Chapter XII

SIWAH

“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.

[1897]“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 13s.

“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.

“We were, therefore, in the highest spirits, and Suliman and the camels having joined me at the foot of the hill, and he having also climbed up and convinced himself, we went on singing with joy. Two more hours, I thought, and we should be at the spring, and I led the way over the intervening nefuds gaily. The sun was in our faces as we topped the last of them, and saw at last the plain of our hopes before us. Suliman and I looked in each other’s faces blankly. There was nothing at all of what we were expecting—only another long, low, shining plain. The tarfa clumps had resolved themselves into as many bare black stones, and nothing to break the horizon but a single pyramidal hill far away, a full day’s journey off. It was a bitter disappointment. We asked Osman when he arrived with the camels whether he recognized the valley as Síttarah, and he said ‘no.’ We were worse lost than before. Nevertheless, we were convinced that the valley must be still before us, and like an old hound Suliman ran off to the left casting for some sign of it, and presently came, by extraordinary good fortune, on a track, and then a mile or two still farther on, at the very place where the black stones were which we had taken for tarfa clumps, to our exceeding joy, lay the great caravan road—we had not seen it for two days—running with at least a hundred parallel camel paths bearing due westward. This, ‘if not the work of the ján,’ we know must be our road. It led straight to the pyramidal hill, and ‘there,’ said Suliman, ‘the water will be.’ So now we are camped at sunset, once more praising God for his bounty, and in good heart and hope. Old Beseys and all of them had given themselves up for lost. They had made no complaint, but also had made no effort to find the road, but had ridden silently—Beseys saying his prayers at intervals. Perhaps they were heard in heaven.” [N.B. What is very remarkable in this adventure is that both Suliman and I, he being a master in desert craft, having been deceived by the mirage, were so not to our own hurt but to our advantage, for the apparent vegetation lay precisely where the caravan road was emerging from the sand. The mirage in our case saved us. Not that we were yet in great straits for water, except for the mare, for we still had skins enough for our own drinking, and the weather was cold. But, if we had failed to hit off Síttarah next day, we should have soon been in sorry plight, for Síttarah is the only water between El Wah and Siwah. What makes travelling without guides so dangerous in the western desert is that the oases are mere cup-like hollows in the plains, which one may pass to right or left of without sign of their being near. There are almost no landmarks visible from the plain, and the sands have encroached, obliterating the ancient roads, which are most of them now abandoned. In former days the oases must have been all inhabited, but are not so now. The sand drifts are gradually overwhelming them. To pass by one of these and so miss the water is for a caravan a terrible disaster.]

“22nd Feb.—Close to our encampment we found the skeletons of two donkeys, which Osman recognizes as connected with a gruesome tale. Last year at El Wah, a witness being wanted in the affairs of a certain khawajeh, probably a Greek, who had died there, the Egyptian authorities, urged on by an officer of the Inglis, sent to Siwah for the man, who was brought to El Wah with his wife and his two boys. These, when the inquiry was over, wanted to return, and, notwithstanding that it was summer, the man set out for Siwah with his family, and his two donkeys carrying jars of water for the road. The donkeys, however, broke down near Síttarah, doubtless here; the water was finished, and the father sent the elder of the two boys forward with a jar to Síttarah to bring them water. On his return the boy found his mother and his brother already dead of thirst, while the father was still alive. But having drunk, he too died, and the boy was left alone to bury them and tell the tale. We found the graves by the roadside near the donkey skeletons. These, Osman says, were the last who travelled here, and it was two years ago.

