SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT
THE twenty-first found me disembarking at Sollum, which is a tiny
seaport close to the western frontier of Egypt. There we were to
take camel and go by way of Jaghbub to Jalo, the important center
of desert trade where our own caravan would be organized and the
great trek southward begun. A journey like this of mine always
has several starting-points, each with its own variety of emotions
and experiences. In the dimly lighted, incense-scented room in my
father’s house the enterprise was a kind of dream, fascinating in
its possibilities but hardly yet real. At Sollum came the practical
reality of assembling stores and equipment, packing and repacking to
get everything into the smallest compass and most convenient shape
for handling, checking it all over to make sure that nothing had been
forgotten, and arranging with camel-owners for the first stage of the
trip. At Jalo would came the third start, with my own caravan at my
back, and the road to Kufra, already traversed but still by no means
familiar, before me. Then the last setting out of all, as I rode out
of Kufra with my face toward the unknown and the unexplored.
Abdullahi and Ahmed were already at Sollum, with the heavy baggage,
and the camels were arranged for, the agreement only awaiting my
approval. We proceeded to get our outfit and supplies in order.
Some description of the two Egyptians who accompanied me throughout
the expedition may be of interest. Abdullahi was a Nubian from Asswan,
heavily built, well set up and strong, with a pair of small eyes,
deeply set, that could mask a malicious sense of humor with great
indifference or dignity. A man of about forty, he was well educated
and knew his Koran well. I met him first in 1914, when he was attached
to the Idrissi family in Egypt, and I took an enormous liking to him
because of his deeply rooted sense of humor and his loyalty. He was
honest, too, extremely honest, and therefore I put him in charge of
the commissariat. In Abdullahi’s kit one could always find anything
that was needed from strips of leather with primitive Bedouin needles
for mending shoes to elaborate contrivances for propping up a broken
tent-pole. He was ready, moreover, with “inaccuracies” to suit
every situation, whether he wanted me to appear to be a wandering
Bedouin from Egypt, or a merchant, or an important government official
when we landed in the midst of officialdom in the Sudan. Abdullahi
had one peculiarity: between sunset and an hour or two later it was
apparently a most difficult task to keep him awake; though he might be
sitting down holding a discussion, he would go on dozing as he sat. On
one occasion we had just finished dinner, and, it being about the hour,
Zerwali, my Bedouin loyal companion, who joined our caravan at Jalo,
as a joke took a lot of _zatar_ (a strong scent used for flavoring tea)
and put it in Abdullahi’s tea. In between dozes, the latter woke up,
tasted his tea, knew what had happened, said nothing, but simply put
back his glass. After a while, however, Abdullahi turned round and
said to Zerwali, “I believe you are expecting a man to see you;
I think I hear him coming.” As Zerwali got up to look, Abdullahi
quietly changed round the glasses, so that Zerwali drank the highly
“flavored” tea while Abdullahi dozed off peacefully once more.
[Illustration: DOOR TO THE GRAND SENUSSI’S TOMB]
[Illustration: THE TOMB OF THE FOUNDER OF THE SENUSSI
The tomb, which is covered with an embroidered green silk cloth, is
inclosed in a heavy brass cage. From the ceiling of the great tomb
hang many crystal candelabra, the gifts of the sultans of Turkey
and the khedives of Egypt. The floor is strewn with very valuable
Persian rugs.]
Abdullahi’s business instinct came out at its best when we arrived
at inhabited country toward the end of the journey and were short of
food. He collected all the odds and ends of the caravan, including
empty tins and bottles of medicine, even the few used Gillette
blades, and bartered them with the natives for butter, milk, spices,
and leather.
It was Abdullahi also who was greatly upset when I showed my film
of the expedition at a lecture given before H. M. King Fouad at the
Royal Opera House in Cairo. When Abdullahi found that he appeared in
many of the pictures with a tattered shirt, he resented being shown to
his king in such an unsuitable garment and asked if something could
not be done so that he should appear in a shirt that was cleaner and
less well worn.
