simplified—and the risk of errors in consequence much reduced—by having a uniform speed to work upon.

Shortly before we camped for the night we crossed a very faint old road running almost due east and west. These old roads—of which we found a large number—remain visible for an extraordinarily long time, where they happen to run over certain kinds of desert.

We found the going over the plateau unusually bad. Not only had we to cross large areas of _kharafish_ (sharp, sand-eroded rock), but we repeatedly came across a particularly obnoxious form of it known, I believe, as _sofut_—a type of erosion consisting of knife-edged blades of sandstone standing up two or three inches above the ground, which proved to be a severe trial to the soft-footed camels, who tripped and staggered along, uttering the most melancholy groans.

Another type of surface we had occasionally to cross was that known as _noser_. At first sight this appeared to be a perfectly level expanse of hard crusted sand. But appearances were deceptive. The sand was only a few inches thick and overlay a bed of stiff clay which, under the influence of the great summer heat, had cracked into fissures often a foot or more wide and extending for several feet down into the ground. The smooth sandy surfaces showed no trace of these chasms. But if the heavy camels, while walking over the ground, happened to place one of their feet over a fissure, they immediately broke through the weak crusted sand, and stumbled forward into the hole below, on more than one occasion coming right down and throwing their loads. Fortunately we had no worse casualties; but strained sinews, and even broken legs are by no means uncommon from this cause.

We continued marching along the bearing I had taken between the two _’alems_, so far as the unequalities of the desert would allow us, for though the general level of the plateau was maintained over a large area, it had many minor undulations. But by looking ahead in the direction of the bearing we were generally able to decide where the road ran.

Here and there we came across _’alems_, showing that we were still on the right track; but it was not until we had followed it for nearly two days that we again saw any part of the road itself.

Then, however, we found a stretch of it lying in a sheltered position, which we were able to follow for over two miles. In one place where, being sheltered, it was rather more plainly visible than usual, I counted no less than forty-three parallel paths. At one time it must clearly have been one of the main caravan roads of the desert. But we saw no more _’alems_, nor did we come across any more stretches of the road on that journey.

The farther out on the plateau we got the greater were the number of the hills we saw. They were all of the same Nubian sandstone of which the plateau itself consisted—I saw no trace anywhere in this part of the desert of the limestone that caps the plateau to the north and east of Dakhla and Kharga. The hills were of the usual desert type, either flat-topped, domed, or pyramidal. Here and there we came across some with a more jagged outline, but these were rare. In parts these hills were extraordinarily numerous, from one point I counted over two hundred and fifty of them, in spite of the fact that about 60° of the horizon were cut off by the proximity of a long ridge. The largest of them that I saw was not much more than three hundred feet in height. The general level of the plateau was approximately that of the tableland of the top of the cliff to the north of Dakhla.

On our fourth day out from Mut we got into a considerable area of very rough ground, largely consisting of sharp-edged _sofut_, with the result that by evening two of the camels were limping slightly, owing to the injuries to their feet from the sharp rock, and as I could see much lower ground to the south, I turned off on setting out on the fifth morning in that direction.

After two hours’ march we reached the bottom of a small wady, which my aneroid showed to be 110 feet deep. As, shortly before reaching it, we had seen the track of a rat, my men christened it the “_wady el far_” or “Valley of the Rat.” It was still quite early in the day, but as one of the camels was still limping, I decided to camp, and sent Qway off on his _hagin_ towards the south-west to scout.

The whole of the central part of the Libyan desert was supposed to consist of an “impassable sea” of sand dunes, but on a journey to about the middle of the desert, the only dune that had to be actually crossed was the small one shown above. (p. 82).]

On his return to the camp I asked Qway what he had seen during his ride. He said he had ridden for two hours towards the south-west, and then he had reached the edge of a plain on the far side of which was a high black mountain. Beyond that he said was a very deep valley, which he had been unable to see into, but which was overhung by a mist. As the mountain lay about four hours’ ride away, and the valley about two hours beyond it, he had returned to the camp to report what he had seen.

This sounded most promising news, and I was anxious to go off at once and have a look at the “_wady esh shabur_,” or “Valley of the Mist,” as Khalil poetically called it, so I took Qway off to look at our water-tanks.

