OF the making of books on Egypt there is no end. The first on the subject was Genesis, and there has been a steady output ever since. But the literature of the Libyan Desert, that joins up to Egypt on the west, is curiously scanty, when the enormous area of this district is considered.

The Libyan desert may be said to extend from the southern edge of the narrow cultivated belt that exists almost everywhere along the North African coast, to the Tibesti highlands, and the northern limit of the vegetation of the Sudan. On the east the boundary of the desert is well defined by the Valley of the Nile; but on its western side it is extremely vague.

A broad belt of desert stretches all across North Africa from east to west. The western portion of this is known to us as “the Sahara.” But “Sahara” is not really a name, but an Arabic word meaning a desert—any desert. By the natives this term is applied to the whole of this desert belt, and is used just as much to describe the Libyan Desert, as the more westerly part of it. The boundary line between what we know as the Sahara and the Libyan Desert has never been drawn, but it may be said to run roughly from the northern end of Tibesti to the base of the Gulf of Sidra. With such vague boundaries it is impossible to give an accurate estimate of its extent, but it may be taken that the Libyan Desert covers nearly a million square miles. It is probably the least-known area of its size in the world. There are still hundreds of thousands of square miles in its southern and central parts quite unknown to Europeans, the map of which appears as so much blank paper, or is shown as being covered with impassable sand dunes.

I had had some experience of desert travelling in the Western Sahara, so when, in 1908, I wrote to the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, suggesting a journey into the Western Sahara, and received a letter in reply proposing that I should tackle the Libyan Desert instead, as offering the largest available area of unknown ground, and should take up the study of sand dunes, for which it afforded an unrivalled opportunity, I jumped at the suggestion, which had not before occurred to me.

But after a jump of that kind one usually comes to earth again with something of a bang, and when, after making a more thorough enquiry than I had previously done into the nature of the job I had undertaken, I began to realise its real character and felt that in saying I would tackle this part of the world, I had done something quite remarkably foolish.

Many expeditions had set out from Egypt to explore this part of the world, but none up to that time had ever crossed the Senussi frontier, with the exception of Rohlfs’, who, in 1874, before the Senussia was firmly established in the desert, attempted to reach Kufara Oasis. Even he, hampered perhaps by his enormous caravan, only managed to proceed for three days westward from Dakhla and was then compelled, by the insurmountable character of the dunes, to abandon the attempt and to turn up towards the north and make for the Egyptian oasis of Siwa. This difficulty of crossing the sand hills, the obstructing influence of the Senussi, who had reduced passive resistance to a fine art, and, perhaps, in some cases, want of experience in desert travelling, had rendered the other attempts abortive. Still, this seemed to be the most promising side from which to enter the desert.

I first took a preliminary canter by going again to the Algerian Sahara. This was, of course, some years before the war, in the course of which the Senussi—or the Senussia as they should be more strictly called—were very thoroughly thrashed. Just before the war, however, they were at about the height of their power and were a very real proposition indeed.

They had the very undesirable peculiarity—from a traveller’s point of view—of regarding the part of the Libyan Desert, into which I was proposing to go, as their private property and of resenting most strongly—to put it mildly—all attempts to penetrate into their strongholds. There can be little doubt that at this period they had been contemplating for a long time an invasion of Egypt, and were only waiting for a suitable opportunity to occur of putting it into execution. In the circumstances, they naturally did not want Europeans to enter their country for fear that they should get to know too much. Moreover their fanaticism against Europeans had been considerably augmented by the advance of the French into their country from the south.

Even now most people seem hardly to realise the real character of the Senussia; for one constantly hears them alluded to as a “tribe” or merely as a set of unusually devout Moslems, who have chosen to take up their abode in the most inaccessible parts of Africa, in order to devote themselves to their religious life, without fear of interruption from outsiders. The fact is, that they are in reality dervishes, whose character, at that time at any rate, was of a most uncompromising nature towards all non-Mohammedans and was especially hostile towards Europeans, particularly those occupying any Moslem territories. Moreover they were not confined only to the Libyan Desert, but formed one of the most powerful of the dervish orders, with followers spread throughout practically the whole Moslem world from Sumatra to Morocco.

