Chapter XII: Siwah (1)

“_24th Oct._ 1896.—

“I have been reading Slatin’s ‘Fire and Sword in the Soudan,’ a sensational volume written with a purpose, the style obviously Wingate’s, as it is identical with his ‘Ohrwalder’ book. Slatin is a mean wretch to have published it, and the Mahdi made a mistake in not cutting off his head at once when he surrendered, and sending him straight to Paradise. His professions of loyalty to the Khedive and to our gracious Queen are fulsome, and those of disloyalty to the people whose religion he adopted to save his miserable life, disgusting. Gordon’s judgment of him is justified when he distrusted him as a traitor and despised him as a renegade, for he shows himself here doubly both.

“With regard to the Mahdi, Slatin declares him to have been a hypocrite and an impostor, but his opinion rests upon no evidence given and seems to me wholly improbable. Slatin only saw him a few times and was never at all in his confidence, and on the few occasions that the Mahdi spoke to him he seems to have done so kindly and reasonably. Slatin is himself a witness that the whole of the Mahdi’s followers believed in him to the very end, and it is quite incredible that they should have done so if, while preaching self-denial to others, he had really been the monster of depravity Slatin affirms him to have been in his private life. Such a discrepancy could not have been hidden from the Soudanese world and could not but have destroyed the popular belief in him. With regard to the Khalifa Abdullah the position is different, as Slatin _was_ intimate with him and Abdullah had no pretensions to high sanctity, nor did his followers believe in him as a saint. Slatin talks about his own military honour, but how does the case stand? When he surrendered to the Mahdi he was put in reality on parole, that is to say, he promised and swore fidelity to the Mahdi, in return for which he was allowed his freedom and an honourable position in the Mahdi’s army. He used this position to betray the Mahdi by writing letters to Gordon in a sense contrary to his orders. For his treachery he might justly have been shot, but after a short imprisonment, and on his giving a new parole, he was reinstated only to escape and betray again. We shall see this honourable soldier made a K.C.B. [And so he was].

“_27th Oct._—Arrived at Sheykh Obeyd to-day, the garden very green and beautiful. The Nile is at its full, and everything is drinking deeply in the hot sun. I am surprised, as I am every year surprised, at the quality of the loveliness, the vivid colours, the depths of shade, the brilliancy of the light. It is an absurdity to waste one’s life elsewhere. I am too idle to write, I can only enjoy.

“_9th Nov._—Sheykh Mohammed Abdu called to-day, and we had a long talk about the Khedive. Abdu is dissatisfied with certain things His Highness has done, and especially with a dispute about land he has had with Hassan Musa el Akkád. He calls the Khedive’s conduct puerile, which it doubtless is. He says that his marriage was entirely his mother’s doing. When Abbas first came back from Europe, he wished to have a bachelor’s establishment without women, but his mother forced half-a-dozen slaves on him, and eventually he chose the one he has married. He has had a new disappointment this year in the birth of a second daughter instead of a son.

“_19th Nov._—To Cairo to see the Khedive. He received me in the same friendly way as always, and talked, as always, without reserve. He asked me if I had been to Constantinople, and we discussed the situation there and the probability of European intervention, which must come with the Sultan’s increasing financial difficulties. The power of the Porte will then be re-established and a financial control set up.

“He talked much about Dongola and the unfairness that had been exercised towards his own Egyptian soldiers as contrasted with the English soldiers, only one baggage camel was allowed to every five Egyptian officers, while Kitchener took as many as 150 camels for himself and his mess. The Egyptian soldiers had to do all the work, the English got all the credit. As to the English battalion it did next to no work, and did not even march on foot, but was sent by rail while all the Egyptians marched. The fellah soldiers, too, had never a hot meal given them, nor more than ten hours rest in the twenty-four. They had insufficient water, and only two loaves instead of the three they gave them at Cairo, the third loaf they could have, but they must pay for it. I asked him how much the expedition had cost. He said first a half million taken from the Caisse, then several hundred thousands taken for the railway. He did not know when the expedition would be renewed, but not till next autumn.

“He also told me the whole history of Rhodes and the Soudanese he took from Cairo. He, the Khedive, had seen them himself being embarked for Suez. There were 200 of them, men got together by Kitchener, and made over to Rhodes in a lump. Kitchener had told him they were not good enough for service in the Egyptian army. They had gone with Cromer’s consent but without his, the Khedive’s, permission. Their exportation was quite illegal. Cromer had apologized for the informality of not asking permission. The Khedive knew nothing of what had become of the men, except that he had been told they had been disembarked at Mombaza. Rhodes gave the men a month’s pay in advance and took their women and children with them. The women were given a shilling each as bakshish. ‘But this is not all. A little before this happened a negro came to me and told me of a case of slave dealing, of a man and woman who had been bought by the sons of Prince Ibrahim for their harem. To prevent a scandal I told the young men they must get rid of them. Whereupon they went to Lord Cromer and threw themselves at his feet and begged forgiveness. Cromer then took the two slaves and married the woman to one of the soldiers who was given to Rhodes, and the man was sent with the rest to Suez. Also they took one of my Shaggias (soldiers of his bodyguard) who went away taking my uniform with him, but I had him stopped and brought back.’

