his loud-voiced little Hijn,[EN#89] remarkable because it is of the noble Bishári strain, bred between the Nile and the Red Sea, he is ever the guide in chief. At last it ends with Nádi Shaykh Furayj!–“Call Shaykh Furayj”–when anything is to be done, to be explained, to be discovered. I would willingly have recommended him for the chieftainship of his tribe, but he is not wealthy; he wisely prefers to see the dignity in the hands of his cousin ‘Alayán, who, by-the-by, is helpless without him. He remained with us to the end: he seemed to take a pride in accompanying the expedition by sea to El-Haurá, and by land to the Wady Hamz, far beyond the limits of his tribe. When derided for mounting a pair of Government “bluchers,” tied over bare feet, with bits of glaring tassel-string from his camel-saddle, he quoted the proverb, “Whoso liveth with a people forty days becomes of them.” We parted after the most friendly adieu, or rather au revoir, and he was delighted with some small gifts of useful weapons:–I wonder whether Shaykh Furayj will prove “milk,” to use Sir Walter Scott’s phrase, “which can stand more than one skimming.”
In such wild travel, the traveller’s comfort depends mainly upon weather. Usually the air of Magháir Shu’ayb was keen, pure, and invigorating, with a distinct alternation of land-breeze by night, and of sea-breeze by day. Nothing could be more charming than the flushing of the mountains at sunrise and sunset, and the magnificence of the windy, wintry noon. The rocky spires, pinnacles, and domes, glowing with gorgeous golden light, and the lower ranges, shaded with hazy blue, umber-red, and luminous purple, fell into picture and formed prospects indescribably pure and pellucid. But the average of the aneroid (29.19) gave an altitude of eight hundred feet; and even in this submaritime region, the minimum temperature was 42 deg. F., ranging to a maximum of 85 deg F. in the shade. These are extremes which the soft Egyptian body, reared in the house or the hut, could hardly support.
Darwaysh Effendi followed suit after Yusuf Effendi; it was a study to see him swathed to the nose, bundled in the thickest clothes, with an umbrella opened against the sun, and with a soldier leading his staid old mule. Bukhayt Ahmar and several of the soldiers were laid up; Ahmed Kaptán was incapacitated for work by an old and inveterate hernia, the effect, he said, of riding his violent little beast; and a sound ague and fever, which continued three days, obliterated in my own case the last evils of Karlsbad. We had one night of rain (January 15), beginning gently at 2.30 a.m., and ending in a heavy downfall–unfortunately a pluviometer was one of the forgotten articles. Before the shower, earth was dry as a bone; shortly after it, sprouts of the greenest grass began to appear in the low places, and under the shadow of the perennial shrubs. The cold damp seemed to make even the snakes torpid: for the first time in my life I trod upon one–a clairvoyante having already warned me against serpents and scorpions. There were also bursts of heat, ending in the normal three grey days of raw piercing norther; and followed by a still warmer spell. Upon the Gulf of El-‘Akabah a violent gale was blowing. On the whole the winter climate of inland Midian is trying, and a speedy return to the seaboard air is at times advisable, while South Midian feels like Thebes after Cairo. The coast climate is simply perfect, save and except when El-Aylí, the storm-wind from ‘Akabat Aylah, is abroad. My meteorological journal was carefully kept, despite the imperfection of the instruments. Mr. Clarke registered the observations during my illness; Mr. Duguid and Násir Kaptán made simultaneous observations on board the ships; and Dr. Maclean kindly corrected the instrumental errors after our return to Cairo.[EN#90]
I had proposed to march upon the Hismá, or sandy plateau to the east, which can be made from Magháir Shu’ayb without the mortification of a Nakb, or ladder of stone. Thereupon our Tagaygát-Huwaytát Shaykhs and camel-men began to express great fear of the ‘Imran-Huwaytát, refusing to enter their lands without express leave and the presence of a Ghafír (“surety”). Our caravan-leader, the gallant Sayyid, at once set off in search of ‘Brahim bin Makbúl, second chief of the ‘Imrán, and recognized by the Egyptian Government as the avocat, spokesman and diplomatist, the liar and intriguer of his tribe. This man was found near El-Hakl (Hagul), two long marches ahead: he came in readily enough, holding in hand my kerchief as a pledge of protection, and accompanied by three petty chiefs, Musallam, Sa’d, and Muhaysin, all with an eye to “bakhshísh.” In fact, every naked-footed “cousin,” a little above the average clansman, would call himself a Shaykh, and claim his Musháhirah, or monthly pay; not a cateran came near us but affected to hold himself dishonoured if not provided at once with the regular salary. ‘Brahim was wholly beardless, and our Egyptians quoted their proverb, Sabáh el-Kurúd, wa lá Sabán el-‘Ajrúd–“Better (see ill-omened) monkeys in the morning than the beardless man.” As the corruption of the best turns to the worst, so the Bedawi, a noble race in its own wilds, becomes thoroughly degraded by contact with civilization. I remember a certain chief of the Wuld Ali tribe, near Damascus, who was made a Freemason at Bayrút, and the result was that “brother” Mohammed became a model villain.