As I expected to come a good deal in contact with them in the Libyan Desert, after leaving the Algerian Sahara, I spent a considerable time in the public libraries of Algeria and Tunis, in collecting such information as was available on the Senussia and other dervishes of North Africa.

For the benefit of those unacquainted with the subject it may be as well to explain the nature of these dervish orders. They resemble in some ways the monastic communities of Christianity, and are usually organised on much the same lines. Their zawias, or monasteries, vary in size from unpretentious buildings, little better than mud huts, to huge establishments, which in size and architecture favourably compare with the finest institutions of their kind in Europe.

Each dervish order has its own peculiar ritual. Many of them are entirely non-political and of a purely religious character; but there are others, such for instance as the notorious Rahmania and Senussia, who are of a strongly political character, usually hostile to Europeans. Frequently, however, their influence is not apparent, as they keep discreetly in the background; but it has been repeatedly shown that it has been intriguing sects such as these, who have been at the bottom of the numerous risings and difficulties that Europeans have had to contend with in dealing with their Moslem subjects.

Other political orders—such as the Tijania—are actually favourable towards Europeans; while others again lend their support to some particular branch of the community, acting for instance, as in the case of the Ziania, as protectors to travellers or, as the Kerzazia do, supporting the dwellers in the oases against the attacks of the bedawin who surround them, and so forth.

As these dervish orders are largely dependant upon the refar, or tribute, that they exact from their followers, for their support, with few exceptions, each sect does its utmost to increase the number of its adherents and to prevent them from joining any other order. This naturally leads to a considerable rivalry between them, and when two of them pursue an exactly opposite policy—as for instance in the case of the Tijania and the Senussia—this rivalry develops into a deadly feud. It is the impossibility of inducing rival dervishes to combine, more perhaps than anything else, that makes that wild dream of Pan-islam, by which all Mohammedans are to unite to get rid of their European rulers, such a hopelessly impossible scheme.

A very large proportion of the Moslem natives of North Africa belong to one, or more, of these orders. But it is seldom that a native can be found to discuss at all freely the particular one to which he belongs. A knowledge, however, of them and of the peculiarities by which the followers of each sect can be identified, is most useful. The information that I picked up on this subject before going to Libya I found of the greatest possible value, as it often enabled me to gauge the probable attitude towards me of the men with whom I came in contact, and even to put a spoke in their wheel, before they even realised that I had any ground for suspicion.

On leaving Tunis, I went on to Egypt, where, before actually setting out for the desert, I spent some time in Cairo, putting the finishing touches to my equipment and picking up what information I could about the part into which I was going. It is extraordinary how many of my informants regarded the desert as “a land of romance.” No doubt in many cases distance lends enchantment to the view, and covers it with a certain amount of glamour; but a very slight experience of these arid wastes is calculated completely to shatter the spell. Romance is merely the degenerate offspring of imagination and ignorance. There can be few parts of the world where one is so much up against hard cold facts as one is in the desert.

On the whole, the information that I was able to collect was of a very unsatisfactory character. I could learn practically nothing at all definite about the desert—at least nothing that seemed to be reliable, except that the dunes of the interior of the desert were quite impassable.

But I soon found out that though I was learning nothing, other people were. The truth of the local saying that “you can’t keep anything quiet in Egypt” was several times forced upon me in rather startling ways. Most of the news that natives learn probably leaks out through the reckless way in which some Europeans talk in the presence of their English-speaking servants. But even allowing for careless conversation of this kind, it is astonishing how quickly news sometimes travels. This rapid transmission of secret news is a well-known thing in North Africa, and one that has always to be reckoned with. In Algeria they call it the “arab telegraph,” and many extraordinary cases of it are recorded.

As a result of my enquiries I was able to draw up a sort of programme for my work in the desert, the main objects in which were as follows:—

(1) To cross that field of impassable dunes.

(2) If I succeeded in doing so, to cross the desert from north-east to south-west.

