Chapter XVI: The Lost Oases: Arkenu

_WEDNESDAY, April 18._ Bu Helega had at last found two men, Bukara and Hamid, who would go with his camels. They were poor men, and the money they would make loomed larger in their eyes than the danger.

Sayed El Abid sent three representatives to see us off. They brought a letter of farewell from him that touched my heart.

Bu Helega came to say good-by. At the final moment there were tears in his eyes, and I do not think they were caused by fears for his camels or for the men whom he was sending with us. In spite of our controversy over the route, we remained true friends, with affection and respect for each other.

My men were greeted by their friends as though this was to be their last meeting. It was the most touching farewell of the whole journey. “May God make safety your companion. . . . What is decreed is decreed, and that will happen. May God guide you to the true road and protect you from evil.”

There was little about this parting of that sense of assurance which attends both those who go and those who stay behind when it is a case of starting for a holiday with some certitude of safe arrival. There were a few quivers in the last phrases of farewell, and, knowing what had passed in the preceding days and the intimidation to which the men had been subjected, I could guess what was in their minds. Whereas I was excited by thoughts of the “lost oases” and taking the unexplored road and going into the unknown, they were thinking that this might be the last time they would shake hands with their friends. There was even a pitying look on the faces of some of those who came to bid us God-speed as to doomed men, yet being Bedouins they also felt, “It is decreed that they should go thus.”

We recited the “Fat-ha,” the first chapter of the Koran:

Praise be to God, the Master of the Universe, the Merciful, the Compassionate, the Lord of the day of Resurrection. It is You Whom we worship, and it is You Whom we ask for help. Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom You have rewarded, not those upon whom displeasure has fallen nor those who have gone astray. Amen.

There followed the call to prayers:

God is great, and I testify that there is no God but God, and that Mohammed is the Prophet of God. Haste to prayers, haste to that which is beneficent. Prayers are ready. God is great. There is no God but God.

It was upon the edge of the valley of Kufra, where the oasis ends and the desert stretches out ahead. They had walked with us until then, and as we passed from the valley into the flat desert we looked back upon the date-palms. The sun was setting, dusk falling, and Kufra itself in the waning light was glimpsed as through the aperture of a camera. Those who had come to say farewell straightway returned and looked back no more. I was eager to get away from Kufra and let my men turn their minds to the task ahead.

At last the real start had been made. Before me all was unknown, full of the mystery and the fascination that lie in those parts of the earth’s surface yet untraversed by men from the outside world.

We started at 4:30 P.M. and halted at 8:15, making fifteen kilometers. It was fine and clear, with no wind. Hard sand covered with very fine gravel, slightly undulating. After leaving the date-trees of Ezeila and Kufra, we crossed a zone of _hatab_, similar to that at Zieghen, and entered the _serira_ at 5:45. At 6:30 we passed hillocks which form the south side of the valley of Kufra. At 8:15 we arrived at Hatiet El Houesh, marked by dry _hatab_, which must once have been green. We left two men behind us to bring two loads that were to be carried on Tebu camels.

Our caravan comprised twenty-seven camels and nineteen persons: myself, Zerwali, Abdullahi, Ahmed, Hamad, Ismail, Senussi Bu Hassan, Senussi Bu Jaber, Hamad Zwai, Sad the Aujili, Faraj the slave, Bukara and his young brother Hamid, the camelman, Hassan, Mohammed our guide, and three Tebus.

An entry from my diary again:

_Thursday, April 19._ Start at 1:45 P.M., halt at 7:15 P.M. Make 24 kilometers. Highest temperature 32°, lowest 11°. Fair and clear, with few white clouds. Southeast breeze which drops at midday. After leaving Hatiet El Houesh we enter into a _serira_ again, flat expanse of hard sand covered with fine gravel. East of the _hatia_ is a chain of sand hillocks covered with dark brown stones; to the west is another similar chain about 4 kilometers away.

At 2:15 we pass the end of the Hatiet El Houesh. The _hatia_ is about 2 kilometers broad. At 3:45 there is a _gara_ on our left about 2 kilometers away, and at 5 another _gara_ 4 kilometers distant on our right. At 6:30 the sand is softer, with patches of red and black stones. The surface is undulating.