By way of payment for escort and conveyance to the Hismá, ‘Brahim expected a recognition of his claim upon the soil of Magháir Shu’ayb, which belongs to the wretched Masá’id. He held the true Ishmaelitic tenet, that as Sayyidná (our Lord) Ádam had died intestate, so all men (Arabs) have a right to all things, provided the right can be established by might. Hence the saying of the Fellah, “Shun the Arab and the itch.” Thus encouraged by the Shaykhs, the “dodges” of the clansmen became as manifold as they were palpable. They wanted us to pay for camping-ground; they complained aloud when we cut a palm-frond for palms, or used a rotten fallen trunk for fuel. They made their sheep appear fat by drenching them with water. The people of the Fort el-Muwaylah, determined not to déroger, sent to us, for sale, the eggs laid by our own fowls. And so forth.
Presently ‘Brahim brought in his elder brother, Khizr bin Makbúl, about as ill-conditioned a “cuss” as himself. Very dark, with the left eye clean gone, this worthy appeared pretentiously dressed in the pink of Desert fashion–a scarlet cloak, sheepskin-lined, and bearing a huge patch of blue cloth between the shoulders; a crimson caftan, and red morocco boots with irons resembling ice-cramps at the heels. Like ‘Brahim, he uses his Bákúr, or crooked stick, to trace lines and dots upon the ground; similarly, the Yankee whittles to hide the trick that lurks in his eyes. Khizr tents in the Hismá, and his manners are wild and rough as his dwelling-place; possibly manly, brusque certainly, like the Desert Druzes of the Jebel Haurán. He paid his first visit when our Shaykhs were being operated upon by the photographer: I fancied that such a novelty would have attracted his attention for the moment. But no: his first question was, Aysh ‘Ujratí?–“What is the hire for my camels?” Finally, these men threw so many difficulties in our way, that I was compelled to defer our exploration of the eastern region to a later day.
After a week of washing for metals at Magháir Shu’ayb, it was time to move further afield. On January 17th, the Egyptian Staff-officers rode up the Wady ‘Afál, and beyond the two pyramidal rocks of white stone, which have fallen from the towered “Shigd,” they found on its right bank the ruins of a small atelier. It lies nearly opposite the mouth of the Wady Tafrígh, which is bounded north by a hill of the same name; and south by the lesser “Shigd.” Beyond it comes the Wady Nimir, the broad drain of the Jibál el-Nimir, “Hills of the Leopard,” feeding the ‘Afál: the upper valley is said to have water and palms. After a “leg” to the north-east (45 deg. mag.), they found the ‘Afál running from due north; and one hour (= three miles) led them to other ruins on the eastern side of the low hills that prolong to the north the greater “Shigd.” The names of both sites were unknown even to Shaykh Furayj. The foundations of uncut boulders showed a semicircle of buildings measuring 229 paces across the horseshoe. They counted eleven tenements–probably occupied by the slave-owners and superintendents–squares and oblongs, separated by intervals of from forty-five to ninety-seven or a hundred paces. On the north-north-east lay the chief furnace, a parallelogram of some twenty-three paces, built of stone and surrounded by scatters of broken white quartz and scoriæ. These two workshops seem to argue that the country was formerly much better watered than it is now. Moreover, it convinced me that the only rock regularly treated by the ancients, in this region, was the metallic Marú (quartz).
I had heard by mere chance of a “White Mountain,” at no great distance, in the mass of hills bounding to the north the Secondary formations of Magháir Shu’ayb. On January 21st, M. Marie and Lieutenant Amir were detached to inspect it. They were guided by the active Furayj and a Bedawi lad, Hamdán of the Amírát, who on receiving a “stone dollar” (i.e. silver) could not understand its use. Travelling in a general northern direction, the little party reached their destination in about three hours (= nine miles). They found some difficulty in threading a mile and a quarter of very ugly road, a Nakb, passing through rocks glittering with mica; a ladder of stony steps and overfalls, with angles and zigzags where camels can carry only half-loads. The European dismounted; the Egyptian, who was firm in the saddle, rode his mule the whole way. We afterwards, however, explored a comparatively good road, viâ the Wady Murákh, to the seaboard, which will spare the future metal-smelter much trouble and expense.
