Chapter VII

I hear the moan

Of winds that wake the desert from its dream.

* * * * *

FROM SOTAIRE TO BAGGHAREEYEH.

A Cheap ox. — Gebel Ain. — A sick camel. — Ordeal by fire. — Windy nights. — Delinquents. — The disciplinarian. — Judgment and sentence. — Hares. — Foxes. — Sand-storm.

ON the following morning at sunrise, when the cattle came down to drink, we selected a fine ox, made a bargain with the old shiekh, and paid him three Maria Theresa dollars, or twelve shillings, for it. We were advised to let it drink before slaughtering, and the steak we had that morning for breakfast was equal to any I have eaten in the famous grill- rooms in London, and was certainly much cheaper.

As our journey was now to follow along the proposed line of the Darfoor railway, we decided to make, while travelling, a sketch-survey by triangulation with prismatic compass. We divided ourselves into two sections, one to follow the sinuosities of the low part of the valley, which skirted the eastern line of rocks, and I to travel nearer to the western side; we should thus obtain a general survey of the whole valley, accurate enough to enable us to lay down an appropriate centre line for the guidance of the Khartoom party, who, on their return to Sotaire, would carry their work along the Wady Milkh in order to meet us as we worked back from El Fasher. We devoted this day and the next to making a plan of the country round Sotaire to a distance of ten miles in every direction, and on the morning of 11th February, after paying a farewell visit to the shiekh and other friends, we parted, each section of our party to pursue its intended journey, and to meet again four days after at the well of Gebel Ain.

As the Wady Milkh has very seldom been used by caravans as a highway into Darfoor, there is no discernible track. I instructed the Mahound in charge to keep about midway between the vegetation on the left and the wall of Sandstone rock on the right. My companion and myself, accompanied by Mohommed Gadderâb, the guide, and by Mohommed Rhanum, the soldier in command of the lunch camel, wandered about in every direction making the sketch-survey, sometimes to the base of the water-worn hills, at others far away to the left, on the borders of the thorny mimosa- trees in the bottom of the valley. At evening we generally reached the camp at 7, or half-past, to find it pitched precisely as on the previous day, with the beds and furniture arranged in the same manner in the tent, and the cloth laid, and the dinner ready to be served in its special tent as soon as we had completed our toilets. In the event of our being late, the soldiers would spread themselves about and discharge a few rifle-shots to indicate by the sound the whereabouts of the camp.

The desert through which we travelled afforded few features of interest; occasional ridges of granite, trap, or quartz broke the even sameness of its face. Little dried-up watercourses stretched, few and far between, down to the hollow; some of them contain a few trees, and we generally seized the opportunity of resting an hour for lunch beneath their grateful shade. Grass was only found here and there in patches, but in quantities large enough to afford pasture for the camels and sheep. Of gazelles, throughout the four days’ journey, we saw none; they were, however, numerous enough in the valley below, and our friends who took that route, more fortunate than ourselves, were plentifully supplied, as we correctly augured from hearing, in the far distance, the report of the doctor’s generally unerring rifle. Each day the wind blew continually from the north, and although during the hottest part of the day the thermometer reached 90° in the best shade we could obtain, the atmosphere was so exquisitely pure and dry that we never suffered in the least degree from heat or oppression; our health was perfect in every respect; the mere breathing of the bright exhilarating air was a pleasure which a dweller in a moist climate like that of England can hardly conceive. At night, which, like the day, was absolutely cloudless, the north wind would sometimes cease to blow, and we would then remove our beds outside on to the sand, and could often lie down to read, before going to sleep, in the dead calm, with an unsheltered candle burning in the open air. Generally, however, the wind continued to blow all night, sometimes so severely as to necessitate our having to call up the soldiers to drive the tent-pegs more firmly into the ground. The thermometer at night mostly fell to 50° Fahr. and rose on those nights when the wind ceased to 60° or 65° Fahr.

The ground was generally so smooth and rose so gradually as to offer no obstacles for the construction of a railway; the rails might have been laid on their sleepers on the surface, and neither cutting nor embankment was in any case necessary over this distance.

Insects of any kind there were none, with the exception of flies which had followed us from Old Dongola, and which never left us. All our efforts to abolish them were in vain, and they remained with us, increasing as we journeyed until we returned to the Nile. Each village we came to further on added to their numbers, and they eventually became as numerous as in the worst season of the year in Lower Egypt.

