Chapter XX: To Furawia on Short Rations

THE valley of Enebah was covered with soft sand, dotted with shrubs both green and dry and with trees.

I had a good night’s rest and was awakened by the hubbub of the Bidiyat women bargaining with the men of my caravan for empty tins. They offered a kind of dry shrub that they called tobacco and milk in return. Five more sheep were brought as _diafa_, and more presents were distributed.

Encouraged by a cool southeast wind, we started at 3:15 P.M., but the wind soon dropped and we made slow progress in the heat. The evening was cooler, however, and we made up a little for lost time. The night was cold.

On _Friday, May 25_, we were up at four and started an hour and a quarter later. The country was very undulating and broken, and Herri was not sure of the way. We moved slowly because of the difficulty of the going and the uncertainty of the guide. Shortly after nine we dropped into a valley and camped an hour later.

Senussi Bu Hassan, who was walking beside me, gave expression to his opinion of the guide and his Bedouin pride.

“Those Goran wabble about like camels,” he said. “They do not walk like Bedouins, who fly straight to their goal like birds.”

When we took the road again in the afternoon the sun was still very hot. The camels moved slowly, and the men’s singing sounded like broken bagpipes. It was perhaps as well that we were compelled to move slowly, for Herri was more uncertain of the way than ever. Some of the time we followed the track left by a flock of sheep going presumably toward Bao, but at intervals it was lost in the tracts of broken stones.

A little after five we dropped into a big valley whose name we discovered later to be Koni-Mina, running east and west and filled with fine trees. Just before reaching it we met a Goran with a few sheep. He came up to me, dropped his sword and spears on the ground, and took off his sandals. We shook hands with many ejaculations of “_Keif-halak, tayibeen_” (“How are you? Very well.”). It was all the Arabic he knew. Mohammed and Herri then talked with him and learned that there was a Goran camp in the valley before us. A cattle merchant had also just arrived from Fada in Wadai with sheep and cows on his way to El Fasher. Mohammed and Herri left us and approached the few straw-thatched huts that constituted the Goran camp. We went across the valley and camped on its farther rim.

Soon a man came running to ask us to return to the camp and start again the next day. I appreciated the hospitable suggestion but felt that we could not afford to retrace our steps even for two or three kilometers. I thanked him for the invitation and told him that we were in a great hurry. We should camp near-by to wait for our two guides. An hour later Mohammed appeared, full of news from Fada and El Fasher, obtained from the merchant.

We were busy that evening overhauling our baggage and repairing damages. All the ropes were getting worn, and the Bedouin woolen bags too. We had been losing much time on the way with reloading and shifting things about. But it was a consolation to know that in a fortnight we should be in El Fasher.

We had the most beautiful sunrise on May 26 that I have seen. The brilliant white light on the red and black stones near-by and the distant hills made everything wonderfully clear and distinct. Soon it changed to a warm red glow, and then the golden rays of the sun broke through the thin clouds and flooded everything. The long shadows cast by rocks and shrubs on the ground looked like black stenciling on the yellow sand. The shadows of the slowly moving caravan made a fantastic pattern.

It soon proved to be an oppressively close morning.

Herri joined us later in the forenoon with a slaughtered sheep slung on each side of his camel, the _diafa_ from the Goran camp.

We followed sheep and camel tracks and marched from one valley into another until we camped in one of the largest of them, which had many shady trees.

It is always a problem whether to stop under the shade of a tree and suffer the attacks of white ants and all sorts of sinister-looking insects or pitch tent in the broiling sun. In future, I shall be inclined to take my chance in the open, as the insects are always with you, while the sun’s heat is over by five or six in the afternoon. The valley in which we camped is called Kap-Terku.

We started again at four, with a southeast breeze that made walking not so tedious. There were also a few clouds which tempered the heat of the sun. The camels walked better. In the late afternoon we passed a Goran family, a man, wife, and naked child, and later we found a well. It was seven meters deep and had good water, though the roots of a near-by tree had rotted in it, giving it an unpleasant odor.

We camped at eight fortunately in a clear space free from shrubs and stones. At one in the morning a hyena visited the camp, and had it not been for the vigilance of Hamid, the camelman, it might have got Baraka, who was tied at night and therefore unable to defend himself. Hamid fired at it impulsively, and with my glasses I saw a dark object running far away in the brilliant moonlight.

