Volume I Part 6 (2/2)

Amongst our followers was a ”Kazi of the Arabs,” one Jabr bin 'Abd el-Nabi, who is a manner of judge in civil, but not in criminal matters. Before the suit begins the plaintiff, or his surety, deposits a certain sum in coin, corn, or other valuables, and lays his damages at so much. The defendant, if inclined to contest the claim, pays into court the disputed amount, and the question is settled after the traditional and immemorial customs of the tribe. This man, covetous as any other disciple of Justinian, was exceedingly anxious to obtain the honorarium of a Shaykh, and he worked hard to deserve it. Shortly before our departure from Sharma, he brought in some scoriae and slag, broken and streaked with copper--in fact, ekvolades. They are thinly scattered over the seaward slope of the left jaw, where the stone nowhere shows a trace of the mineral in situ. As, however, the Expedition had found native copper in three places, more or less near the Jebel el-Abyaz, it was decided that the ore had been brought from the interior.

We were again much puzzled concerning the form of industry which gave rise to such a large establishment as Sharma. Agriculture was suggested and rejected; and we finally resolved that it was a branch-town that supplied ore to the great smelting-place and workshop of the coast, 'Aynunah, and possibly carbonate of lime to serve for flux.

The distance along the winding Wady, between the settlement and the sea westward, where the watercourse ends in sand-heaps, is seven to eight miles, and the coast shows no sign of harbour or of houses. About three miles, however, to the northwest is the admirable Bay of 'Aynu'nah, unknown to the charts. Defended on both sides by sandspits, and open only between the west and the north-west, where reefs and shoals allow but a narrow pa.s.sage, its breadth across the mouth from east to west measures at least five thousand metres, and the length inland, useful for refuge, is at least three thousand. At the bottom of this n.o.ble Liman, the Kolpos so scandalously abused by the ancients, are three sandy b.u.t.tresses metalled with water rolled stones, and showing traces of graves. Possibly here may have been the site of an ancient settlement. The Arabs call the southern anchorage, marked by a post and a pit of brackish water, El-Musaybah or Musaybat Sharma. Its only present use seems to be embarking bundles of rushes for mat-making in Egypt. The north-eastern end of the little gulf is the Gad (Jad), or Mersa of El-Khuraybah, before described as the port of 'Aynu'nah.

At the Musaybah I stationed our tender, the Sambuk El-Musahhil, which carried our heavy goods, specimens by the ton; rations and stores; forge, planks, and crowbars. The sailors lost no time in showing their rapacity. Every day they dunned us for tobacco; and when we made a counter-demand for the excellent fish which was caught in shoals, they simply asked, ”What will you pay for it?”

I imprudently left my keg of specimen-spirits on board this ign.o.ble craft, and the consequence was that it speedily became bone-dry. The Musaybah bight is a direct continuation of the Wady el-Mellah, which, joining that of El-Maka'dah, runs straight up to the Jebel el-Abyaz and to the Filon Husayn. These metalliferous quartzes cannot be further from the coast than a maximum distance of fourteen miles, and the broad, smooth watercourse, with its easy gradients, points it out as the site of the future tramway. I should prefer a simpler form of the ”Pioneer Steam Caravan or Saddleback-Railway System,” patented by Mr John L. Haddan, C.E., formerly of Damascus.[EN#29] He recommends iron as the best material for the construction; and the cost, delivered at Alexandria, would not exceed 1200, instead of 3000 to 20,000 per kilometre, including the rolling stock. As the distance from the port is nothing, 300 per kilometre would be amply sufficient for ”fixing up;” but I should reduce the price to 500 for the transport of some 50 tons per diem. By proper management of the rails or the main rail, it would be easy for trained camels to draw the train up the Wady; and the natural slope towards the sea would give work only to the brake where derailments are not possible.

At Sharma we saw the crescent, when the Englishmen turned their money in their pockets, and the Egyptian offficers muttered a blessing upon the coming moon. Every day we waxed more weary of the place; possibly the memories of the first visit were not pleasant. Many in camp still suffered; and an old Bedawi, uncle to Shaykh 'Alayan, died and was buried at 'Aynunah. The number of servants also made us uncomfortable. The head Dragoman, whose memory was confined to his carnet, forgot everything; and, had we trusted to him, half the supplies would have returned to Suez, probably for the benefit of his own shop at Zagazig. I soon found his true use, and always left him behind as magazine-man, storekeeper, and guardian of reserve provisions. He was also a dangerous, mischief-making fellow; and such men always find willing ears that ought to know better. Petros, the Zante man, was the model of a tipotenios (an ”anybody”), who seemed to have been born limp, without bones or brains. He was sent back as soon as possible to Cairo. The worst point of these worthies was, that they prevented, for their own reasons, the natives working for us; while they preferred eternal chatter and squabbles to working themselves. So the Greek element was reduced to George the cook, a short, squat, unwashed fellow, who looked like a fair-Hercules out of luck; who worked like three, and who loudly clamoured for a revolver and a bowie-knife. His main fault, professionally speaking, was that he literally drenched us with oil till the store happily ran out. His complexion was that of an animated ripe olive, evidently the result of his own cookery. His surprise when I imperatively ordered plain boiled rice, instead of a mess dripping with grease; and when told to boil the fish in sea water and to serve up the bouillon, was high comedy. Doubtless he has often, since his return, astounded his ”h.e.l.lenion” by describing our Frankish freaks and mad eccentricities.

