The Start--from El-muwaylah to the "White Mountain" and 'Aynúah.
I landed at El-Muwaylah, described in my last volume,[EN#18] on
the auspicious Wednesday, December 19, 1877, under a salute from
the gunboat Mukhbir, which the fort answered with a rattle and a
patter of musketry. All the notables received us, in line drawn
up on the shore, close to our camp. To the left stood the
civilians in tulip-coloured garb; next were the garrison, a dozen
Básh-Buzuks en bourgeois, and mostly armed with matchlocks; then
came out quarrymen in uniform, but without weapons; and, lastly,
the escort (twenty-five men) held the place of honour on the
right. The latter gave me a loud "Hip! hip! hurrah!" as I passed.
The tents, a total of twenty, including two four-polers for our
mess and for the stores, with several large canvas sheds--páls,
the Anglo-Indian calls them--gleamed white against the dark-green
fronds of the date-grove; and the magnificent background of the
scene was the "Dibbagh" block of the Tiha'mah, or lowland
mountains.
The usual "palaver" at once took place; during which everything
was "sweet as honey." After this pleasant prelude came the normal
difficulties and disagreeables--it had been reported that I was
the happy possessor of £22,000 mostly to be spent at El-MuwayIah.
The unsettled Arabs plunder and slay; the settled Arabs slander
and cheat.
A whole day was spent in inspecting the soldiers and mules; in
despatching a dromedary-post to Suez with news of our
unexpectedly safe arrival, and in conciliating the claims of
rival Bedawin. His Highness the Viceroy had honoured with an
order to serve us Hasan ibn Salim, Shaykh of the Beni 'Ukbah, a
small tribe which will be noticed in a future page. Last spring
these men had carried part of our caravan to 'Aynúnah; and they
having no important blood-feuds, I had preferred to employ them.
But 'Abd el-Nabi, of the Tagayát-Huwaytát clan, had been spoilt
by over-kindness during my reconnaissance of 1877; besides, I had
given him a bowie-knife without taking a penny in exchange. In my
first volume he appears as a noble savage, with a mixture of the
gentleman; here he becomes a mere Fellah-Bedawi.
The claimants met with the usual ceremony; right hands placed on
the opposite left breasts--this is not done when there is bad
blood--foreheads touching, and the word of peace, "Salám,"
ceremoniously ejaculated by both mouths. Then came the screaming
voices, the high words, and the gestures, which looked as if the
Kurbáj ("whip") were being administered. The Huwayti stubbornly
refused to march with the other tribe, whom, moreover, he grossly
insulted: he professed perfect readiness to carry me and mine
gratis, the while driving the hardest bargain; he spoke of "our
land," when the country belongs to the Khediv; he openly denied
his allegiance; he was convicted of saying, "If these Christians
find gold, there will be much trouble (fitneh) to us Moslems;"
and at a subsequent time he went so far as to abuse an officer. I
had "Shaykh'd" him (Shayyakht-uh), that is, promoted him in rank,
said the Sayyid 'Abd el-Rahím; and the honour had completely
changed his manners. "Nasaggharhu" (We will "small" him), was my
reply. The only remedy, in fact, was to undo what had been done;
to cut down, as Easterns say, the tree which I had planted. So he
was solemnly and conspicuously disrated; the fee, one dollar per
diem, allotted as travelling and escort-allowance to the chiefs,
was publicly taken from him, and he at once subsided into an
ignoble Walad ("lad"), under the lead of his uncle, Shaykh
'Aláyan ibn Rabí. The latter is a man of substance, who can
collect at least two thousand camels. Though much given to
sulking, on the whole, he behaved so well that, the Expedition
ended, I recommended him to his Highness the Viceroy for
appointment to the chieftainship of his tribe, and the usual
yearly subsidy. With him was associated his cousin, Shaykh
Furayj, an excellent man, of whom I shall have much to say; and
thus we had to fee three Bedawi chiefs, including Hasan. The
latter was a notable intriguer and mischief-maker, ever breeding
bad blood; and his termper was rather violent than sullen. When
insulted by a soldier, he would rush off for his gun,
ostentatiously light the match, walk about for an hour or two
threatening to "shyute," and then apparently forget the whole
matter.
All wanted to let their camels by the day, whereas the custom of
Arabia is to bargain for the march. Thus, the pilgrims pay one
dollar per stage of twelve hours; and the post-dromedary demands
the same sum, besides subsistence-money and "bakhshi'sh." But our
long and frequent halts rendered this proceeding unfair to the
Bedawin. I began by offering seven piastres tariff, and ended by
agreeing to pay five per diem while in camp, and ten when on the
road.[EN#19] Of course, it was too much; but our supply of money
was ample, and the Viceroy had desired me to be liberal. In the
Nile valley, where the price of a camel is some £20, the average
daily hire would be one dollar: on the other hand, the animal
carries, during short marches, 700 lbs. The American officers in
Upper Egypt reduced to 300 lbs. the 500 lbs. heaped on by the
Súdáni merchants. In India we consider 400 lbs. a fair load; and
the Midianite objects to anything beyond 200 lbs.
I have no intention of troubling the reader with a detailed
account of our three first stages from El-Muwaylah to the Jebel
el-Abyaz, or White Mountain.[EN#20] On December 21st, leaving
camp with the most disorderly of caravans--106 camels instead of
80, dromedaries not included--we marched to the mouth of the Wady
Tiryam, where we arrived before our luggage and provisions,
lacking even "Adam's ale." The Shaykhs took all the water which
could be found in the palm-boothies near the shore, and drank
coffee behind a bush. This sufficed to give me the measure of
these "wall-jumpers."