(3) Failing the latter scheme, to survey as much as possible of other unknown parts of the desert.

(4) To collect as much information as possible from the natives about the unknown portions of the desert that I was unable to visit myself.

Before leaving Cairo, I engaged two servants. My knowledge of Arabic at that time was scanty, and what there was of it was of the Algerian variety—a vile patois that is almost a different language to that spoken in the desert—an interpreter was consequently almost a necessity. I took one—Khalil Salah Gaber by name—from a man who was just leaving the country. He was loud in his praises of Khalil, stating that he was an extremely good interpreter and “very tactful.”

Since then I have always been distinctly suspicious of people who are noted for their tact—there are so many degrees of it. Tactful, diplomatic, tricky, dishonest, criminal, all express different shades of the same quality, and Khalil’s tact turned out to be of the most superlative character!

I also engaged a man called Dahab Suleyman Gindi as cook. Dahab—unlike Khalil, who was a fellah or one of the Egyptian peasants—was a Berberine, the race from which the best native servants are drawn. He was a small, elderly, rather feeble-looking man with an honest straightforward appearance, who not only turned out to be a very fair cook, but who also made himself useful at times as an interpreter, as he knew a certain amount of English.

After my preparations were completed, I stayed on for a while to see something of the sights of Cairo. Its cosmopolitan all-nation crowd made it an interesting enough place for a short stay. But after one had spent a little time there, and done all the usual sights, dirty, noisy Cairo and the other tourist resorts began to pall upon one. After all, they are only a sort of popular edition of the country, published by Thomas Cook and Son. Beyond lay the real Egypt and desert, a land where afrits, ghuls, genii and all the other creatures of the native superstitions are matters of everyday occurrence; where lost oases and enchanted cities lie in the desert sands, where the natives are still unspoiled by contact with Europeans, and where most of the men are pleasing, and, though the prospect is vile, that could not destroy the attraction that lay in the fact that about a million square miles of it were quite unknown, and waiting to be explored.

Before I had been very long in Cairo, I had had enough of it—it was so much like an Earl’s Court exhibition—and at the end of my stay, I cleared out for the desert with a feeling of relief.

The train for Kharga Oasis left Cairo at 8 p.m. After a long dusty journey I found myself deposited at the terminus in the Nile Valley of the little narrow gauge railway that runs across the desert for some hundred miles to Kharga Oasis.

There is a proper station at this junction now, but at that time, in 1909, the line had only been recently opened, and the junction consisted merely of a siding, a ramshackle little wooden hut for the station-master, and a truly appalling stink of dead dog, the last being due to the fact that owing to an attack of rabies in the district, the authorities had been laying down poisoned meat to destroy the pariah dogs of the neighbourhood, who all seemed to have chosen the vicinity of the station as the spot on which to spend their last moments.

Having shot out my baggage at the side of the permanent way, the train disappeared into the distance and left me with about half a ton of kit to get up to Qara, the base of the oasis railway, where I had been told I could get put up. After a delay of nearly an hour, during which time, as it was bitterly cold, I began to feel the truth of the native saying that “all travel is a foretaste of hell,” some trollies put in an appearance. Moslems, it may be mentioned, believe that there are seven hells, each worse than the last—and they say they are all feminine!

As soon as the trollies had been loaded up, a start was made for Qara, some five miles away, where I spent the next few days, while collecting the camels for my caravan.

To assist me in buying the beasts, I engaged a local Arab, known as Sheykh Suleyman Awad, a grim, grizzled old scoundrel of whom I saw a good deal later on. In his youth he had had a great reputation as a gada—a term corresponding pretty closely to our “sportsman,” and much coveted by the younger bedawin.

He had gained this reputation in a manner rather characteristic of these Arabs. Once, when a young man, he was having an altercation with a couple of fellahin, who after showering other terms of abuse upon him, finally wound up by calling him a “woman.” An insult such as this from a couple of mere fellahin, a race much despised by the Arabs, was too much altogether for Suleyman, who promptly shot them both. It was a neat little repartee, but Suleyman had to do time for it.