“We stayed talking for three-quarters of an hour, and he made me a number of pretty speeches when I went away. He was rather inquisitive about a journey I had arranged to Siwah, which he had heard of and seemed anxious to dissuade me from. I suppose he had heard of it from his camel men. I also called on Riaz and Tigrane.

“_29th Nov._—A long letter from George Wyndham from South Africa where he has been with Rhodes getting up a case for him for the Parliamentary Committee. His letter is an interesting one written at intervals of a long ride from Buluwayo to the Transvaal frontier. The work done in South Africa is sickening, and seems likely to lead to the destruction of the whole black race south of the tropics. The Rinderpest has destroyed all wild animals, and is destroying their cattle. The ‘rebels’ are being blown up by dynamite in the caves of the Matoppo hills, and their chiefs shot in cold blood, and while all this is going on we are having meetings the whole of England over to denounce the Sultan because he is destroying the Armenians. Was there ever a nation like ours? Never, since the world began.

“I had a long talk with Mohammed Abdu a few days since. He has read my ‘Nineteenth Century’ article about Armenia, and approves all I have said against Abdul Hamid. He looks upon him as mad and to be deposed. He gave me an interesting account of his own persecution at the Azhar by the old-fashioned Sheykhs of the Ulema in the days of Ismaïl, especially by Sheykh Aleysh. He had, he says, at one time, as many as 4,000 students who attended his lectures, but the Conservative opposition was too strong for him. Still there was a good deal of liberty of thought and speech at Cairo even in those days, it never was as bad here as it is now at Constantinople, but all the old-fashioned ideas of liberty and humanity are fast disappearing from the world. Abdu and I find ourselves almost alone in our views. The best effect my article has had in England has been to make John Morley pronounce himself in favour of coming to terms about evacuating Egypt. His speech on this head is a paraphrase of my article.

“Mrs. Morris and her daughter May have been staying with us here at Sheykh Obeyd for the last ten days.

“_13th Dec._—We went in yesterday to Cairo to see Ali Pasha Sherif’s horses which, with the rest of his property, are to be sold by auction on Thursday. We shall probably bid for three or four of the brood mares, and so save a remnant from extinction, sold to us privately before the auction.

“_17th Dec._—The luck of the thing is that Ali Pasha’s affairs, being in the hands of trustees, it is to spite them that the old man is willing to sell privately to us. He insists on his right to dispose of them as he pleases. When he had received our cheque he sent the mares off in the dark at four in the morning. Now there has been a row between the old man and the trustees. Ali Pasha declares that not another horse shall go out of the stable without his permission. Mutlak, who arranged the whole thing for us, found him this morning sitting at his window which overlooks the yard of his palace and the stables, with a Winchester rifle loaded at his side, with which he swears he will shoot anyone who ventures to come near these. The old man is considered mad by his relations, and his sons have had him interdicted and his affairs placed in Sabit Pasha’s hands as trustee, but we have got the mares and they are beautiful. The mere name of having purchased them will be worth much to our stud, for they are celebrated the whole East over, and I don’t think the trustees will care really to dispute our purchase. Abdu tells me that according to the terms of the interdiction, Ali Pasha may do what he likes with his moveable property, and Carton de Wiart, the leading lawyer here whom I have consulted, gives me a curious account of the reason of the interdiction. It was a little political job of which there are so many done at Cairo. When Ali Sherif, two years ago, was involved in the slave trade prosecution, feeling ran high between the Khedive and Cromer about it, for in reality our people took advantage of the old man’s age and infirmities to force on him an apology which he might perfectly well have refused, for he had done nothing illegal. Cromer, seeing he had been in the wrong, agreed therefore to the following arrangement by mutual concession. On his side he consented to the dismissal of Shäffer, the anti slave-trade official who had brought the action against Ali Sherif; and the Khedive on his side agreed to Ali Sherif’s being interdicted as incapable of managing his affairs. But Ali Sherif was not really mad, only extravagant and old.

“_22nd Dec._—Anne and I called on Princess Nazli yesterday. She is looking an old woman now, but is still full of life and conversation. She has thrown herself lately into the Young Turkey movement at Constantinople and has written a letter to the Sultan which she asked Anne to translate for her into English, though she speaks English perfectly. She told us she considered Abdul Hamid very near his end now, and she only hoped that he would be assassinated and not simply deposed, as it would be a good lesson for his successor. Hitherto the Young Turks had been averse from this extreme measure, but according to the latest news they are now determined on it. In this I should not be surprised if they were following a hint from our Embassy. Murad, she said, is quite sane, and would be Abdul Hamid’s successor. About politics in Egypt she also talked, praising Cromer and the English Occupation and in virulent abuse of the Khedive. A good deal of this I know to be nonsense, but she is a clever woman, and I fancy has done much towards converting travelling Englishmen to a belief in their ‘great and noble work’ in Egypt. Cromer intervened with the late Khedive to prevent his cutting off her allowance as princess of the vice-regal family.

