DURING my first two seasons I had managed to get out to the middle
of the desert and had succeeded in mapping a large area of it;
but the main object to which these two years had been devoted—the
crossing of the desert from north-east to south-west had not been
attained—there seemed no prospect of my being able to accomplish
it, for Owanat, the first stage on the journey, was evidently so
far out that it could only be reached by adopting some elaborate
system of depots or relays, that Qway’s escapade had shown to be
too dangerous. The Senussi had certainly won the first trick in the
game; but I did not feel at all inclined to let them have things
all their own way.
It was, however, pointed out to me that the omens to any further
journeys were by no means propitious just then, as the natives were
much excited over the Italian invasion of Tripoli, and, moreover,
the Senussi were clearly prepared to take an active hand in the game
and, even at that time, were evidently contemplating an invasion of
Egypt, should a suitable opportunity occur.
The latter fact, however, seemed to me to cut both ways, for the
Senussi were quite wide-awake enough to realise that, if an European
got scuppered by them, some form of punitive expedition was extremely
likely to follow, which might force them into hostilities at an
inconvenient time—so I concluded that they would just as unwillingly
start scrapping as I would myself—and that was saying a good deal.
As crossing the desert seemed an impracticable scheme just then,
I abandoned that part of my programme, and as there were plenty of
other large areas waiting to be explored, decided to try a different
district, and set out to explore as much as possible of the unknown
parts of the eastern and western sides of the huge depression in
which lies the oasis of Farafra.
I intended, too, to visit the little oasis of Iddaila, that lies
not far to the west of Farafra, and I hoped to score a trick off
the Senussia by making a dash into the dunes to the south-west of
Farafra and locating the oasis of Dendura, that was used sometimes
by them as a half-way house when travelling from Egypt to Kufara.
Unfortunately—though I did not learn this till afterwards—before
my start some rag of a native paper in Cairo announced that I had
come out again to Egypt and intended to go in disguise to Kufara,
and a copy of the paper had been sent out to that oasis itself. This
was a piece of pure invention on the part of that journal that led
to rather unpleasant consequences.
I was advised to take as my guide some man who was admittedly a member
of the Senussia and camel drivers of the same persuasion. The advice
did not commend itself very strongly to me; but in deference to the
views of those whom I expected to know a good deal more of the country
than I did, I so far accepted it as to decide on taking a Senussi
guide and one or two of his camel men, while adding Abd er Rahman,
Ibrahim and Dahab as well to the caravan—Abdulla unfortunately
was not available.
I eventually engaged a man called Qwaytin, who was stated to
be reliable. Haggi Qwaytin Mohammed Said—to give him his full
name—though a native of Surk in Kufara Oasis, at that time was
living in the Nile Valley, in the Manfalut district, near Assiut. For
some time he had acted as a tax-collector among the Bedayat for
’Ali Dinar, the Sultan of Darfur, and when he was inclined to be
communicative could impart a considerable amount of information about
unknown parts of the desert. He seemed to have led a fairly wandering
existence and to be at home in most parts of North and Central Africa;
at any rate he had a Bedayat wife in Darfur, a Tawarek one somewhere
near Timbuktu and one—if not two—others near Manfalut.
He was a queer fellow, and I did not altogether take a fancy to
him. When I told him that I already had two camel drivers and did
not want more, he was very much put out and declared that he could
not trust his camels to strangers. Eventually we compromised the
question by arranging that he should take three men and that I,
in addition, should bring Abd er Rahman, Ibrahim and Dahab.
I asked to see the men he was going to bring with him. The three
he produced—Mohanny, Mansur and ’Abd el Atif—were even less
prepossessing than Qwaytin himself. They were typical specimens of
the low-class _bedawin_ camel drivers that the camel owners engage
on nominal wages, to take charge of their beasts when they hire
them out. They proved to be most indifferent drivers. But Qwaytin
and his men were such an obviously feeble lot that, with my three
men to back me up, I had no doubt of being able to deal with them,
if they gave any trouble.
I intended to pump Qwaytin as dry as I could of the information
he could give me of the unknown parts of the desert and, with the
assistance of my own men, to compel him, by force if necessary,
to take me within sight of Dendura, after we had left Farafra.
These preliminaries having been gone through, I sent for Abd er Rahman
and Ibrahim to come up and join me in Assiut—Dahab was already with
me. While waiting in the little Greek pub, where I stayed for the
arrival of my men, I made the acquaintance of an educated Egyptian,
who was engaged in some sort of literary work, the exact nature of
which I was unable to discover. His English was excellent, and he
was evidently anxious to practise it, for he stuck to me like a leech.