Ahmed too was a Nubian from Asswan, a slight, wiry fellow who never
gave in. He was my valet and cook. Although very well educated, he
became a cook because he liked to live a free life; had he become a
religious man, as his father wished, he would have been obliged to
lead a model life, and that apparently did not appeal to him. He was
always cheerful, and though no one in the caravan did so much cursing,
the Bedouins did not mind him. At a word that Ahmed said, had it come
from any other, there would have been bloodshed, but the Bedouins got
accustomed to him, and there was only one row. After his cooking was
over Ahmed used to sit down with the Bedouins and scorn their knowledge
of religion; he would prove his superiority by reciting from memory
bits of poetry about religion and the Arabic language and some of the
Prophet’s sayings. Never once did Ahmed fail to make me a glass of
tea even in circumstances of the greatest difficulty. On one occasion
after a whole night’s trek he was suffering badly from a hurt foot,
and as we were pitching camp I told him casually that I did not want
any breakfast or tea until I had slept and ordered him to go to bed
at once. Nevertheless, just as I was getting my shelter ready, Ahmed
arrived with a steaming glass of tea. He cursed all the Bedouins,
but there was no Bedouin in the caravan for whom, if he felt ill,
Ahmed would not do everything in his power to give him relief. He had
learned gradually the use of such medicines as I had, and frequently
when in doubt would bring me a little bottle to ask whether it was
quinine or aspirin.
The requirements for a desert trek are simple, and the list of what
one takes with one is almost stereotyped. For food there are, first
of all, flour, rice, sugar, and tea. All the people of the desert
are very fond of meat, but it naturally cannot be carried. One
must either shoot it by the way or go without. Tea is the drink in
the Libyan Desert, rather than coffee, and for that there are two
reasons. The first is religious; the second is practical. Sayed Ibn
Ali El Senussi, the founder of that interesting brotherhood that
controls the destinies of the country through which I was to travel,
forbade his followers all luxuries. His prohibition included tobacco
and coffee but, for some reason, did not extend to tea. His followers,
therefore, are tea-drinkers, if you can call by the same name the
delicate, aromatic, pale fluid that graces the tea-tables of Europe
and America and the murky, bitter liquid which sustains the Bedouin
on his marches and revives him at the day’s end. The second reason
is that tea is a stimulant to work on, while coffee is not. Tea is
the thing with which to finish off each meal of the desert day and
to refresh the weary traveler at the end of a hard day’s trek,
leaving coffee for the less strenuous life of the oasis and the home.
After these staples come dates; or perhaps they ought to be put
first. The camels live on dates, as does the whole caravan when other
foods are exhausted or there is no time to halt and cook a meal. But
the dates are not the rich, sweet, sugary things one is accustomed to
for dessert or a picnic delicacy in western lands. The date which one
must use for desert travel has little sugar about it. Sugar breeds
thirst, and where wells are days apart the water-supply is not to be
prodigally spent.
I took some tinned things with me, bully beef, vegetables and fruits;
but tins are heavy, and to carry enough food in tins for a long trek
would demand a score of extra camels or more. There was a little coffee
in our stores, but we seldom drank it. I used most of it for presents
to the friends we made along the way. A few bottles of malted milk
tablets proved useful for emergency lunches when food ran low. The
Bedouins, however, were not keen on them. “They fill us up,” they
said, “without the pleasure of the taste.”
[Illustration: CAMEL SERENADING THE CAMP AT OUENAT
Desert changing into grass country]
[Illustration: A DYING CAMEL
This is a great catastrophe, as his load has to be thrown away]
That was our commissary list, except for salt and some spices,
especially pepper for the _asida_, a pudding of boiled flour and oil,
made pepper hot. There was little variety; but variety is the one
thing one has to give up when one’s supplies are to be carried by
animals who must themselves live chiefly on what they can carry. There
were no luxuries, no matter how pleasant they might have been to
relieve the monotony of rice, unleavened bread, dates, and tea. If
one has experience in desert travel and the wisdom to learn by it,
one takes no foods of which there is not enough to feed every one
in the caravan. On the trek in the desert there is no distinction of
rank or class, high or low.
The sole exception to the rule of no luxuries was tobacco. Since
only one of the men who were with me at any time on the trip smoked,
however, this was no real violation of the rule. A stock of Egyptian
cigarettes and tobacco afforded me constant pleasure and comfort
throughout the journey.
Next comes water, the one great and unceasing problem of desert
travel. Men have lived for an unbelievable number of days without food,
whether from necessity or from curiosity. But the man who could go
for four days without water would be a miracle. A desert is a desert
just because it lacks water. The desert traveler must think first of
his drinking supply.
We carried water in two ways. The regular supply was held in
twenty-five _girbas_, the traditional sheepskin water-carrier of the
desert. Each holds from four to six gallons—and is easily burst if
two camels carrying _girbas_ bump together in the dark on a rocky
road! So the reserve water-supply for emergencies is carried in
_fantasses_. They are long tin containers, oblong or oval shaped
in cross-section to hang easily along the camel’s side. We had
four _fantasses_ holding four gallons each and four others holding
twelve gallons each. Our full supply, therefore, was something like
two hundred gallons, enough to last our caravan, when it was finally
organized, on the longest trek from well to well that we were likely
to encounter. We carried only our reserve supply in _fantasses_,
although they were less liable to injury, because the _girbas_,
when empty, took up so little space. All twenty-five of them could
be carried on one camel, while only two _fantasses_ went to a camel,
full or empty. We had no camels to spare.