“_30th Dec._—Mohammed Abdu came yesterday and told me the news. There has been a great row on account of the confirmation by the native appeal court of Sheykh Ali Yusuf’s acquittal. Ali Yusuf had been prosecuted for publishing in his newspaper, the ‘Moayyad,’ a telegram relating to military events during the Dongola campaign, which it was asserted he had got from a telegraph clerk of the name of Kirillos. The evidence against Ali Yusuf was of the slightest kind; that against Kirillos only presumptive. The latter had on one occasion been seen copying a telegram, not the one in question, presumably for the press. Against Ali Yusuf there was no evidence at all. Nevertheless Cromer seems to have determined on fighting a battle with the native press, and when the case came before the Appeal Court, Cameron, the English judge, informed his two native colleagues that they were expected to find the accused guilty, or they would involve the Native Appeal Court in strong measures of ‘reform’ which would be taken against it. He also accused them of having been tampered with by the Khedive, and when they indignantly refused to find the accused guilty, Cameron refused at first to sit with them in delivering judgment of acquittal. Now Cromer has announced that a number of English councillors would be added to the court so as to swamp the native members. Abdu assures me that as a matter of fact the Khedive had nothing to do with the matter, and that the judges could not have decided otherwise on the evidence before them. Nothing so scandalous has happened here since the Kitchener affair, and this is really worse, as it is an attack on the integrity of the law. Carton de Wiart, the Belgian lawyer, who is at the head of his profession here, confirms the story to me, and there seems to be no doubt about it. Abdu declares that Lord Cromer is led by the nose by certain Syrians, of whom the editor of the ‘Mokattam’ and one Shakur are the principal agents. Certainly he appears to be under unfortunate inspiration. It has become very much a personal struggle and quarrel between Cromer and the Khedive. Lord Salisbury allows Cromer to carry matters with a high hand. The Khedive, on the other hand, is also led by intriguers, so that there is really no rational authority at the head of things.” This was the beginning of Lord Cromer’s interference with the operation of the law in Egypt for political purposes, an intervention which he carried afterwards to extreme results.

“_28th Jan._, 1897.—I am preparing for a long journey to Siwah, and perhaps to Jebel Akdar and Benghazi. This should take forty days at least, and there is just a little risk in it, especially as I am far from well, but it is a thing I want to do and I feel if I put it off till another year it will never be accomplished. Possibly I may be able to go as far as to visit the Sheykh el Senussi, but this is doubtful, as the Sheykh has disappeared within the last year, and it is not known exactly where he is, but I shall learn all about that from my friend Abdullah el Jibali, in the Fayoum, to whom, in the first instance, I intend to go. I hope all the same to accomplish my journey successfully and be back in time for our annual migration to England.

“_2nd Feb._—I have arranged to start on my journey on the 5th, having by good luck met Abdullah el Jibali yesterday, when I was in Cairo, and have arranged that he is to send me on to Siwah and Benghazi. I am looking forward immensely to this trip, and only wish Anne was going with me, but she will not leave Judith, so I must go alone. There is just a little danger in the journey, principally of my falling ill, so I have signed a codicil to my will. All my preparations are made, and I am away on Friday with a good prospect of getting through to Tripoli or Benghazi. If only Anne were going too!”

The journey to Siwah proved much more difficult and dangerous than I imagined, and is of sufficient political interest to make me include the whole of my travelling diary in this volume contrary to my general rule about desert expeditions. I started in ill health and in a frame of mind of unusual recklessness and depression as well, feeling that it would be the last I should make of any serious kind. I had, too, at the back of my mind, the thought that perhaps I might find among the Senussis something of the better tradition of Islam I had been so often disappointed of in the more civilized Mohammedan lands, and possibly that true desert hermitage I had so often dreamed of. Something of this will be found noted in my diary, and I give it hardly at all abridged as it stands there.

“_5th Feb._—Left Sheykh Obeyd at half-past seven. Our travelling party consists of Suliman Howeyti, Owde his cousin, and Eid, all Bedouins of the Howeytat, and Salem, my Egyptian body servant for cook, with Abd-el- Salaam of the Oulad Ali Bedouins, my own six camels, one with foal at foot, and my mare Yemama. Anne and Judith rode the first few miles with me. We passed the Obelisk of Heliopolis and followed the Towfikiyeh Canal to Mustórod where Anne and Judith turned back. They saw a blue kingfisher on the way but I missed seeing it, which I take for an ill omen. From Mustórod we followed the Helwa, the sweet water canal—overtaking many people on their way to market at Cairo with loads of _bersim_. A few white herons were about, and by the cactus gardens we saw tracks of jackals, nothing European, till we reached the railway station of Pont Limon at Cairo, then on through the town to Kasr el Nil Bridge, mixed up with carriages, people on bicycles, and the usual mongrel crowd; and on to within half a mile of Mena (nobody recognizing me) when we turned to the left and camped beyond it on the sand. I have with me the following moneys for my journey, £40 in English gold, £5 in silver dollars, and £8 in small silver, £1 in half piastres—total £54 13_s._

“_6th Feb._—To-day we followed up the Nile valley passing to the right of Sakkara—many tracks of foxes and jackals on the desert edge. Great fields of lupins (_termès_)—the Delta very green—desert larks but few other birds, except wagtails. Camped at half-past two by the _birkeh_, where the road branches off to Tumiya—teals, coots, pochards, pintails, and other small waterfowl. The water brackish. A very beautiful evening.

