MYSTERIES OF THE LIBYAN DESERT
[Illustration: MY HAGIN, OR RIDING CAMEL.
The saddle bags, or _hurj_, are gaily coloured and the rider rests his
legs on the leather pad over the withers, the camel being controlled by
a single rein. (p. 33).]
MYSTERIES OF THE
LIBYAN DESERT
A RECORD OF THREE YEARS OF EXPLORATION
IN THE HEART OF THAT VAST &
WATERLESS REGION
BY
W. J. HARDING KING, F.R.G.S.
_Awarded Gill Memorial in 1919 by the Royal Geographical Society_
AUTHOR OF “A SEARCH FOR THE MASKED TAWAREKS,” &c.
WITH 49 ILLUSTRATIONS & 3 MAPS
London
Seeley, Service & Co. Limited
196 Shaftesbury Avenue
1925
“In a land that the sand overlays—the ways to her gates are untrod.
A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God,
Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their
fall,
And of this is a story written: but Allah alone knoweth all!”
KIPLING—_The City of Brass_.
Printed in Great Britain at
_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth_. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
PREFACE
IT is not easy to condense into a reasonable compass an account of
three years’ work in an entirely unknown part of the world like the
centre of the Libyan Desert.
Most of the scientific results I obtained during that time, however,
have already appeared in the journals of the Royal Geographical
Society, or other scientific bodies, so it has not been necessary
to reproduce them. Many of the journeys, too, that were made into
the desert had of necessity to retraverse routes that I had already
covered, or were of too uninteresting a character to be worth
describing, so no account of these was necessary. On the other hand,
various incidents have been introduced into the narrative part of
the book which, though they may appear comparatively unimportant in
themselves, illustrate the character of the natives, and so supply data
of an ethnographical character in one of its most practical forms.
The photographs which form the illustrations were all taken by myself.
Unfortunately many others that I took were so seriously damaged by the
sand, or heat, as to be unfit for reproduction. These have had to be
replaced by sketches that I made from them—for these I can only offer
my apologies.
The names by which the new places that we found in the central part
of the desert are called will not be seen on any map. They are only
those given to them by my men. But it has been necessary to use
them in order to avoid repetition of such cumbersome phrases as
“the-hill-that-appeared-to-alternately-recede-and-advance-as-we-
approached-it,” etc.
I received so much kindness and assistance in so many quarters in
carrying out my work that it is a little difficult to decide where to
begin in acknowledging it. To the War Office I am indebted for the
gift of the graticules upon which my map was constructed; the Sudan
Office in Cairo lent me tanks and gave me much useful intelligence.
Major Jennings-Bramley, Capt. James Hay and the late Capt. (afterwards
Colonel) O. A. G. Fitzgerald all gave me information and advice of
great value.
Dr. Rendle and his staff of the Botanical Section of the Natural
History Museum in South Kensington kindly identified for me a
collection of plants that I brought back, and in addition allowed
me the use of their library while working out the geographical
distribution of the collection.
For the identification of part of my other collections I am also
indebted to the staff of the Natural History Museum in South
Kensington. A collection of insects made on my last journey sent to the
Tring Museum were most kindly identified for me by Lord Rothschild.
I am under a deep debt of gratitude to the Royal Geographical Society
for a most generous loan of instruments; and last, but by no means
least, I have to express most cordial thanks to the Survey Department
in Egypt for the loan of tanks and instruments and for much valuable
advice and assistance. More especially I am under obligations to the
following members of this department: To the late Mr. (afterwards
Lt.-Col.) B. F. E. Keeling and Mr. Bennett, for calculating some of
my astronomical observations; to Mr. J. Craig for his kindness in
working out my boiling point and aneroid altitudes; to Dr. John Ball
and Mr. H. E. Hurst, who gave me much assistance and so far enlightened
my ignorance on the subject as to enable me to take some electrical
observations on the sand blown off a sand dune; the former, too, most
kindly lent me his electrometer for the purpose of the observations.
Mr. Alfred Lucas of this department also kindly analysed some samples
of crusted sand that I collected in order to discover the cementing
material.