The bedawin in that part of Egypt are semi-sedentary, living encamped in the Nile Valley on the edge of the cultivation. Most of them live in tents woven of thick camel and goat hair, others in huts of busa—dried stalks of maize, etc.—a few of the more wealthy Arabs have houses, built of the usual mud bricks, and own small areas of land which they cultivate. At certain seasons of the year, they migrate into the oases, returning again to their camping places in the Nile Valley in the spring, to avoid the camel fly that puts in its appearance in the oases at that season, and is capable of causing nearly as much mortality among the camels as the tsetse fly does among horses in other parts of Africa.

After spending a day or two trying to buy camels round Qara, I at length secured five first-rate beasts in the market at Berdis.

Each Arab tribe has its own camel brand or wasm, the origins of which are lost in the mists of antiquity. Some of these marks, however, are identical in shape with the letters of the old Libyan alphabet of North Africa, and with its near relation the Tifinagh, or alphabet of the modern Tawareks, and it is possible that there may be some connection between them.

The camels I bought at Berdis came from the Sudan. They were large fawn-coloured beasts with a fairly smooth coat, and all showed the same brand—a vertical line on the near side of the head by the nostril, and a similar line in the bend of the neck. They belonged, I believe, to the Ababda tribe.

Sheykh Suleyman eventually produced a decent-looking camel from somewhere, which I bought, and that, with the five I had procured from Berdis, constituted my whole caravan—and an excellent lot of beasts they were.

I engaged a couple of drivers to look after them—Musa, a young fellow of about eighteen years of age, and a little jet-black Sudani, called Abd er Rahman Musa Said, who turned out to be a first-rate man, and stayed with me the whole time I spent in the desert. Both of these men belonged to Sheykh Suleyman’s tribe.

The choice of a guide is a serious question, as the success or otherwise of an expedition depends very largely upon him, and I found considerable difficulty in finding a suitable man. I nearly engaged one who applied, as he seemed to be the only one of the candidates who knew anything at all about the desert beyond the Egyptian frontier. But Nimr—Sheykh Suleyman’s brother—sent me word by Abd er Rahman, that he was not to be relied on as he “followed the Sheykh”—the usual way among natives of describing a man who was a member of the Senussia, and as he refused a cigarette I offered him, I declined to employ him. Smoking, it may be noticed is forbidden to the followers of Sheykh Senussi, and the offer of a cigarette is consequently a useful—though not always infallible—test of membership of this fanatical fraternity.

My suspicions were confirmed on the following morning, when this man came in to hear my answer to his application. The camel he rode was branded on the neck with the wasm of the Senussia—a kind of conventionalised form of the Arabic word “Allah” ()—a damning piece of evidence showing not only that he belonged to the sect, but that his mount was supplied by the Senussia itself. He was probably one of their agents.

I was beginning to despair of finding a guide, when I received a telegram from the mudir (native governor) of Assiut, to whom I had applied for a reliable man, saying that he had got one for me, and asking whether I wished to see him.

The man arrived the next day. I took a fancy to him at once, which even his many peccadilloes never quite destroyed. His appearance was distinctly in his favour. He was a big man, nearly six feet high, which is very tall indeed for an Arab. He looked about sixty years old, and carried himself with that “grand air” which so many of the bedawin show, and which goes so well with the flowing robes of the East. Unlike most bedawin he was spotlessly clean.

His name he said was Qway Hassan Qway. It is quite impossible to convey an accurate idea of the pronunciation of Arabic names by mere European systems of writing, but his first name as he pronounced it, sounded like “choir” with a sort of gulping “g” instituted for the “ch.” He added the gratuitous piece of information that his grandfather had been a bey—a sort of military title corresponding roughly to a knighthood. He was clearly not in the habit of hiding his light under a bushel. But as he was very highly recommended by the mudir, and I liked the look of him, I engaged him.

“Guide” is perhaps hardly the correct term to describe the capacity in which he was expected to act, for he did not even profess to have any knowledge of the desert beyond the Egyptian frontier. But as it seemed hopeless to attempt to find anyone who did, I employed him as a man of great experience in desert travelling, who would act as head of the caravan and help me with his advice in any difficulty that arose.