“As I walked with Osman this morning he told me the story, and also much about Burnou and Wadai. There are there, he assures me, wild koheyl. The Arabs catch them at their watering places in pitfalls or traps which catch them by the leg. They keep these horses tied up fast for three days, then put bits into their mouths and ride them. They can go ten days without water. This he told me in almost the same words as those used by Leo Africanus 400 years ago. I asked about their colours, and he said they were bay, white, and dark; they had long manes and tails; some Arabs ate them, calling them halal. I asked him about the lant (mentioned by Leo Africanus), and he said, ‘Oh, yes el ant,’ and described it as red (bay) above with a white belly and dark markings between the red and the white, like a gazelle—the male alone with horns, big like a cow. I am convinced this is the Eland of natural history. There are also elephants, lions, and giraffes. The elephant is half halal (permitted food), half haram (forbidden food), the fore toes halal. He has eaten the flesh. He described the giraffe as a tall camel with two small horns. The Falata, he said, hunt all these—and the gazelle with hawks. They ride koheyls after the ostrich and the lant. All this is most interesting. There are also wild asses.

“All this time we were following the caravan road, and at about eleven we sighted bushes—this time real bushes—and I galloped on some three or four miles to the dry edge of the Lake of Síttarah. It lay exactly as Suliman had said, under the pyramidal hill. This eastern end of the lake (which is a salt lake and quite undrinkable) is clearly a paradise of wild beasts. The tracks of the ariel gazelle were like those of a flock of sheep, and of the hares, like those of rabbits at Newbuildings in the snow, round every bush. And there were jackal tracks, and the track of a wolf and of a wild boar quite fresh. I was surprised to find the jackal tracks, as I had never seen them before far from inhabited places. But their being here was later explained by the dates, which they doubtless feed on. Of bushes I found ghurkhud and aghur, the latter always a sign of former cultivation, tamarisks on a mound or two, and a single palm bush. I should have liked to encamp here on the chance of seeing an ariel; but it was necessary to find the water first. Osman could not recollect where the spring was, except that it was under palms, and about two miles farther on palms were visible. So I once more cantered on. The first palms stood in a swamp near the lake, just opposite the pyramidal hill, with blue water beyond them for quite a mile. The swamp, too, was a main home of the wild beasts, but as yet I saw no birds. I was driven out of it by the midges and mosquitoes, which assailed me in battalions from the reeds, and I was glad to get back to the desert and wait there for the camels. When they arrived we all dispersed in search of the spring, which Osman could not find, examining palm clump after palm clump. At the western edge of the lake there is no marsh, and the nefuds come down to the water’s edge with only a fringe of reeds and tufts of palms, which we found covered with good fruit. Of these we plucked and ate. The first hopeful sign of water was when with a rush and a scream out of a palm clump flew a blackbird, a real English blackbird. I had never seen one in the desert, or in Egypt, except in my own garden of Sheykh Obeyd. This was a proof there must be good water, and soon after Suliman discovered good water by digging in the sand to his elbow at a place which seemed frequented, and Osman found more under the very last palm of the Oasis westwards. The springs had been choked with sand drift, but were easily dug out.

“Minshawi, meanwhile, had got another supply from the shore of the lake. The lake itself is salt, like all desert lakes, but by digging a few yards away from the edge, drinkable, though brackish, water can be had; and of this Yemama drank her fill. She was very thirsty, as yesterday she had been on half rations. We all felt very happy, and agreed to spend two nights and enjoy the water. There is all here a man with a few she-camels can require to live on, good pasture, good water, and good dates. The lake is covered with flamingos, and I saw a heron and heard wild geese. I think I saw pelicans. I also saw one chrysippus butterfly, but no land bird except the one blackbird. It would be a paradise for a hermit, but for the gnats. These came out in swarms at sunset, and drove me out of camp, and a mile away into the nefud, where I spent the night alone with Suliman and our two nagas. Of all the hermitages I have yet found this is the best. It is never visited by man. There are no Arabs anywhere within a hundred miles, and it is very beautiful—a winter hermitage, I mean, for in summer it must be a furnace. It is hot even now.

