Volume I Part 6 (1/2)
On the plain to the north of the Jebel el-Abyaz also, I found curdles of porphyritic trap, and parallel trap-d.y.k.es, cutting the courses of large-grained grey granite: as many as three outcrops of the former appeared within fourteen yards. This convinced me that the whole of the solid square, thirty kilometres (six by five), where the quartz emerges, is underlaid by veins and veinlets of the same rock. Moreover, I then suspected, and afterwards ascertained, that the quartz of the Jibal el-Bayza, as the Bedawin call this section, is not a local peculiarity. It everywhere bursts, not only the plain between the sea and the coast-range, but the two parallels of mountain which confine it on the east. In fact, throughout our northern march the Arabs, understanding that its object was ”Maru,” the generic name for quartz,[EN#23] brought us loads of specimens from every direction. Nothing is easier than to work the purely superficial part. A few barrels of gunpowder and half a dozen English miners, with pick and crowbar, suffice. Even our dawdling, f.e.c.kless quarrymen easily broke and ”spelled” for camel loading some six tons in one day.
Our short se'nnight was not wasted; yet I had an uncomfortable feeling that the complication of the country called for an exploration of months and not hours. Every day some novelty appeared. The watercourses of the Ghats or coast-range were streaked with a heavy, metallic, quartzose black sand which M.
Marie vainly attempted to a.n.a.lyze. We afterwards found it in almost every Wady, and running north as far as El-'Akabah; whilst, with few exceptions, all our was.h.i.+ngs of red earth, chloritic sand, and bruised stone, yielded it and it only. It is apparently the produce of granite and syenite, and it abounds in African Egypt. I was in hopes that tungsten and t.i.taniferous iron would make it valuable for cutlery as the black sand of New Zealand. Experiments in the Citadel, Cairo, produced nothing save magnetic iron with a trace of lead. But according to Colonel Ross, the learned author of ”Pyrology, or Fire Chemistry,”[EN#24]
it is iserine or magnetic ilmenite, t.i.taniferous iron-sand, containing eighty-eight per cent. of iron (oxides and sesquioxides), with eleven per cent. of t.i.tanic acid.
The Arabs brought in fine specimens of hemat.i.te and of copper ore from Wady Gharr or Ghurr, six miles to the south of camp. Here were found two water-pits in a well-defined valley; the nearer some ten miles south-west of the Jebel el-Abyaz, the other about two miles further to the north-west; making a total of twelve.
About the latter there was, however, no level ground for tents. A mile and a half walking almost due north led to a veinlet of copper 30 metres long by 0.30 thick, with an east-west strike, and a dip of 45 degrees south. This metal was also found in the hills to the south. Crystalline pyroxene and crystallized sulphates of lime apparently abound, while the same is the case with carbonate of manganese, and other forms of the metal so common in Western Sinai. Briefly, our engineer came to the conclusion that we were in the very heart of a mining region.
We made a general reconnaisance (December 27th) of a place whence specimens of pavonine quartz had come to hand. Following the Wady 'Ifriya round the north and east of the White Mountain, we fell into the Wady Simakh (of ”Wild Sumach”), that drains the great gap between the Pinnacles and the b.u.t.tresses of the 'Urnub-Tihamah section. After riding some two miles, we found to the south-east fragments of dark, iridescent, and metallic quartz: they emerge from the plain like walls, bearing north-south, with 36 degrees of westing and a westward dip of 15 degrees to 20 degrees--exactly the conditions which Australia seeks, and which produced the huge ”Welcome Nugget” of Ballarat.
They crop out of the normal trap-d.y.k.ed grey granite, and select specimens show the fine panache l.u.s.tre of copper. M. Marie afterwards took from one of the geodes a pinch of powder weighing about half a gramme, and cupelled a bright dust-shot bead weighing not less than two centigrammes. Without further examination he determined it to be argentiferous, when it was possibly iron or antimony. On the other hand, the silver discovered in the Grand Filon by so careful and conscientious an observer as Gastinel Bey, and the fact that we are here on the same line of outcrop, and at a horizon three hundred feet lower, are rea.s.suring.