He was never tired of dilating on the beauties of Arabic as a literary
language. In Arabic literature, he said, the great thing was to use
as many metaphors as possible, and the best metaphors were those that
were the most obscure or, as he expressed it, that made the reader
“work his brain” the most. Certainly some of the examples he
gave left nothing whatever to be desired in that direction.
He insisted in coming to see me off at the station, where he explained
that he had lain awake for a considerable part of the night, in
order to be able to think of a really good metaphor for me at parting.
It certainly was a poser. If, he said, he described a man as having a
very cowardly dog, what should I think he meant? I suggested various
possible solutions: that he was a brutal man who thrashed his dog
unmercifully; that he was a very poor man who could not afford to
buy a good one; or a very mean man who nearly starved the beast to
death. As none of them was correct, I asked him to explain. But he
preferred to keep me on tenterhooks and declined to do so, chuckling
with delight at the way in which he was making me “work my brain.”
[Illustration: SHEYKH SENUSSI.—Clerk to the Qadi in Mut and the
village poet. (p. 44).]
[Illustration: HAGGI QWAYTIN.—My guide during my last year in the
desert. (p. 199)]
[Illustration: SHEYKH IBN ED DRIS.—One of the Senussi Sheykhs in
the _Zawia_ in Farafra. (p. 228).]
[Illustration: Left, HAGGI QWAYTIN. Right, HAGGI QWAY.—Qway was
my guide during my first two years in the desert. (p. 26).]
It was not until the train began to move, that he condescended to
solve the problem. When he said that a man had a cowardly dog,
he meant that he was so very hospitable that his dog got tired
of barking at the innumerable guests who came to his house! As a
literary language Arabic must be very hard to beat.
Near Nazali Genub, where I camped while buying my camels, I found
an acquaintance whose job consisted in surveying and drawing the
hieroglyphics on the tombs, where, to relapse into metaphor, in
mere English:
“The long phantasmal line
Of Pharaohs crowned divine
Are dust among the dust that once obeyed them.”
I shared a very comfortable tomb with him during the time I spent
there.
After about a week, during which Qwaytin with Abd er Rahman visited
the surrounding villages and markets in search of the camels that he
required to complete the caravan, we moved over to Qwaytin’s house,
some seven miles away, and on the following morning, 24th March,
started off for our journey into the desert; Ibrahim at the start,
as usual, banging off his gun after the Arab custom to scare away
evil spirits during our journey.
I decided first to make for an uninhabited oasis called Bu Gerara,
which had not previously been reported, that Qwaytin said he knew of,
and that lay some little distance off the Derb et Tawil, and not very
far to the north-east of Dakhla. This oasis he said contained palms,
wells and some old buildings, but had been deserted for many years.
The Derb ed Deri—the monastery road—that we followed starts from
near an old _der_, or monastery, called the Der Muharug, from which it
takes its name, and is a branch of the great Derb et Tawil—“the
long road”—that, starting from the Nile Valley near Manfalut,
runs right across the desert plateau to Dakhla Oasis.
On getting up on to the plateau, Qwaytin pointed out in the distance
to the west a low hill, which he said was called the Jebel Jebaïl,
where, he stated, there are many tombs.
The plateau was level and as featureless as that between the
Nile Valley and Kharga Oasis, to which it bore a strong general
resemblance. There were the same patches of sand and pebbles,
interspaced with areas of limestone, showing all the same types of
sand erosion—_kharashef_, _kharafish_, _battikh_ and _rusuf_.
In many places the limestone appeared as marble, sometimes polished by
the action of the sand blast. White, black, grey, yellow and beautiful
rose pink, in various combinations, were seen in the stone. Much of
it showed large cracks on the surface, but there were considerable
areas of stone, especially of the grey marble with darker grey lines,
that seemed to be quite solid. The rock in places was translucent
and appeared to be alabaster, but of very inferior quality. Some
of the pink marble looked to be of a fine colour and texture; but
it is doubtful, in such an inaccessible position, if it would ever
repay working.
Early on our second day in the desert we joined the main road—the
Derb et Tawil, or “long road.” Close to the east of the point,
where the two roads met, was one of the low rocky hills with which
the plateau was studded. From the foot of this ran a little used road
leading to ’Ain Amur, via ’Ain Embares, an undiscovered well
that I had tried to reach by way of the small depressions leading
out of the ’Ain Amur wady. It was reported to be almost sanded up
and to give very little water.
On the following day we passed the point where a road branches off to
the west from the Derb et Tawil to go direct to Qasr Dakhl. This road,
which does not appear to be much used, is known as the “Derb el
Khashabi,” or “wooded road,” owing to the fact that about two
days’ journey from the point where it leaves the Derb et Tawil,
there is a patch of dead trees about ten feet high. It is said to
be an easy one to traverse.
