Salt sediments as white as snow--Brilliant stars--Plaintive songs
of the camel men--An improvisatore--Unpleasant odour of camels--A
large salt deposit--No water and no fuel--A device to protect
oneself against great heat--Amazing intelligence of
cats--Nature's ways and men's ways--A hot climb--A brilliantly
coloured range--Sea shells and huge fossils.
On November 11th at ten o'clock p.m. we gladly left poisonous Lawah and
spent the night (November 12th) traversing a mountain region by a
flattish and low pass, and then travelling due north entered the actual
_Dasht-i-lut_--the sandy Salt Desert, the sediment of surface salt being
in some places so thick and white as to resemble snow. Here and there
some hillocks of sand relieved the monotony of the dreary journey,
otherwise flat sand and surface salt extended as far as the eye could
see.
The nights, even when there was no moonlight, were so clear, and the
stars and planets so brilliant, that with a little practice one could,
for general purposes, see almost as well as by day.
The night was terribly cold, which I felt all the more owing to the
fever, as I hung resting my head on the padded pommel of the saddle and
my legs and arms dangling at the sides. A howling, cutting wind blew and
made it impossible to cover one's self up with blankets, as they were
constantly being blown away, no matter how well one tucked one's self in
them.
There was a certain picturesque weirdness in these night marches in the
desert--when one could dissociate one's self from the discomforts. The
camel men had some sad, plaintive songs of their own--quite melodious and
in good tune with the accompaniment of dingling bells hanging from the
camels' necks. There was a musician in our party--Ali Murat's young
brother--who carried a flute in his girdle during the day, but played
upon the instrument the whole night--some doleful tunes of his own
composition, which were not bad. True, when one had listened to the same
tune, not only scores but hundreds of times during one night, one rather
felt the need of a change, but still even the sound of his flute was a
great relief in the dreary night marches. Occasionally, when the fancy
took him, and he made some variations in the airs, the camel men, who
slept while mechanically walking, would join in to sing in a chorus.
Overhead the stars gleamed with a brightness that we can never dream of
seeing in Europe, and in the distance we now began to perceive some
phantom-like hills rising from the whitish-grey surface of the desert. A
good deal of the poetry of the desert is, nevertheless, lost each time
that the camel on which you ride breathes. Behold! one is brought to
earth very soon! The rancid smell which comes in regular whiffs is
sickening. So is the powerful stench of his hump when it gets heated by
the pads of the never-removed saddle.
About every two miles a few minutes' rest is given to the camels, then on
again they slowly swing forward, the nose of one being attached by a long
string to the tail rope of the preceding animal.
[Illustration: Author's Camel Men in their White Felt Coats.]
[Illustration: Camel Men saying their Prayers at Sunset.]
Twenty miles from Lawah, mud-hills covering underlying rock were reached,
and closed us in on either side. Two miles further, when it got too hot
to proceed--thermometer 148° in the sun and not a thread of shade--we
halted on a white salt deposit of considerable extent. There was no water
and no fuel, and the heat was well-nigh unbearable in the middle of the
day. It was useless to pitch my tent, for in such stifling heat it is not
possible to remain under it, nor could one breathe at all if one tried to
get a little shade by screening one's self against a wall of loads which
impeded the air moving.
My camel men showed me a device which by the ignorant may be ridiculed,
but to the sensible is a great blessing when exposed to abnormally high
temperatures. The only way to protect one's self against the broiling air
is to cover one's self, head and all, leaving space to breathe, with one
or two thick blankets of wool or thick felt, of a white or light colour
preferably, white being a non-absorbent of the hot sun's rays. The
thickness of the cloth keeps the body at an enveloping temperature
slightly above the temperature of the body itself (even when with high
fever seldom more than 104°), and therefore a cooler temperature than
outside the blankets, when it is frequently 148° sometimes 150° and even
more. By contrast this seems quite cool. It is, in other words, a similar
process to that used by us in summer to maintain ice from melting.
In Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Arabia, the people who are much exposed to
the rays of the hot sun in deserts always wear extremely thick woollen
clothing, or bernouses; and in Persia the camel men of the desert, as we
have seen, possess thick white felt coats in which they wrap themselves,
head and all, during the hot hours of the day. The Italians, too, seem to
have been fully aware of this, for in Naples and Southern Italy they have
an ancient proverb in the Neapolitan dialect:--_Quel che para lo freddo
para lo caldo_--"What is protection against cold is protection against
heat."