The stationary camp also retained Lieutenant Yusuf and MM. Duguid and Philipin, with thirteen soldiers and sixteen miners. The six camels were placed under Gabr, Kazi el-'Orban; and all the stay-behinds were charged with was.h.i.+ng the several earths, with scouring the country for specimens, and with transporting sundry tons of the black sand before mentioned. Old Haji Wali, probably frightened by the Arabs, and maddened by the idea that, during his absence in the thick of the cotton season, the Fellahs of Zagazig would neglect to pay their various debts, began to ”malinger” with such intensity of purpose, that I feared lest he would kill himself to spite us. The venerable Shylock, who ever pleaded poverty, had made some 300 by lending a napoleon, say, on January 1st, which became a sovereign on February 1st; not to speak of the presents and ”benevolences” which the debtor would be compelled to offer his creditor. So he departed for El-Muwaylah, whence some correspondent had warned him that a pilgrim boat was about to start; declaring that he was dying, and trotting his mule as hard as it would go, the moment a safe corner was turned. He stayed two days on board the gunboat, and straightway returned to Egypt and the cotton season:--we had the supreme satisfaction, however, to hear that he had gone through the long quarantine at Tor. Yet after our return he reproached me, with inimitable coolness and effrontery, for not having behaved well to him.

On the morning of January 7th, a walk of two hours and twenty minutes (= seven miles) northwards, and mostly along the sh.o.r.e of the n.o.ble ”Musaybat Sharma,” transferred us to well-remembered 'Aynunah. The sea in places washed over slabs of the fine old conglomerates which, in this country, line the banks and soles of all the greater Wadys: these are the Cascalho of the Brazil, a rock which is treated by rejecting the pebbles and by pounding the silicious paste. The air was softer and less exciting than that of Sharma; and, although the vegetation was of the c.r.a.paud mort d'amour hue--here a sickly green, there a duller brown than April had showed--the scene was more picturesque, the ”Gate” was taller and narrower, and the recollection of a happy first visit made me return to it with pleasure. Birds were more abundant: long-shanked water-fowl with hazel eyes; red-legged rail; the brown swallow of Egypt; green-blue fly-catchers; and a black muscivor, with a snowy-white rump, of which I failed to secure a specimen. We also saw the tern-coloured plover, known in Egypt as Domenicain and red kingfishers. The game species were fine large green mallard; dark pintail; quail, and red-beaked brown partridge with the soft black eye.

New formations began to develop themselves, and the sickly hues of the serpentines and the chlorites, so rich in the New World, appeared more charming than brow of milk or cheek of rose.[EN#30]

There were few changes. A half-peasant Bedawi had planted a strip of barley near the camping place; the late floods had s.h.i.+fted the course of the waters; more date-trees had been wilfully burned; a big block of quartz, brother to that which we had broken, had been carried off; and where several of the old furnaces formerly stood, deep holes, dug by the ”money-hunter,” now yawned. I again examined the two large fragments of the broken barrage, and found that they were of uncut stone, compacted with fine cement, which contained palm-charcoal.

At 'Aynunah we gave only one day to work. While M. Lacaze sketched the views, we blasted with gunpowder more than half charcoal the Ma'dan el-Fayruz (”turquoise mine”), as the Arabs called it, on the right side of the Wady. The colour and texture were so unlike the true lapis Pharanitis that we began to suspect, and presently we ascertained from the few remaining fragments, it had been worked for copper,--the carbonates and the silicates which characterize Cyprus. Presently good specimens of the latter were brought to us from the Jebel el-Fara by a Bedawi pauper, 'Ayd of the Tagaygat-Huwaytat tribe. These half-naked shepherds and goatherds, who know every stone in the land, are its best guides; not the Shaykhs, who, as a rule, see little or nothing outside their tents. From our camp the direction, as reported by Ahmed Kaptan, was 102 degrees (mag.), and the distance three miles. I afterwards sent Lieutenant Yusuf from El-Muwaylah to make a detailed plan.[EN#31]

We also dug in an old pit amongst the Christian graves to the south-east of the camp, and below the left jamb of the ”Gate.”