On the afternoon of 14th the caravan, shortly afterwards followed by that of the other section, reached the well, or rather spring, of Ain- Hamed. The Gebel Ain is a long, almost perpendicular wall of rock forming the western boundary of the Wady Milkh. On its top is an extensive plain, reaching as far as we could see, and only here and there broken by extinct watercourses. The boundary of the valley on the eastern side is less regular, but the general level of the high land is about the same as the top of the Gebel Ain, namely, four hundred and fifty or five hundred feet above the valley below. The spring, which is of excellent water, is situated, as we enter, on the left side of a vast chasm in the rock.

On our arrival within about half a mile of the camp, which had been pitched right in the centre of the rocky chasm, we found one of our baggage camels standing stiff and motionless, still loaded and apparently deserted. Some few severe blows from our guide were not of any use to induce it to move. After a time two of the drivers arrived and commenced to light a charcoal fire; heating to white heat an iron, used for the purpose, they pressed it quickly and remorselessly to the hind-quarters of the camel, which, however, never stirred nor uttered a sound; the process was performed a second time ineffectually, but on the third application the poor beast sent forth so unutterable a wail of agony as I shall ever remember. After a great shake of his body and limbs he trotted off, quite refreshed, to join his companions at the spring. Camels are subject to fits of seeming lifelessness of this description, and have consequently to be sometimes abandoned, when they of course die of thirst. Nothing but very severe measures are of use, and, notwithstanding the pain this generally effectual remedy produces, they are fit for work next day and seem none the worse for the treatment.

The spring is at the bottom of an artificial hole, about ten feet cube, excavated in the base of the rock; the water is excellent in quality and abundant for the greater part of the year, but in the weeks preceding the commencement of the rainy season runs nearly dry. During our stay here we were fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a new animal for the table; its shape and horns resemble those of an ibex, and its flesh is somewhat like beef. I cannot find it mentioned in any of the books, and was unfortunately not able to learn its Arab name. The specimen we had for dinner was seen early one morning leaping among the fragment of rocks at the back of the ravine. He had evidently descended from above to drink, but, finding the spring occupied, had, while on the way back to his plains, fallen a victim to the doctor’s rifle. I cannot speak very favourably of the flesh of this animal, but it, nevertheless, formed a desirable change from that of the gazelle, of which we all, in course of time, grew somewhat tired.

Our camp being pitched in the narrow ravine, in no part more than one hundred yards across from top to top, we were much inconvenienced by the wind which, both by day and night, blew down from the heights above, in one awful and continuous storm. On the third night of our arrival my tent was carried away and split from top to bottom with a report as though the rocks on either side of the chasm had fallen down. Several of the other tents shared the same fate, and the first hours of the following morning were occupied in general repairs throughout the camp.

We remained at the spring for three days, long enough to allow all the camels to drink, which was a tedious process, there being only one source of supply. After plotting our sketch-surveys and trial barometrical section from Sotaire, we continued our journey on the morning of the 18th, travelling as before in two sections. We were rather late in getting away as, as I mentioned above, several of the soldiers and servants were engaged for some time in sewing up the tatters which the storm of the night had made in many of our tents. My route was to be a direct line, on a bearing of about S.W., to the wells of Bagghareeyeh; the other section descended again into the hollow which, making a great sweep, we crossed on the second day of our journey, and got our camels a little mixed with those of the other caravan, which reached our crossing-place at the same time as ourselves.

We had now passed the Gebel Ain, which came to an abrupt end shortly after the spring. The valley was wider, but sloping more unevenly down from the high ground on each side. Numerous tributary valleys flowed— or, rather, at one time had flowed—into the central main Wady Milkh, some of them as much as twenty or thirty miles long and a mile broad. The surface of the ground in the immediate vicinity of the low part of the valley was, however, sufficiently smooth to enable us to choose a centre-line for the railway which would involve no works of importance.