“23rd Feb.—After a delightful night I walked at sunrise to the top of the highest nefud, from which the whole lake can be seen. It is very interesting. Clearly the Oasis has been inhabited, but has been overwhelmed by the nefuds advancing on it from the south and west. The lake may be seven miles long, and is very beautiful. The northern shore is bounded by low cliffs, the ancient limit doubtless of the lake, which is shrinking, and will some day be a mere chaos of nefud, as so many others are. It was somewhere in this desert, they say, that Cambyses disappeared with his army. I can well believe it, for we were within a little of such a misfortune two days ago. If the weather had been less clear and cool I could not have seen the valley, and with a sand wind we might easily have perished. Now all seems easy and delightful. In the afternoon I went out for a ride, intending to visit the pyramidal hill, but got into a quicksand, crossing over a half dry arm of the lake, out of which I had some difficulty in dragging my mare. The blackbird I saw again at the same place, and a kestrel. It is so hot to-day that I had the tent pitched for a shade—the first time we have used it, as I sleep under my carpet shelter. The barometer shows the lake to be 120 feet below sea level.

“24th Feb.—Started at sunrise, believing our difficulties to be now over, but we took a wrong track, which led us south-west instead of farther north, towards some distant palms we had sighted an hour after leaving. This took us to what I believe to be the oasis of Bahreyn—at least such an Oasis is marked on my map. [N.B. A very excellent German map.] This Oasis is very like Síttarah, though with two lakes instead of one—whence its name. Osman pronounced this to be Araj, and said we were now close to Zeytoun and Siwah, which I knew could not be the case, and was sure when we came to the second lake it could only be Bahreyn. The road, too, westwards, we found blocked by a great sebkha (a dry salt marsh), and we were obliged to turn north and travel several hours to recover the right road. Fortunately we fell in soon with the track of a donkey, and two men who had been to the oasis, we think, to gather dates, a track of about ten days old, which we followed. The barometer at Bahreyn showed exactly 0° above the sea. The donkey track led us to a nukbeh, where we fell in with a well-marked road bearing north-west by north over a plateau of limestone hillocks, each about ten feet high, like the crested waves of the British Channel in rough weather, with the space between them sand. The road was carefully marked with rijms (cairns), and easy to follow, and I cantered gaily on to find a camping place, where we now snugly are, screened from the north-east wind. It is fortunate we found the donkey track, or we might not have hit off the road. Yemama is now in excellent condition, and ate up her two melwas of corn during the night. The camels were all watered before starting. At Bahreyn to-day I saw a kite and a raven.

“I find Beseys is very unwilling now to go to Jerabub, being afraid, I think, of displeasing the Akhwan. We have agreed to find out at Zeytoun or Siwah whether Abu Seyf is at Jerabub or not, and to pass by without alighting if he should be absent.

“25th Feb.—To-day we are in a worse plight than ever. We started very early, taking up our path of yesterday, which brought us in a couple of hours to the end of the limestone plain, and to my great delight to the edge of a new and very deep oasis which I knew must be the Araj we were looking for. Araj has no lake, only a little standing water and a tamarisk marsh. But a vast number of palms are scattered over a wide basin with many isolated clumps, very beautiful, in the sand. It was no case here of the nefud having destroyed the villages, as in the other oases, but of abandonment, one cannot say why. There are palms enough left to support many villages. The cliffs here are on the south and west sides, the sand slopes on the north and east. Still on the track of the donkey and the two men we chevied along the edge of the jungle north westwards, the ground covered with the tracks of gazelles, hares, and jackals. Of birds I saw only three, mourning chats, black with white beaks and rumps—nothing else alive. The depth of the oasis puzzled my barometer. It must be about 150 feet below the sea. From the bottom the track led up by some clumps of palms, where I am sure there must be water underground, across deep nefuds to the opposite nukbe marked by some wonderful rocks—one quite square, white as marble, and with curious architectural markings, another like a tall chessman, both 100 feet high at least, their tops level with the plain above, a splendid hermitage where one might find shade and shelter at all hours and in every weather. They are geologically of limestone, with layers of shells, their tops black, like lava. One layer of the chessman, one of those round white flakes, Suliman calls dirahem (money). This place was the wildest, the most romantic, the most supernatural in its natural structure I have ever seen, an abode of all the jan.