Early next morning I set the quarrymen to work, with pick and
basket, at the north-western angle of the old fort. The latter
shows above ground only the normal skeleton-tracery of coralline
rock, crowning the gentle sand-swell, which defines the lip and
jaw of the Wady; and defending the townlet built on the northern
slope and plain. The dimensions of the work are fifty-five mètres
each way. The curtains, except the western, where stood the Báb
el-Bahr ("Sea gate"), were supported by one central as well as by
angular bastions; the northern face had a cant of 32 degrees east
(mag.); and the northwestern tower was distant from the sea
seventy-two me'tres, whereas the south-western numbered only
sixty. The spade showed a substratum of thick old wall, untrimmed
granite, and other hard materials. Further down were various
shells, especially bénitiers ( Tridacna gigantea) the harp (here
called "Sirinbáz"), and the pearl-oyster; sheep-bones and palm
charcoal; pottery admirably "cooked," as the Bedawin remarked;
and glass of surprising thinness, iridized by damp to rainbow
hues. This, possibly the remains of lachrymatories, was very
different from the modern bottle-green, which resembles the old
Roman. Lastly, appeared a ring-bezel of lapis lazuli;
unfortunately the "royal gem," of Epiphanus was without
inscription.
Whilst we were digging, the two staff-officers rode to the
date-groves of Wady Tiryam, and made a plan of the ancient
defences--the results of the first Khedivial Expedition had
either not been deposited at, or had been lost in, the Staff
bureau, Cairo. They found that the late torrents had filled up
the sand pits acting as wells; and the people assured them that
the Fiumara had ceased to show perennial water only about five or
six years ago.
The second march was disorderly as the first: it reminded me of
driving a train of unbroken mules over the Prairies; the men were
as wild and unmanageable as their beasts. It was every one's
object to get the maximum of money for the minimum of work. The
escort took especial care to see that all their belongings were
loaded before ours were touched. Each load was felt, and each box
was hand-weighed before being accepted: the heaviest, rejected by
the rich, were invariably left to the poorest and the lowest
clansmen with the weakest and leanest of animals. All at first
especially objected to the excellent boxes--a great comfort--made
for the Expedition[EN#21] at the Citadel, Cairo; but they ended
with bestowing their hatred upon the planks, the tables, and the
long tent-poles. As a rule, after the fellows had protested that
their camels were weighted down to the earth, we passed them on
the march comfortably riding--for "the 'Orbán can't walk." And no
wonder. At the halting-place they unbag a little barley and
wheat-meal, make dough, thrust it into the fire, "break bread,"
and wash it down with a few drops of dirty water. This copious
refection ends in a thimbleful of thick, black coffee and a pipe.
At home they have milk and Ghí (clarified butter) in plenty
during the season, game at times, and, on extraordinary
occasions, a goat or a sheep, which, however, are usually kept
for buying corn in Egypt. But it is a "caution" to see them feed
alle spalle altrui.
Nothing shabbier than the pack-saddles; nothing more rotten than
the ropes. As these "Desert ships" must weigh about half the
sturdy animals of Syria and the Egyptian Delta, future
expeditions will, perhaps, do well to march their carriage round
by El-'Akabah. The people declare that the experiment has been
tried, but that the civilized animal sickens and dies in these
barrens; they forget, however, the two pilgrim-caravans.
At this season the beasts are half-starved. Their "kitchen" is a
meagre ration of bruised beans, and their daily bread consists of
the dry leaves of thorn trees, beaten down by the Makhbat, a
flail-like staff, and caught in a large circle of matting
(El-Khasaf). In Sinai the vegetation fares even worse: the
branches are rudely lopped off to feed the flocks; only "holy
trees" escape this mutilation. With the greatest difficulty we
prevented the Arabs tethering their property all night close to
our tents: either the brutes were cold; or they wanted to browse
or to meet a friend: every movement was punished with a wringing
of the halter, and the result may be imagined.
We slept that night at Wady Sharmá. Of this ruined town a plan
was made for "The Gold-Mines of Midian," by Lieutenant Amir, who
alone is answerable for its correctness. We afterwards found
layers of ashes, slag, and signs of metal-working to the
north-east of the enceinte, where the furnace probably stood. The
outline measures 1906 metres, not "several kilometres;" and
desultory digging yielded nothing but charcoal, cinders, and
broken pottery. It was not before nine a.m. on the next day that
I could mount my old white, stumbling, starting mule; the delay
being caused by M. Marie's small discovery, which will afterwards
be noticed. We crossed both branches of the Sharmá water; and,
ascending the long sand-slope of the right bank, we again passed
the Bedawi cemetery. I sent Lieutenants Amir and Yusuf to
prospect certain stone-heaps which lay seawards of the graves;
and they found a little heptangular demi-lune, concave to the
north; the curtains varying from a minimum length of ten to a
maximum of eighty me'tres, and the thickness averaging two
metres, seventy-five centimetres. It was possibly intended, like
those above Wady Tiryam, to defend the western approach; and,
superficially viewed, it looks like a line of stones heaped up
over the dead, with that fine bird's-eye view of the valley which
the Bedawi loves for his last sleeping-place.
