The following very lively description of a pilgrimage across the desert,
is given by Ali Bey, in his travels in Morocco, Tripoli, &c. It is an
animated picture, which portrays in the strongest colors the perils and
sufferings encountered in these enterprises.
“We continued marching on in great haste, for fear of being overtaken by
the four hundred Arabs whom we wished to avoid. For this reason we never
kept the common road, but passed through the middle of the desert,
marching through stony places, over easy hills. This country is entirely
without water; not a tree is to be seen in it, not a rock which can
afford a shelter or shade. A transparent atmosphere; an intense sun,
darting its beams upon our heads; a ground almost white, and commonly of
a concave form, like a burning-glass; slight breezes, scorching like a
flame. Such is a faithful picture of this district, through which we
were passing. Every man we meet in this desert is looked upon as an
enemy. Having discovered about noon a man in arms, on horseback, who
kept at a certain distance, my thirteen Bedouins united the moment they
perceived him, and darted like an arrow to overtake him, uttering loud
cries, which they interrupted by expressions of contempt and derision;
as, ‘What are you seeking, my brother?’ ‘Where are you going, my son?’
As they made these exclamations they kept playing with their guns above
their heads. The discovered Bedouin profited by his advantage, and fled
into the mountains, where it was impossible to follow him. We met no one
else.
“We had now neither eaten nor drank since the preceding day; our horses
and other beasts were equally destitute; though ever since nine in the
evening we had been traveling rapidly. Shortly after noon we had not a
drop of water remaining, and the men, as well as the poor animals, were
worn out with fatigue. The mules, stumbling every moment, required
assistance to lift them up again, and to support their burden till they
rose. This terrible exertion exhausted the little strength we had left.
At two o’clock in the afternoon a man dropped down stiff, and as if
dead, from great fatigue and thirst. I stopped with three or four of my
people to assist him. The little wet which was left in one of the
leathern budgets, was squeezed out of it, and some drops of water poured
into the poor man’s mouth, but without any effect. I now felt that my
own strength was beginning to forsake me; and becoming very weak, I
determined to mount on horseback, leaving the poor fellow behind. From
this moment others of my caravan began to drop successively, and there
was no possibility of giving them any assistance; they were abandoned to
their unhappy destiny, as every one thought only of saving himself.
Several mules with their burdens were left behind, and I found on my way
two of my trunks on the ground, without knowing what was become of the
mules which had been carrying them, the drivers having forsaken them as
well as the care of my effects and of my instruments.
“I looked upon this loss with the greatest indifference, as if they had
not belonged to me, and pushed on. But my horse began now to tremble
under me, and yet he was the strongest of the whole caravan. We
proceeded in silent despair. When I endeavored to encourage any of the
party to increase his pace, he answered me by looking steadily at me,
and by putting his fore-finger to his mouth to indicate the great thirst
by which he was affected. As I was reproaching our conducting officers
for their inattention, which had occasioned this want of water, they
excused themselves by alleging the mutiny of the oudaias; and besides,
added they, ‘Do we not suffer like the rest?’ Our fate was the more
shocking, as every one of us was sensible of the impossibility of
supporting the fatigue to the place where we were to meet with water
again. At last, at about four in the evening, I had my turn and fell
down with thirst and fatigue. Extended without consciousness on the
ground in the middle of the desert, left only with four or five men, one
of whom had dropped at the same moment with myself, and all without any
means of assisting me, because they knew not where to find water, and,
if they had known it, had not strength to fetch it, I should have
perished with them on the spot, if providence, by a kind of miracle, had
not preserved us.
“Half an hour had already elapsed since I had fallen senseless to the
ground, (as I have since been told,) when, at some distance, a
considerable caravan, of more than two thousand souls, was seen
advancing. It was under the direction of a marabout or saint called Sidi
Alarbi, who was sent by the sultan to Ttemsen or Tremecen. Seeing us in
this distressed situation, he ordered some skins of water to be thrown
over us. After I had received several of them over my face and hands, I
recovered my senses, opened my eyes, and looked around me, without being
able to discern anybody. At last, however, I distinguished seven or
eight shereefs and faquirs, who gave me their assistance, and showed me
much kindness. I endeavored to speak to them, but an invincible knot in
my throat seemed to hinder me; I could only make myself understood by
signs, and by pointing to my mouth with my finger. They continued
pouring water over my face, arms and hands, and at last I was able to
swallow small mouthfuls. This enabled me to ask, ‘Who are you?’ When
they heard me speak, they expressed their joy, and answered me, ‘Fear
nothing; far from being robbers, we are your friends;’ and every one
mentioned his name. I began by degrees to recollect their faces, but was
not able to remember their names. They then poured over me a still
greater quantity of water, gave me some to drink, filled some of my
leather bags, and left me in haste, as every minute spent in this place
was precious to them, and could not be repaired.