_Sunday, May 27._ Start at 5:15 A.M., halt at 9:15 A.M. start again at 3:45 P.M., halt at 7:45 P.M. Make 30 kilometers. Highest temperature 38°, lowest 7°. Fine, clear, and calm in the morning. At midday strong hot southeast wind, which drops in afternoon. Few white clouds. Warm and calm in the evening. Very cloudy, with few drops of rain at 10 P.M. Valleys of soft sand as before, with low sandstone hills twenty to eighty meters high. Patches of the same stone crop out through the sand.

Herri proved himself a bad guide. He predicted that we would reach Bao this morning, but when night came we were not yet there. He knew the places when he saw them, but his sense of direction was faulty. Our water had given out, except for one last _girba_, and it was very hot.

We marched until 7:45, when we reached rocky ground, dangerous for the camels even in the clear moonlight. We were on the edge of a large valley which Herri declared to be that of Bao, but we could not believe him. Experience had taught me not to permit the last of the water-supply to be used until we had not only seen the well but approached it to make sure that there was drinkable water there. I insisted that the last _girba_ should not be touched that night. We went to bed without dinner, since we could not cook without water.

There was, however, the consolation of a beautiful night. I lay in bed watching the play of the moonlight on the clouds. A few drops of rain announced the approach of the rainy season. We were astir early. Empty stomachs do not encourage long sleep. We drove the camels as we had not driven them before. How tired they looked, and how weak! When camels and men are hungry and thirsty, all the other defects in the caravan come out. There was no singing that morning, merely silent, relentless urging forward of the camels and ourselves.

The descent into the valley was steep and dangerous. Three camels threw off their loads, which had to be carried by the men down to the level ground and loaded again. At last we saw a few sheep and a straw hut or two. We stopped, and I let the men drink the water from the last _girba_, for which they had asked many times that morning.

Herri and Mohammed went ahead and made their way to the huts. The caravan meanwhile moved directly down the valley toward the well. Soon some blacks of the Goran and Bidiyat tribes came to meet us. We fired our rifles as usual, as if in salutation, but in reality to impress the natives with our preparedness.

I noticed that by a curious coincidence those who met us, men and women, were all old. There was not a single young person among them, especially no young woman. However, it did not strike me as extraordinary, but a little later I was surprised to see batches of slim and beautiful girls, brown or black, half naked in their tattered clothes, but holding themselves gracefully erect. As they came along in groups of three and four, I turned to Bukara and asked, “From where are these girls?”

Bukara looked at them with great admiration and replied: “Allah be great! These girls are of the village. They thought we were going to rob the village and take away the young girls as slaves, so they sent them out to hide as soon as they sighted our caravan. Now that the men know that we are a peaceful caravan, they have sent word to the girls to come back.”

As the girls passed my horse they shyly dropped on their knees in salutation, as is the custom there when addressing a person of higher rank. In this part of the world when one is addressed by some more exalted person the etiquette is not to stand up but to sit down in token of reverence. One after another these girls dropped to their knees, and in return I gave them the usual Arab blessing, “May God’s peace be on you and His mercy and blessings.” As they rose again the girls bashfully turned to look at my company of admiring Bedouins.

We camped at the end of the valley near the well. An hour later the _sheikh_ of the camp came to greet us. We discussed the roads to El Fasher and the direction to be followed. Here Herri looked thoughtful and sad. This was close to his own country, for we were across the frontier of French Wadai now. He had thrown away his rights and run away from the French, leaving all his property and relatives, and gone to the solitary oasis of Ouenat to live in self-inflicted exile.

We were getting into a different kind of country. There were many more varieties of birds, including crows, owls, parrots, doves, and others whose names I do not know.

In the night a lioness had killed two donkeys, and some of the natives captured one of its young and sent its skin to Fada to be sold. There are several score of blacks of the Goran and Bidiyat tribes at Bao. The women are graceful creatures, clothed with the utmost simplicity. Their dress is either a length of cloth wound skilfully around the body, with a narrow strip of cloth for a belt, in which is carried a small knife, or a sheepskin wrapped round the lower part of the body. Their hair is arranged in small plaits. They wear ornaments of silver and ivory, heavy rings in the hair, and bead and amber necklaces. Young girls wear only an apron of cloth or leather. The men have splendid physique, go naked except for a loin-cloth, and carry two or three spears, a sword, and throwing-knife. Only _sheikhs_ wear white robes and large turbans.