The Libyan Desert, that in the past has to a great extent defied the
efforts of all its explorers, is bound before long to give up its
secrets. Suitably designed cars, accompanied perhaps by a scouting
plane, our enemies against which even the most avid desert is almost
defenceless, though one cannot but regret the necessity for such
prosaic mechanical aids, they unquestionably afford an ideal method of
conducting long pioneer explorations in a waterless desert. But these
things have only recently been invented, and there are still many
problems that remain unsolved as to “what lies hid behind the ridges”
in the vast area that we know as the Libyan Desert, and speculation is
so full of fascination, that it seems almost a pity that those problems
should ever be solved.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I 17
CHAPTER II 28
CHAPTER III 37
CHAPTER IV 47
CHAPTER V 60
CHAPTER VI 75
CHAPTER VII 82
CHAPTER VIII 92
CHAPTER IX 102
CHAPTER X 111
CHAPTER XI 122
CHAPTER XII 130
CHAPTER XIII 138
CHAPTER XIV 144
CHAPTER XV 148
CHAPTER XVI 153
CHAPTER XVII 160
CHAPTER XVIII 168
CHAPTER XIX 181
CHAPTER XX 195
CHAPTER XXI 198
CHAPTER XXII 206
CHAPTER XXIII 219
CHAPTER XXIV 231
CHAPTER XXV 241
CHAPTER XXVI 248
CHAPTER XXVII 280
APPENDIX I 293
APPENDIX II 322
APPENDIX III 326
INDEX 337
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HALF-TONES
MY _HAGIN_ OR RIDING CAMEL _FRONTISPIECE_
FACING PAGE
RESOLING A CAMEL 40
KHARASHEF 48
SAND-GROVED RIDGE 48
IN OLD MUT 48
THE GATE OF QALAMUN 56
THE _’OMDA_ OF RASHIDA AND HIS FAMILY 56
A TEAPARTY IN DAKHLA OASIS 64
MAKING WOODEN PIPES 72
A STREET IN RASHIDA 72
THE MOST “IMPASSABLE” DUNE 88
VIEW, NEAR RASHIDA 96
A CONSPICUOUS ROAD—TO AN ARAB 96
BATTIKH 96
RATHER THIN 112
_WASM_ OR BRAND OF THE SENUSSIA 118
BREADMAKING IN THE DESERT 118
SIEVING THE BABY 118
_SOFUT_ 152
THE DESCENT INTO DAKHLA OASIS 152
A MADE ROAD 152
SHEYKH SENUSSI 200
HAGGI QUAYTIN 200
SHEYKH IBN ED DRIS 200
HAGGI QUAY 200
A BRIDE AND HER POTTERY 228
MARRIAGE PROCESSION IN DAKHLA OASIS 248
VEGETATION IN _HATTIA_ KAIROWIN 248
FIRST SIGHT OF THE “VALLEY OF THE MIST” 272
A GAZELLE TRAP 272
TRAP FOR SMALL BIRDS 272
A STREET IN KHARGA 312
IN THE TEXT
PAGE
_’OMDA’_ HOUSE, TENIDA 38
SENUSSI _ZAWIA_ AT SMINT 40
OLD HOUSES IN MUT 42
THE TREE WITH A SOUL, RASHIDA 49
DER EL HAGAR, DAKHLA OASIS 58
SHEYKH AHMED’S GUEST HOUSE 65
OLD _’ALEM_, “VALLEY OF THE MIST” 112
DIAGRAM OF JEBEL EL BAYED 114
OLD WIND SHELTER, “VALLEY OF THE MIST” 117
ABD ER RAHMAN’S WIND SCOOP 123
OLD KHAN IN ASSIUT 133
UPPER FLOOR OF POST OFFICE 139
BLIND TOWN CRIER, MUT 141
SKETCH PLAN OF TRACKS ROUND JEBEL EL BAYED 175
PINNACLE ROCK ON DESCENT TO BU GERARA VALLEY 204
BOY WITH CROSSBOW, FARAFRA 226
SENUSSI PRAYING PLACE, BU MUNGAR 233
FLOUR MILL, RASHIDA 264
OLIVE MILL, RASHIDA 266
OLIVE PRESS, RASHIDA 267
KHATIM OR SEAL 274
SCORPION PROOF PLATFORM 283
ERODED ROCK, SOUTH-WEST OF DAKHLA 309
[Illustration: MAP FOR “MYSTERIES OF THE LIBYAN DESERT.”
Seeley Service & Co. Ltd.]
Mysteries of the Libyan Desert
CHAPTER I
OF the making of books on Egypt there is no end. The first on
the subject was Genesis, and there has been a steady output ever
since. But the literature of the Libyan Desert, that joins up to
Egypt on the west, is curiously scanty, when the enormous area of
this district is considered.