“This attack of thirst is perceived all of a sudden by an extreme
aridity of the skin; the eyes appear to be bloody; the tongue and mouth,
both inside and outside, are covered with a crust of the thickness of a
crown piece; this crust is of a dark yellow color, of an insipid taste,
and of a consistence like the soft wax from a beehive. A faintness or
languor takes away the power to move; a kind of knot in the throat and
diaphragm, attended with great pain, interrupts respiration. Some
wandering tears escape from the eyes, and at last the sufferer drops
down to the earth, and in a few moments loses all consciousness. These
are the symptoms which I remarked in my unfortunate fellow-travelers,
and which I experienced myself. I got with difficulty on my horse again,
and we proceeded on our journey. My Bedouins and my faithful Salem were
gone on different directions to find out some water, and two hours
afterward they returned one after another, carrying along with them some
good or bad water, as they had been able to find it: every one presented
to me part of what he had brought; I was obliged to taste it, and I
drank twenty times, but as soon as I swallowed it my mouth became as dry
as before; at last I was not able either to spit or to speak.
“The greatest part of the soil of the desert consists of pure clay,
except some small traces of a calcareous nature. The whole surface is
covered with a bed of chalky, calcareous stone of a whitish color,
smooth, round and loose, and of the size of the fist; they are almost
all of the same dimension, and their surface is carious like pieces of
old mortar: I look upon this to be a true volcanic production. This bed
is extended with such perfect regularity, that the whole desert is
covered with it; a circumstance which makes pacing over it very
fatiguing to the traveler. No animal is to be seen in this desert,
neither quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, nor insects, nor any plant
whatever; and the traveler who is obliged to pass through it, is
surrounded by the silence of death. It was not till four in the evening
that we began to distinguish some small plants burnt with the sun, and a
tree of a thorny nature without blossom or fruit.”
The passage across the Nubian desert, is, in its general features, the
same as that over the great desert of Sahara. The following narrative is
somewhat abridged from Bayard Taylor’s “Journey to Central Africa.” “My
little caravan consisted of six camels, including that of the guide. We
passed the miserable hamlet of Korosko, turned a corner of the mountain
chain into a narrow, stony valley, and in a few minutes lost sight of
the Nile and his belt of palms. Thenceforward, for many days, the only
green thing to be seen in the wilderness was myself. The first day’s
journey lay among rugged hills, thrown together in confusion, with no
apparent system or direction. They were of jet black sandstone, and
resembled immense piles of coke or anthracite. The small glens and
basins inclosed in this chaos, were filled with glowing yellow sand,
which, in many places, streamed down the crevices of the black rocks,
like rivulets of fire. The path was strewn with hollow globes of hard,
black stones, precisely resembling cannon-balls. The guide gave me one
of the size of a rifle bullet, with a seam around the center, as if cast
in a mold. The thermometer showed a temperature of eighty degrees at two
o’clock in the afternoon, but the heat was tempered by a pure fresh
breeze. After eight hours’ travel, I made my first camp, at sunset, in a
little hollow inclosed by the mountains, where a gray jackal, after
being twice shot at, came and looked into the door of the tent.