Here also the Bedawin had been at work; and, when unable to work deep enough, they told us wonderful tales of an alabaster slab, which doubtless concealed vast treasures. In Arabia, as in Africa, one must look out for what there is not, as well as for what there is. After spending a morning in sinking a twelve-feet shaft, we came upon a shapeless coralline-boulder, which in old times had slipped from the sea-face of the cliff to the left of the valley. I ascended this height, and saw some stones disposed by the hand of man; but there were no signs of a large slave-miner settlement like that on the other side of the Bab.

In the afternoon Mr. Clarke led a party of quarrymen across the graveyards to El-Khuraybah, the seaport of 'Aynunah, and applied them to excavating the floor of a cistern and the foundations of several houses; a little pottery was the only result. It was a slow walk of forty minutes; and thus the total length of the aqueducts would be three miles, not ”between four and five kilometres.” I had much trouble and went to some expense in sending camels to fetch a ”written stone” which, placed at the head of every newly buried corpse, is kept there till another requires it. It proved to be a broken marble pillar with a modern Arabic epitaph. In the Gad el-Khuraybah, the little inlet near the Gumruk (”custom-house”), as we called in waggery the shed of palm-fronds at the base of the eastern sandspit, lay five small Sambuks, which have not yet begun fis.h.i.+ng for mother-of-pearl.

Here we found sundry tents of the Tagaygat-Huwaytat, the half Fellahs that own and spoil the once goodly land; the dogs barked at us, but the men never thought of offering us hospitality. We had an admirable view of the Tihamah Mountains--Zahd, with its ”nick;” the parrot-beak of Jebel el-Shati; the three perpendicular Pinnacles and flying b.u.t.tresses of Jebel 'Urnub; the isolated lump of Jebel Fas; the single cupola of Jebel Harb; the huge block of Dibbagh, with its tall truncated tower; the little Umm Jedayl, here looking like a pyramid; and the four mighty horns of Jebel Sharr.

I left 'Aynunah under the conviction that it has been the great Warshah (”workshop”) and embarking-place of the coast-section extending from El-Muwaylah to Makna; and that upon it depended both Wady Tiryam and Sharma, with their respective establishments in the interior. Moreover, the condition of the slag convinced me that iron and the baser metals have been worked here in modern times, perhaps even in our own, but by whom I should not like to say.

Chapter III.

Breaking New Ground to Maghair Shu'ayb.

On January 9th we left 'Aynunah by the Hajj-road, and pa.s.sed along the Quarry Hill visited during my first journey: the crest has old cuttings and new cuttings, the latter still worked for Bedawi headstones. The dwarf pillar with the mysterious cup is reflected by the Nubians, who hollow out the upper part of the stela to a depth of eight or ten inches without adding any ornament. Hence, perhaps, the Sawahili custom of the inserted porcelain-plate.

After issuing from the stony and sandy gorge which forms the short cut, we regained the Hajj-road, and presently sighted a scene readily recognized. Fronting us, the northern horizon was formed by the azure wall of Tayyib Ism,[EN#32] the ”Mountain of the Good Name,” backed by the far grander peaks of Jebel Mazhafah: the latter rises abruptly from the bluer Gulf of El-Akabah, and both trend to their culminating points inland or eastward. On our right followed the unpicturesque metalliferous heap of Jebel Zahd or 'Aynunah Mountain, whose Breche de Roland seems to show from every angle; its chocolate-coloured heights contain, they say, furnaces and ”Mashghal,” or ateliers, where the Maru (”quartz”) was worked for ore. In places it is backed by the pale azure peaks of Jebel el-Lauz. This ”Mountain of Almonds”

is said to take its name from the trees, probably bitter, which flourish there as within the convent-walls of St. Catherine, Sinai. They grow, I was told, high up in the clefts and valleys; and here, also, are furnaces both above and below. Of its white, sparkling, and crystallized marble, truly n.o.ble material, a tombstone was shown to me; and I afterwards secured a slab with a broken Arabic inscription, and a ball apparently used for rubbing down meal. The Lauz appears to be the highest mountain in Northern Midian-land; unfortunately, it is to be reached only via Sharaf, two long stations ahead, and I could not afford time for geographical research to the prejudice of mineralogical. Its nearer foot-hill is the Jebel Khulayf; and this feature contains, according to the Bedawin, seven wells or pits whose bottom cannot be seen. Between the ”Almond Block” and its northern continuation, Jebel Munifah, we saw a gorge containing water, and sheltering at times a few tents of the 'Amirat Arabs; in the same block we also heard of a Sarbut or rock said to be written over.

The regular cone of El-Makla' ends the prospect in the north-eastern direction. Looking westward, we see the ghastly bare and naked Secondary formation, the Rugham of the Bedawin, not to be confounded with Rukham (”alabaster or saccharine marble”). We afterwards traced this main feature of the 'Akabah Gulf as far south as the Wady Hamz. It is composed of the sulphates of lime--alabaster, gypsum, and the plaster with which the Tertiary basin of Paris supplies the world; and of the carbonates of lime--marble, chalk, kalkspar, sh.e.l.ls, and eggs.