The Libyan desert may be said to extend from the southern edge of the
narrow cultivated belt that exists almost everywhere along the North
African coast, to the Tibesti highlands, and the northern limit of
the vegetation of the Sudan. On the east the boundary of the desert
is well defined by the Valley of the Nile; but on its western side
it is extremely vague.
A broad belt of desert stretches all across North Africa from east to
west. The western portion of this is known to us as “the Sahara.”
But “Sahara” is not really a name, but an Arabic word meaning
a desert—_any_ desert. By the natives this term is applied to the
whole of this desert belt, and is used just as much to describe the
Libyan Desert, as the more westerly part of it. The boundary line
between what we know as the Sahara and the Libyan Desert has never
been drawn, but it may be said to run roughly from the northern
end of Tibesti to the base of the Gulf of Sidra. With such vague
boundaries it is impossible to give an accurate estimate of its
extent, but it may be taken that the Libyan Desert covers nearly
a million square miles. It is probably the least-known area of its
size in the world. There are still hundreds of thousands of square
miles in its southern and central parts quite unknown to Europeans,
the map of which appears as so much blank paper, or is shown as
being covered with impassable sand dunes.
I had had some experience of desert travelling in the Western Sahara,
so when, in 1908, I wrote to the Secretary of the Royal Geographical
Society, suggesting a journey into the Western Sahara, and received
a letter in reply proposing that I should tackle the Libyan Desert
instead, as offering the largest available area of unknown ground,
and should take up the study of sand dunes, for which it afforded
an unrivalled opportunity, I jumped at the suggestion, which had
not before occurred to me.
But after a jump of that kind one usually comes to earth again
with something of a bang, and when, after making a more thorough
enquiry than I had previously done into the nature of the job I had
undertaken, I began to realise its real character and felt that in
saying I would tackle this part of the world, I had done something
quite remarkably foolish.
Many expeditions had set out from Egypt to explore this part of the
world, but none up to that time had ever crossed the Senussi frontier,
with the exception of Rohlfs’, who, in 1874, before the Senussia
was firmly established in the desert, attempted to reach Kufara
Oasis. Even he, hampered perhaps by his enormous caravan, only managed
to proceed for three days westward from Dakhla and was then compelled,
by the insurmountable character of the dunes, to abandon the attempt
and to turn up towards the north and make for the Egyptian oasis of
Siwa. This difficulty of crossing the sand hills, the obstructing
influence of the Senussi, who had reduced passive resistance to a
fine art, and, perhaps, in some cases, want of experience in desert
travelling, had rendered the other attempts abortive. Still, this
seemed to be the most promising side from which to enter the desert.
I first took a preliminary canter by going again to the Algerian
Sahara. This was, of course, some years before the war, in the course
of which the Senussi—or the Senussia as they should be more strictly
called—were very thoroughly thrashed. Just before the war, however,
they were at about the height of their power and were a very real
proposition indeed.
They had the very undesirable peculiarity—from a traveller’s point
of view—of regarding the part of the Libyan Desert, into which
I was proposing to go, as their private property and of resenting
most strongly—to put it mildly—all attempts to penetrate into
their strongholds. There can be little doubt that at this period
they had been contemplating for a long time an invasion of Egypt,
and were only waiting for a suitable opportunity to occur of putting
it into execution. In the circumstances, they naturally did not
want Europeans to enter their country for fear that they should get
to know too much. Moreover their fanaticism against Europeans had
been considerably augmented by the advance of the French into their
country from the south.
Even now most people seem hardly to realise the real character of the
Senussia; for one constantly hears them alluded to as a “tribe”
or merely as a set of unusually devout Moslems, who have chosen to
take up their abode in the most inaccessible parts of Africa, in
order to devote themselves to their religious life, without fear of
interruption from outsiders. The fact is, that they are in reality
dervishes, whose character, at that time at any rate, was of a most
uncompromising nature towards all non-Mohammedans and was especially
hostile towards Europeans, particularly those occupying any Moslem
territories. Moreover they were not confined only to the Libyan
Desert, but formed one of the most powerful of the dervish orders,
with followers spread throughout practically the whole Moslem world
from Sumatra to Morocco.
As I expected to come a good deal in contact with them in the Libyan
Desert, after leaving the Algerian Sahara, I spent a considerable
time in the public libraries of Algeria and Tunis, in collecting such
information as was available on the Senussia and other dervishes of
North Africa.