There were also some individual water-bottles, but most of them
were soon discarded because the men hated the nuisance of carrying
them. A few were kept for cooling water later on in the journey
when the weather became hot. The evaporation of the moisture through
the canvas sides of the bottles or bags kept the water within at a
pleasant temperature.
Four tents, two bell-shaped and two rectangular, and numerous
cooking-utensils, of which the chief was a huge brass _halla_
or bowl for boiling rice, made up the tale of our equipment. For
emergencies there was a medicine-chest, with quinine, iodine, cotton
and bandages, bismuth salicylate for dysentery, morphine tablets and
a hypodermic syringe, anti-scorpion serum—which was to plunge me
into an apparently serious predicament and rescue me from it—zinc
ointment for eczema, indigestion tablets, and Epsom salts. I had
a primitive surgical kit and a few dental instruments and remedies
which a dentist friend had given me. I was equipped to take care of
the simple every-day ills; if anything more serious befell, I should
have to say, “Recovery comes from God.”
For hunting and possible defense I took three rifles, three automatic
pistols, and a shot-gun. By the time of our return the shot-gun
had been given as a present, and the rest of the arsenal had been
increased by six rifles and one pistol. When the rifles arrived at
Sollum in their characteristically shaped boxes, it was immediately
rumored through the town that I was carrying a machine-gun, for some
mysterious purpose which gossip elaborated to suit itself.
In order to make the report of what I found and saw as vivid and
truthful as possible I took five cameras. Three of them were Kodaks,
which functioned perfectly to the end; one a more elaborate instrument
with a focal-plane shutter, which was ruined by the penetrating
sand; and the last a cinema machine. For all the cameras I carried
Eastman Kodak films, which were packed with elaborate care, first
in air-tight tins, then in tin cases, sawdust filled, and finally in
wooden boxes. These precautions in packing proved to be none too great,
in view of the intense heat of the first part of the route and the
rain and dampness which we encountered later on in the Sudan. For
the cinema camera I took nine thousand feet of film. Fortune was
with me in all the photographic work. The films were not developed
until my return eight months later to Egypt, but the percentage of
failures was gratifyingly low. For clothing I took the usual Bedouin
garb of white shirts and long drawers, both made of calico, and a
woolen _jerd_, the voluminous Bedouin wrap; also silk jackets and
waistcoats and cloth drawers like riding-breeches, but reaching to
the ankles; the latter were used only on ceremonious occasions, such
as entering or leaving an oasis; there were naturally a few changes
of each. I did not wish to put on the desert dress until the end of
the first stage of the journey, so I left Sollum in old khaki coat and
riding-breeches, which had already seen their best days. With yellow
Bedouin slippers on my feet, the only possible wear in desert travel,
and a Jaeger woolen night-cap on my head, for the weather was keenly
cold, I must have been an amusing figure when we made our start.
[Illustration: WOMEN OF THE ZAGHAWA TRIBE
The women do all the work of watering the cattle and sheep, looking
after the home and the men-folk. They work far less as slaves in
North Africa than they do as free women in their own country.]
When traveling into unknown lands, especially in the East, it is
important to be able to make presents to those of prominence whom
you meet. I had what seemed to me an enormous supply of silks,
copper bowls, and censers inlaid with silver, bottles of scent,
silk handkerchiefs, silver tea-pots and tea-glasses, silver
call-bells—which the Bedouin is delighted to be able to use for
summoning his slaves instead of the usual clapping of the hands. When I
saw all this array being packed, I felt sure that we should bring half
of it back with us. But by the time we had reached Kufra, I discovered
that not only those who were of use to me this time but every one who
had rendered the slightest service on my previous trip was expectant
of reward for services rendered. What with postponed expectations and
the opportunities which the present trip afforded for making presents,
we had none too many of the goods I have mentioned. In making these
gifts, however, I did not feel that it was so much an endeavor to
smooth the way of my expedition as a courtesy from a Bedouin of the
town to his brother Bedouin of the desert.
Most important of all for the ultimate value of the expedition, if
it was to have any, was the scientific apparatus, which is detailed
in Dr. Ball’s report in the appendix.
The fortnight at Sollum was filled with busy days. Simple as our
equipment was, everything had to be as nearly right as thought and
care could achieve. Things carried on camel-back, put on each morning
and taken off each night and built into barricades against weather
and possible attacks, must be snugly and securely packed. At the end
of a day’s trek, careless or tired camelmen often find it easier
to let boxes and bundles drop without ceremony from the camels’
sides than to handle them with proper care.