This vein, which may be of great length and puissance, I took the liberty of calling the ”Filon Husayn,” from the prince who had so greatly favoured the Expedition. Here we had hit upon the Negros,[EN#25] or coloured quartzose formations of Mexico, in which silver appears as a sulphure; and we may expect to find the Colorado, or argillaceous, that produces the n.o.ble metal in the forms of chlorure, bromure, and iodure. The former appears everywhere in Midian, but our specimens are all superficial, taken a ciel ouvert. To ascertain the real value and the extent of the deposits required exposure of the veins at a horizon far lower than our means and appliances allowed us to reach. If the rock prove argentiferous I should hope to strike virgin silver in the capillary or aborescent shape below. Above it, as on the summit of the Jebel el-Abyaz, and generally in the ”Maru” hills and hillocks of North Midian, the dull white quartz is comparatively barren; showing specks of copper; crystals of pyrites, the ”crow-gold” of the old English miner, and dark dots of various metals which still await a.n.a.lysis.
Thus, I would divide the metalliferous quartzes of this North-Midianite region into two chief kinds: those stained green and light blue, whose chief metallic element is copper, with its derivatives; and the iridescent Negro, which may shelter the Colorado. In South Midian the varieties of quartz are incomparably more numerous, and almost every march shows a new colour or const.i.tution.
About the Jebel el-Abyaz, as in many mining countries, water is a serious difficulty. The princ.i.p.al deposit lies some three miles east of the camping ground in a Nakb or gorge, El-Asaybah, offsetting from the great Fiumara, ”El-Simakh;” and apparently it is only a rain-pool. Throughout Midian, I may say, men still fetch water out of the rock. M. Philipin, whilst pottering about this place, saw two Beden (ibex) with their young, which suggests a permanent supply of drink.[EN#26]
However that may be, Norton's Abyssinian pumps, for which I had vainly applied at Cairo, would doubtless discover the prime necessary in the Wadys, many of the latter being still damp and muddy. Moreover, the crible continue a grilles filtrantes, the invention of MM. Huet and Geyler, introduced, we are told, into the mechanical treatment of metals, a principle which greatly economizes fluid. Founded upon the fact that sands of nearly the same size, but of different densities, when mixed in liquid and subjected to rapid vertical oscillation, range themselves by order of weight, the heavier sinking and not allowing pa.s.sage to lighter matter, the new sieve offers the advantages of a single and simple instrument, with increased facility for treating poor ”dirt.” Finally, as I shall show, the country is prepared by nature to receive a tramway; and the distance to the sea does not exceed fourteen miles, liberally computed.[EN#27]
Either the rain-water affected the health of the party, or it suffered from the excessive dryness and variations of the atmosphere, eight to nine hundred feet above sea-level (aner.
29.10), ranging in the tents between 92 degrees by day and 45 degrees at night, a piercing, killing temperature in the Desert.
Moreover, the cold weather is mostly the unwholesome season in hot lands, and vice versa: hence the Arab proverb, Hararat el-Jebel, wa la Bard-ha (”The heat of the hills and not their cold”). Old Haji Wali lost his appet.i.te, complained of indigestion, and clamoured to return home; Ahmed Kaptan suffered from Sulb (”lumbago”) and bad headache; whilst Lieutenant Yusuf was attacked by an ague and fever, which raised the mouth thermometer to 102 degrees--103 degrees, calling loudly for aconite. These ailments affected the party more or less the whole way, but it was not pleasant to see them begin so soon. When our work of collecting specimens--three tons from the Jebel el-Abyaz, and three from the Filon Husayn--was finished, I resolved upon returning to the coast and treating our loads at the Sharma water. We reached the valley mouth on December 30th, and we greatly enjoyed the change from the harshness of the inland to the mildness of the seaboard air.
We stayed at Sharma, much disliking its remarkably monotonous aspect, for another week, till January 7, 1878. Yule, ”the wheel,” despite the glorious tree-logs and roaring fires, had been a failure at the White Mountain. The Dragoman had killed our last turkey, and had forgotten to bring the plum-pudding from El-Muwaylah: there was champagne, but that is not the stuff wherewithal to wash down tough mutton. New Year's Day, on the other hand, had all the honours. Its birth was greeted with a flow of whisky-punch, wherein wine had taken the place of water; and we drank the health of his Highness, the Founder of the Expedition, in a bottle of dry Mumm. The evening ended with music and dancing, by way of ”praying the Old Year out and the New Year in.” Mersal, the Boruji, performed a wild solo on his bugle; and another negro, Ahmed el-s.h.i.+nnawi, played with the Nai or reed-pipe one of those monotonous and charming minor-key airs--I call them so for want of a word to express them--which extend from Midian to Trafalgar, and which find their ultimate expression in the lovely Iberian Zarzuela.[EN#28] The boy Husayn Geninah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious Midian. And, to make the shock more violent, some friend, male salsus, sent me copies of the cosmopolitan Spectator and the courteous Mayfair, which at once became waste paper for Bedawi cartridges.