For the benefit of those unacquainted with the subject it may be as
well to explain the nature of these dervish orders. They resemble in
some ways the monastic communities of Christianity, and are usually
organised on much the same lines. Their _zawias_, or monasteries, vary
in size from unpretentious buildings, little better than mud huts,
to huge establishments, which in size and architecture favourably
compare with the finest institutions of their kind in Europe.
Each dervish order has its own peculiar ritual. Many of them are
entirely non-political and of a purely religious character; but
there are others, such for instance as the notorious Rahmania and
Senussia, who are of a strongly political character, usually hostile
to Europeans. Frequently, however, their influence is not apparent,
as they keep discreetly in the background; but it has been repeatedly
shown that it has been intriguing sects such as these, who have been
at the bottom of the numerous risings and difficulties that Europeans
have had to contend with in dealing with their Moslem subjects.
Other political orders—such as the Tijania—are actually favourable
towards Europeans; while others again lend their support to some
particular branch of the community, acting for instance, as in the
case of the Ziania, as protectors to travellers or, as the Kerzazia
do, supporting the dwellers in the oases against the attacks of the
_bedawin_ who surround them, and so forth.
As these dervish orders are largely dependant upon the _refar_, or
tribute, that they exact from their followers, for their support, with
few exceptions, each sect does its utmost to increase the number of
its adherents and to prevent them from joining any other order. This
naturally leads to a considerable rivalry between them, and when two
of them pursue an exactly opposite policy—as for instance in the
case of the Tijania and the Senussia—this rivalry develops into
a deadly feud. It is the impossibility of inducing rival dervishes
to combine, more perhaps than anything else, that makes that wild
dream of Pan-islam, by which all Mohammedans are to unite to get
rid of their European rulers, such a hopelessly impossible scheme.
A very large proportion of the Moslem natives of North Africa
belong to one, or more, of these orders. But it is seldom that
a native can be found to discuss at all freely the particular
one to which he belongs. A knowledge, however, of them and of the
peculiarities by which the followers of each sect can be identified,
is most useful. The information that I picked up on this subject
before going to Libya I found of the greatest possible value, as it
often enabled me to gauge the probable attitude towards me of the men
with whom I came in contact, and even to put a spoke in their wheel,
before they even realised that I had any ground for suspicion.
On leaving Tunis, I went on to Egypt, where, before actually setting
out for the desert, I spent some time in Cairo, putting the finishing
touches to my equipment and picking up what information I could
about the part into which I was going. It is extraordinary how many
of my informants regarded the desert as “a land of romance.”
No doubt in many cases distance lends enchantment to the view,
and covers it with a certain amount of glamour; but a very slight
experience of these arid wastes is calculated completely to shatter
the spell. Romance is merely the degenerate offspring of imagination
and ignorance. There can be few parts of the world where one is so
much up against hard cold facts as one is in the desert.
On the whole, the information that I was able to collect was of a
very unsatisfactory character. I could learn practically nothing at
all definite about the desert—at least nothing that seemed to be
reliable, except that the dunes of the interior of the desert were
quite impassable.
But I soon found out that though I was learning nothing, other
people _were_. The truth of the local saying that “you can’t keep
anything quiet in Egypt” was several times forced upon me in rather
startling ways. Most of the news that natives learn probably leaks
out through the reckless way in which some Europeans talk in the
presence of their English-speaking servants. But even allowing for
careless conversation of this kind, it is astonishing how quickly
news sometimes travels. This rapid transmission of secret news is
a well-known thing in North Africa, and one that has always to be
reckoned with. In Algeria they call it the “arab telegraph,”
and many extraordinary cases of it are recorded.
As a result of my enquiries I was able to draw up a sort of
programme for my work in the desert, the main objects in which were
as follows:—
(1) To cross that field of impassable dunes.
(2) If I succeeded in doing so, to cross the desert from north-east
to south-west.
(3) Failing the latter scheme, to survey as much as possible of
other unknown parts of the desert.
(4) To collect as much information as possible from the natives about
the unknown portions of the desert that I was unable to visit myself.
Before leaving Cairo, I engaged two servants. My knowledge of Arabic
at that time was scanty, and what there was of it was of the Algerian
variety—a vile patois that is almost a different language to that
spoken in the desert—an interpreter was consequently almost a
necessity. I took one—Khalil Salah Gaber by name—from a man
who was just leaving the country. He was loud in his praises of
Khalil, stating that he was an extremely good interpreter and
“very tactful.”