“I found dromedary-riding not at all difficult. One sits on a very lofty
seat, with his feet crossed over the animal’s shoulders, or resting on
his neck. The body is obliged to rock backward and forward, on account
of the long, swinging gait; and as there is no stay or fulcrum, except a
blunt pommel, around which the legs are crossed, some little power of
equilibrium is necessary. My dromedary was a strong, stately beast, of a
light cream color, and of so even a gait that it would bear the Arab
test: that is, one might drink a cup of coffee while going on a full
trot, without spilling a drop. I found great advantage in the use of the
oriental costume. My trowsers allowed the legs perfect freedom of
motion, and I soon learned so many different modes of crossing those
members that no day was sufficient to exhaust them. The rising and
kneeling of the animal is hazardous at first, as his long legs double
together like a carpenter’s rule, and you are thrown backward and then
forward, and then backward again; but the trick is soon learned. The
soreness and fatigue of which many travelers complain, I never felt; and
I attribute much of it to the Frank dress. I rode from eight to ten
hours a day, read and even dreamed in the saddle, and was at night as
fresh and unwearied as when I mounted in the morning.
“My caravan was accompanied by four Arabs. They owned the burden camels,
which they urged along with the cry of ‘Yoho! Shekh Abd-el Kader!’ and a
shrill barbaric song, the refrain of which was, ‘O prophet of God, help
the camels, and bring us safely to our journey’s end!’ They were very
susceptible to cold, and a temperature of fifty degrees, which we
frequently had in the morning, made them tremble like aspen leaves, and
they were sometimes so benumbed that they could scarcely lead the
camels. They wore long swords, carried in a leathern scabbard over the
left shoulder, and sometimes favored us with a war-dance, which
consisted merely in springing into the air with a brandished sword, and
turning round once before coming down. They were all very devout,
retiring a short distance from the road to say their prayers, at the
usual hours, and performing the prescribed ablutions with sand instead
of water. On the second morning, we passed through a gorge in the black
hills, and entered a region called _El Biban_, or ‘The Gates.’ Here the
mountains, though still grouped in the same disorder, were more open,
and gave room to plains of sand several miles in length. The narrow
openings, through which the road passes from one plain to another, gave
rise to the name. The mountains are higher than on the Nile, and present
the most wonderful configurations: towers, fortresses, walls, pyramids,
temples in ruin, of an inky blackness near at hand, but tinged of a
deep, glowing violet hue in the distance. Toward noon I saw a _mirage_,
a lake in which the broken peaks were reflected with great distinctness.
One of the Nubians who was with us, pointed out a spot where he was
obliged to climb the rocks, the previous summer, to avoid being drowned.
During the heavy tropical rains which sometimes fall here, the hundreds
of pyramidal hills pour down such floods that the sand can not
immediately drink them up, and the valleys are turned into lakes. The
man described the roaring of the waters, down the clefts of the rocks,
as something terrible. In summer the passage of the desert is much more
arduous than in winter, and many men and camels perish. The road was
strewn with bones and carcasses, and I frequently counted twenty dead
camels within a stone’s throw. The stone-heaps which are seen on all the
spurs of the hills, as landmarks for caravans, have become useless,
since one could find his way by the bones in the sand. My guide, who was
a great believer in afrites and devils, said that formerly many persons
lost the way and perished from thirst, all of which was the work of evil
spirits. Toward noon, on the third day, we passed the last of the
‘gates,’ and entered the _Bahr bela Ma_, (river without water,) a broad
plain of burning yellow sand. The gateway is very imposing, especially
on the eastern side, where it is broken by a valley or gorge of
Tartarean blackness. As we passed the last peak, my guide, who had
ridden in advance, dismounted beside what seemed to be a collection of
graves—little ridges of sand, with rough head and foot stones. He sat by
one which he had just made. As I came up he informed me that all
travelers who crossed the Nubian desert, for the first time, are here
expected to pay a toll, or fee to the guide and camel-men. ‘But what if
I do not choose to pay?’ I asked. ‘Then you will immediately perish, and
be buried here. The graves are those of persons who refused to pay.’ As
I had no wish to occupy the beautiful mound he had heaped for me, with
the thigh-bones of a camel at the head and foot, I gave the men a few
piasters, and passed the place. He then plucked up the bones and threw
them away, and restored the sand to its original level.[8]
-----
Footnote 8:
“Burckhardt gives the following account of the same custom, in his
travels in Nubia. ‘In two hours and a half we came to a plain on the
top of the mountain called _Akabet el Benat_, the Rocks of the Girls.