But the inspection was not too encouraging. We were distinctly short of water. Qway thought we should have just enough to take us out to his “Valley of the Mist,” and back again to Dakhla, if all went well, but he pointed out that we had one lame camel and another limping slightly, and that at that season it was quite possible that we might get some hot days with a _simum_ blowing, and he consequently thought that it would be far better to be on the safe side and go straight back to Dakhla, rest the camels, and then come out and go on to the valley on the next journey.

As this was obviously sound advice, we struck camp, packed up and prepared to set off at once towards Dakhla, leaving several sacks of grain behind us, which greatly eased the burden of the camels and allowed us to leave the two limping beasts unloaded.

The wady in which the camp had been pitched evidently lay on the southern fringe of the plateau, and opened out on its eastern side down a sandy slope on to the lower ground beyond. The plateau, I knew, did not extend much farther to the east, so with two damaged camels in the caravan, I thought it best to avoid a return over the very rough road we had followed on our outward journey, and to strike instead in an easterly direction, round the south-east corner of the tableland, over the smooth sandy desert lying at the foot of the scarp of the plateau.

This road, though somewhat longer than the one we had followed on our outward journey, proved to be excellent going; it lay almost entirely over smooth hard sand. We continued to follow an easterly course till the middle of the next morning, when, on reaching the edge of the dune belt that runs along the western boundary of Dakhla, we turned up north towards Mut, and coasted along it.

The road was almost featureless. A few low rocky hills were seen on the lower ground for a while after leaving the “Valley of the Rat,” but even these soon ceased. From this point onwards we saw nothing of interest, with the exception of some pieces of petrified wood, lying on a greenish clay, until we reached our destination at Mut, in Dakhla Oasis. In the desert round about Kharga and Dakhla we several times came across the petrified remains of trees, though they never occurred in large patches.

Qway proved to be right in his forebodings of hot weather, and we had two days of fairly warm _simum_ wind. We, however, managed to get in without suffering unduly from thirst—but I felt rather glad that we had not tried to reach that valley.

The state of my caravan necessitated my giving them some days’ rest, to enable them to recover their condition, and to allow their feet to get right again after the hard usage they had received on the sharp rocks of the plateau, before setting out again into the desert.

In the meantime I conducted an experiment to try and locate the position of the place from which the palm doves—the _kimri sifi_—were said to come. Their migration was just at its height, and several times, while on the plateau, we put them up from the rocks on which they had alighted to rest during their flight.

The _kimri sifi_ always arrived in the oasis just before sunset, and as they generally made for a particular well to the south-west of Mut, I went there one evening with a compass and gun to wait for them. I took the bearing with my compass to the direction in which a number of them came. These bearings tallied very closely, the average of them being 217° mag.

I then shot a few of them just as they were alighting, and cut them open. They had all been feeding on seeds—grass seeds apparently—and olives. The seeds were in an almost perfect condition, but the olives were in such an advanced state of digestion as to be hardly recognisable.

I next bought some doves of the ordinary kind kept in the oasis from the villagers, and confined them in a cage. At sunrise the following morning I fed them on olives and then, towards midday, took them out one by one, at intervals of an hour, killed them, and cut them open to see the state of the olives. Those of the one killed at three o’clock seemed in the state most resembling those taken from the _kimri sifi_ I had shot, showing that it required about nine hours’ digestion to reduce them to that condition.

The _kimri sifi_ is a weak-flighted bird, and, judging from the numbers we put up in the desert from places where they had settled down to rest, spends a considerable part of the day during the flight to Mut from the oasis where the olives grow, resting upon rocks in the desert. I consequently concluded that its average speed, including the rests, during its journey from the olive oasis, would be about twenty-five miles an hour.

Applying the principles of Sherlock Holmes to the case I deduced—I believe that to be the correct word—that the oasis the _kimri_ came from lay in the direction of the mean of the bearings I had taken, viz. 217° mag., at a distance of nine times twenty-five, or two hundred and twenty-five miles, and that it contained olive trees. Some years later an Arab told me that there _was_ an oasis off there that contained large quantities of olive trees. Boy scouts will, I trust, copy!