Thence we passed through the dry Báb ("sea gap"), cut by a
torrent in the regular line of the coralline cliff, the opening
of the Wady Melláh, off which lay our Sambúk. Marching up the
Wady Maka'dah, our experienced eyes detected many small outcrops
of quartz, formerly unobserved, in the sole and on the banks. The
granite hills, here as throughout Midian, were veined and dyked
with two different classes of plutonic rock. The red and pink are
felsites or fine-grained porphyries; the black and bottle-green
are the coarse-grained varieties, easily disintegrating, and
forming hollows [Illustration with caption: Fortification on the
cliff commanding the right bank of Wady Sharma'.] in the harder
granite. The ride was made charming by the frontage of
picturesque Jebel 'Urnub, with its perpendicular Pinnacles upon
rock-sheets dropping clear a thousand feet; its jutting bluffs;
its three huge flying Buttresses, that seemed to support the
mighty wall-crest; and its many spits and "organs," some capped
with finials that assume the aspect of logan-stones. There was no
want of animal life, and the yellow locusts were abroad; one had
been seized by a little lizard which showed all the violent
muscular action of the crocodile. There were small long-eared
hares, suggesting the leporide; sign of gazelles appeared; and
the Bedawin spoke of wolves and hyenas, foxes and jackals.
We camped upon the old ground to the southwest of the Jebel
el-Abyaz; and at the halt our troubles forthwith began. The
water, represented to be near, is nowhere nearer than a two
hours' march for camels; and it is mostly derived from
rain-puddles in the great range of mountains which subtends
maritime Midian. But this was our own discovery. The half-Fellah
Bedawin, like the shepherds, their predecessors, in the days of
Abimelech and Jethro, are ever chary of their treasure; the only
object being extra camel-hire. After eating your salt, a rite
whose significance, by-the-by, is wholly ignored throughout
Midian and its neighbourhood, they will administer under your
eyes a silencing nudge to an over-communicative friend. 'The very
children that drive the sheep and goats instinctively deny all
knowledge of the Themáil ("pits") and holes acting as wells.
At the head of the Wady el-Maka'dah we halted six days (December
24--30); this delay gave us time to correct the misapprehensions
of our flying visit. The height of the Jebel el-Abyaz, whose
colour makes it conspicuous even from the offing when sailing
along the coast, was found to be 350 (not 600) feet above the
plain. The Grand Filon, which a mauvais plaisant of a reviewer
called the "Grand Filou," forms a "nick" near the hill-top, but
does not bifurcate in the interior. The fork is of heavy greenish
porphyritic trap, also probably titaniferous iron, with a trace
of silver,[EN#22] where it meets the quartz and the granite.
Standing upon the "old man" with which we had marked the top, I
counted five several dykes or outcrops to the east (inland), and
one to the west, cutting the prism from north to south; the
superficial matter of these injections showed concentric circles
like ropy lava. The shape of the block is a saddleback, and the
lay is west-east, curving round to the south. The formation is of
the coarse grey granite general throughout the Province, and it
is dyked and sliced by quartz veins of the amorphous type,
crystals being everywhere rare in Midian (?) The filons and
filets, varying in thickness from eight metres to a few lines,
are so numerous that the whole surface appears to be quartz
tarnished by atmospheric corrosion to a dull, pale-grey yellow;
while the fracture, sharp and cutting as glass or obsidian, is
dazzling and milk-white, except where spotted with
pyrites--copper or iron. The neptunian quartz, again, has
everywhere been cut by plutonic injections of porphyritic trap,
veins averaging perhaps two metres, with a north-south strike,
and a dip of 75 degrees (mag.) west. If the capping were removed,
the sub-surface would, doubtless, bear the semblance of a
honeycomb.
The Jebel el-Abyaz is apparently the centre of the quartzose
outcrop in North Midian (Madyan Proper). We judged that it had
been a little worked by the ancients, from the rents in the reef
that outcrops, like a castle-wall, on the northern and eastern
flanks. There are still traces of roads or paths; while heaps,
strews, and scatters of stone, handbroken and not showing the
natural fracture, whiten like snow the lower slopes of the
western hill base. They contrast curiously with the hard
felspathic stones and the lithographic calcaires bearing the
moss-like impress of metallic dendrites; these occur in many
parts near the seaboard, and we found them in Southern as well as
in Northern Midian. The conspicuous hill is one of four mamelons
thus disposed in bird's-eye view; the dotted line shows the
supposed direction of the lode in the Jibál el-Bayzá, the
collective name.
On the plain to the north of the Jebel el-Abyaz also, I found
curdles of porphyritic trap, and parallel trap-dykes, cutting the
courses of large-grained grey granite: as many as three outcrops
of the former appeared within fourteen yards. This convinced me
that the whole of the solid square, thirty kilometres (six by
five), where the quartz emerges, is underlaid by veins and
veinlets of the same rock. Moreover, I then suspected, and
afterwards ascertained, that the quartz of the Jibál el-Bayzá, as
the Bedawin call this section, is not a local peculiarity. It
everywhere bursts, not only the plain between the sea and the
coast-range, but the two parallels of mountain which confine it
on the east. In fact, throughout our northern march the Arabs,
understanding that its object was "Marú," the generic name for
quartz,[EN#23] brought us loads of specimens from every
direction. Nothing is easier than to work the purely superficial
part. A few barrels of gunpowder and half a dozen English miners,
with pick and crowbar, suffice. Even our dawdling, feckless
quarrymen easily broke and "spelled" for camel loading some six
tons in one day.
Our short se'nnight was not wasted; yet I had an uncomfortable
feeling that the complication of the country called for an
exploration of months and not hours. Every day some novelty
appeared. The watercourses of the Gháts or coast-range were
streaked with a heavy, metallic, quartzose black sand which M.