I took him round and introduced him to my other men. At my suggestion he arranged with Sheykh Suleyman to hire a riding camel from him, as he said that he had not one of his own that was strong enough for a hard desert journey.

In spite of his engaging manners, for some reason that was not apparent, both Sheykh Suleyman and Abd er Rahman obviously took a strong dislike to him. I was rather pleased at this, as a little friction in one’s caravan makes the men easier to manage. At the time, I put it down to his belonging to a different tribe; but, judging from what afterwards occurred, I fancy it was really due to their knowing something against him, which, native-like, they did not see fit to tell me.

Qway being thus provided for, I dispatched my caravan by road to Kharga Oasis, and followed them myself a day or two afterwards by the bi-weekly train.

FOR the first few miles the line ran over the floor of the Nile Valley. Some twenty-eight miles from Qara, we emerged from the wady through which the railway ran on to the plateau above. Jebel, the word generally used in Egypt to signify desert, means literally mountain; the desert near the Nile Valley consisting of the plateau through which the Nile has cut its course.

The view on the plateau was impressive in its utter barrenness—no single plant, not even dried grass, was to be seen. Though the actual surface of the desert was very uneven, the general level was extremely uniform. The whole plateau consisted of limestone, in the slight hollows and inequalities of which patches of sand and gravel had collected. Here and there very low limestone hills, or rather mounds, were to be seen, none of them probably exceeding twenty feet in height. Everywhere on the plateau the effect of the sand erosion was most marked. The various types of surface produced being known to the natives as rusuf, kharafish, kharashef and battikh, or “water melon” desert, the nature of which will best be seen from the photographs.

The descent from the plateau into the depression in which Kharga Oasis lies, lay, like the ascent from the Nile Valley on to the plateau, through a wady. Kharga Oasis was at that time very little known to Europeans. Until the advent in the district of the company who had constructed the railway, the oasis had only been visited, I believe, by a few scientists and Government officials.

The desert beyond it had been so little explored that, within about a day’s journey from the oasis, I found a perfect labyrinth—several hundred square miles in extent—of little depressions, two or three hundred feet in depth, opening out of each other, that completely honeycombed what had previously been considered to be a part of the solid limestone plateau. Unfortunately, I was never able entirely to explore this curious district. It almost certainly contains at least two wells, or perhaps small oases—’Ain Hamur and ’Ain Embarres.

It is difficult to convey to anyone who has not seen them a clear idea of these oases in the Libyan Desert. Kharga is an oblong tract of country measuring roughly a hundred and forty miles from north to south by twenty from east to west. It is bounded on the east, north and west by huge cliffs or hills. Only about a hundred and fiftieth of its area, in the neighbourhood of the various villages, hamlets and farms scattered over its surface, is under cultivation. These cultivated areas are irrigated by artesian wells, many of which date back to a very remote period. But Kharga Oasis and its antiquities have already been described by two or three writers, so no lengthy account of them is necessary. It contains a number of temples and other ruins, the most important of which is the Temple of Hibis.

The temple has an excellent mummy story connected with it. Those engaged in excavating the temples and tombs of Egypt—an occupation locally known as “body snatching”—are well aware that in their work they always have “the dead agin them,” and there are few places where this has been so well exemplified as in the Temple of Hibis.

At the time of my arrival in Kharga it was being restored by an American archæologist, named W———. Before it was taken in hand, sand had drifted by the wind up against the walls, until it reached very nearly to their summit. In order to find out the extent of the buildings, W——— caused a trench to be dug parallel to one of the main walls.

Before this was completed, his men told him that they did not wish to continue working in that part, giving as their reason that a sheykh, i.e. a holy man, had been buried there, and since he was of exceptional holiness, lights had been seen hovering over his grave at night, and a man who had dug there before had fallen ill.