“I cantered up the sand slope to the top of the pass, elated at having found Araj corresponding so well with my map, and being in front forgot to give orders for water to be looked for, and the girbehs filled. Hence our present trouble. For on gaining the upper plain, instead of the well-marked track we had expected, we found nothing but a windswept plateau of nefud interspersed with mounds of stone, where the donkey track speedily disappeared or was lost, nor could we ever again find it. We were left now to our sole wits and the mercy of God, for the wind was blowing hard from the north-east and was drifting the sand hopelessly. Suliman, now in command, recommended descending towards some hills to the north-west, and this brought us to a new formation of limestone ground, arranged in flat masses with sharp edges, the most abominable imaginable interspersed with sand. Across this we floundered with our camels for several hours, when Suliman, having climbed to the top of a low tell, announced that he had seen a valley with palms, and it was resolved, much against old Osman’s wish, that we should cross the whole valley on the chance of striking a track near the hills. The trend of the valley was westwards, and if it was the beginning of the Siwah valley, Suliman argued, it must have a road passing up it. So Suliman and I went scouting with the tall buttresses of a crag to west-north-west for our object. Now we have almost reached these, but have found no sign of road or life—only a poor wagtail lost in the strong wind. We have camped for the night, feeling ourselves to be out of all reckoning (for this according to the map should have been the Siwah valley, yet it is absolutely without trace of human passage, old or new). We are camped in a hollow near two seyyal trees, ill screened from the wind, and in very miserable plight.

“26th Feb.—I spent a restless, uncomfortable night, disturbed at finding that of our five water skins three were already empty, and reproaching myself with having let the men pass Araj without replenishing. I felt myself responsible, too, from having taken the direction of our route out of Osman’s hands. Old Beseys and the rest, except my own Bedouins, were clearly of opinion that I was wrong. The wind, too, raged furiously, and kept me waking, and in the darkness I imagined all kinds of disaster, more especially when I found the stars overhead obscured with drifting sand. I said prayers to all my saints and repented of my sins, and so I think did all the party. Once in the night the sky cleared and I got a sight of the Pole Star and made a line on the ground with my camel stick as a guide in the morning, for my pocket compass is out of order and cannot be relied on. There were even moments when I thought gloomily of ordering a retreat to Araj.

“In the morning, however, more courageous counsels prevailed, and we took our due course west towards the khusm (the headland) determined to go straight forward and solve the question of this being the Siwah valley or no. Nor were we long in suspense. We had hardly gone a mile when, riding in front, I came upon a little single path leading to some seyyal trees which had been pollarded by Bedouins, a sign of human neighbourhood, and presently, to my delight, to the old caravan road, reappearing plain and unmistakable. It relieved us from all anxiety, and following it we found ourselves by mid-day at the first bushes of the Siwah oasis.” [N.B. It is well here to note, as a general rule of travelling in the desert without guides that, when looking for a lost camel track or road, there is more chance of finding it at the point of a headland in the wady than elsewhere, for the reason that it is there that the shortest cut would be made in rounding a trend of the hills. This justified Suliman in making for the khusm yesterday.] “Soon afterwards we came to sebkhas, where there were tracks of many pasturing camels, and then within sight of the oasis of Zeytoun and the Senussi Zaghwiyeh standing on high ground a mile or more from its palm trees. As it was near sunset we resolved to rest here and have made a pleasant camp under some ghurkhud bushes. El hamdul Illah.