We were delayed in starting through waiting for the two camels which had been left behind, and used the time in collecting _hatab_. It was very warm, and the camels grew tired quickly because of the heat. The country was similar to that between Buttafal and Zieghen. With my new _hejin_ I found it easy to fall behind to take observations without exciting suspicion. We had to camp early because of the condition of the camels.

_Friday, April 20._ Start at 2 A.M.; halt at 9:30 A.M. Start again at 3:30 P.M. and final halt at 8 P.M., make 48 kilometers. Highest temperature 32°, lowest 10° at 12:30 A.M. Fine and clear, with cold southeast wind in the early morning. It drops at midday and gets up again at 4. In the evening it shifts to northeast.

At 4 A.M. passing through undulating country strewn with stone. At 6 enter _serira_ again, flatter. Sunrise is at 5:30. Immediately thereafter on our right and left are low sand-hills from 8 to 10 kilometers distant. See a swallow in the morning and a hawk in the afternoon. At 4:20 cross low sand-dunes and sight a black _gara_, a long low mound, 10 degrees south of southeast.

This was the worst part of the journey for traveling, so far as temperature conditions were concerned. In the middle of the day it was too hot to march, and at night it was too cold. So we broke the trek into two parts, starting soon after midnight, and resting in the heat of the day. We had trouble with the baggage because of the difficulty of good packing and loading in the dark. The camels, however, went better on this day.

This was the fourth day of the lunar month. The Bedouins observe the weather conditions on that day, believing that the weather for the rest of the month will be the same. It was to prove true in this case.

_Saturday, April 21._ We started at 2:30 A.M. At six in the morning we came across stony and hilly country, which lasted for 12 kilometers. We passed on our left the _gara_ called Garet Kudi. At nine we entered again into _serira_, with distant sand-dunes on the right and left.

One camel fell ill shortly after our start and refused to go even when its load was taken off. Two Bedouins were left behind to bleed it, but all efforts at cure were in vain, and it had to be slaughtered. I forbade the Bedouins to eat its flesh. Later, after the midday halt, two Tebus dumped the loads from their camels and went back to dry the flesh and leave it until their return from Ouenat. They were to catch us later. This all delayed us about an hour.

The men had little sleep the previous night and were very tired after sunrise. But it was chiefly the intense heat from noon to four o’clock that exhausted both men and camels. It was a very tired caravan that started again at 4.30 P.M. and moved slowly along.

Broken country and rough ground encountered by the party; it was very difficult for the camels’ pads, which were often cut by the sharp stones]

I saw two hawks and fresh sleeping-camps of birds on the sands.

_Sunday, April 22._ We traveled over flat hard sand, with occasional sand hillocks, three to ten meters high, covered with black stones. At 5:30 A.M. we sighted a chain of hills on our left running from north to southwest across our path. At 8 A.M. we entered into broken, hilly country, which continued all day. It was called Wadi El Maraheeg. We came across broken ostrich-eggs.

We had better loading to-day, but the men were tired. Many of them fell out to snatch a half-hour’s sleep, catching up with the caravan when they woke.

Bukara brought me two little eagles, which he had taken from their nest on the top of a _gara_. I ordered him to put them back and saw that it was done.

The _hejin_ was ill and had to go all the afternoon without load or even saddle.

At the midday halt the men fell asleep immediately and snored heavily. This kind of travel is grueling, tedious work. But we were getting on.

_Monday, April 23._ We started at 2.30 A.M., halted at 9:15 A.M., second start at 3:45 P.M., halt at 9 P.M., making forty-six kilometers. This was the most exhausting trek that I had yet known. For eight days we had had only four hours of sleep a day. We had hardly started before the men with one accord fell back to snatch a half-hour’s sleep, leaving the camels to follow the will-o’-the-wisp of the guide’s lantern. I could not avail myself of this privilege, because of my anxiety for my instruments. The loading, done in the dark, was insecure, and a slipped fastening may mean a broken instrument or camera.

At intervals one or another camel would halt and kneel and refuse to get up. Then a Tebu would come and press his thumb on a certain big vein in the camel’s forehead and manipulate it. It seemed to give the beast relief.