“Abd-el-Salaam tells me he went campaigning with 1,500 of his tribe, in the first year of Ismaïl’s reign, to the Soudan, taking the outer road of the Oases, and as far as Darfur and Kordofan. He told me also much about Jebel Akhdar (the Cyrenaica). There are five springs in it, he says, with streams running from them, all well wooded with trees, _zeytoun_ (olive) and _karub_, with much grass and crops watered by rain. It is held by the Harabi tribe with whom the Oulad Ali had been _goum_ (enemies) from the time of Saïd Pasha. But he, Abd-el-Salaam, has friends amongst them. He has travelled to Benghazi and to all the Oases, but not to Tarablus (Tripoli) or Tunis. He boasts that the Oulad Ali are of Anazeh blood; as to the Harabi they are of Harb blood. He is fasting for Ramadan, which no one else of us is, and is rather cross and obstinate. I am not sure about taking him beyond Kasr-el-Jibali. There is beautiful sweet camomile here for our camels.

“_7th Feb. (Sunday)._—Off at half-past seven. A plain desert march, following a track made by sheep and cattle the whole way. Sighted a fox in the early morning on his way home to some limestone cliffs. Also passed two cattle droves. No other incident. I remember twenty-one years ago travelling this way and having a tussle with a young Arab horseman, who had jeered at us for our European dresses. He pointed his gun at us, and I took hold of it and pulled him off his horse, his girths giving way, and he came a tumble, much to his discomfiture. This was in 1876. We are encamped under the tamarisks, where formerly Fraser, who was travelling with us, and I shot hares.

“Abd-el-Salaam has gone on with his recollections. The expedition he tells me was six months away on their Soudan campaign, each horseman receiving 200 piastres a month and all found, including camels and horses; also their families received from £13 to £14 while they were gone. There was no fighting, ‘victorious without fighting.’ In all this Western desert southwards there is no pasture, except a little _nossi_ that comes up after the rain, or northwards till you come near the Mediterranean.

“_8th Feb._—A continuous march of eleven hours through the Fayoum, passing by Toumiyeh, Senuris, Fidimin, Senhur, Abuxeh, and Bisheh. Then, having crossed the river, a branch of the Bahar Yusuf, we camped on the other side, at nightfall, a couple of miles short of Kasr-el-Jibali. I preferred taking excuse of the night to stop, for I was tired, and I knew that going on to the castle would mean sitting up till midnight waiting for a sheep to be killed and cooked. The Fayoum is a bad country to camp in, all black mud and crops, with hardly an open spot; and we were lucky, after travelling five or six miles looking in vain, at last to pitch upon a dry unoccupied field on the edge of the cliff above the river.

“At Toumiyeh the land has been taken possession of and cultivated by some Jews, who got a concession from the Government. Otherwise the town is much as it was in 1876, when I remember going to see a poor notable of the town who was dying, they told us, of love. The Mamur of the district in those days had taken from him forcibly one of his wives, the youngest, last, and best beloved of them; and we found him lying on his death-bed, surrounded by his friends lamenting his loss, and he smelling an onion which he held in his hand.

“_9th Feb._—I was already asleep last night when Abdallah Minjowar, hearing of my being in camp so near him, rode out to see me; and I had to get up to receive him. We drank tea together and made all the arrangements necessary for my onward journey. He will send two men with me, Minshawi and another, with camels to El Wah (the small Oasis), Siwah, Jerabub, and Jebel Akhdar, and will write letters to the various Sheykhs, and see me through to Benhazi or Dernah. Abdallah is by position a great man. He has an immense territory and lives in a castle, which if not mediæval belongs to the age of Mohammed Ali, and has a really beautiful stone gateway worthy of any century. He tells me his father and his tribe came into Egypt first in Mohammed Ali’s time, having been invited here from Jebel Akhdar in Tripoli. He was once there with his father, Minjowar, as a boy. In appearance he reminds me of the Emir Abd el Kader, and is in truth a man of high and generous character, a great personage here on the desert edge. The Government has recently made a high road for him to Medinet el Fayoum, of which he is proud. I rode in to see him after breakfast, and we are camped now inside his wall. Many poor people, particularly boys and women, have run up to kiss my hand yesterday and to-day. Expenses besides _bersim_, 10 piastres. Yesterday we passed an immense swarm of bees covering the rocks in a ravine by the river.

“All is satisfactorily arranged. Abdallah will send Minshawi with us, and a second man with two camels, and a head man, Beseys, on a _delul_. He is to carry letters of credence for us to the chief persons at Siwah and Jerabub, and to the two principal Harabi Sheykhs of the Jebel Akhdar, at whose tents I am promised to alight within twenty, say thirty days. I shall not be able to see Senussi as he has left Jerabub, but I shall see the head of the Zaghwiyeh, the Monastery there, and be well received. We are to start on Thursday, 11th, with four _ardebs_ of beans for the camels and barley for the mare. Salem is to go into Medinet el Fayoum to-morrow, to get what things are still required, as nothing will be procurable anywhere beyond. I have spent the day slugging in my tent—very hot, with many flies, an object of attention for the villagers, and of attentions from Abdallah, his relations and friends. Beseys, who is to go with me, is an oldish man, with a rugged, ugly face, but I think that he will do. Minshawi we know already. Abd-el- Salaam has left us. He was too old for the journey, and required too much in the way of comfort, and did too little in the way of work. Also Abdallah objected to him, and he himself was inclined to leave, so I paid him his five days, and he is gone.