“27th Feb.—In half an hour from leaving camp we came to the Zaghwiyeh, and Yemama started at the sight of strange human beings, the first she had seen since leaving El Wah, who came out to receive us. These were servants and slaves of the monastery, and we were shown by them the well where we watered mare and camels—a small well just outside the buildings. These were not different from an ordinary small village, a score of low square houses with a mosque attached. The servants may have been half-a-dozen or more, an unhandsome set of men, especially those of the Siwah type, which is one of the ugliest in the world, yellow skinned, brown haired, snub nosed, hare-lipped and light eyed (such one imagines the Huns to have been). In marked contrast to them was the ‘brother,’ who came out presently to entertain us, an Arab of the Western type, not unlike my friend Abdallah Mijower, with a singularly pleasant smile. One could imagine him having great influence with the people. He had a look of goodness which could not be mistaken. His name, he told us, was Sidi Hamid of the Mujábara tribe of Aujla. He has with him only one fellow brother, a Siwan, inferior to him in every way. He gave us all the news of the brotherhood, how that, after Sidi Sherif’s death, Sidi Abu Seyf had also died, leaving Sidi el Médani head of the community at Jerabúb. He said we should have no difficulty in our journey to Benghazi. It was four easy days to Jerabúb, and from thence we could go straight to Bir Menús in nine days, with one water on the sixth day. He would like to go with us himself. He was very kind to me, and though he did not eat with us, it being Ramadan, he gave me some good gazali dates and some pomegranates, and milk and dates to the servants, who were not fasting. Then he called his fellow brother Mohammed, and they recited a fatha for our safe journey, all standing together outside the monastery, and we went much pleased on our way.

“Old Beseys tells me it is their practice to entertain all comers for two nights with milk and dates—otherwise to occupy themselves only with prayer and the superintending of the palm cultivation. (Cardinal Lavigerie’s White Fathers imitated in this their way of life.) One might do worse in the world than be a Senussi brother. Every difficulty seems now to be in the way of solution. Beseys is confident of accomplishing our journey by Jerabúb to Benghazi.

“Thus we travelled till four o’clock, when we reached the first isolated garden outside Siwah, where Beseys found a friend, who invited us to stay with him, and we should have done well to accept, and presently we encamped for the night just outside the Eastern town, of the two of which Siwah is composed, half a mile away south of it in the sand among some groups of palms.

“28th Feb.—A day of disaster. Last night after dark, Mohammed Saïd, Omdeh of the Eastern town, came out to see us; a fat, well-dressed, dark-faced man whom Suliman pronounced to be ‘a splendid prince.’ We had bought a lamb (for Sheykh Obeyd), and Suliman cooked it for us, and Mohammed Saïd ate of it largely with a friend and he had just got up to say good-night and go, having promised us a guide and all we wanted for next day, when we saw lights coming, and a number of persons, horse and foot, and the word passed that it was the hákim (government representative), a maown (police officer), the chief man being away at Skanderia. He was polite and amiable, a slender man with no palate to his mouth, speaking almost in a whisper, and with him a number of Siwans who, as I understand now, were Sheykhs of the Western town. These all sat down, and I, too, was obliged to stay out their visit while coffee was being made. Old Beseys, as his way is, made most of the conversation, and he began very imprudently to tell them we intended going to Benghazi. The sheykhs, upon this, became curious and inquisitive. Old Beseys strung tales of my being from Nejd, and I was obliged to join in to the extent of saying that I was from beyond Sham (Damascus), between Sham and Bagdad, and my name Sakr. They were curious to know my business, but I answered vaguely, also as to our road. I did not for a moment suppose there was anything hostile in their intention, and they drank their coffee and said good night amiably enough, the only disagreeable incident being that during the night a thief came to my tent and stole away my carpet shelter, which I had used to seat my visitors upon outside. It had been carelessly put back at the door of the tent, and the night was one for thieves, being without a moon. I was awoke out of my sleep by Suliman’s shout, who had seen the thief stealing away between the palms, but too late to stop him with his prize. I was put out at this and all the more resolved to move away early—Mohammed Saïd had suggested it—to another place ‘near his castle.’ This castle was barely half a mile away (to the west), a country house built upon a rock, and we accordingly moved camp by daylight and pitched the tent a hundred yards from the house on open ground.