Marie vainly attempted to analyze. We afterwards found it in
almost every Wady, and running north as far as El-'Akabah;
whilst, with few exceptions, all our washings of red earth,
chloritic sand, and bruised stone, yielded it and it only. It is
apparently the produce of granite and syenite, and it abounds in
African Egypt. I was in hopes that tungsten and titaniferous iron
would make it valuable for cutlery as the black sand of New
Zealand. Experiments in the Citadel, Cairo, produced nothing save
magnetic iron with a trace of lead. But according to Colonel
Ross, the learned author of "Pyrology, or Fire Chemistry,"[EN#24]
it is iserine or magnetic ilmenite, titaniferous iron-sand,
containing eighty-eight per cent. of iron (oxides and
sesquioxides), with eleven per cent. of titanic acid.
The Arabs brought in fine specimens of hematite and of copper ore
from Wady Gharr or Ghurr, six miles to the south of camp. Here
were found two water-pits in a well-defined valley; the nearer
some ten miles south-west of the Jebel el-Abyaz, the other about
two miles further to the north-west; making a total of twelve.
About the latter there was, however, no level ground for tents. A
mile and a half walking almost due north led to a veinlet of
copper 30 metres long by 0.30 thick, with an east-west strike,
and a dip of 45 degrees south. This metal was also found in the
hills to the south. Crystalline pyroxene and crystallized
sulphates of lime apparently abound, while the same is the case
with carbonate of manganese, and other forms of the metal so
common in Western Sinai. Briefly, our engineer came to the
conclusion that we were in the very heart of a mining region.
We made a general reconnaisance (December 27th) of a place whence
specimens of pavonine quartz had come to hand. Following the Wady
'Ifriyá round the north and east of the White Mountain, we fell
into the Wady Simákh (of "Wild Sumach"), that drains the great
gap between the Pinnacles and the Buttresses of the
'Urnub-Tihámah section. After riding some two miles, we found to
the south-east fragments of dark, iridescent, and metallic
quartz: they emerge from the plain like walls, bearing
north-south, with 36 degrees of westing and a westward dip of 15
degrees to 20 degrees--exactly the conditions which Australia
seeks, and which produced the huge "Welcome Nugget" of Ballarat.
They crop out of the normal trap-dyked grey granite, and select
specimens show the fine panaché lustre of copper. M. Marie
afterwards took from one of the geodes a pinch of powder weighing
about half a gramme, and cupelled a bright dust-shot bead
weighing not less than two centigrammes. Without further
examination he determined it to be argentiferous, when it was
possibly iron or antimony. On the other hand, the silver
discovered in the Grand Filon by so careful and conscientious an
observer as Gastinel Bey, and the fact that we are here on the
same line of outcrop, and at a horizon three hundred feet lower,
are reassuring.
This vein, which may be of great length and puissance, I took the
liberty of calling the "Filon Husayn," from the prince who had so
greatly favoured the Expedition. Here we had hit upon the
Negros,[EN#25] or coloured quartzose formations of Mexico, in
which silver appears as a sulphure; and we may expect to find the
Colorado, or argillaceous, that produces the noble metal in the
forms of chlorure, bromure, and iodure. The former appears
everywhere in Midian, but our specimens are all superficial,
taken à ciel ouvert. To ascertain the real value and the extent
of the deposits required exposure of the veins at a horizon far
lower than our means and appliances allowed us to reach. If the
rock prove argentiferous I should hope to strike virgin silver in
the capillary or aborescent shape below. Above it, as on the
summit of the Jebel el-Abyaz, and generally in the "Marú" hills
and hillocks of North Midian, the dull white quartz is
comparatively barren; showing specks of copper; crystals of
pyrites, the "crow-gold" of the old English miner, and dark dots
of various metals which still await analysis.
Thus, I would divide the metalliferous quartzes of this
North-Midianite region into two chief kinds: those stained green
and light blue, whose chief metallic element is copper, with its
derivatives; and the iridescent Negro, which may shelter the
Colorado. In South Midian the varieties of quartz are
incomparably more numerous, and almost every march shows a new
colour or constitution.
About the Jebel el-Abyaz, as in many mining countries, water is a
serious difficulty. The principal deposit lies some three miles
east of the camping ground in a Nakb or gorge, El-Asaybah,
offsetting from the great Fiumara, "El-Simákh;" and apparently it
is only a rain-pool. Throughout Midian, I may say, men still
fetch water out of the rock. M. Philipin, whilst pottering about
this place, saw two Beden (ibex) with their young, which suggests
a permanent supply of drink.[EN#26]
However that may be, Norton's Abyssinian pumps, for which I had
vainly applied at Cairo, would doubtless discover the prime
necessary in the Wadys, many of the latter being still damp and
muddy. Moreover, the crible continue à grilles filtrantes, the
invention of MM. Huet and Geyler, introduced, we are told, into
the mechanical treatment of metals, a principle which greatly
economizes fluid. Founded upon the fact that sands of nearly the
same size, but of different densities, when mixed in liquid and
subjected to rapid vertical oscillation, range themselves by
order of weight, the heavier sinking and not allowing passage to
lighter matter, the new sieve offers the advantages of a single
and simple instrument, with increased facility for treating poor
"dirt." Finally, as I shall show, the country is prepared by
nature to receive a tramway; and the distance to the sea does not
exceed fourteen miles, liberally computed.[EN#27]
Either the rain-water affected the health of the party, or it
suffered from the excessive dryness and variations of the
atmosphere, eight to nine hundred feet above sea-level (aner.
29.10), ranging in the tents between 92 degrees by day and 45
degrees at night, a piercing, killing temperature in the Desert.