Our Rosh ha Shanah (”New Year's Day”) was further distinguished by the discovery of a vein and outcrop of metalliferous quartz, about half an hour's walk, and bearing nearly east (80 degrees mag.) from camp. We followed the Wady Sharma, and found above its ”gate” the masonry-foundation of a square work; near it lay the graves of the Wild Men, one with the normal awning of palm-fronds honoris causa. There were signs of stone-quarrying, and at one place a road had been cut in the rock. Leaving on the north the left side of the watercourse, with its rushes (Scirpus), and huge-headed reeds (Arundo donax), its dates and Daums--the two latter often scorched and killed by the careless Bedawi--we struck into a parallel formation, the Wady el Wuday, bone-dry and much trodden by camels. Arrived at the spot, we found that the confused ma.s.ses of hill subtending the regular cliff-line of the old coast, are composed of grey granite, seamed with snowy quartz, and cut by the usual bands of bottle-coloured porphyritic trap, which here and there becomes red. Some of the heights are of greenish-yellow chloritic felspar, well adapted for brick-making. The surface of the land is scattered with fragments of white silex and fine red jasper, banded with black oligistic iron: this rock, close, hard, and fine enough to bear cutting, appears everywhere in scatters and amongst the conglomerates.
Only one fossil was picked up, a mould so broken as to be quite useless.
We also followed out M. Marie's find, to which he had been guided by a patch of red matter, conspicuous on the road from Tiryam to Sharma. For forty minutes we skirted the seaward face of the old cliff, a line broken by many deep water-gashes and b.u.t.tressed by Goz, or high heaps of loose white sand. We then turned eastwards or inland, ascended a Nakb (”gorge”), and saw, as before, the corallines and carbonates of lime altered, fused, scorified, and blackened by heated injections; the grey granite scored with quartz veins, running in all rhumbs; and the porphyritic trap forming crests that projected from the sands. The cupriferous stone struck east-west, with a dip to the south; the outcrops, visible without digging, measured fifteen to twenty metres long, by one to one and a half in breadth.
New Year's Day also restored to us the pup ”Paiji.” When quite a babe, it had walked up to me in the streets of Cairo, evidently claimed acquaintances.h.i.+p, and straightway followed me into Shepheard's, where; having a certain sneaking belief in metempsychosis, I provided it with bed and board. During our third march to the White Mountain, being given to violent yelps, which startled both mules and camels, the small thing had been left to walk, and had apparently made friends with an Arab goatherd. After nine days' absence without leave, ”Paiji”
reappeared, with dirty rags tied round its bony back and wasted waist, showing an admirable skeleton, and making the most frantic demonstrations of joy. The loss of the poor little brute had affected all our spirits: we thought that the hyenas and the ravens had seen the last of it; and it received a warm welcome home.
M. Lacaze, unlike the rest, took a violent fancy for the Wady Sharma: the water-scenery enchanted him. His sketches were almost confined to the palm-growth, and to the greenery so unexpected in arid Midian, where, according to the old and exploded opinion, Moses wrote the Book of Job. The idea of Arabia is certainly not a.s.sociated with flowing rills, and waving trees, and rustling zephyrs. Every morning I used to awake surprised by the song of the Naiad, the little runnel whimpling down its bed of rushes, stone, and sand; and the response of the palms making music in the land-breeze.
Finally, on New Year's Day, Lieutenant Amir, guided by Shaykh Furayj, and escorted by soldiers and miners, made a three days'
trip to the Wady 'Urnub. There he surveyed a large isolated ”Mara,” or quartz-hill, some twenty-two to twenty-five direct miles south-east of the main outcrop; thus giving a considerable extent to the northern mining-focus. This feature is described as being four or five times larger than the Jebel el-Abyaz (proper); and the specimens of quartz and grey granite proved it to be of the same formation. It showed a broken outline, with four great steps or d.y.k.es, which had apparently been worked. In the basal valleys, and spread over the land generally, was found a heavy yellow sand, calcareous and full of silex: the guide called it Awwal Hisma (the ”Hisma frontier”).
