THE _mamur_, who was personally conducting our party, had arranged
that we should look in at Gedida. On the way there we passed the
village of Mushia, lying in an area of blown sand, which in some
places seemed to be encroaching on the cultivation. Most of the
land was planted with palms, of which there were said to be about
twenty-six thousand. The village itself proved to be uninteresting,
its most noticeable peculiarity being the painting of geometrical
patterns which decorated the outer walls of some of the houses. The
inhabitants showed more signs of progress here than in most of the
villages of the oasis, as a number of _sagias_—waterwheels—had
been erected to irrigate the cultivated land, where the partial
failure of the wells had rendered this necessary.
At Gedida, however, they seemed more conservative. The water supply
was failing, owing, according to the inhabitants, to the large amount
of water yielded by the big modern wells at Rashida, and many of
their palms were dying for want of irrigation. A few _shadufs_ had
been introduced to raise the water; but the inhabitants complained
bitterly of the hard labour required to work them. When asked why
they did not use _sagias_, they apathetically replied that no one
knew how to make them, and seemed to think it would be too much
trouble to import them from the Nile Valley.
At Gedida I heard another story of Zerzura. It appears that many years
ago—the exact number was not stated—when the forebears of the
present inhabitants all lived scattered about the district in little
hamlets and _ezbas_ some very tall black men, with long hair and long
nails, came up out of the desert and stole their bread at night. In
the morning the natives followed their tracks out into the desert,
found the wells they had drunk from when coming into the oasis, and
filled them up with salt to prevent them from being used again. They
then returned to Dakhla Oasis, and, banding together, built the
village of Gedida (the “new town”) for mutual protection.
We reached Mut just at sunset, passing a number of the natives driving
in their cattle to be housed in the little walled enclosures that
surround the town.
I found Abd er Rahman waiting to report on the state of the
camels. Everything he said had gone well, except that the green camel
had bitten the blue one, and that the red one had been attacked
by mange. Abd er Rahman, however, said that he had buttered him
well—which, he added, had made him very angry, and he hoped now
that he was cured.
The _’omda_ of Rashida dropped in during the afternoon. On leaving,
he expressed a fervent wish that I might find Zerzura, and that I
should find a lot of treasure there. I soon found that it was quite
useless to attempt to persuade any native into the belief that I was
only intending to make maps and collect scientific information. Even
the more intelligent of them—such as the native officials, the
Mawhub family and the _’omda_ of Rashida—were quite unable to
realise that anyone could be so foolish to do work of that kind unless
he were paid to do so, and they were such confirmed treasure seekers
themselves, and so secretive in their methods of conducting their
hunt for buried riches, that they all considered that the reason
I gave for my journey was only a cloak to disguise the fact that I
was really looking for treasure.
In making my plans to set out into the unknown part of the Libyan
Desert beyond Dakhla, I found myself at once confronted by a serious
difficulty of a distinctly unusual nature. Generally, when a traveller
starts on a journey, he has some definite object in view—he is
going to climb a particular mountain, to follow a certain river to
its source, to complete the survey of some lake that has been found,
or to look for some place that has been reported to exist on native
information—but in this part there was no such object available.
With the exception of the Kufara group of oases, on its extreme
western side, practically the whole Libyan Desert to the south and
west of Dakhla was quite unknown, so the south-west quarter was the
one that appealed to me most, as any journey made in this direction
would lead right into the heart of the largest area of unknown
ground in Africa, or for the matter of that outside it, and it was
in this quarter, too, that the maps showed the great dune-field,
the crossing of which was one of the main objects of my journey,
so this was the part I decided first to tackle.
It was then that I found myself faced with the problem. What was
to be my objective? Between west and south there are a great many
bearings upon which one can march. In which direction should I go?
The prospect of being able to find a well, perhaps only a two-foot
shaft in the ground—very probably silted up with sand—by wandering
out haphazard into several hundred thousand square miles of desert
is remote.
The maps gave little assistance in solving the problem. Many of them
left this space entirely blank. Those that placed anything there
at all, described it as being entirely covered with large dunes,
or as some of them put it, “impassable dunes.”
The nearest point to Dakhla in this south-western quadrant, that
was marked in the maps, was an oasis which native information
placed eighteen days’ journey to the south-west. Eighteen days,
that is over ordinary desert, which might mean thirty at least if
large dunes had to be crossed, and from what I had seen of those
dunes it was doubtful if they were negotiable at all. It was said
to be inhabited; but even its name was unknown. It was also said
to have an old road leading from it towards Egypt. This looked
somewhat promising, but the place was too far off to be of any use
as a first objective, as until its position was accurately known,
so that I could be certain of finding it at my first attempt, it
would be necessary for me to arrange to get back again in the event
of my not being able to reach it—and this would have necessitated
a thirty-six days’ journey away from water, over easy desert,
or two or three months over large dunes.
When it is considered that a camel, laden only with grain, will
consume its own load in about a month, and that the amount of
water that would have to be taken in addition on a journey of
this description would be far heavier than the grain required, it
will be easily realised that such a journey as this would be quite
impossible without adopting some system of depots or relays, which,
owing to the risk of their being tampered with, I felt disinclined
to do until I knew more about the district. Before I could hope to
reach this place, it was necessary for me to find some nearer oasis,
or well, from which I could start afresh; so it was clear that this
intermediate oasis, or well, must be my first objective. But where
was this place to be found?