Since then I have always been distinctly suspicious of people who
are noted for their tact—there are so many degrees of it. Tactful,
diplomatic, tricky, dishonest, criminal, all express different shades
of the same quality, and Khalil’s tact turned out to be of the
most superlative character!
I also engaged a man called Dahab Suleyman Gindi as
cook. Dahab—unlike Khalil, who was a _fellah_ or one of the Egyptian
peasants—was a Berberine, the race from which the best native
servants are drawn. He was a small, elderly, rather feeble-looking
man with an honest straightforward appearance, who not only turned
out to be a very fair cook, but who also made himself useful at
times as an interpreter, as he knew a certain amount of English.
After my preparations were completed, I stayed on for a while to
see something of the sights of Cairo. Its cosmopolitan all-nation
crowd made it an interesting enough place for a short stay. But
after one had spent a little time there, and done all the usual
sights, dirty, noisy Cairo and the other tourist resorts began to
pall upon one. After all, they are only a sort of popular edition
of the country, published by Thomas Cook and Son. Beyond lay the
real Egypt and desert, a land where _afrits_, _ghuls_, _genii_ and
all the other creatures of the native superstitions are matters of
everyday occurrence; where lost oases and enchanted cities lie in the
desert sands, where the natives are still unspoiled by contact with
Europeans, and where most of the men are pleasing, and, though the
prospect is vile, that could not destroy the attraction that lay in
the fact that about a million square miles of it were quite unknown,
and waiting to be explored.
Before I had been very long in Cairo, I had had enough of it—it
was so much like an Earl’s Court exhibition—and at the end of
my stay, I cleared out for the desert with a feeling of relief.
The train for Kharga Oasis left Cairo at 8 p.m. After a long dusty
journey I found myself deposited at the terminus in the Nile Valley
of the little narrow gauge railway that runs across the desert for
some hundred miles to Kharga Oasis.
There is a proper station at this junction now, but at that time,
in 1909, the line had only been recently opened, and the junction
consisted merely of a siding, a ramshackle little wooden hut for
the station-master, and a truly appalling stink of dead dog, the
last being due to the fact that owing to an attack of rabies in
the district, the authorities had been laying down poisoned meat to
destroy the pariah dogs of the neighbourhood, who all seemed to have
chosen the vicinity of the station as the spot on which to spend
their last moments.
Having shot out my baggage at the side of the permanent way, the
train disappeared into the distance and left me with about half a
ton of kit to get up to Qara, the base of the oasis railway, where
I had been told I could get put up. After a delay of nearly an hour,
during which time, as it was bitterly cold, I began to feel the truth
of the native saying that “all travel is a foretaste of hell,”
some trollies put in an appearance. Moslems, it may be mentioned,
believe that there are seven hells, each worse than the last—and
they say they are all feminine!
As soon as the trollies had been loaded up, a start was made for
Qara, some five miles away, where I spent the next few days, while
collecting the camels for my caravan.
To assist me in buying the beasts, I engaged a local Arab, known as
Sheykh Suleyman Awad, a grim, grizzled old scoundrel of whom I saw a
good deal later on. In his youth he had had a great reputation as a
_gada_—a term corresponding pretty closely to our “sportsman,”
and much coveted by the younger _bedawin_.
He had gained this reputation in a manner rather characteristic of
these Arabs. Once, when a young man, he was having an altercation
with a couple of _fellahin_, who after showering other terms of abuse
upon him, finally wound up by calling him a “woman.” An insult
such as this from a couple of mere _fellahin_, a race much despised
by the Arabs, was too much altogether for Suleyman, who promptly
shot them both. It was a neat little repartee, but Suleyman had to
do time for it.
The _bedawin_ in that part of Egypt are semi-sedentary, living
encamped in the Nile Valley on the edge of the cultivation. Most of
them live in tents woven of thick camel and goat hair, others in
huts of _busa_—dried stalks of maize, etc.—a few of the more
wealthy Arabs have houses, built of the usual mud bricks, and own
small areas of land which they cultivate. At certain seasons of the
year, they migrate into the oases, returning again to their camping
places in the Nile Valley in the spring, to avoid the camel fly that
puts in its appearance in the oases at that season, and is capable
of causing nearly as much mortality among the camels as the tsetse
fly does among horses in other parts of Africa.
After spending a day or two trying to buy camels round Qara, I at
length secured five first-rate beasts in the market at Berdis.