Here the Arabs who serve as guides through these mountains, have
devised a singular mode of extorting presents from the traveler: they
alight at certain spots in the Akabet El Benat, and beg a present; if
it is refused, they collect a heap of sand, and mold it into the form
of a diminutive tomb, and then placing a stone at each of the
extremities, they apprise the traveler that his tomb is made; meaning,
that henceforward, there will be no security for him, in this rocky
wilderness. Most persons pay a trifling contribution, rather than have
their graves made before their eyes; there were, however, several
tombs of this description dispersed over the plain.’”
-----
“The _Bahr bela Ma_ spread out before us, glittering in the hot sun.
About a mile to the eastward lay (apparently) a lake of blue water.
Reeds and water-plants grew on its margin, and its smooth surface
reflected the rugged outline of the hill beyond. The waterless river is
about two miles in breadth, and appears to have been at one time the bed
of a large stream. It crosses all the caravan routes in the desert, and
is supposed to extend from the Nile to the Red sea. It may have been the
outlet for the river, before its waters forced a passage through the
primitive chains which cross its bed at Assouan and Kalabshee. A
geological exploration of this part of Africa could not fail to produce
very interesting results. Beyond the _Bahr bela Ma_ extends the broad
central plateau of the desert, fifteen hundred feet above the sea. It is
a vast reach of yellow sand, dotted with low, isolated hills, which in
some places are based on large beds of light-gray sandstone of an
unusually fine and even grain. Small towers of stone have been erected
on the hills nearest the road, in order to guide the couriers who travel
by night. Near one of them the guide pointed out the grave of a
merchant, who had been murdered there two years previous, by his three
slaves. The latter escaped into the desert, but probably perished, as
they were never heard of afterward. In the smooth, loose sand, I had an
opportunity of reviving my forgotten knowledge of trackography, and soon
learned to distinguish the feet of hyenas, foxes, ostriches, lame camels
and other animals. The guide assured me that there were devils in the
desert; but one only sees them when he travels alone.
“On this plain the mirage, which first appeared in the _Biban_,
presented itself under a variety of wonderful aspects. Thenceforth, I
saw it every day, for hours together, and tried to deduce some rules
from the character of its phenomena. It appears on all sides, except
that directly opposite to the sun, but rarely before nine in the
morning, or after three of the afternoon. The color of the apparent
water is always precisely that of the sky, and this is a good test to
distinguish it from real water, which is invariably of a deeper hue. It
is seen on a gravelly as well as a sandy surface, and often fills with
shining pools the slight depressions in the soil at the bases of the
hills. Where it extends to the horizon there is no apparent line, and it
then becomes an inlet of the sky, as if the walls of heaven were melting
down and flowing in upon the earth. Sometimes a whole mountain chain is
lifted from the horizon and hung in the air, with its reflected image
joined to it, base to base. I frequently saw, during the forenoon, lakes
of sparkling blue water, apparently not a quarter of a mile distant.[9]
The waves ripple in the wind; tall reeds and water-plants grow on the
margin, and the desert rocks behind cast their shadows on the surface.
It is impossible to believe it a delusion. You advance nearer, and
suddenly, you know not how, the lake vanishes. There is a grayish film
over the spot, but before you have decided whether the film is in the
air or in your eyes, that too disappears, and you see only the naked
sand. What you took to be reeds and water-plants probably shows itself
as a streak of dark gravel. The most probable explanation of the mirage
which I could think of, was, that it was actually a reflection of the
sky upon a stratum of heated air, next the sand.
-----
Footnote 9:
In a previous chapter, Taylor says: “Before returning on board, we saw
a wonderful _mirage_. Two lakes of blue water, glittering in the sun,
lay spread in the yellow sands, apparently not more than a mile
distant. There was not the least sign of vapor in the air; and as we
were quite unacquainted with the appearance of the mirage, we decided
that the lakes were Nile water, left from the inundation. I pointed to
them, and asked the Arabs, ‘Is that water?’ ‘No, no!’ they all
exclaimed; ‘that is no water; that is _Bar Shaytan_,’ a river of the
devil!”
-----
“I found the desert life not only endurable but very agreeable. No
matter how warm it might be at midday, the nights were always fresh and
cool, and the wind blew strong from the north-west, during the greater
part of the time. The temperature varied from fifty or fifty-five
degrees at six in the morning, to eighty or eighty-five degrees at two
in the afternoon. The extremes were forty-seven and a hundred degrees.