In the absence of more reliable information, it occurred to me that
possibly some indication of its whereabouts might be gathered from
the legends of Zerzura. The story of Rohlfs’ excavations in the
Der el Hagar, told me by men who had actually been living in the
neighbourhood at the time when they were said to have taken place,
showed the extent to which even comparatively recent events are
contorted by the natives.
But the name Zerzura itself was suggestive. Zerzur means literally
a starling, but is a term often loosely applied to any small
bird. Assuming the name to be derived from this source, it would have
some such meaning as “the place of little birds,” a name that
seemed of such a fanciful nature that it appeared to me unlikely
to be applied to any definite place, and, taken in conjunction
with the somewhat mystical character of the stories with which
the oasis was associated, I concluded that either no place of that
name ever existed, or, which seemed more likely, that Zerzura was
a generic name applied to any unknown or lost oasis, and that the
various legends I had heard of it were, in some cases at all events,
garbled versions of events that had really occurred in the past; and
judging from the speed with which the story of Rohlfs’ excavations
had been distorted, a past that was not necessarily very remote.
Zerzura was said to lie to the south-west of Dakhla, and the other
indications, small as they were, all pointed to this being the
most promising direction in which to go. Not only was the unknown
oasis, with the road running back towards Egypt, marked on the map
as lying approximately in this direction, but what was probably the
best indication of all, a large migration of birds came up annually
from this part of the desert. Certainly there was not much to go
upon in deciding to adopt this route, but in the absence of more
reliable information, I was compelled to follow such indications as
there were. Later on—in my last season in the desert—I was able
to collect from various natives a large amount of data as to the
unknown parts, from which I was able to construct a more or less
complete map. But the information came too late for me to make use
of it. It may perhaps be of service in affording an objective for
future travellers. If I had had this intelligence to go upon when I
first went out into the desert I should have tackled the job in an
entirely different manner.
The red camel having recovered from his buttering, and being declared
by Qway to be cured of the mange, I decided to start at once.
Much curiosity existed in the oasis as to the direction in which
I intended to go. The majority of the natives, influenced perhaps
by my enquiries about Zerzura, were firmly convinced that I was
bent upon a hunt for the hidden treasure to be found there, and
any statement that I made to the contrary only had the effect of
strengthening them more strongly in their opinion. No native, when
he is starting treasure seeking, ever lets out where he is going,
he tries to mislead his neighbours as to his real intentions, and
any statements I made as to the object of my journey were invariably
regarded from this standpoint.
The _mamur_ came to see me off, and, just before starting, asked me
in what direction I intended to go. I told him the south-west. The
_mamur_ was too polite to contradict me, but his expression showed
his incredulity quite plainly—incredulity and some admiration. His
thoughts put into words were: “Liar, what a liar. I wish I could
lie like that.”
On my return he was one of the first to come round to “praise Allah
for my safety.” Having got through the usual polite formalities,
he asked me where I had _really_ been. When I said I had gone to the
south-west as I had told him I should, he looked extremely surprised
and glanced across to Qway, drinking tea on a mat near the door, for
confirmation. Qway laughed. “Yes, he did go to the south-west,”
he said.
“But—but—but—,” stammered the _mamur_, “that’s where you said you
were going.”
Even then I don’t think he quite believed it. When asked questions
of this kind, I invariably told the exact truth and never made any
secret of my plans. I knew quite well they would not believe me, and
at first they never did. Afterwards, when they began to realise that
my statements were correct, they looked on me, I believe, as rather
a fool. They did not seem to understand anyone speaking the truth,
when he merely had to lie in order to deceive.
This raises a somewhat intricate question in morality. When you know
that if you speak the truth, you will not be believed, and so will
deceive as to your real intentions, isn’t it more strictly moral
to lie?
I had made somewhat elaborate preparations for crossing the dunes. I
had brought with me several empty sacks to spread on the sand for
the camels to tread on, and for my own use I had a pair of Canadian
snow-shoes, with which I had found it perfectly easy to cross even
the softest sand.
I walked out to have a nearer look at the dunes. At close quarters
they seemed to me even more formidable than when viewed from a
distance. Not only were they of considerable size, but, what was
infinitely worse, the sand of which they were composed was so loose
and soft that the camels would have sunk in almost to their hocks. It
was obvious that, if the whole dune-field was of this character,
to get a caravan over many days’ journey of this soft sand was an
almost hopeless task.
However, I made up my mind to give it a trial. So the evening before
starting out into the desert, I sent Qway off on his _hagin_ to find
the best place for us to enter the dune belt, with the result that,
instead of setting out towards the south-west, he led the caravan
towards the north-west, where he had found a low point in the sand
hills, but it was with a good deal of trepidation that I set foot
on the first dune we came to, and realised that I had embarked
on the desperate attempt to solve the riddle of the sands of the
“Devil’s Country”—it was an awful prospect.