Each Arab tribe has its own camel brand or _wasm_, the origins
of which are lost in the mists of antiquity. Some of these marks,
however, are identical in shape with the letters of the old Libyan
alphabet of North Africa, and with its near relation the Tifinagh,
or alphabet of the modern Tawareks, and it is possible that there
may be some connection between them.
The camels I bought at Berdis came from the Sudan. They were large
fawn-coloured beasts with a fairly smooth coat, and all showed the
same brand—a vertical line on the near side of the head by the
nostril, and a similar line in the bend of the neck. They belonged,
I believe, to the Ababda tribe.
Sheykh Suleyman eventually produced a decent-looking camel from
somewhere, which I bought, and that, with the five I had procured
from Berdis, constituted my whole caravan—and an excellent lot of
beasts they were.
I engaged a couple of drivers to look after them—Musa, a young
fellow of about eighteen years of age, and a little jet-black Sudani,
called Abd er Rahman Musa Said, who turned out to be a first-rate
man, and stayed with me the whole time I spent in the desert. Both
of these men belonged to Sheykh Suleyman’s tribe.
The choice of a guide is a serious question, as the success or
otherwise of an expedition depends very largely upon him, and I found
considerable difficulty in finding a suitable man. I nearly engaged
one who applied, as he seemed to be the only one of the candidates
who knew anything at all about the desert beyond the Egyptian
frontier. But Nimr—Sheykh Suleyman’s brother—sent me word by
Abd er Rahman, that he was not to be relied on as he “followed the
Sheykh”—the usual way among natives of describing a man who was a
member of the Senussia, and as he refused a cigarette I offered him,
I declined to employ him. Smoking, it may be noticed is forbidden
to the followers of Sheykh Senussi, and the offer of a cigarette
is consequently a useful—though not always infallible—test of
membership of this fanatical fraternity.
My suspicions were confirmed on the following morning, when this
man came in to hear my answer to his application. The camel he rode
was branded on the neck with the _wasm_ of the Senussia—a kind of
conventionalised form of the Arabic word “Allah” ([Symbol])—a
damning piece of evidence showing not only that he belonged to the
sect, but that his mount was supplied by the Senussia itself. He
was probably one of their agents.
I was beginning to despair of finding a guide, when I received a
telegram from the _mudir_ (native governor) of Assiut, to whom I
had applied for a reliable man, saying that he had got one for me,
and asking whether I wished to see him.
The man arrived the next day. I took a fancy to him at once, which
even his many peccadilloes never quite destroyed. His appearance was
distinctly in his favour. He was a big man, nearly six feet high,
which is very tall indeed for an Arab. He looked about sixty years
old, and carried himself with that “grand air” which so many of
the _bedawin_ show, and which goes so well with the flowing robes
of the East. Unlike most _bedawin_ he was spotlessly clean.
His name he said was Qway Hassan Qway. It is quite impossible to
convey an accurate idea of the pronunciation of Arabic names by mere
European systems of writing, but his first name as he pronounced it,
sounded like “choir” with a sort of gulping “g” instituted for
the “ch.” He added the gratuitous piece of information that his
grandfather had been a _bey_—a sort of military title corresponding
roughly to a knighthood. He was clearly not in the habit of hiding
his light under a bushel. But as he was very highly recommended by
the _mudir_, and I liked the look of him, I engaged him.
“Guide” is perhaps hardly the correct term to describe the
capacity in which he was expected to act, for he did not even profess
to have any knowledge of the desert beyond the Egyptian frontier. But
as it seemed hopeless to attempt to find anyone who did, I employed
him as a man of great experience in desert travelling, who would act
as head of the caravan and help me with his advice in any difficulty
that arose.
I took him round and introduced him to my other men. At my suggestion
he arranged with Sheykh Suleyman to hire a riding camel from him,
as he said that he had not one of his own that was strong enough
for a hard desert journey.
In spite of his engaging manners, for some reason that was not
apparent, both Sheykh Suleyman and Abd er Rahman obviously took a
strong dislike to him. I was rather pleased at this, as a little
friction in one’s caravan makes the men easier to manage. At the
time, I put it down to his belonging to a different tribe; but,
judging from what afterwards occurred, I fancy it was really due to
their knowing something against him, which, native-like, they did
not see fit to tell me.
Qway being thus provided for, I dispatched my caravan by road to
Kharga Oasis, and followed them myself a day or two afterwards by
the bi-weekly train.