“I had just settled that the servants were to go to town to buy what we wanted when Suliman came to my tent to tell me of an armed party approaching from the town towards us, and that we ought to get our guns ready. I loaded my gun, and then looked through my glass, and saw in fact a little army, some 200 men, on horse and on foot (and with camels), advancing from the Western town, which, though evidently armed, I could not believe had any intention hostile to ourselves. The servants were for flight with the camels, and old Beseys and Salem and the younger Arabs disappeared. Only Suliman and the good old slave Osman stayed with me, and, seeing it was absurd to think of defence, I told them to put up their weapons, and sat down again in my tent waiting the event. Presently the Siwans arrived, and I heard them call out ‘Salaam aleykum,’ and ‘amán,’ and supposed it to be all right. But half a minute after I found myself surrounded by a number of men, mostly Soudanis, who were pulling the tent over my ears. On seeing me sitting there, they rushed forward and caught hold of me by the wrists and pulled me to my feet. I expostulated with them, and they became more violent, and though I made no defence except in words one of them struck me a blow on the side of the neck and others began to try and pull my clothes off me, others pointed guns and pistols at me, and there was a vast hubbub and confusion, one dragging me one way and another another. I received several blows on the head and one from some weapon on the cheek. All I could make out of their cries (for there was an immense uproar and they were shouting the most part in a language—Berberi—I did not understand), was something about Sidi-el-Mahdi.

“There were half-a-dozen sheykhs on horseback, with an old white-bearded man brandishing a drawn sword, others with blunderbusses and every kind of impossible weapon. I recognized in them several of those who had drunk coffee with us the night before. My captors hustled me towards the town, tearing me nearly in pieces in their desire to get my pistol from my belt, which at last they tore away. The sheykhs on horseback were evidently in direction of the whole affair. I had lost sight of Suliman and the slave Osman, but I heard afterwards that they, too, were considerably knocked about. I received a rather nasty blow on the nape of the neck and another with some weapon on my cheek bone, but neither very serious, and, not being really hurt, I managed to keep my temper. The sheykhs made no effort to protect me in any way; but, when they had got my pistol, my assailants left me more or less alone, as there was a general rush to pillage the baggage. Fortunately the leather bags with spring locks were a puzzle to them, and they could not tear them open. But I had no leisure to attend to this, and my captors marched me off towards the town, every now and then having a drag at my cloak or my hezam (girdle); ‘el dirahem, el dirahem!’ (‘the drachmas, the money!’) they shouted; ‘you have a thousand? you have two thousand?’

“At last a man, with a better face than most, came up to me, and I made myself his dahil (according to the Arab formula, ‘ana dahilak,’ by seizing his cloak, an act of surrender), and he took me to join a second body which had been waiting behind the first, and some of these threw their cloaks over my head to protect me from further blows. It was a rabble rout as ever was seen, and they marched me to the town, where the women were all shrilling their triumph (ulu-lu-lu-lu) from every housetop. I did not know in the least what it was about or what they intended, but they seemed all very angry, and at times I thought they meant to kill me. But, strangely enough, I was not at all frightened, and felt interested in it all almost as a spectator.” [The truth is it was a very lovely morning, the air sparkling and clear, and the whole thing, with its almost mediæval and quite barbaric costuming and staging, was more like a pageant than a reality, so that it seemed difficult to realize that it was quite in earnest; nor had I time to think much or consider what it meant.]

“Arrived inside the town, I was marched to an open space where there were two erections not unlike gallows, and for a moment I thought that I was perhaps to be hanged. All I could imagine in explanation of the affair was that some revolution had broken out in which I was accidentally involved. But we did not stop at the gallows, and presently I was bidden inside a house and up a stair which led to a nice open room with mastabahs (seats) and a pleasant outlook to the north. This proved to be the mejliss (council chamber) of the Sheykhs of the Gharbieh (western town), and there we sat down. I took the best place, and called for water, which was brought; and a great talk began among the Sheykhs, who were now by way of protecting me. Having drunk and recovered my breath, I asked them the reason of all their wrath, and of the attack made on me, but could get no intelligible answer except that the Maown was coming. I explained that I was a person well known at Cairo and a friend of Effendina’s (the Khedive’s). But they said they knew nothing of Effendina—they had a government of their own, and that I should go to the diwan (government house). Soon after the Maown arrived. He had made me the kindly offer of his services last night, and I now whispered to him that I was an Englishman. This made him still more courteous, and I think, poor man, he did all he could to set things right, with considerable tact, too. And, as things went on better, I whispered the same intelligence also to one of the sheykhs who sat next me, and with the same good effect. There was now a great hurry to restore the plunder, and most of the things taken were by degrees brought in, the chief losses being two of my three guns, and my good Persian sword (the sword Mohammed Ibn Aruk of Tadmor had given me), also my little store of gold—£29 had been abstracted from my small red bag, which must have been done by the sheykhs themselves, for the silver had been left, and certainly the common plunderers would have left nothing. And so, little by little, matters cleared. The Maown brought water, and himself washed my cheeks from the blood, and a katib (scribe) having arrived, I dictated a statement of the case, though I don’t think it was signed by any one.