“We spent the evening talking, principally with a very intelligent man of fellah origin, and of good education, who had been an Arabist, and now is living here, cultivating a few feddans, which Abdallah has let him have more or less as a charity. He gave us his views of Egyptian politics, which are exactly Arabi’s old ones. It is refreshing to hear them in these days. Old Beseys listened with an occasional word of approval, but Abdallah was sent to sleep by it and retired.

“Kasr-el-Jibali is a place of religion, and it being Ramadan, prayer goes on nearly all day long, from an hour before sunrise, when a kind of matins is chanted by a select few, till sunset, when there is a general service attended by everybody. The singing is far from good, as each worshipper intones in his own key, and the effect is not unlike that of the old village hymn-singing of fifty years ago in England. There is even a certain non-conformist popular character about it, which is different from anything I have heard elsewhere. The mosque is a new one, built close to the castle, in excellent taste. It might be a hundred or two hundred years old for all one can tell from its architecture. It has no minaret, and is a plain square buttressed building, with a slight ornament on the top and lancet windows. We are camped too near it for quiet, and have been exposed all day to the curiosity of prayer-goers. Also the ground is very dirty, and life is made difficult with flies. Indoors, in the castle, it is hardly better, for the guest rooms are built for the summer, and are cold to sit in, being away from the sun. So I am obliged to wait on in my tent till the hospitable pleasure of Abdallah is exhausted, and I have his permission to begin my march. These days of hospitable waiting in towns and villages are a heavy price one has to pay for the joys of desert travelling. But my departure is promised for to-morrow at noon. Suliman’s expenditure in provisions for the journey comes to 275 piastres, something under £3.

“_11th Feb._—Away at last in the highest of spirits, with a cool westerly wind blowing in our faces. The camels arrived early, and I obtained Abdallah’s permission, dear good man, to mount and go. When all was settled I told him I wished to have a few words with him alone; and we went into the great room of the castle, and I told him I was very anxious to see, if not the Sheykh el Senussi, who has gone south to Kufra, at least one of the principal Sheykhs of the _tarik_ (the religious order) at Jerabub, and I begged him to give me a letter for one of them. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘that I have for a long time been with you at heart, of the _mumenin_, but I have not borne witness for reasons you will understand. I wish to ask certain questions of the Sheykhs of the Senussia, and to understand their teaching, and it seems to me that the members of the _tarik_ are the only good Moslems in the world, or at any rate are the best.’ The good man readily assented, and showed me much affection, and told me that he had already written to the head of the community at Jerabub, introducing me as the son of Hajji Batran of Aleppo, for he thought that would give me a favourable reception. But I begged him to write again and tell the Sheykh the truth of the case, that I was an Englishman who desired instruction, and he has accordingly done so, though he has left the other letters, those written to the Harabi Sheykhs of the Jebel Akhdar, as they were with my name as Ibn Batran. Fortunately I knew Hajji Batran when at Aleppo, or rather I knew his son, Hajji Mahmud, and may, perhaps, be able to personate a grandson from so far away. A cousin of Abdallah’s, one Ali, who accompanied me on horseback as far as this camp, has given me particulars of the arrangement made and tells me that it is necessary, inasmuch as the Arabs of the Jebel Akhdar bitterly hate all of European race, whereas, if presented as a relation of Hajji Batran, who had married a _hatherieh_, townswoman, of Dernah, I should be accepted as a relation. The Hannádi, he explained, were of the Beraza clan, the same as the Harabi. There was a son Naïf born to Batran; and I must personate him. I do not like this. But Ali said there was real danger in going among people so wild as his mountain kinsmen; and he besought me to be content with Siwah, and to turn back from there by the sea-coast route to Mariut. I am, however, in the mood for an adventure, dangerous or not.” [N.B. It will be seen that these letters of Abdallah, whatever their precise nature, were unfortunately conceived, and brought about the misunderstanding which led to the attack made on me at Siwah.]

“We are encamped five miles from Kasr-el-Jibali in a bit of tamarisk underwood well screened from the wind, at the outmost edge of Nile irrigation in the direction of the Oases—how happy to be at last alone! The Nile water reaches no farther westwards. A little run of it feeds the last fields, which are of wheat, barley, and _helbeh_ (a sort of clover). On the _helbeh_ Yemama is turned out to graze, and the camels eat it brought in to them. The two new camels have arrived, sturdy little beasts of the Western type, brown both, and rough haired—not beautiful, but good. The men, too, are of a wholly other type from that east of the Nile. Suliman and his two Howeytat companions have almost a look of breeding contrasted with them, while Ali’s mare, of which he is proud, as being of western blood, is a plain barb, honestly shaped, but of no distinctive type. Beauty is the natural gift, to desert man and desert beast, only of peninsular Arabia.

“_12th Feb._—Abdallah appeared again last night, having been preceded by his younger son, a pleasant youth of mixed type—the son of his _jari_ (concubine) Salem said—who had dined with me. Though grown up, the young man has never seen more of the world than Medinet el Fayoum and El Wah, not even Cairo or the Nile. Abdallah has a separate establishment with the boy’s mother close by here. He and I embraced affectionately at parting. He has done everything in his power to further my wishes about the journey and has brought seven or eight letters which he has written to various persons on my route, including the most important of all, one to Sidi Abu Seyf, the head prior of the Jerabub monastery, Senussi’s right hand. He has entrusted me to old Beseys, who is one of the confraternity, and who is to explain to Abu Seyf how matters stand with me religiously. ‘Abu Seyf,’ Abdallah said, ‘is as my own heart to me, and he will treat you as myself.’ Letters, too, have been written for the two principal Bedouin Sheykhs of the Harabi in Jebel Akhdar, and I am to go on to Benghazi if I like or return by Dernah and the sea route to Skanderia.