I know one Englishman in Southern Persia who, when crossing the broiling
plains of Arabistan, wears a thick overcoat and plenty of woollen
underwear--a method which he learnt from the nomad tribes of
Arabistan--but he is generally laughed at by his countrymen who do not
know any better. This cooling device, naturally, only applies to tropical
climates when the temperature of the air is greatly above the actual
temperature of the blood.
I had arranged with the caravan that accompanied mine to carry fodder for
my camels, as there was no grazing for the animals here. Large cloths
were spread on which straw and cotton-seeds were mixed together, and then
the camels were made to kneel round and have a meal.
On this occasion I was much struck by the really marvellous intelligence
of cats. We hear a lot about dogs finding their way home from long
distances by using their sense of scent (how far this explanation is
correct we have no time to discuss), but of cats the general belief is
that if they are taken away from home they seldom find their way back.
This may be the case with cats that have always been shut up in some
particular house, but it is not that they do not possess the intellect to
do so in their natural state. Here is an instance.
On letting the cats loose when we halted, the newly-purchased one
attempted to make his escape. I was watching him carefully. He did not do
this in a haphazard manner, running here and there as a dog would, but
jumped out of the box, took his bearings with great calm and precision
and in a most scientific manner, first by looking at the sun, and then at
his own shadow, evidently to discover whether when shut up in the box he
had travelled east or west, north or south, or to some intermediate
point. He repeated this operation several times with a wonderful
expression of intelligence and reflection on his little face, and then
dashed away with astounding accuracy in the direction of Lawah town. Mind
you, he did not at all follow the track that we had come by, which was
somewhat circuitous, but went in a bee line for his native place and not
a second to the left or right of the direct bearings which I took with my
prismatic compass to check his direction. Sadek and the camel men went in
pursuit of him and he was brought back.
This seemed so marvellous that I thought it might be a chance. We were
then only twenty-two miles from Lawah. I repeated the experiment for
three or four days from subsequent camps, until the cat reconciled
himself to his new position and declined to run away. I took the trouble
to revolve him round himself several times to mislead him in his
bearings, but each time he found his correct position by the sun and his
own shadow, and never made a mistake in the absolutely correct bearings
of his route.
A remarkable fact in connection with this is that the most ignorant
natives of Persia, men who have never seen or heard of a compass, can
tell you the exact direction of places by a very similar method, so that
there is more in the process than we think.
It is rather humiliating when we reflect that what we highly civilised
people can only do with difficulty with the assistance of elaborate
theodolites, sextants, artificial horizons, compasses and lengthy
computations, an ignorant camel man, or a kitten, can do practically and
simply and always correctly in a few seconds by drawing conclusions on
facts of nature which speak for themselves better than all the scientific
instruments we can manufacture.
There was a high mountain north-east of camp, the Darband, 8,200 feet,
and as my fever seemed to be getting worse, and I had no quinine with
which to put a sudden stop to it, I thought I would climb to the top of
the mountain to sweat the fever out, and also to obtain a view of the
surrounding country.
After having slept some three hours and having partaken of a meal--we had
the greatest difficulty in raising enough animal fuel for a fire--I
started off about one in the afternoon under a broiling sun. The camp was
at an altitude of 4,350 feet and the ascent not difficult but very steep
and rocky, and involving therefore a good deal of violent exertion. The
dark rocks were so hot with the sun that had been shining upon them that
they nearly burned one's fingers when one touched them. Still, the view
from the top well repaid one for the trouble of getting there.
A general survey showed that the highest mountain to be seen around was
to the south-south-east (150° bearings magnetic), and a couple of almost
conical hills, exactly alike in shape, but not in size, stood one in
front of the other on a line with 160° b.m. Between them both to east and
west were a number of misshapen mountains. Were it not for a low confused
heap of grey mud and sand the desert would be an absolutely flat stretch
from the distant mountains enclosing the plain on the south to the others
on the north. A long high mud barrier runs diagonally at the northern
end, in a direction from east to west, and another extending from
south-east to north-west meets it, forming a slightly acute angle. The
latter range is of a most peculiar formation, extremely brilliant in
colour, the ground being a vivid red, regularly fluted and striped across
so straight with friezes and bands formed by strata of different tones of
colour, that from a distance it almost resembles the patient work of a
skilful artisan instead of the results of the corrosive action of water.
Another parallel and similar range stands exactly opposite on the east.
The mountain itself to which I had climbed was most interesting. Imbedded
in the rock were quantities of fossil white and black sea-shells, and
about half way up the mountain a huge fossil, much damaged, resembling a
gigantic turtle. Near it on the rock were impressions of enormous paws.