“After this, my servants one by one appeared all with tales of the losses, and Suliman and Osman of their bruises—and we were escorted by the Maown to the diwan, which is the general Government House of Siwah. Here we now are, in not uncomfortable quarters upstairs, with several mud-built rooms and a nice roof top. The camels are below in a great yard; and after all the trouble nothing serious has really happened. Only it is clear our onward journey is stopped. Our money and our arms are gone, and there is a general demoralization among the servants. Salem is thoroughly frightened and has given warning, and the others all declare for an immediate return by Alexandria. So here my expedition ends. The timid Beseys, it turns out, ran away to his friend Mohammed Saïd at the first news of the approaching army, and came late, on the Maown’s summons, to the mejliss, where the Sheykhs set upon him, excusing themselves for the attack by laying it on Beseys’ assurance to them that I was this that and the other; and, indeed, I think it has been mainly his fault. It was quite unnecessary for him to talk about my going to Benghazi to anybody but Mohammed Saïd; and I am not sure he had not talked also about the road to Jerabúb. Still we must be thankful for small mercies, and it has all been in the way of the adventure I was seeking. None of us is hurt, and for the small losses I shall make the Egyptian Government responsible. They should either give up holding Siwah or keep order here. As it is, the Maown, poor man, is powerless. He told me his sorrows to-night. He has been twelve years here, on £7 a month, and has but six men under him for the preservation of the peace, four of whom are disabled by fever, and he himself suffers from it. His second in command is dying of consumption, and spits blood continually. His superior, the Mamur, at £25 a month, has just been recalled, and I think he cannot read or write. His bashkatib, chief secretary, is down with fever, and the second, too, is sick.

“1st March.—Things look pleasanter this morning. It is arranged that we are to leave to-morrow with a messenger the Maown is sending to Alexandria with the news of our adventure. We shall take the northern road by Akabah and the sea coast. Last night was a noisy one, of chaunting and processions, as Ramadan is ending. [N.B. The diwan overlooked the great square of the mosque, which was crowded all night with a multitude of devotees, and a wild concourse of Oulad Ali Bedouins who had come in to Siwah from the north and west to buy dates and attend the coming festival. The Oulad Ali are all more or less adherents of the Senussia, and what may truly be called ‘fanaticism,’ was rampant among them. It was a curious and impressive sight, and cannot have been very different from the condition of things at Omdurman and el Obeyd in the time of the Mahdi. At midnight and again at the hour of the morning prayer a gong was sounded, apparently by the blows repeated singly of an iron hammer, with the effect of a series of sharp reports like those of a rifle, sharp and penetrating, followed by the call to prayer splendidly chaunted by the mueddhin, and then a general chaunting maintained for an hour or more, wild and menacing as anything to be heard in the world.] The best explanation of the attack made on me is Ramadan. The Siwans are mad with it. Beseys tells me the Akhwan took part in yesterday’s affair. It is quite likely. Others say it is on account of our having gone on arrival to Mohammed Saïd, who is at the head of the opposite faction, that of the Eastern town. But I think plunder had not a little to do with it, and the recklessness which Ramadan brings. Certainly the whole of the Gharbieh town was concerned in the attack. I regret it as upsetting my plans for the Jebel Akhdar, but it cannot be helped. It may serve as a useful instruction as to this western Islam of which I had hoped something. If the condition of Siwah is all the fruit the Senussia has to show, the tree can be but little worth.