“We started to-day at sunrise and I walked an hour or more on foot, it being cold, before mounting my _delul_. Our course south by west, then turning more westward. At eleven we came to the edge of Wady Rayyan, a great chaotic depression from 50 to 150 feet below the Nile. It is absolutely barren, and there is no trace in it of Nile mud or clay of any kind, most of the surface soil being drift-sand and grit, with the bare limestone rocks showing here and there. This effectually disproves the theory that Rayyan was the Lake Mœris of Herodotus, it is nothing but a dried up _sebkha_, like the Jôf and many another desert depression. There are curious rocks in it set in lines, which look exactly like the remains of buildings; but they are all, I think, natural. Nor do I believe that any part of the Valley was ever inhabited except perhaps by hermits, who planted the palm trees which still struggle to live on near the springs. Descending into the belly of the wady, we quickly found ourselves among _nefuds_ (sandhills) which run across it here and there in lines from north-west to south-east, and make effective fortifications against camels. Here Suliman’s desert craft became of service (for the three Harabis with us were useless for anything but pottering along a track) and he and I went forward to look out the easiest places for the camels to cross, while in the steepest Suliman and Eid made paths for them slantwise in the deep sand. The old camel man, Haj Abd-el-Rahman, not choosing to follow us, was left behind, and we consequently had to camp some four miles short of the main spring, but in a nice spot, a deep hollow under sand hillocks and _tarfa_ clumps. This part of the wady has vegetation, _tarfa_, _ghurkud_, _erta_—none, however, in green leaf—much of it dead, firewood abundant. Barom. 50 feet below the Nile water at Kasr-el-Jibali.

“_13th Feb._—At sunrise we started, after a good night’s rest for me under my _hejeyra_ (my carpet shelter, the one with a scorpion worked on it), and on to the spring. This lies due south of the _khusm_ (snout) of Rayyan, at the extreme edge of the vegetation, a number of bush palms together, with a lovely spring welling up in a sand-bottomed basin, the water running in a little stream for twenty yards, when it disappears. The two Harabis, Beseys and Minshawi, attribute to it miraculous virtues. The water only runs, they say, when travellers come to drink, and it varies in volume with the number of their camels. When there are many camels you have only to encourage it by calling to it ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’ and it comes bubbling up so fast that you can water 200 camels in the afternoon. It is hot by night, cold by day. To-day, the wind being cold, it was lukewarm, rather flat water, ill-tasted but not salt, therefore ‘sweet,’ as desert waters go. Yemama drank well of it, and we took away two _girbehs_ full, in addition to our two of Nile water, as this is the last water until we come to El Wah. Some ‘sons of dog who have no fear of God’ had fired the palms and left some of them in ruins, but the palm immediately over the spring was untouched in flower. We found tracks of gazelles, hares, jerboas, and foxes there, but no recent traces of men or camels. The wady is little frequented.

“From the spring we turned south-west and mounted by an even slope to the top of the _nukbeh_ (pass), which we found barred by a complete rampart of _nefud_, which we had some difficulty in surmounting—then on and on through a desolate land wholly barren, a cliff on our left hand, until at the _asr_ we came to a singular rock, exquisitely poised, about twenty feet high, of friable lime stone worn away on every side, below. A mile or two beyond this we descried a little pasture _shgáa_ with a _seyyal_ tree. Here at 4.15 we encamped.

“Beseys gave me some information this afternoon as we rode together. The elder Senussi, he tells me, came from Fez and died at Jerabub in the year A.H. 1271. Beseys saw him, an ancient man with a small white beard, regular features ‘like your own.’ He was 110 or 120 years old when he died. He left two sons, Mohammed Sidi el Mahdi and Sherif. The latter died last year. The elder left Jerabub in anger with the Sultan of Turkey after this, and has gone with a few disciples to form a new Zaghwiyeh in the South. I understood him to say that the quarrel was in consequence of the stopping of a subsidy, but I may have heard him incorrectly as he has lost his front teeth and is hardly intelligible. He told me that from Fez to the Hejaz there were about 150 Zaghwiyehs containing each from twenty to thirty brethren _akhwan_. People exaggerated the numbers because there were many lay servitors, who cultivated the crops and bought or sold for the brothers. There is no brotherhood at Kasr-el-Jibali. Abdallah’s grandfather was the first who came to Egypt. He became _awely_ (saint) and is buried in the koubbah at Kasr-el-Jibali. He left four sons, of whom Minjowar was the eldest.

“_14th Feb._—A long monotonous tramp from sunrise to sunset across a gravelly _hamad_ (plain), no leafy thing all day. Camped in the plain about 400 feet above the sea—30 miles.

“_15th Feb._—Again from sunrise to sunset. Passed a beautiful wady with _seyyal_ trees—_gholam_, _shgáa_, _nossi_—Khabra Balbal—then the _Bahr bela ma_ (river without water), whose height is 350 feet above the sea. A long day’s tracking of the road obliterated with _nefuds_—hyæna, wolf, and fox tracks. We camped in the _nefud_.