We gave the women and children macaroni, but they refused to eat it. Instead, they threaded the pieces on strings and made necklaces, which they wore proudly. The business instinct of the Bedouins at once displayed itself. They made necklaces from our little store of macaroni and exchanged them for butter and leather.

Herri and Mohammed were to leave us here. They did not care to venture further south. I had some difficulty in finding a guide to take us to Furawia but at last succeeded. A sheep was brought to us as _diafa_, and we dined early on Tuesday, intending to make a prompt start in the morning.

The guide did not present himself, and I began to feel that the Bidiyat were suspicious of my caravan. At 11 P.M. he appeared, however, and I immediately woke the men and set them to loading the camels before he had any chance of changing his mind.

_Wednesday, May 30._ Start at 1 A.M., halt at 8:30 A.M., start again at 4:15 P.M., halt at 7:15 P.M. Make 40 kilometers. Highest temperature 36°. Fine and clear. Strong and dusty southeast wind. The wind changes to northeast in the afternoon and drops in the evening. Country same as before, except flatter, and with no large valleys and no big trees. At 8:15 A.M. across a small _wadi_ running east and west.

When we started at one o’clock there was a beautiful moon, which made it as clear as in daylight.

Herri and Mohammed started with us, as they wished to give the impression to the men of Bao that they were going with us to El Fasher. Otherwise they feared that they might be waylaid. In an hour we had climbed out of the valley. We halted to say good-by to the two guides, who were going to travel only by night on their way back to Ouenat, to avoid detection.

As I stood a little apart from the caravan in the moment of farewell to them, I realized that the difficulties through which we had come had drawn us close together. Mohammed was tall, erect, with a piercing eye and an interesting illustration of the self-assurance that life in the desert gives and the fatalistic resignation with which one accepts whatever comes. Herri was a gentle-mannered, unassuming old man with a benign smile and charming manners. There was unquestioned dignity in his movements in spite of an injured left foot which he had to drag when he walked. He was a prince by nature.

This was not merely a parting of companions of the trek, but a symbol of the old, having run the race, pointing the onward road to the young. We all forgot that I was the head of a caravan and they my guides. Herri put his hands on my shoulders and spoke with feeling in his voice.

“May God bless you and give you strength,” he said. “There is your road.” He pointed to an opening in the distant hills. I murmured a few words in a voice that I could scarcely trust not to tremble and turned away to my caravan. The two dignified but somehow pathetic figures, both exiles from their own land, faded away in the moonlight.

We halted at dawn for our morning prayers and at 8:30 to camp for the day. There were tracks of lions about. We started again early in the afternoon, but the men were tired, having had little sleep the previous night, and we marched only three hours. The sheep which had been given us escaped, and in the moonlight Hamid and Sad went after it, bleating like sheep themselves to attract it, but with no success.

_Thursday, May 31._ Start at 3:45 A.M., halt at 8:45 A.M., start again at 3:30 P.M., halt at 7:30 P.M. Make 36 kilometers. Highest temperature 37°, lowest 5°. Fine, clear, and calm. Southeast wind in the afternoon, which changed to northeast and dropped toward evening. Calm evening and night, with full moon and few white clouds.

An uneventful day.

Shortly after an early start on Friday, June 1, the guide got sleepy and “lost his head.” We were soon traveling due west instead of southeast. I did not interfere until we stopped for morning prayers at five, but then I asked him quietly if he had intended to march to the westward. He was surprised but admitted frankly his error. Fortunately, we had not been going wrong for long.

At 6:30 we passed a hill called Tamaira, on which stood a dry tree marking the boundary between Wadai and the Sudan. From the boundary-post we dropped into Wadai Hawar, a large valley full of big trees, which is said to extend westward to Wadai and eastward toward the Sudan. In Wadai, it is called Wadi Hawash.