Moreover, the cold weather is mostly the unwholesome season in
hot lands, and vice versâ: hence the Arab proverb, Harárat
el-Jebel, wa lá Bard-há ("The heat of the hills and not their
cold"). Old Haji Wali lost his appetite, complained of
indigestion, and clamoured to return home; Ahmed Kaptán suffered
from Sulb ("lumbago") and bad headache; whilst Lieutenant Yusuf
was attacked by an ague and fever, which raised the mouth
thermometer to 102 degrees--103 degrees, calling loudly for
aconite. These ailments affected the party more or less the whole
way, but it was not pleasant to see them begin so soon. When our
work of collecting specimens--three tons from the Jebel el-Abyaz,
and three from the Filon Husayn--was finished, I resolved upon
returning to the coast and treating our loads at the Sharmá
water. We reached the valley mouth on December 30th, and we
greatly enjoyed the change from the harshness of the inland to
the mildness of the seaboard air.
We stayed at Sharmá, much disliking its remarkably monotonous
aspect, for another week, till January 7, 1878. Yule, "the
wheel," despite the glorious tree-logs and roaring fires, had
been a failure at the White Mountain. The Dragoman had killed our
last turkey, and had forgotten to bring the plum-pudding from
El-Muwaylah: there was champagne, but that is not the stuff
wherewithal to wash down tough mutton. New Year's Day, on the
other hand, had all the honours. Its birth was greeted with a
flow of whisky-punch, wherein wine had taken the place of water;
and we drank the health of his Highness, the Founder of the
Expedition, in a bottle of dry Mumm. The evening ended with music
and dancing, by way of "praying the Old Year out and the New Year
in." Mersál, the Boruji, performed a wild solo on his bugle; and
another negro, Ahmed el-Shinnáwi, played with the Nái or
reed-pipe one of those monotonous and charming minor-key airs--I
call them so for want of a word to express them--which extend
from Midian to Trafalgar, and which find their ultimate
expression in the lovely Iberian Zarzuela.[EN#28] The boy Husayn
Genínah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge
military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his
ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect
that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank
table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout
the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls
contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious
Midian. And, to make the shock more violent, some friend, malè
salsus, sent me copies of the cosmopolitan Spectator and the
courteous Mayfair, which at once became waste paper for Bedawi
cartridges.
Our Rosh há Shanah ("New Year's Day") was further distinguished
by the discovery of a vein and outcrop of metalliferous quartz,
about half an hour's walk, and bearing nearly east (80 degrees
mag.) from camp. We followed the Wady Sharmá, and found above its
"gate" the masonry-foundation of a square work; near it lay the
graves of the Wild Men, one with the normal awning of palm-fronds
honoris causâ. There were signs of stone-quarrying, and at one
place a road had been cut in the rock. Leaving on the north the
left side of the watercourse, with its rushes (Scirpus), and
huge-headed reeds (Arundo donax), its dates and Daums--the two
latter often scorched and killed by the careless Bedawi--we
struck into a parallel formation, the Wady el Wuday, bone-dry and
much trodden by camels. Arrived at the spot, we found that the
confused masses of hill subtending the regular cliff-line of the
old coast, are composed of grey granite, seamed with snowy
quartz, and cut by the usual bands of bottle-coloured porphyritic
trap, which here and there becomes red. Some of the heights are
of greenish-yellow chloritic felspar, well adapted for
brick-making. The surface of the land is scattered with fragments
of white silex and fine red jasper, banded with black oligistic
iron: this rock, close, hard, and fine enough to bear cutting,
appears everywhere in scatters and amongst the conglomerates.
Only one fossil was picked up, a mould so broken as to be quite
useless.
We also followed out M. Marie's find, to which he had been guided
by a patch of red matter, conspicuous on the road from Tiryam to
Sharmá. For forty minutes we skirted the seaward face of the old
cliff, a line broken by many deep water-gashes and buttressed by
Goz, or high heaps of loose white sand. We then turned eastwards
or inland, ascended a Nakb ("gorge"), and saw, as before, the
corallines and carbonates of lime altered, fused, scorified, and
blackened by heated injections; the grey granite scored with
quartz veins, running in all rhumbs; and the porphyritic trap
forming crests that projected from the sands. The cupriferous
stone struck east-west, with a dip to the south; the outcrops,
visible without digging, measured fifteen to twenty metres long,
by one to one and a half in breadth.
New Year's Day also restored to us the pup "Páijí." When quite a
babe, it had walked up to me in the streets of Cairo, evidently
claimed acquaintanceship, and straightway followed me into
Shepheard's, where; having a certain sneaking belief in
metempsychosis, I provided it with bed and board. During our
third march to the White Mountain, being given to violent yelps,
which startled both mules and camels, the small thing had been
left to walk, and had apparently made friends with an Arab
goatherd. After nine days' absence without leave, "Páijí"
reappeared, with dirty rags tied round its bony back and wasted
waist, showing an admirable skeleton, and making the most frantic
demonstrations of joy. The loss of the poor little brute had
affected all our spirits: we thought that the hyenas and the
ravens had seen the last of it; and it received a warm welcome
home.
M. Lacaze, unlike the rest, took a violent fancy for the Wady
Sharmá: the water-scenery enchanted him. His sketches were almost
confined to the palm-growth, and to the greenery so unexpected in
arid Midian, where, according to the old and exploded opinion,
Moses wrote the Book of Job. The idea of Arabia is certainly not
associated with flowing rills, and waving trees, and rustling
zephyrs. Every morning I used to awake surprised by the song of
the Naiad, the little runnel whimpling down its bed of rushes,
stone, and sand; and the response of the palms making music in
the land-breeze.