“_16th Feb._—We are encamped at last in the basin of the Wahat (oases), barom. 315 feet above the sea and 300 below the sand-ridge at the top of the pass, where we first caught sight of the valley. This was a happy spectacle, a break in the brown rags of the desert foreground, dipping down and showing blue hills beyond. From this pass we went down by a gradual descent for a couple of hours. We are still some miles from the two villages of the oasis, with their palm groves showing blackly against the rocks beyond them. We are enjoying an afternoon’s rest quietly in the shadow of a great rock half a mile from a spring. The sandy ground is pleasant, with hillocks tufted with green rough grass, _ékresh_ and _rukeyb_, tamarisk, _ithel_, and dwarf palm. There are two springs, one on a mound 20 feet high, but the water was flat and bad—the other sweet, which runs for a few yards in open ground, with a little greenness round it—no trees.

“It is agreed that from this point I am to adopt a Syrian identity as Sakr ibn Zeydun el Helali, related by marriage to Sidi Abd el Kader at Damascus, and to Hajji Batran at Aleppo, with a title of Bey from the Dowlah, travelling to see his relations at Dernah and Benghazi. I shall not go into the villages here, so that no questions may be asked by officials. Beseys, too, is anxious to keep clear of them.

“I like Beseys. As we rode ahead of our party yesterday on our _deluls_, I talked to him about religion and about my wish for a hermit’s life in the desert, and he much applauded the idea and promised to take me to a spiritual father of his own, Sidi Maymun, who lived just such a life in the Jebel Akhdar. The wely would put me in the way of a true vocation and give me all the advice I wanted. I asked him about Jerabub and the Zaghwiyeh there. He assures me the whole of the Akhwan have left it. Sherif, the second son of Senussi, followed his brother Sidi el Mahdi in his flight southwards, but came back to die at Jerabub, and is buried there with his father. Abu Seyf upon this left Jerabub with the rest of his following, and now there are only lay brothers and poor people there who look after the palms. Beseys is very pious himself, and prays every morning for some time as he rides. While we were talking earnestly on these pious matters we missed our track in the _nefuds_, and were some time finding it again. It is exciting work picking out the cold scent of an old track by odds and ends of camel _jelleh_ and doubtful landmarks, as exciting as following hounds, and we became keen and jealous. But Beseys is a really good old man, and I think takes a true interest in my conversion. It is forty-three years since he travelled the road before, being then a boy of an age young enough to need being told not to lag behind, or get separated from the rest. That would make him no older than I am, but in appearance he is quite an ‘ancient of days.’ We got back eventually into the right road by following a hyæna track. Hyænas, jackals and foxes in the desert are fond of frequenting caravan routes for what they may chance to pick up, and know them well—the first for the hap of a dead beast, the foxes for dropped dates. We passed a place where foxes had been gathering scraps at the site of an encampment. At Balbal yesterday there were fresh gazelle tracks, besides larks singing and wagtails quite at home. There are no Bedouins in these deserts as there is no water and little pasturage. The thorn trees are consequently uncut, and the _nossi_ grass of last spring stands uneaten. Balbal is a beautiful spot. The Bahr is much less interesting, being merely one of those long serpentine depressions so common in the desert. This one being 350 feet above sea level cannot have ever been a mouth of the Nile. Its bottom is of limestone without a trace of Nile mud. A caravan carrying dates was just setting out from the spring as we arrived.

“_17th Feb._—We have moved camp to a spring just north of Bawiti, which is the last village of the Little Oasis westwards.

“Last night I had a long ride alone to get a look at the Oasis, climbing on Yemama to the top of the Harra which stands like an island in its midst. The top of it is level ground, smooth enough to canter on from end to end, one of the loneliest places I ever saw, for I crossed no single track of beast or bird or reptile, nor was there trace of men having ever been there, though so near the villages. It is apparently volcanic. One gets a good bird’s-eye view from it of the palm groves and the four villages, Sabu, Mandija and the double village of Kasr and Bawiti. It is clear that much more land was cultivated formerly. The _ithel_ and tamarisk clumps must have been private property. They are being fast destroyed now. There is a deal of rough camel pasture in the Oasis, so that we grazed as we went.

“I met a man cutting palm leaves to-day to make matting and asked him to get us a guide to Siwah, as neither Beseys nor Haj Abderrahman, nor yet Minshawi know the road any farther. I was riding alone in front on Udeyha, and having stopped was sleeping under a palm tree outside Bawiti when I was wakened by a man greeting me. He was a Berber from Farafra who offered to be of use and showed us the spring hard by. Now we have sent Minshawi and Salem in to market and are camped in the sand hills.

“In the evening I rode round the Oasis with Minshawi, but did not enter the village, as the Government Chiauss has been inquisitive about me, and I think it prudent to run no risks. There is nice _halfa_ grazing here. Everywhere there are bunches of palms with springs more or less in use for gardens, some of which are beautiful with large olive trees, _esshaar_, _sont_, and _safsaf_ (willow). The palms are the most vigorous I ever saw, having, as the saying is, ‘their feet in the water, their heads in the fire.’ We passed the ruins of a building, probably Roman.