So great a change of temperature every day was not so unpleasant as
might be supposed. In my case, Nature seemed to make a special provision
in order to keep the balance right. During the hot hours of the day I
never suffered inconvenience from the heat, but up to eighty-five
degrees felt sufficiently cool. I seemed to absorb the rays of the sun,
and as night came on and the temperature of the air fell, that of my
skin rose, till at last I glowed through and through, like a live coal.
It was a peculiar sensation, which I never experienced before, but was
rather pleasant than otherwise. My face, however, which was alternately
exposed to the heat radiated from the sand, and the keen morning wind,
could not accommodate itself to so much contraction and expansion. The
skin cracked and peeled off more than once, and I was obliged to rub it
daily with butter. I mounted my dromedary with a ‘shining morning face,’
until, from alternate buttering and burning, it attained the hue and
crispness of a well-basted partridge.
“I soon fell into a regular daily routine of travel, which, during all
my later experiences of the desert, never became monotonous. I rose at
dawn every morning, bathed my eyes with a handful of the precious water,
and drank a cup of coffee. After the tent had been struck and the camels
laden, I walked ahead for two hours, often so far in advance that I lost
sight and hearing of the caravan. I found an unspeakable fascination in
the sublime solitude of the desert. I often beheld the sun rise, when,
within the wide ring of the horizon, there was no other living creature
to be seen. He came up in awful glory, and it would have been a natural
act, had I cast myself upon the sand and worshiped him. The sudden
change in the coloring of the landscape, on his appearance, the lighting
up of the dull sand into a warm golden hue, and the tintings of purple
and violet on the distant porphyry hills, was a morning miracle, which I
never beheld without awe. The richness of this coloring made the desert
beautiful; it was too brilliant for desolation. The scenery, so far from
depressing, inspired and exhilarated me. I never felt the sensation of
physical health and strength in such perfection, and was ready to shout
from morning till night, from the overflow of happy spirits. The air is
an elixir of life, as sweet and pure and refreshing as that which the
first man breathed, on the morning of creation. You inhale the
unadulterated elements of the atmosphere, for there are no exhalations
from moist earth, vegetable matter, or the smokes and steams which arise
from the abodes of men, to stain its purity. This air, even more than
its silence and solitude, is the secret of one’s attachment to the
desert. It is a beautiful illustration of the compensating care of that
providence which leaves none of the waste places of the earth without
some atoning glory. Where all the pleasant aspects of nature are
wanting; where there is no green thing, no fount for the thirsty lip,
scarcely the shadow of a rock to shield the wanderer in the blazing
noon; God has breathed upon the wilderness his sweetest and tenderest
breath, giving clearness to the eye, strength to the frame, and the most
joyous exhilaration to the spirits.
“Achmet always insisted on my taking a saber as a protection against the
hyenas, but I was never so fortunate as to see more than their tracks,
which crossed the path at every step. I saw occasionally the footprints
of ostriches, but they, as well as the giraffe, are scarce in this
desert. Toward noon, we made a halt in the shadow of a rock, or if no
rock was at hand, on the bare sand, and took our breakfast. One’s daily
bread is never sweeter than in the desert. The rest of the day I jogged
along patiently beside the baggage camels, and at sunset halted for the
night. A divan on the sand, and a well-filled pipe, gave me patience
while dinner was preparing, and afterward I made the necessary entries
in my journal. I had no need to court sleep, after being rocked all day
on the dromedary. Until noon of the fourth day we journeyed over a vast
plain of sand, interrupted by low reefs of black rock. Soon after midday
the plain was broken by low ranges of hills, and we saw in front and to
the east of us many blue mountain-chains. Our road approached one of
them, a range, several miles in length, the highest peak of which
reached an altitude of a thousand feet. The sides were precipitous and
formed of vertical strata, but the crests were agglomerations of loose
stones, as if shaken out of some enormous coal-scuttle. The glens and
gorges were black as ink; no speck of any other color relieved the
terrible gloom of this singular group of hills. Their aspect was much
more than sterile: it was infernal. The name given to them by the guide
was _Djilet e’ Djindee_, the meaning of which I could not learn. At
their foot I found a few thorny shrubs, the first sign of vegetation
since leaving Korosko. We encamped half an hour before sunset on a
gravelly plain, between two spurs of the savage hills, in order that our
camels might browse on the shrubs, and they were only too ready to take
advantage of the permission. They snapped off the hard, dry twigs,
studded with cruel thorns, and devoured them as if their tongues were
made of cast-iron. We were now in the haunts of the gazelle and the
ostrich, but saw nothing of them.