After some difficulty W——— succeeded in inducing the men to continue their work. But a sacred mummy is an uncanny thing to tackle. Sure enough, after his men had been digging a little longer, some earth slipped down into the trench, and with it came half the mummy, the other half remaining in the ground by the side of the trench. The men “downed tools” at once, and stood aghast at this calamity. The mummy’s feelings must have been seriously outraged for he lost no time in getting to work—the native who had actually dug him up was subject to fits, and had one and died that night.

The next morning the mummy had disappeared and all the men were back at work again, just as though nothing had happened. After some little time W——— began to make cautious enquiries as to what had happened to the mummy; but he elicited no information whatever. His enquiries were met with a blank stare of surprise—“mummy? What mummy? There had been no mummy there.” When a native knows nothing like that, it is quite hopeless to try and get anything out of him.

W———’s men went on with their work as though nothing had happened. One of them had atoned for the little accident to the mummy, so they knew that the rest of them were safe . . . but they seemed solicitous about W———’s health, and W——— soon found that he had not done with that mummy. Before the end of the season, he and the European working with him, who had had most to do with the mummy, went down with very bad Kharga fever—a virulent form of malaria—from which W——— himself nearly died.

Some time afterwards he discovered that his men had gone down before him, on the night the mummy had been dug up, and had collected his remains and given him a decent Mohammedan burial. He found out where he was buried and built a really magnificent tomb-top over his grave. It must be nearly ten feet long, six feet wide and two feet high. It was built of the very best mud bricks the oasis could produce—and he even whitewashed it. Since then the mummy has been pacified and has left W——— in peace.

When I found out where the mummy was buried, I bakhshished him, by shoving a five-piastre piece into the ground by the side of his grave—a proceeding that met with Dahab’s highest approval—and I had a more successful trip that year than any other. But it doesn’t say much for the intelligence of the mummy, for that five-piastre piece was a bad one.

For the benefit of the sceptical, I wish to add that this story is true—absolutely true—any native in Kharga will tell you that—besides there is the whited sepulchre to prove it; so for a mummy story it is very true indeed.

After a stay of some days in Kharga to allow the caravan to come through from the Nile Valley, we started off for our journey to Dakhla Oasis. Our road at first ran roughly from east to west. Shortly after our start it passed through a patch some two miles wide of curious clay ridges. These, which seemed all to be under twenty feet high, were evidently formed by the erosion of the earth by the wind-driven sand, for they all ran from north to south, in the direction of the prevailing wind. Just before reaching the western side of the oasis, our road passed through a gap in a belt of sand dunes, which, like the clay ridges, also ran in the same north to south direction of the prevailing wind.

These sand belts consist of long narrow areas covered with dunes, running across the desert in almost straight lines, roughly from north to south. This Abu Moharik belt, through which our road ran, has a length which cannot be much less than four hundred miles; but, though it varies somewhat in width at different points along its course, its average breadth is probably not much more than five miles, that is to say, about an eightieth of its total length. These belts consist almost entirely of more or less crescent-shaped dunes. In places the sand hills of which they are composed are scattered and stand isolated from each other, with areas of sand-free desert between them. In other parts the dunes are more closely packed; many of the crescents join together to form large clusters, and the spaces between the dunes are also sometimes covered with sand.

Beyond the dune belt, we turned sharply towards the south and soon came on to the northern end of the cultivated area surrounding Kharga village. From Kharga we journeyed southward to the village of Bulaq, passing on our way the sandstone temples of Qasr el Guehda—or Wehda, as it is often locally pronounced—and Qasr Zaiyan. Both were surrounded by a mudbrick enclosure filled with the remains of a labyrinth of small ruined brick buildings and contained some hieroglyphics and some fine capitals to the pillars.

Shortly after leaving Qasr Zaiyan, we entered a sandy patch covered with vegetation consisting of graceful branched Dom palms, acacias, palm scrub and grasses, in which some of the cattle of the breed, for which the oasis was noted, were grazing. Half an hour’s journey through this scrub-covered area brought us to the palm groves and village of Bulaq, on the south side of which I pitched my camp. Bulaq, though one of the largest villages of the oasis, with a population of about one thousand, is quite uninteresting. Its palm groves and cultivated land lie on its eastern side; on the north, south and west it is bounded by open sandy desert. It is chiefly noted as being the main centre in the oasis for the manufacture of mats and baskets, made chiefly from the leaves of the numerous Dom palms growing in the neighbourhood.