Our travellers returned by a parallel line, southerly and more direct. In the Wady 'Urnub, the Ma'azah of the Salimat clan received them with apparent kindness, inwardly grumbling the while at their land being ”spied out;” and they especially welcomed Furayj, who, being a brave soldier, is also noted as a peacemaker. All the men were armed, and wore the same dress as the Huwaytat; like these, they also breed camels and a.s.ses--that is, they are not cow-Arabs. Certain travellers on the Upper Nile have distributed the Bedawin into these two groups; add horse-Arabs and a.s.s-Arabs, and you have all the divisions of the race as connected with the so-called ”lower animals.” About three hours (= eleven miles) from Sharma camp, some pyramids of sand were pointed out in the Wady Ratiyah: the Bedawin call one of them the Goz et-Hannan (”Moaning Sand-heap”). They declare that when the Hajj-caravan pa.s.ses, or rather used to pa.s.s, by that way, before the early sixteenth century, when Sultan Selim laid out his maritime high-road, a Naubah (”orchestra”) was wont to sound within its bowels. This tale, which, by-the-by, is told of two other places in Midian, may have been suggested by the Jebel el-Nakus (”Bell Mountain”) in Sinai-land; but as the Arabs perform visitation and sacrifice to the ”Moaning-heap,” the superst.i.tion probably dates from ancient days. Ruins are also reported to exist in the Jebel Fa's, the southern boundary of the 'Urnub valley; and, further south, in the Jebel el-Harb, I was told by some one whose name has escaped me, of a dolmen mounted upon three supports. Lieutenant Amir also brought copper ore from the Wady 'Urnub, and from the Ras Wady el-Mukhbir specimens of a metal which the Arabs use as a kohl or collyrium. It proved, however, iron, not antimony; and the same mistake has been made in the Sinaitic Peninsula.
At Wady Sharma we rigged up, under the superintendence of M.
Philipin, a trough and a cradle for was.h.i.+ng the black sands, the pounded quartz of the Jebel el-Abyaz, and the red sands; these latter had shown a trace of silver (1/10000) to the first Expedition. We mixed it with mercury and amalgamed it in goatskins; the men moved them to and fro; but, of course, the water evaporated, and the ma.s.s speedily became dry. The upper or superficial white yielded only, as far as our engineer could judge, a little copper and bright k.n.o.bs of pyrites. The Negros, or iridized formations, of the ”Filon Husayn” on a lower horizon, gave the dubious result already alluded to. All the experiments were conducted in the rudest way. Of course, a quant.i.ty of metal may have escaped notice; and a fair proportion of the powdered stone was reserved for scientific treatment in Europe.
During our first trip we had found, upon the right jaw of the Wady Sharma, a ruined village of workmen, probably slaves, whose bothans measured some twelve feet by eight. They differ from the Nawamis, or ”mosquito-huts,” as the word is generally translated, only in shape--the latter are circular, with a diameter of ten feet--and they perfectly resemble the small stone hovels in the Wady Mukattab, which Professor Palmer (”Desert of the Exodus,” p.
202) supposes to have been occupied by the captive miners and their military guardians. This time we ascended the coralline ridge which forms the left jamb. At its foot a rounded and half degraded dorsum of stiff gravel, the nucleus of its former self, showed a segment of foundation-wall, and the state of the stone suggested the action of fire. Possibly here had been a furnace.
The summit also bears signs of human occupation. The southern part of the b.u.t.tress-crest still supports a double concentric circle with a maximum diameter of about fifteen feet; the outside is of earth, apparently thrown up for a rampart behind a moat, and the inside is of rough stones. Going south along the dorsum, we found remains of oval foundations; a trench apparently cut in the rock, pottery often an inch and more thick, and broken handmills made of the New Red Sandstone of the Hisma. Finally, at the northernmost point, where the cliff-edge falls abruptly, with a natural arch, towards the swamp, about one kilometre broad at the Bab, we came upon another circle of rough stones. We were doubtful whether these rude remains were habitations or old graves; nor was the difficulty solved by digging into four of them: the pick at once came upon the ground-rock. Hitherto these ruins have proved remarkably sterile; the only products were potsherds, fragments of hand-mills, and a fine lump of white marble (Rukham), supposed to come from the Jebel el-Lauz.