On arrival in camp rather late in the evening of this day we found Mohommed Effendi, lieutenant in command of the troops, pacing impatiently to and fro in front of our tent, with a gigantic “korbatch,” or whip of hippopotamus hide, in his hand, a whip capable of inflicting a punishment compared with which that inflicted by the prison “cat” can only be agreeable titillation. I was rather surprised, as, with the exception of on one occasion, when two of our servants at New Dongola were guilty of theft and drunken brawling in the camp, we had never once had to complain of the conduct of any of the men. I learned that two of the camel-drivers had been fighting, and had wounded each other severely. Mohommed Effendi, evidently a strict disciplinarian, was waiting for my sanction to leather them well with his pet “korbatch.” The two men were produced; they had quarrelled and fought with stones, and their faces were disfigured with blood and bruises, but there appeared to be nothing dangerous in the wounds which either of them had received. The quarrel had arisen in the partition of some dry wood they had collected in the valley in order to have a fire to warm themselves at night. Thinking the punishment each had already received was sufficient for the offence, I told him that it was not the custom in Egypt, or elsewhere, to flog idiots or madmen, which it was evident they must be to fight about so ridiculous a matter, and that when, in future, there was anything to divide, one of them should portion it into two heaps, and the other choose which of the heaps he pleased, and so avoid all quarrelling. They must, however, take something to cool their heated brains—an ounce of salts each, with a little senna, the whole stirred up with two or three lumps of sugar. Each went away under the impression that he had had a fit of temporary insanity, and that the nauseous medicine would effectually prevent a recurrence. After this drastic treatment there was no more fighting in camp throughout our expedition. Mohommed Effendi, however, was evidently disappointed, and probably cursed me in his soul for preventing him from executing what he considered justice in such a breach of discipline.

On the first two days of our journey from Gebel Ain, previous to crossing to the southern and eastern side of the Wady Milkh, we met with no gazelles, but started a few hares and saw one fox. The hares were smaller than those in England, but not inferior in flavour; the fox was of rather paler hue. After crossing the Wady the vegetation became sensibly denser; trees and shrubs were not now confined to the centre of the valley, but were scattered pretty frequently over the surrounding country; different varieties of grass, some of them exquisitely scented, nearly covered the beds of the many hollows. The common boxwood tree, of very stunted growth, was first seen by us on the third day. Gazelles were now very numerous, in herds of from twenty to thirty.

On this day, from the summit of an isolated sandstone hill, two or three hundred feet above the level of the ground, I saw one of the sublime and appalling sights of the desert. Away to the west, distant two miles, across the brown-green trees in the valley at my feet, seven lofty pillars of sand were travelling swiftly along the undulating plain. The centre one of these was vertical, and those surrounding it, at a distance of two or three hundred yards, leaned slightly towards it; a smaller eighth column, about half a mile behind the others, was inclined towards them at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and was fast overtaking them. The sand at the base of the columns was lashed by the furious whirlwind into a surging sea; trees of the hardest wood were torn up with their roots and whirled hundreds of yards away and high up into the air; even the grass that grew in the path of that terrible storm was shorn clean away from its roots. The summits of the seven columns at length joined and then burst forth, from their united tops, a yellow gigantic cloud of sand of such magnitude and density as to obscure from me, in my remoteness, the face of the bright afternoon sun. The whirlwind or sand-spout, called by the natives “zobahah,” shortly after subsided, but the cloud of sand and grass, which had been raised high in the heavens, continued to darken the setting sun for more than another hour. The smaller column behind travelled, increasing, until it reached the site of the break-up of the others, and then added its mite to the universal destruction and confusion.

With my sextant, as I stood in security, I measured the height of the centre column of sand; it was eight hundred and fifty feet. The others round it rose, during the time I observed them (about a quarter of an hour), from six hundred feet to a height equal to or greater than that of the centre column. When the junction of them all took place, the sudden eruption of sand and leaves and grass reached to a total height of over three thousand foot, but this was only an approximate calculation.

Storm sand-spouts are rarely so severe in any part of the desert as that which I have described; isolated “zobahahs,” more or less clearly defined, reaching to the height of a thousand feet, are, however, very common, and woe betide the tent that happens to stand in their way. Ten yards from the column the air may be perfectly calm, but within the small circumscribing circle there rages such a tempest as will carry away a tent, however firmly fixed in the ground, into the regions of the upper air as easily as an ordinary gust of wind will blow away a piece of paper. An Arab will always know whether one of these approaching “zobahahs” is likely to come upon him, and will take down his tent, or temporary house, to meet its convenience. It appears that their usual method of travelling is in the arc of a wide circle, and the direction of the centre of the circle is almost invariably from south to north.

Late on the evening of the fifth day we reached the wells of Bagghereeyeh. Both caravans were already there, and the tents were pitched. Our friends of the other section had not yet arrived, and we ordered the dry grass to be ignited to show a light to enable them to find their way home, where dinner was waiting, to which we were both anxious to sit down.

[Decoration]