After breakfast the next day we struck camp and set off due west across the dune belt. It took us only an hour and a quarter to negotiate. Between the dunes were many interspaces entirely free from sand, so by keeping as much as possible to these and winding about, so as to cross the sand hills at their lowest points, we managed to get through the belt and emerged on to a gravelly sand-free desert beyond.

This, my first experience of the dunes of the Libyan Desert, was distinctly encouraging. Not only were the sand hills much smaller than I had been led to suppose, but their surface was crusted hard, and we crossed them with little difficulty; on emerging on the farther side, I set out for Dakhla Oasis, feeling far more hopeful of being able to cross the heavy sand to the west of that oasis than I had ever been before.

After crossing the dune belt, we altered our course and turned up nearly due north so as to make for the well of ’Ain Amur. The desert over which we were travelling was of pebbly sand, with an occasional rocky hill or ridge of black sandstone, and presented few points of interest. We camped at five, and I had a good opportunity of studying the peculiarities of my men, and of the kit they had brought with them for the journey.

Qway’s equipment was about as near perfection for the desert as it was possible to get it. His camel saddle was a rabiat, over this was a red leather cushion on which he sat. On this he placed his hurj, or pair of saddle-bags, of strong carpet-like stuff, one of which hung down on either side; above this lay a folded red blanket, and over this again he spread his furwa, or black sheepskin—an indispensable part of a camel rider’s equipment, which he not only places over his saddle, where it forms a soft and comfortable seat, but on which he sits when dismounted, lies on or covers himself with at night and throws over his shoulders on a cold day. Over the camel’s withers in front of the saddle was a second small pad, also of red leather, on which to rest his legs as he crossed them in front of him as he rode, hanging from his rabiat on either side was a sack of grain for his camel, the pockets of his hurj resting on the top of the sacks.

Slung on to his saddle was a most miscellaneous collection of articles. A Martini-Henry rifle I had lent him, with a text from the Koran engraved on it in gold lettering, lay along his camel’s back under his hurj on one side, and was balanced by a red parasol on the other. A goat-skin for carrying water, a small crock full of cheese, his camel’s nose-bag, or mukhlia, in which, when leaving an oasis he generally carried a few eggs packed in straw that he had managed to cadge from some village as we passed, his ’agal, or camel hobble, and a skin of flour, were all tied on to some part or other of his saddle.

In his hurj Qway carried a most extraordinary collection of things: a small circular mirror and a pair of folding nail scissors, with which at the end of a day’s march he frequently spent some time in trimming his beard and moustache—he was always spotlessly clean and neat—a clothes-brush, with which he always brushed his best clothes; his best shoes; an awl with the point stuck into a cork for operating on the camels; a packing needle and one or two sewing needles, with their points similarly protected, a little bag containing thread and buttons; a lump of soap; part of a cone of sugar; tea, salt, red pepper, pills and one or two other mysterious Arab medicines, all carefully tied up separately in different pieces of rag, some cartridges I had given him for his rifle, any onions he had been able to cadge in the last oasis, and a quantity of dried dates, constituted only a few of the miscellaneous assortment of things that his camel bags contained.

The kit of the camel drivers, who were of course on foot, was much more simple. Between them they brought a skin of flour, an enamelled iron basin to make their dough in; a slightly dished iron plate (saj) to bake their bread on, and two or three small tin canisters, in which they carried sugar, salt and tea, when they had any, and which were thrown into the ordinary sack in which they carried the small amount of surplus clothing they possessed.

Dahab carried his belongings in a bag rolled up in a rug on which he slept, his kit being of a very workmanlike nature. Khalil’s outfit, however, was largely of an ornamental character, including such trifles as a pink satiny pillow thickly studded with gold stars and covered with a pillow-case trimmed with lace!