“2nd March.—The day has passed in going to and fro on the part of the Maown to arrange matters for our start to-morrow. They have imposed two khabirs (guides) on us, one from each village, for whom I am to pay £4 each. This will leave me with only fifteen reals and a piastre, all counted. The Sheykh of the Gharbieh, who is chief guarantor in the transaction, is the same who led the attack on us yesterday. There is little doubt that the prime movers in the affair were the Akhwan. Some say that Mohammed, the Siwahi brother who recited the prayer with us at Zeytoun, followed us on his white donkey, and that he was the cause of the night visit paid us, and the questions asked of us as to our projected journey. The Sheykh of the Western town led the ghazu, but the men who first attacked me were, I am sure, slaves of the Akhwan. I remember among their cries when they struck me with the gun, ‘ya kelb, la te fut and Sidi el Mahdi.’ Indeed it was all done in the name of Sidi el Mahdi. Now old Beseys says he recognized one of the Akhwan as leader in the attack.

“Of the Sheykhs there were three prominent leaders, Othman Habbun, the old man with the naked sword (this I believe to have been Hassuna), and the young dark man with the prominent eyes, who afterwards sat next me at the mejliss, Mohammed Kuli. All these three were on horseback. I am certain, too, that the gold stolen from the red bag was taken, not in the general plunder, but afterwards—this because the bag, though not locked, was shut with a spring, and if the plunderers had got it open they would not have left the silver or the pistol, both of which were inside. I suspect it was Othman took it. Beseys says that the arms are in his hands and in those of the Akhwan. The name of the man who first protected me is Abu Bekr Mohammed Daoud, and another was Mohammed Mansur, Hassan Mansur’s brother, on whom they now lay all the blame. Mohammed Kuli was among the advanced riders. I consider Abdallah Homeydeh among the most responsible of the second division. The three commanders of the advanced party are then—Othman Habbun, the worst, Hassuna, and Mohammed Kuli. It was Mohammed Kuli, I think, who pointed the pistol at my head. They lay all the blame on Hassuna now, who they say is asi (in rebellion) against the Government, and has possession of my sword and guns.

“Othman has been to see me and has brought back the money, or rather its equivalent of ten sovereigns and twenty-five bintos. The Sheykhs of the Gharbieh have all been with me, talking, and are now polite enough and anxious their quarrel with me should be settled; and I have used a little siasa with them, acquiescing in their view of Hassuna’s sole guilt. They have asked me to get him removed by the Government as a mischief maker. It was Abdallah Homeydeh who made the remark in the mejliss ‘We know nothing of Effendina. We have a government of our own.’” [N.B. I am sorry not to have noted more in my journal of these Sheykhs’ conversation, for much of it was interesting as connected with the affairs of the Senussia. I found Othman Habbun by far the most able man among them, a strong, capable rogue. The rest were very poor creatures, some of them of the most degraded physical type I have ever come across, and apparently without those sentiments of honour most Arabs pretend to even if they are without them. The Siwahi are, however, no real Arabs, but men of very mixed origin with much negro blood, and apparently some northern blood too, for there were individuals with yellow faces, pale eyes, and tow-coloured hair. They are probably descended from the criminals formerly sent here in Roman and later times, for Siwah was a convict settlement.]

“3.30.—I have had a last talk with Huseyn Effendi, the Maown, and have learned several things from him. Othman Habbun is no other, he tells me, than the Wakil of the Akhwan at Siwah. This explains the whole affair, and it is on him and the Akhwan that the whole responsibility of the attack rests. He is now anxious not to compromise the Senussia with the Government, and represents Hassuna as the dangerous man, making him scapegoat in his place. Hassuna is Sidi el Mahdi’s strongest adherent in Siwah, and if the Government attempts to arrest him, he will doubtless fly and take refuge with the Sidi, as he did once before in the Khedive Tewfik’s time. I am tired of waiting here, but the delay has been fruitful in the knowledge I have acquired. It is an experience not, I think, bought too dear.