We were having a hard time of it crossing the high steep sand-dunes when suddenly mountains rose before us like medieval castles half hidden in the mist. A few minutes later the sun was on them, turning the cold gray into warm rose and pink.

I let the caravan go on, and for half an hour I sat on the sand-dune and let the sight of these legendary mountains do its will with my mind and heart. I had found what I came to seek. These were the mountains of Arkenu.

It was the outstanding moment of the whole journey. Any hardships I might have endured, any hardships that might still await me, were as nothing compared with the joy that filled me at the mere sight of these hills. It was not like going to seek a hidden treasure that had to be dug out of the ground. There they were standing right up high before me so that I might feast my eyes upon them. Up and down, up and down we had plodded across the sand-dunes in the chilly grayness of the hours before dawn, until suddenly at the last dune it was as though somebody had rung up a curtain upon these magical hills of which I have not seen the like in the whole Libyan Desert. From the time I left Sollum until I reached this spot, there had been nothing like the mountains of Arkenu. The sight of them so gripped me that for a while I dreamed that I was not in the desert any more.

_Tuesday, April 24_, was the one hundred and eleventh day from Sollum and the one hundred and fortieth from Cairo. We covered broken country, sand covered with stones, undulating. At 5 A.M. heavy sand-dunes. After the dunes the country became stony again, and later there was hard sand covered with gravel. North of Arkenu Mountain and only a hundred meters from it was a big sandstone hill about two kilometers long and a hundred meters or so high.

There was a glorious sunrise, with shades of red and gold splashed on the few gray clouds in the east. The cool wind soon dropped, and it became close and warm.

Arkenu Mountain is a mass of granite, its gray surface weathered to a ruddy brown, rising uniformly along its length some five hundred meters from the desert surface. It is made up of a series of conical masses which run together at their feet, without intervals between them. We approached it at its most western point. As we came toward it, we could not tell how far it extended to the east. At the farthest point which we could see in that direction it rose into a peak. We marched around the northwestern corner of the mountain mass and came to the entrance of a valley which runs to the eastward. There is one solitary tree of the species called by the Goran _arkenu_ standing in the desert here. From it the oasis takes its name. We made our camp near it. This was a bad spot for camel-ticks, who lived in the shade of the tree and came literally running by the score when our camels approached. We were obliged to camp some distance from the tree, as the insects did not seem to care to forsake its shade, even to attack the camels.

I once picked up a tick that was like a piece of petrified stone. I hit it with a stick, and it just clicked like a piece of stone. I turned away and pretended to be busy with something else. It took about three or four minutes before it gave any sign of life. The tick knows instinctively that safety lies in pretending to be petrified. Then, without warning, it scooted like lightning. When there are no camels these ticks live on nothing. They absorb the camel’s blood, get inflated, and then they can live—the Bedouins say years, but certainly a few months.

His sword over his shoulder is carried ordinarily on the left arm, with his wrist through the thong]

Note the finer type of physique]

Immediately on our arrival the camels were sent into the valley to be watered and to bring back the supply of water of which we were much in need.

Two hours after we pitched camp the two Tebus left behind arrived with a supply of meat from the slaughtered camel, which was eaten with enthusiasm for dinner. A hot, gusty wind blew all the afternoon. While I was resting in my tent I was suddenly aroused by something tickling my ear and tried to brush it away, without discovering what it was. In a moment a gust of wind blew in one of the side walls of the tent, which had been raised for ventilation, and I felt something darting across my body. I grasped at it instinctively and, fortunately for my peace of mind, missed it. It was a snake some four feet long, which was subsequently caught by my men and despatched.

The men held a shooting competition in the afternoon. It started as a perfunctory affair, but the interest quickened when I put up a Medjidie—a Turkish dollar—as a prize. Senussi Bu Jaber, though short-sighted, won the contest. Hamid expressed the feelings of the other contestants when he said: “It was the Medjidie that worked on my emotions and made me nervous. I had hit the mark before.”

I made observations and took photographs, and, incidentally, treated the guide’s teeth.