The next day we reached the Abu Moharik dune belt that took us
three hours and twenty minutes to cross, which at the rate of two
and a half miles an hour, was equivalent to a distance of eight
and a half miles. The dunes of which it was composed were all,
so far as we saw, of the crescentic type, and were probably all
considerably under fifteen feet in height. Where the road crossed
the belt, was a sand-free gap, the dunes in that part being rather
thinly distributed, though farther to the north they appeared to lie
much closer together. The whole of the road, where it ran through
the belt, was entirely free from drift sand. We camped that night
in the middle of the dunes.
On leaving the dunes for Bu Gerara, I sent Qwaytin and Abd er
Rahman off to look for another oasis that the former had heard of,
that was said to lie some distance to the west of our road, which,
however, he failed to find. In the evening before his departure,
he came into my tent and announced that “his book said” that
on the following day we should reach the Gara bu Gerara. There,
he said, the road forked, and one branch, leaving the usual road
followed by caravans going to Dakhla, and keeping more to the west,
led to Bu Gerara—the oasis we were in search of.
This was the first mention he had made of any “book,” so I
enquired what the book was to which he referred. Qwaytin seemed
rather surprised that I had not heard of it before, and said that
it was his “book of treasure!”
Cautious questioning elicited the fact that he had never been to Bu
Gerara before, but that he was relying entirely on the directions
given in this precious volume to take me there, and evidently
expected, when we reached the place that we should all fall to
digging in search of the buried riches that the book said were to
be found there, instead of getting on and mapping the desert.
He was clearly under the impression that he was conferring a great
favour on me by taking me into the secret of the vast wealth that he
expected to find. To have thrown any doubt on the reliability of his
wonderful book would have mortally offended him, as natives are very
sensitive on these subjects. But as following out his instructions did
not seem likely to take me far from the part to which I wanted to go,
and would lead me into new ground, I thought it best to humour him,
trusting that, when he failed to find the place, he would be willing
to come down to the more mundane occupation of mapping the desert. So,
much against my inclination, I found myself at last fairly launched
on a treasure-hunting expedition!
[Illustration: PINNACLE ROCK ON DESCENT TO BU GERARA VALLEY.]
Soon after our start on the following morning one of the camels fell
ill. What the particular disease was I was unable to discover; but
the remedy that Mohanny applied was to bleed her from the tip of her
tail—an operation that appeared to afford some relief. The _bedawin_
veterinary methods are simple, but, on the whole, effective. They
may be summed up in three words—“bleed, butter, or burn.”
Eleven miles’ march from our camp brought us to the Gara bu
Gerara—a long, low, flat-topped hill with a small peak at its
eastern extremity, where the road to Bu Gerara branched off from
the Derb et Tawil, according to Qwaytin’s book of treasure.
Qwaytin had given minute instructions to Mohanny as to finding the
place, so, on reaching the hill, he came up to me and announced that
it was now necessary to leave the Derb et Tawil, which turned off
towards the east, and to follow a road that led straight on.
Our departure for Gara bu Gerara though had to be postponed for a
short time owing to the camel developing another attack of whatever
the complaint was that she was suffering from, necessitating that she
should be again bled—this time from the nose. The operation having
been successfully performed, we started off to look for our treasure.
Much to my surprise, we found a very well marked road branched
off from the Derb et Tawil, though, judging from its appearance,
it had not been used for a very long time. Away to the east of our
route—by the side of the Derb et Tawil—was a small, but very
conspicuous mound of bright yellow earth—probably ochreous—which
I was told was the Garet ed Dahab (golden hillock).
Shortly after we passed through a tract of desert thickly studded
with stones. Through this stony area ran a made road. The stones had
all been cleared off its surface, which had then been smoothed over
with a thoroughness that made it extremely unlikely that the work
had ever been done by the _bedawin_, whose contempt for all forms
of manual labour always induces them to put up with a bad part in
a road, if they cannot circumvent it by a slight detour.
After traversing this stony part of the desert, we reached the
top of a steep descent, where again it was evident that some more
civilised race than the desert _bedawin_ had been at work, for the
road down on to the lower level had been notched out of the side of
the scarp in a way that would not have done discredit to a modern
engineer. After that I felt prepared for any developments.
After negotiating the Negeb Shushina, as the descent from the plateau
to the level of the depression is called, we came on to a level
sandy plain, where for a time Mohanny, who had been acting as guide
by following the directions Qwaytin had given him from his wonderful
book, succeeded in getting completely lost. After wandering about
for a time, seeking the marble palaces and gilded domes of Bu Gerara,
we at length caught sight of two figures in the distance, who, when
examined through the glass, proved to be Qwaytin and Abd er Rahman.