Finally, on New Year's Day, Lieutenant Amir, guided by Shaykh
Furayj, and escorted by soldiers and miners, made a three days'
trip to the Wady 'Urnub. There he surveyed a large isolated
"Mará," or quartz-hill, some twenty-two to twenty-five direct
miles south-east of the main outcrop; thus giving a considerable
extent to the northern mining-focus. This feature is described as
being four or five times larger than the Jebel el-Abyaz (proper);
and the specimens of quartz and grey granite proved it to be of
the same formation. It showed a broken outline, with four great
steps or dykes, which had apparently been worked. In the basal
valleys, and spread over the land generally, was found a heavy
yellow sand, calcareous and full of silex: the guide called it
Awwal Hismá (the "Hismá frontier").
Our travellers returned by a parallel line, southerly and more
direct. In the Wady 'Urnub, the Ma'ázah of the Salímát clan
received them with apparent kindness, inwardly grumbling the
while at their land being "spied out;" and they especially
welcomed Furayj, who, being a brave soldier, is also noted as a
peacemaker. All the men were armed, and wore the same dress as
the Huwaytát; like these, they also breed camels and asses--that
is, they are not cow-Arabs. Certain travellers on the Upper Nile
have distributed the Bedawin into these two groups; add
horse-Arabs and ass-Arabs, and you have all the divisions of the
race as connected with the so-called "lower animals." About three
hours (= eleven miles) from Sharmá camp, some pyramids of sand
were pointed out in the Wady Rátiyah: the Bedawin call one of
them the Goz et-Hannán ("Moaning Sand-heap"). They declare that
when the Hajj-caravan passes, or rather used to pass, by that
way, before the early sixteenth century, when Sultán Selim laid
out his maritime high-road, a Naubah ("orchestra") was wont to
sound within its bowels. This tale, which, by-the-by, is told of
two other places in Midian, may have been suggested by the Jebel
el-Nákús ("Bell Mountain") in Sinai-land; but as the Arabs
perform visitation and sacrifice to the "Moaning-heap," the
superstition probably dates from ancient days. Ruins are also
reported to exist in the Jebel Fa's, the southern boundary of the
'Urnub valley; and, further south, in the Jebel el-Harb, I was
told by some one whose name has escaped me, of a dolmen mounted
upon three supports. Lieutenant Amir also brought copper ore from
the Wady 'Urnub, and from the Ras Wady el-Mukhbir specimens of a
metal which the Arabs use as a kohl or collyrium. It proved,
however, iron, not antimony; and the same mistake has been made
in the Sinaitic Peninsula.
At Wady Sharmá we rigged up, under the superintendence of M.
Philipin, a trough and a cradle for washing the black sands, the
pounded quartz of the Jebel el-Abyaz, and the red sands; these
latter had shown a trace of silver (1/10000) to the first
Expedition. We mixed it with mercury and amalgamed it in
goatskins; the men moved them to and fro; but, of course, the
water evaporated, and the mass speedily became dry. The upper or
superficial white yielded only, as far as our engineer could
judge, a little copper and bright knobs of pyrites. The Negros,
or iridized formations, of the "Filon Husayn" on a lower horizon,
gave the dubious result already alluded to. All the experiments
were conducted in the rudest way. Of course, a quantity of metal
may have escaped notice; and a fair proportion of the powdered
stone was reserved for scientific treatment in Europe.
During our first trip we had found, upon the right jaw of the
Wady Sharmá, a ruined village of workmen, probably slaves, whose
bothans measured some twelve feet by eight. They differ from the
Nawámis, or "mosquito-huts," as the word is generally translated,
only in shape--the latter are circular, with a diameter of ten
feet--and they perfectly resemble the small stone hovels in the
Wady Mukattab, which Professor Palmer ("Desert of the Exodus," p.
202) supposes to have been occupied by the captive miners and
their military guardians. This time we ascended the coralline
ridge which forms the left jamb. At its foot a rounded and half
degraded dorsum of stiff gravel, the nucleus of its former self,
showed a segment of foundation-wall, and the state of the stone
suggested the action of fire. Possibly here had been a furnace.
The summit also bears signs of human occupation. The southern
part of the buttress-crest still supports a double concentric
circle with a maximum diameter of about fifteen feet; the outside
is of earth, apparently thrown up for a rampart behind a moat,
and the inside is of rough stones. Going south along the dorsum,
we found remains of oval foundations; a trench apparently cut in
the rock, pottery often an inch and more thick, and broken
handmills made of the New Red Sandstone of the Hismá. Finally, at
the northernmost point, where the cliff-edge falls abruptly, with
a natural arch, towards the swamp, about one kilometre broad at
the Báb, we came upon another circle of rough stones. We were
doubtful whether these rude remains were habitations or old
graves; nor was the difficulty solved by digging into four of
them: the pick at once came upon the ground-rock. Hitherto these
ruins have proved remarkably sterile; the only products were
potsherds, fragments of hand-mills, and a fine lump of white
marble (Rukhám), supposed to come from the Jebel el-Lauz.
Amongst our followers was a "Kázi of the Arabs," one Jabr bin
'Abd el-Nabi, who is a manner of judge in civil, but not in
criminal matters. Before the suit begins the plaintiff, or his
surety, deposits a certain sum in coin, corn, or other valuables,
and lays his damages at so much. The defendant, if inclined to
contest the claim, pays into court the disputed amount, and the
question is settled after the traditional and immemorial customs
of the tribe. This man, covetous as any other disciple of
Justinian, was exceedingly anxious to obtain the honorarium of a
Shaykh, and he worked hard to deserve it. Shortly before our
departure from Sharmá, he brought in some scoriae and slag,
broken and streaked with copper--in fact, ekvolades. They are
thinly scattered over the seaward slope of the left jaw, where
the stone nowhere shows a trace of the mineral in situ. As,
however, the Expedition had found native copper in three places,
more or less near the Jebel el-Abyaz, it was decided that the ore
had been brought from the interior.