“_18th Feb._—Haj Abderrahman has left us to go home. He would have taken the two camels back with him but I would not allow it, as they are Abdallah’s, not his, and I told him I would be answerable for the price of the beasts. He was unwilling to go farther. Now Minshawi has brought us a tall Soudani, Osman, from Siwah who will travel with us, and we hope to be off not later than noon. There are many tracks of foxes and jackals about, and I heard an owl at dawn.

“Off at 10.30, and marched till sunset. The nukbe lies due north, and is steep. There was no marked track till we crossed the caravan road and turned west. The plain on the upper ground is an absolutely barren hamad, gravel and sand grit, quite devoid of life—500 to 600 feet above the sea. No sign of recent travellers on the road. A very cold north- west wind. Camped under lee of a low tell.

“_19th Feb._—Thermom. 42° and a bitter wind. I find that Osman the Soudani has only been this way once before, and that twenty-five years ago, and travelling by night, and in the opposite direction to what we are now going. He is a Falata from Bornu, which he left when seventeen years old ‘on account of a war.’ [He had been taken as a slave, and had been carried by his captors to Merzouk, the northern oases, and ultimately to Siwah,, whence he had escaped to El Wah, travelling by night, and hiding in the daytime. For this reason he knew almost nothing of the road, except the general direction. He did not tell me this till afterwards.] He has been astray in the oases ever since, and may now be about fifty. I like him as he is plain spoken, and with an agreeable black face, nearly pure negro blood, though he boasts of the Falata as Arabs. The Falata have a Sultan of their own, he says, and know nothing of the Dowlah.

“Eleven hours’ march to-day—thirty-two miles. Camped amid driving sand, barely protected from the wind.

“_20th Feb._—Crossed several _nefuds_ to-day all running north-west and south-east, which obliged us to travel far south, and then north-west again—then came to another deep depression where the caravan track disappeared for fully ten miles. We had much trouble following it, but by the help of skeleton camels recovered it at the nukbe beyond. At one place we came across an old _menzil_ (encampment) with a dead camel, and the wooden frame of a _hedajeh_ (camel saddle) all at least two years old. But Eid and Minshawi collected the _jelleh_ (camel dung) finding it still good for firing, and Suliman made prize of the saddletree. Beyond the nukbe at four o’clock we came for the first time since leaving El Wah, on a bit of camel pasture, _sreygá_ and camomile and _nossi_. The _nossi_, though a year old, had not been grazed, but I found the hole and track of a desert mouse. Yemama eagerly devoured the _nossi_. Osman surprised me by saying of her, ‘Her sire is perhaps _koheyl_.’ I find that he knows all about the horse breeds, Duheym, Jilfa, and the rest. He assures me that in Bornou and Wadi they have thoroughbred _koheyls_, the great people as many as ten of them, besides great multitudes of camels. We are encamped in a pleasing spot, with just enough of the pasture to feed our ten camels.

“_21st Feb._—To-day has been full of excitement for us. After about four miles from our start we came to the edge of another great depression, the nukbe being well marked with stone heaps pointing to a corresponding nukbe beyond, about eight miles off. We went down, therefore, confidently, though the track quickly disappeared. The depression was choked with _nefuds_ to our right, but to our left was clear, the loose soil being composed mostly of old shells. Its height above the sea at the lowest point was 100 feet. It soon, however, became plain that we were out of the track, though the westerly direction was good, and we had to cross a _sebkha_ (salt swamp) with a treacherous bottom, and climb a very steep gradient to the nukbe. Osman, nevertheless, maintained that all was right, but soon we found ourselves in a wilderness of _nefuds_. Here Osman’s knowledge came to an end, and after floundering over ridge after ridge for some time, he acknowledged that he knew not where he was. We therefore sat down and called a council, and having watered Yemama from the skins, somewhat solemnly, for we felt that it was the last we could spare her, it was agreed that Suliman and I should go forward alone scouting, either to come across the track or find some height from which we might get sight of a landmark. It seemed an equal chance to try right or left for the track. At starting we crossed the tracks of a gazelle, an ariel Suliman said, and it seemed to me a good omen. After a while, bearing somewhat to the right, we got out of the _nefud_, and on to a hard gravel, and I sent Yemama along at a good pace in the direction of some hills to the west north west, saying all the prayers I knew to my saints, Mohammedan and Christian, for a good issue. Nor had I long to wait. At first it seemed a very hopeless quest, with a brown horizon all round me and low brown hills each like the other. But it was nice cantering with the fresh wind in my face, and as I got on to higher ground the view opened and I saw the hill I was following rise higher and higher apparently about five miles off. At a point of the plain where there was a little mound I stopped and looked all round me. Far away to the west there seemed to be a little break in the horizon, and examining through my glasses I felt sure it was a wady, the wady of Síttarah (where the water was said to be which we were looking for). Still it might be a mistake, an effect of mirage, and I galloped back to Suliman, who was following on my _delul_, to ask his opinion. We then both agreed that we saw a wady with mounds of tarfa, perhaps palms, and that this was our wady. So I sent him back with the good news and to bring the camels on, and cantered on to the hill to get a better view. From the top of it I saw everything, as I thought, clearly, the tarfa mounds, the dark green wady, and the hill, blue beyond—almost like the Nile valley.