The soil in the _wadi_ is very fertile, and the men from Wadai and Darfur come to it in the autumn for grazing. We camped here for the midday halt and found tracks of giraffe. In the afternoon we walked through high dry grass as though in a great field of ripe corn.

Receiving the explorer and his party on entering the frontiers]

The men of the caravan were getting worn out, all the more as clothing was tattered, shoes at the last gasp; and to add to our inflictions we had much trouble with _haskanit_, a small, very hard, hooked thorn which grows on a low bush and attaches itself to whosoever brushes against it, when it is extremely difficult to extract.

I heard Bukara describing to Hamid a giraffe and an elephant. The giraffe, he said, has the head of a camel, the hoofs of a cow, and the hind quarters of a horse. His word picture of the elephant was grotesque and much exaggerated, to impress the man from the north.

We made a very early start on Saturday, June 2, to make sure of reaching Furawia that day. At 5 A.M. we passed on our right the landmark of Hagar Kamra-ra, ten kilometers away, and an hour later passed another, Hagar Urdru, a hill about eighty meters high and two hundred meters long. _Hagar_ is the Sudanese word for _gara_, or small hill. Then we started dropping into the valley of Furawia. It was the largest valley and the most inhabited that we had come across. Its people are Zaghawa and a few Bidiyat.

We camped at nine near a Bidiyat camp and soon heard the distressing news that no food was to be obtained at Furawia. This was contrary to my expectation. I made haste to find a messenger to take a letter to the governor of Darfur at El Fasher, asking him to send me provisions and cloth to clothe my men, who were in rags. After much hesitation, caused apparently by fear of my men, the Zaghawa _sheikh_ of a camp near-by came, driven by curiosity, to visit us. He was under the Sudanese Government, and I pounced on him and offered him three pounds to take a letter from me to Saville Pasha, Governor of Darfur. It was liberal pay, and in addition I threatened him with much unpleasantness should he hesitate or refuse. I told him he must start at dawn the next day. After murmuring something about having no animal to carry him, he went away and soon returned to say that he would take my letter to El Fasher. He intended to go on horseback. This was good news, for we had had no sugar for three weeks and had been obliged to sweeten our tea as best we could with pounded-up dates. Flour and rice had also given out, and a scanty diet of macaroni prepared with bad water is very monotonous.

I moved the camp near to one of the wells in the valley and tried to buy a sheep to cheer up my men. But it was getting dark, and none of the inhabitants came near our camp. We watered the camels and settled down for the night, not very well satisfied with life.

I was suddenly surprised to hear my men singing and apparently as cheerful as though they had had a good meal. I called Zerwali and Bukara over and asked them what was the singing about when there was no sugar and little food and things were generally disagreeable.

“We can breathe now,” answered Zerwali. “We have entered the Sudan and feel ourselves at last in safety.”

“Were you so fearful, then, of this journey we have made?” I asked.

“At Kufra all our relations said that we were ‘walking for our fate’ when we took this road,” explained Bukara. “‘Your fates are written,’ they said to us, ‘but may God protect you.’ We wondered if perhaps they might not be right.”

“You heard at Kufra,” said Zerwali, “how some people offered you encouragement to take this route, while many advised against it. Those who favored it were malicious men who simply hoped that they would never see you again.”

It was then also that Zerwali—who, now that we were nearing the end of the trip, felt himself more free to talk—told me that the houses of Sadaida and Jehilat of the Zwaya tribe at Hawari and Kufra had strongly resented my second visit and held a meeting to discuss the best means of either destroying the caravan or preventing me from coming back.

Then I realized what pluck it had taken for these men to come with me by the strange and unknown way without a murmur of protest. I was proud of them.

At 2 A.M. Hamid, who was acting as sentry, woke me to say that the messenger had arrived and was ready to take my letter to El Fasher. Two letters were all written and ready under my pillow, one to Saville Pasha and the other to the officer in command at Kuttum, the outpost on the way to El Fasher, asking him to make sure that my letter to El Fasher reached its destination. I was glad the messenger had come so early. The sooner we got new supplies the happier we should all be. I promised him a few extra dollars if he would deliver the letter to El Fasher in four days. I bade him a very warm God-speed and watched him ride off in the moonlight on a quite strong if ragged-looking horse.