We were again much puzzled concerning the form of industry which
gave rise to such a large establishment as Sharmá. Agriculture
was suggested and rejected; and we finally resolved that it was a
branch-town that supplied ore to the great smelting-place and
workshop of the coast, 'Aynúnah, and possibly carbonate of lime
to serve for flux.
The distance along the winding Wady, between the settlement and
the sea westward, where the watercourse ends in sand-heaps, is
seven to eight miles, and the coast shows no sign of harbour or
of houses. About three miles, however, to the northwest is the
admirable Bay of 'Aynu'nah, unknown to the charts. Defended on
both sides by sandspits, and open only between the west and the
north-west, where reefs and shoals allow but a narrow passage,
its breadth across the mouth from east to west measures at least
five thousand metres, and the length inland, useful for refuge,
is at least three thousand. At the bottom of this noble Límán,
the Kolpos so scandalously abused by the ancients, are three
sandy buttresses metalled with water rolled stones, and showing
traces of graves. Possibly here may have been the site of an
ancient settlement. The Arabs call the southern anchorage, marked
by a post and a pit of brackish water, El-Musaybah or Musaybat
Sharmá. Its only present use seems to be embarking bundles of
rushes for mat-making in Egypt. The north-eastern end of the
little gulf is the Gád (Jád), or Mersá of El-Khuraybah, before
described as the port of 'Aynu'nah.
At the Musaybah I stationed our tender, the Sambúk El-Musahhil,
which carried our heavy goods, specimens by the ton; rations and
stores; forge, planks, and crowbars. The sailors lost no time in
showing their rapacity. Every day they dunned us for tobacco; and
when we made a counter-demand for the excellent fish which was
caught in shoals, they simply asked, "What will you pay for it?"
I imprudently left my keg of specimen-spirits on board this
ignoble craft, and the consequence was that it speedily became
bone-dry. The Musaybah bight is a direct continuation of the Wady
el-Melláh, which, joining that of El-Maka'dah, runs straight up
to the Jebel el-Abyaz and to the Filon Husayn. These
metalliferous quartzes cannot be further from the coast than a
maximum distance of fourteen miles, and the broad, smooth
watercourse, with its easy gradients, points it out as the site
of the future tramway. I should prefer a simpler form of the
"Pioneer Steam Caravan or Saddleback-Railway System," patented by
Mr John L. Haddan, C.E., formerly of Damascus.[EN#29] He
recommends iron as the best material for the construction; and
the cost, delivered at Alexandria, would not exceed £1200,
instead of £3000 to £20,000 per kilometre, including the rolling
stock. As the distance from the port is nothing, £300 per
kilometre would be amply sufficient for "fixing up;" but I should
reduce the price to £500 for the transport of some 50 tons per
diem. By proper management of the rails or the main rail, it
would be easy for trained camels to draw the train up the Wady;
and the natural slope towards the sea would give work only to the
brake where derailments are not possible.
At Sharmá we saw the crescent, when the Englishmen turned their
money in their pockets, and the Egyptian offficers muttered a
blessing upon the coming moon. Every day we waxed more weary of
the place; possibly the memories of the first visit were not
pleasant. Many in camp still suffered; and an old Bedawi, uncle
to Shaykh 'Alayan, died and was buried at 'Aynúnah. The number of
servants also made us uncomfortable. The head Dragoman, whose
memory was confined to his carnet, forgot everything; and, had we
trusted to him, half the supplies would have returned to Suez,
probably for the benefit of his own shop at Zagázig. I soon found
his true use, and always left him behind as magazine-man,
storekeeper, and guardian of reserve provisions. He was also a
dangerous, mischief-making fellow; and such men always find
willing ears that ought to know better. Petros, the Zante man,
was the model of a tipotenios (an "anybody"), who seemed to have
been born limp, without bones or brains. He was sent back as soon
as possible to Cairo. The worst point of these worthies was, that
they prevented, for their own reasons, the natives working for
us; while they preferred eternal chatter and squabbles to working
themselves. So the Greek element was reduced to George the cook,
a short, squat, unwashed fellow, who looked like a fair-Hercules
out of luck; who worked like three, and who loudly clamoured for
a revolver and a bowie-knife. His main fault, professionally
speaking, was that he literally drenched us with oil till the
store happily ran out. His complexion was that of an animated
ripe olive, evidently the result of his own cookery. His surprise
when I imperatively ordered plain boiled rice, instead of a mess
dripping with grease; and when told to boil the fish in sea water
and to serve up the bouillon, was high comedy. Doubtless he has
often, since his return, astounded his "Hellenion" by describing
our Frankish freaks and mad eccentricities.
The stationary camp also retained Lieutenant Yusuf and MM. Duguid
and Philipin, with thirteen soldiers and sixteen miners. The six
camels were placed under Gabr, Kázi el-'Orbán; and all the
stay-behinds were charged with washing the several earths, with
scouring the country for specimens, and with transporting sundry
tons of the black sand before mentioned. Old Haji Wali, probably
frightened by the Arabs, and maddened by the idea that, during
his absence in the thick of the cotton season, the Fellahs of
Zagázig would neglect to pay their various debts, began to
"malinger" with such intensity of purpose, that I feared lest he
would kill himself to spite us. The venerable Shylock, who ever
pleaded poverty, had made some £300 by lending a napoleon, say,
on January 1st, which became a sovereign on February 1st; not to
speak of the presents and "benevolences" which the debtor would
be compelled to offer his creditor. So he departed for
El-Muwaylah, whence some correspondent had warned him that a
pilgrim boat was about to start; declaring that he was dying, and
trotting his mule as hard as it would go, the moment a safe
corner was turned. He stayed two days on board the gunboat, and
straightway returned to Egypt and the cotton season:--we had the
supreme satisfaction, however, to hear that he had gone through
the long quarantine at Tor. Yet after our return he reproached
me, with inimitable coolness and effrontery, for not having
behaved well to him.