“On the fifth day we left the plain, and entered a country of broken
mountain-ranges. In one place the road passed through a long, low hill
of slate rock, by a gap which had been purposely broken. The strata were
vertical, the laminæ varying from one to four inches in thickness, and
of as fine a quality and smooth a surface as I ever saw. A long wady, or
valley, which appeared to be the outlet of some mountain-basin, was
crossed by a double row of stunted doum-palms, marking a water-course
made by the summer rains. Eyoub pointed it out to me, as the half-way
station between Korosko and Abou-Hammed. For two hours longer we
threaded the dry wadys, shut in by black, chaotic hills. It was now
noonday, I was very hungry, and the time allotted by Eyoub for reaching
_Bir Mûrr-hàt_ had passed. He saw my impatience and urged his dromedary
into a trot, calling out to me to follow him. We bent to the west,
turned the flank of a high range, and after half an hour’s steady
trotting, reached a side-valley or _cul-de-sac_, branching off from the
main wady. A herd of loose camels, a few goats, two black camel’s-hair
tents, and half a dozen half-naked Ababdehs, showed that we had reached
the wells. A few shallow pits, dug in the center of the valley,
furnished an abundance of bitter, greenish water, which the camels
drank, but which I could not drink. The wells are called by the Arabs
_el morra_, ‘the bitter.’ Fortunately, I had two skins of Nile-water
left, which, with care, would last to Abou-Hammed. The water was always
cool and fresh, though in color and taste it resembled a decoction of
old shoes. We left Mûrr-hàt at sunrise, on the morning of the sixth day.
I walked ahead, through the foldings of the black mountains, singing as
I went, from the inspiration of the brilliant sky and the pure air. In
an hour and a half, the pass opened on a broad plain of sand, and I
waited for my caravan, as the day was growing hot. On either side, as we
continued our journey, the blue lakes of the mirage glittered in the
sun. Several isolated pyramids rose above the horizon, far to the east,
and a purple mountain-range in front, apparently two or three hours
distant, stretched from east to west. ‘We will breakfast in the shade of
those mountains,’ I said to Achmet, but breakfast-time came and they
seemed no nearer, so I sat down in the sand and made my meal. Toward
noon we met large caravans of camels, coming from Berber. Some were
laden with gum, but the greater part were without burdens, as they were
to be sold in Egypt. In the course of the day upward of a thousand
passed us. The afternoon was intensely hot, the thermometer standing at
one hundred degrees, but I felt little annoyance from the heat, and used
no protection against it. The sand was deep and the road a weary one for
the camels, but the mountains which seemed so near at hand in the
morning were not yet reached. We pushed forward; the sun went down, and
the twilight was over before we encamped at their base. The tent was
pitched by the light of the crescent moon, which hung over a
pitchy-black peak. I had dinner at the fashionable hour of seven. Achmet
was obliged to make soup of the water of Mûrr-hàt, which had an
abominable taste. I was so drowsy that before my pipe was finished, I
tumbled upon my mattress, and was unconscious until midnight, when I
awoke with the sensation of swimming in a river of lava.
“The tent was struck in the morning starlight, at which time the
thermometer stood at fifty-five degrees. I walked alone through the
mountains, which rose in conical peaks to the hight of near a thousand
feet. The path was rough and stony until I reached the outlet of the
pass. On leaving the mountain, we entered a plain of coarse gravel,
abounding with pebbles of agate and jasper. Another range, which Eyoub
called Djebel Dighlee, appeared in front, and we reached it about noon.