In the rough usage inseparable from a desert journey everyone’s clothing becomes more or less damaged. The other men during our halts got their clothes patched and mended, but Khalil never repaired the numerous rents that soon began to appear in his garments. He ultimately became such a scarecrow that when, on one extremely hot day, he seated himself on a rock during our noontide halt, he sprang up again a great deal quicker than he sat down, the reason being that the rock was greatly heated, and, to put it poetically, he had not been “divided from the desert by the sewn.”

While in the Valley, Khalil had been quite a success, for he made a very fair interpreter. But no sooner did he get into the desert, than he appeared at once in his true character, of a dragoman of the deepest die. He was a sore trial, until I got rid of him.

The first few days in the desert with a new caravan are always trying. The men have not got into their work, and the camels, being strangers to each other, spend most of their time in fighting. A savage camel is a dangerous beast and it is of no use playing with him. The right place to hit him is his neck. Hit him hard with something heavy, and go on doing it and he becomes partially stunned and is then amenable to reason. Still, as the gifted author of “Eothen” put it, “you soon learn to love a camel for the sake of her gentle womanish ways.”

The Arabs have different names that they apply to camels according to their age—a one-year-old beast is called ibn esh Sha’ar, or sometimes ibn es Sena; a two-year-old, ibn Lebun; a three-year-old, Heg; a four-year-old, Thenni; a five-year-old, Jedda; a six-year-old, Raba’a; a seven-year-old, Sedis; and an eight-year-old, Fahal. The names apply to both male and female beasts. After eight years a male is called jemel (camel) simply, and the female naga.

On some very bad roads, where there is much rock surface to be crossed, many of the caravan guides carry an awl, string and pieces of leather, for the purpose of resoling a camel’s foot should the whole skin of it peel off, as it sometimes will. Qway resoled a foot of one of my camels once that went dead lame from this cause.

The operation was a simple one and seemed to be quite painless. He bored holes diagonally upwards through the thick skin on the edge of the sole of the foot, cut out a piece of leather slightly larger than the camel’s footprint, and then passed pieces of string through the holes he had bored, and through corresponding holes in the piece of leather and tied the ends of the string together. One or two of the strings got cut through by the rock and had to be replaced. The camel, however, without much difficulty was able to hobble back into the oasis, and after some weeks’ rest to allow the skin on the sole of his foot to grow again, completely recovered.

Camels vary considerably in colour. Among those I bought in my first season in Egypt were a beast of a rather unusual chestnut colour and two other fawn-coloured brutes, one of which had a shade of grey in its complexion, and the other was inclined towards a roan tint. These were called by my men the red, blue and green camels respectively.

The “green” beast was the one I used to ride. He was not a bad mount, but as he had not been ridden before I bought him, and guiding a camel by means of a single rein is always rather like trying to steer a boa-constrictor with a string, my stick at first had to be used pretty often.

In the afternoon of our third day, after leaving Kharga, we passed a mass of eroded chalk jutting up above the sandy ground, which, being a recognised landmark was known to natives from its shape as Abu el Hul—“the Sphinx.” From there we proceeded to the well of ’Ain Amur, close to which I found a few patches of light blue sand.

A journey of a day and a half westwards over the tableland, on the north cliff of which ’Ain Amur is placed, brought us to the top of the slope from the level of the plateau to Dakhla Oasis.

This negeb, or descent, proved to be rather difficult to negotiate. The sand had drifted up against the cliff we had to climb down, and once on the bank of sand the camels, by walking diagonally down the slope, were able to reach the bottom without difficulty. But at the top of the sand bank, the rocks of which the cliff was composed, overhung to form a sort of cornice, and the path on to the sand slope below it lay through a cleft in the cornice, so narrow that the baggage had to be lifted temporarily up from the camels’ backs to enable them to pass through the passage.

It took us half an hour to negotiate this place; but having at length managed it without any catastrophe, we camped in a bay in the cliff soon after reaching the bottom.

Soon after sunset a wild goose flew over the camp on to the plateau, coming from the south-west. Many were the speculations as to where it had come from, as no water was known to exist in the desert from which it came anywhere nearer than the Sudan.