On the morning of January 7th, a walk of two hours and twenty
minutes (= seven miles) northwards, and mostly along the shore of
the noble "Musaybat Sharmá," transferred us to well-remembered
'Aynúnah. The sea in places washed over slabs of the fine old
conglomerates which, in this country, line the banks and soles of
all the greater Wadys: these are the Cascalho of the Brazil, a
rock which is treated by rejecting the pebbles and by pounding
the silicious paste. The air was softer and less exciting than
that of Sharmá; and, although the vegetation was of the crapaud
mort d'amour hue--here a sickly green, there a duller brown than
April had showed--the scene was more picturesque, the "Gate" was
taller and narrower, and the recollection of a happy first visit
made me return to it with pleasure. Birds were more abundant:
long-shanked water-fowl with hazel eyes; red-legged rail; the
brown swallow of Egypt; green-blue fly-catchers; and a black
muscivor, with a snowy-white rump, of which I failed to secure a
specimen. We also saw the tern-coloured plover, known in Egypt as
Domenicain and red kingfishers. The game species were fine large
green mallard; dark pintail; quail, and red-beaked brown
partridge with the soft black eye.
New formations began to develop themselves, and the sickly hues
of the serpentines and the chlorites, so rich in the New World,
appeared more charming than brow of milk or cheek of rose.[EN#30]
There were few changes. A half-peasant Bedawi had planted a strip
of barley near the camping place; the late floods had shifted the
course of the waters; more date-trees had been wilfully burned; a
big block of quartz, brother to that which we had broken, had
been carried off; and where several of the old furnaces formerly
stood, deep holes, dug by the "money-hunter," now yawned. I again
examined the two large fragments of the broken barrage, and found
that they were of uncut stone, compacted with fine cement, which
contained palm-charcoal.
At 'Aynúnah we gave only one day to work. While M. Lacaze
sketched the views, we blasted with gunpowder more than half
charcoal the Ma'dan el-Fayrúz ("turquoise mine"), as the Arabs
called it, on the right side of the Wady. The colour and texture
were so unlike the true lapis Pharanitis that we began to
suspect, and presently we ascertained from the few remaining
fragments, it had been worked for copper,--the carbonates and the
silicates which characterize Cyprus. Presently good specimens of
the latter were brought to us from the Jebel el-Fará by a Bedawi
pauper, 'Ayd of the Tagaygát-Huwaytát tribe. These half-naked
shepherds and goatherds, who know every stone in the land, are
its best guides; not the Shaykhs, who, as a rule, see little or
nothing outside their tents. From our camp the direction, as
reported by Ahmed Kaptán, was 102 degrees (mag.), and the
distance three miles. I afterwards sent Lieutenant Yusuf from
El-Muwaylah to make a detailed plan.[EN#31]
We also dug in an old pit amongst the Christian graves to the
south-east of the camp, and below the left jamb of the "Gate."
Here also the Bedawin had been at work; and, when unable to work
deep enough, they told us wonderful tales of an alabaster slab,
which doubtless concealed vast treasures. In Arabia, as in
Africa, one must look out for what there is not, as well as for
what there is. After spending a morning in sinking a twelve-feet
shaft, we came upon a shapeless coralline-boulder, which in old
times had slipped from the sea-face of the cliff to the left of
the valley. I ascended this height, and saw some stones disposed
by the hand of man; but there were no signs of a large
slave-miner settlement like that on the other side of the Báb.
In the afternoon Mr. Clarke led a party of quarrymen across the
graveyards to El-Khuraybah, the seaport of 'Aynúnah, and applied
them to excavating the floor of a cistern and the foundations of
several houses; a little pottery was the only result. It was a
slow walk of forty minutes; and thus the total length of the
aqueducts would be three miles, not "between four and five
kilometres." I had much trouble and went to some expense in
sending camels to fetch a "written stone" which, placed at the
head of every newly buried corpse, is kept there till another
requires it. It proved to be a broken marble pillar with a modern
Arabic epitaph. In the Gád el-Khuraybah, the little inlet near
the Gumruk ("custom-house"), as we called in waggery the shed of
palm-fronds at the base of the eastern sandspit, lay five small
Sambúks, which have not yet begun fishing for mother-of-pearl.
Here we found sundry tents of the Tagaygát-Huwaytát, the half
Fellahs that own and spoil the once goodly land; the dogs barked
at us, but the men never thought of offering us hospitality. We
had an admirable view of the Tihámah Mountains--Zahd, with its
"nick;" the parrot-beak of Jebel el-Shátí; the three
perpendicular Pinnacles and flying Buttresses of Jebel 'Urnub;
the isolated lump of Jebel Fás; the single cupola of Jebel Harb;
the huge block of Dibbagh, with its tall truncated tower; the
little Umm Jedayl, here looking like a pyramid; and the four
mighty horns of Jebel Shárr.
I left 'Aynúnah under the conviction that it has been the great
Warshah ("workshop") and embarking-place of the coast-section
extending from El-Muwaylah to Makná; and that upon it depended
both Wady Tiryam and Sharmá, with their respective establishments
in the interior. Moreover, the condition of the slag convinced me
that iron and the baser metals have been worked here in modern
times, perhaps even in our own, but by whom I should not like to
say.