The day was again hot, the mercury rising to ninety-five degrees. It
took us nearly an hour to pass Djebel Dighlee, beyond which the plain
stretched away to the Nile, interrupted here and there by a distant
peak. Far in advance of us lay Djebel Mokràt, the limit of the next
day’s journey. From its top, said Eyoub, one may see the palm-groves
along the Nile. We encamped on the open plain, not far from two black
pyramidal hills, in the flush of a superb sunset. The ground was
traversed by broad strata of gray granite, which lay on the surface in
huge bowlders. Our camels here found a few bunches of dry, yellow grass,
which had pierced the gravelly soil. To the south-east was a mountain
called by the Arabs _Djebel Nogàra_, (the mountain of the Drum,)
because, as Eyoub declared, a devil who had his residence among its
rocks, frequently beat a drum at night, to scare the passing caravans.
“The stars were sparkling freshly and clearly when I rose, on the
morning of the eighth day, and Djebel Mokràt lay like a faint shadow on
the southern horizon. The sun revealed a few isolated peaks to the right
and left, but merely distant isles on the vast, smooth ocean of the
desert. It was a rapture to breathe air of such transcendent purity and
sweetness. I breakfasted on the immense floor, sitting in the sun, and
then jogged on all day, in a heat of ninety degrees, toward Djebel
Mokràt, which seemed as far off as ever. The sun went down, and it was
still ahead of us. ‘That is a _Djebel Shaytan_,’ I said to Eyoub; ‘or
rather, it is no mountain; it is an afrite.’ ‘O effendi!’ said the old
man, ‘don’t speak of afrites here. There are many in this part of the
desert, and if a man travels alone here at night, one of them walks
behind him and forces him to go forward and forward, until he has lost
his path.’ We rode on by the light of the moon and stars; and two hours
after sunset, we _killed_ Djebel Mokràt, as the Arabs say: that is,
turned its corner. The weary camels were let loose among some clumps of
dry, rustling reeds, and I stretched myself out on the sand, after
twelve hours in the saddle. Our water was nearly exhausted by this time,
and the provisions were reduced to hermits’ fare, bread, rice and dates.
I had, however, the spice of a savage appetite, which was no sooner
appeased, than I fell into a profound sleep. I could not but admire the
indomitable pluck of the little donkeys owned by the Kenoos. These
animals not only carried provisions and water for themselves and their
masters, the whole distance, but the latter rode them the greater part
of the way; yet they kept up with the camels, plying their little legs
as ambitiously the last day as the first. I doubt whether a horse would
have accomplished as much under similar circumstances.
“The next morning we started joyfully, in hope of seeing the Nile; and
even Eyoub, for the first time since leaving Korosko, helped to load the
camels. In an hour we passed the mountain of Mokràt, but the same
endless plain of yellow gravel extended before us to the horizon. Eyoub
had promised that we should reach Abou-Hammed in half a day, and even
pointed out some distant blue mountains in the south, as being beyond
the Nile. Nevertheless, we traveled nearly till noon without any change
of scenery, and no more appearance of river than the abundant streams of
the mirage, on all sides. I drank my last cup of water for breakfast,
and then continued my march in the burning sun, with rather dismal
spirits. Finally, the desert, which had been rising since we left the
mountain, began to descend, and I saw something like round granite
bowlders lying on the edge of the horizon. ‘Effendi, see the
doum-trees!’ cried Eyoub. I looked again: they _were_ doum-palms, and so
broad and green that they must certainly stand near water. Soon we
descended into a hollow in the plain, looking down which I saw to the
south a thick grove of trees, and over their tops the shining surface of
the Nile. ‘Ali,’ I called to my sailor-servant, ‘look at that great
_bahr shaytan_!’ The son of the Nile, who had never before, in all his
life, been more than a day out of sight of its current, was almost
beside himself with joy. ‘Wallah, master,’ he cried; ‘that is no river
of the devil: it is the real Nile, the water of Paradise.’ It did my
heart good to see his extravagant delight. ‘If you were to give me five
piasters, master,’ said he, ‘I would not drink the bitter water of
Mûrr-hàt.’ The guide made me a salutation, in his dry way, and the two
Nubians greeted me with ‘A great welcome to you, O effendi!’ With every
step the valley unfolded before me; such rich deeps of fanlike foliage,
such a glory in the green of the beans and lupines, such radiance beyond
description in the dance of the sunbeams on the water! The landscape was
balm to my burning eyes, and the mere sight of the glorious green
herbage was a sensuous delight, in which I rioted for the rest of the
day.”