The broken crests of the Jibal el-Hamra, the red hills backing Makna,[EN#33] and the jagged black peaks of their eastern parallel, the Kalb el-Nakhlah, look like plutonic reefs or island-chains emerging from the Secondary sea. The latter, whose bleached and skeleton white is stained, here and there, by greenish-yellow sands, chlorite and serpentine, stands boldly out from the chaos of purpling mountains composing Sinai, and ending southwards in the azure k.n.o.bs of three-headed Tiran Island. The country, in fact, altogether changed: quartz had disappeared, and chlorite had taken its place.

We pa.s.sed the night at El-'Usaylah, a Ghadir (or ”hollow”) without drainage, which the sinking of water cakes with mud and covers with an irregular circle of salsolaceous trees, a patch of dark metallic green. This ”'Usaylah” is eaten by camels, but rejected by mules. Here our post reached us from Suez on the seventh day, having started on the 2nd inst. A dollar was offered to the Bedawi, who eyed the coin indignantly, declaring that it ought to be a ginni (guinea). I had also given him some tobacco, and repented, as usual, my generosity.

Next day we finished the last and larger part of the second pilgrim-stage from El-Muwaylah. Our Arabs had been ”dodging;”

and, much disappointed about converting a two days' into a three days' march, they punished us by feeding their camels on the road, and by not joining us till the evening. As before, there was no game till we approached the springs; yet tufts and scatters of tamarisks, Samur (Inga unguis) and Arak (Salvadora), looked capable of sheltering it. And now, beyond the level and monotonous Desert, we began to see our destination;--palms and tufty trees at the mouth of a masked Wady. This watercourse runs between a background of reddish-brown rock, the foot-hills and sub-ranges of the grand block, ”El-Zanah,” to the north; and a foreground of pale-yellow, stark-naked gypsum, apparently tongue-shaped. Above the latter tower two sister-quoins of ruddy material, the s.h.i.+gdawayn, to which a tale hangs.

Presently we fell into and ascended the great Wady 'Afar, which begins in the Hisma, or Red Region, east of the double coast-range. After receiving a network of Secondary valleys that enable it to flow a torrent, as in France, every ten to twelve years, it falls into the Minat el-'Ayanat, a little port for native craft, which will presently be visited. We left this Wady at a bend, some two hundred metres wide, called the ”Broad of the Jujube,” from one of the splendid secular trees that characterize North Midian. Near the camping-ground we shall find another veteran Zizyphus, whose three huge stems, springing from a single base, argue a green old age. Here both banks of the Fiumara are lined with courses of rough stone, mostly rounded and rolled boulders, evidently the ruins of the water-conduits which served to feed the rich growth of the lower 'Afa'l. The vegetation of the gorge-mouth developed itself to dates and Daums, tamarisks and salsolaceae, out of which scuttled a troop of startled gazelles. We turned the right-hand jamb of the ”Gate,” and found ourselves at the water and camping-ground of Maghair Shu'ayb.

The general appearance of the station-basin is novel, characteristic, and not without its charms, especially when the sunset paints the plain with the red, red gold, and washes every barren peak with the tenderest, loveliest rosy pink. Under an intensely clear sapphire-coloured sky rises a distant rim of broken and chocolate-coloured trap-hills, set off by pale hillocks and white flats of gypsum, here and there crystallized by contact with the plutonics. The formation mostly stands up either in stiff cones or in long spines and ridges, whose perpendicular wall-like crests are impossible to climb. The snowy cliffs rest upon shoulders disposed at the ”angle of rest,” and the prevailing dull drab-yellow of the base is mottled only where accidental fracture or fall exposes the glittering salt-like interior. The gashes in the flank made by wind and rain disclose the core--grey granite or sandstone coloured by manganese. The greater part of the old city was built of this alabaster-like[EN#34] material. When new, it must have been a scene in fairy-land; Time has now degraded it to the appearance and the consistence of crumbling salt. The quoin-shaped hills of the foreground, all uptilted and cliffing to the north, show the curious mauve and red tints of the many-coloured clays called in the Brazil Taua. Even the palms are peculiar. Their tall, upright crests of lively green fronds, their dead-brown hangings, and their trunks charred black by the careless Bedawi, form a quaint contrast with the genteel, nattily dressed, and c.o.c.kneyfied brooms of Egypt and the Hejaz. And that grandeur may not be wanting to the view, on the east rise the peak and pinnacles of the Almond Mountain (Jebel el-Lauz), whilst northwards the Jebel el-Za'nah, a huge dome, forms the horizon.

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