Goran, the black tribes of the neighborhood, suddenly appeared from the valley and were kept to dine with my men. No one had dreamed of their presence until they appeared. The mountain looked desolate and deserted, and one would not suspect that inside it lies a fertile valley which is inhabited. As a matter of fact, Arkenu is not inhabited all the year round. In the valley is good vegetation to which in the past Bedouins, Tebus, and Goran brought their camels during the grazing season. They closed the entrances to the valley with rocks and left the camels there unattended for three months.

“When they came to take them back,” said Mohammed, the guide, “they had as much fat on them as this.” He put his closed fists one on top of the other.

_Wednesday, April 25._ The Goran family in the valley brought a sheep, milk and _samn_, which is butter in a curious liquid state because of the heat, as _diafa_ or hospitality. They also drove their sheep to the camp to be milked for the men of the caravan.

After luncheon I rode into Arkenu Valley with Zerwali and Bukara. It is a _karkur_, or narrow winding valley, extending some fifteen kilometers back into the mountains. There are grass, shrubs, and an occasional tree. We visited the Goran hut, where I took photographs of a girl and two boys of the family. The boys wore white robes, the sign of the sons of a _sheikh_. When I got back to camp, I sent presents of cloth, handkerchiefs, and rice for the three children.

It was a beautiful moonlight night. I decided to spend three days more at Arkenu because the grazing was good and the camels still seemed tired from their hard trek. My _hejin_ was doing well. I picked up stones for geological specimens and aroused the suspicions of some of my men. They thought there was gold in what stones I picked up or else I would not take the trouble to carry them back home.

_Thursday, April 26._ At Arkenu. Highest temperature 36°; lowest 9°. Fine and clear, with very strong and hot southeast wind. Twice the wind blew the tents down. We sent the camels to be watered and to graze. It was a sweltering day, over 100° Fahrenheit in the tent, and only a little less in the shade outside. Making observations was difficult on account of the wind. I did not like to shelter myself behind the tent while making them for fear of arousing the inevitable curiosity and suspicion. The wind dropped in the evening, and we were repaid for a hot and scorching day by a beautifully cool evening with a fine moon. There was dancing and singing by Bukara and the other men until midnight.

_Friday, April 27._ Arkenu was the first of the two “lost” oases which it is my good fortune to place definitely on the map. There had long been a tradition that two oases existed close to the southwestern corner of Egypt. But the position that they had been conjecturally given on one or two maps was from thirty to one hundred and eighty kilometers out of place. No one had described them from an actual visit. My observations showed that Arkenu is situated in north latitude 20° 12′ 32″ and east longitude 24° 44′ 15″ and has an altitude of 598 meters at the foot of the mountain. It is thus well within the boundaries of Egypt.

The principal interest of this oasis, as of Ouenat, lies in the possibilities it offers for exploring the southwest corner of Egypt, which has until now been unreached either by military patrols or by travelers. No one has known with any certainty of water-supplies in that part of the desert which could be relied upon. The water at Arkenu is apparently unfailing and is drinkable, though not as wholesome for human beings as one could wish. Arkenu may conceivably prove to have strategic value at some future time, standing as it does almost precisely at the meeting-point of the western and southern boundaries of Egypt.

Both Arkenu and Ouenat differ from all the other oases of the Western Desert of Egypt in that they are not depressions in the desert with underground water-supplies, but mountain areas where rain-water collects in natural basins in the rocks.

The mountain chain of Arkenu as I saw it is about fifteen kilometers in extent from north to south and some twenty kilometers from east to west. But there was no opportunity to explore it to the eastward, so that I cannot say whether it may not extend farther in that direction than I have stated. I could only observe it as far as I could see from the desert at the western foot of the mountain. It may well be that off to the east Arkenu Mountain runs into a chain of hills of which the Ouenat Mountains are also spurs to the south. There is an opportunity for more exploration of the eastern portions of both these rock masses than I was able to make in the time and with the resources at my command.

The nearest known point to Arkenu and Ouenat to the east or rather the northeast is Dakhla Oasis, some six hundred kilometers distant. There is a tradition that there is an old track to Egypt between these two points, but a journey from Dakhla to Arkenu and Ouenat with caravan, which would take at least fourteen days, would be a formidable undertaking.