The quartz mountain is, like almost all the others, the expanded mushroom-like head of a huge filon or vein; and minor filets thread all the neighbouring heights. The latter are the foot-hills of the great Jebel Zánah, a towering, dark, and dome-shaped mass clearly visible from Magháir Shu’ayb. This remarkable block appeared to me the tallest we had hitherto seen; it is probably the “Tayyibat Ism, 6000,” of the Hydrographic Chart. The travellers ascended the Jebel el-Marú, trembling the while with cold; and from its summit, some fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, they had a grand view of the seaboard and the sea. They brought home specimens of the rock, and fondly fancied that they had struck gold: it was again that abominable “crow-gold” (pyrites), which has played the unwary traveller so many a foul practical joke.
During our stay at Magháir Shu’ayb the camp had been much excited by Bedawi reports of many marvels in the lands to the north and the north-east. The Arabs soon learned to think that everything was worth showing: they led M. Lacaze for long miles to a rock where bees were hiving. A half-naked ‘Umayri shepherd, one Suwayd bin Sa’íd, had told us of a Hajar masdúd (“closed stone”) about the size of a tent, with another of darker colour set in it; the Arabs had been unable to break it open, but they succeeded with a similar rock in the Hismá, finding inside only Tibn (“tribulated straw”) and charcoal. Another had seen a Kidr Dahab (“golden pot”), in the ‘Aligán section of the Wady el-Hakl (Hagul) where it leaves the Hismá; and a matchlock-man had brought down with his bullet a bit of precious metal from the upper part. This report prevails in many places: it may have come all the way from “Pharaoh’s Treasury” at Petra, or from the Sinaitic Wady Lejá. At the mouth of the latter is the Hajar el-Kidr (“Potrock”), which every passing Arab either stones or strikes with his staff, hoping that the mysterious utensil will burst and shed its golden shower. Moreover, a half-witted Ma’ázi, by name Masá’í, had tantalized us with a glorious account of the “House of ‘Antar” in the Hismá, and the cistern where that negro hero and poet used to water his horses. Near its massive walls rises a Hazbah (“steep and solitary hillock”) with Dims or layers of ashlar atop: he had actually broken off a bit of greenstone sticking in the masonry, and sold it to a man from Tor (Khwájeh Kostantin?) for a large sum–two napoleons, a new shirt, and a quantity of coffee. A similar story is found in the Bádiyat el-Tíh, the Desert north of the Sinaitic Peninsula. At the ruined cairns of Khara’bat Lussán (the ancient Lysa), an Arab saw a glimmer of light proceeding from a bit of curiously cut stone. “This he carried away with him and sold to a Christian at Jerusalem for three pounds.”[EN#91]
Shaykh ‘Brahím had also heard of this marvel; but he called it the Haráb ‘Antar (“Ruin of ‘Antar”), and he placed it in the Wady el-Hakl, about an hour’s ride south of the Wady ‘Afál. Finally, a tablet in the Wady Hawwayi’, adorned with a dragon and other animals, was reported to me; and the memory of inscriptions mentioned in the Jihan-numá was still importunate. Evidently all these were mere fancies; or, at best, gross distortions of facts. The Bedawin repeat them in the forlorn hope of “bakhshísh,” and never expect action to be taken: next morning they will probably declare the whole to be an invention. Yet it is never safe to neglect the cry of “wolf”: our most remarkable discovery, the Temple at the Wady Hamz, was made when report promised least.
Accordingly, on January 24th, I despatched, with Shaykhs Khizr and ‘Brahím as guides, Mr. Clarke and the two Staff-lieutenants towards El-Rijm, the next station of the pilgrim-caravan. Riding up the Wady ‘Afál, they reached, after an hour and three-quarters, the ruins known as Igár Muás–a name of truly barbarous sound. The settlement had occupied both banks, but the principal mass was on the left: here two blocks, separated by a hillock, lay to north-east and south-west of each other. Apparently dwelling-places, they were composed of a masonry-cistern and of fourteen buildings, detached squares and oblongs, irregular both in orientation and in size; the largest measuring eighty by fifty metres, and the smallest five by four. The material was of water-rolled boulders, huge pebbles without mortar or cement. There were no signs of a furnace, nor were the usual fragments of glass and pottery strewed about. To the north and running up the north-north-eastern slope stood a line of wall two metres broad and three hundred long: it ended at the south-western extremity in five round towers razed to their foundations. It was suggested that this formed part of a street, laid out on the plan of the Jebel el-Safrá, the hauteville of Magháir Shu’ayb. On the right bank of the Wady appeared a heap of stones suggesting a Burj. Fine, hard, compact, and purple-blue slate was collected in the ruins; and the red conglomerates on either side of the watercourse suggested that Cascalho had been worked.
After riding their dromedaries some three hours, halts not included, the travellers were asked why they had not brought their tents. “Because we expect to return to camp this evening!” Then it leaked out that they had not reached half-way to the “closed stone,” while the dragon-tablet would take a whole day. Unprepared for a wintry night in the open, some twelve hundred feet above sea-level, they rode back at full speed, greatly to the disgust of the Arabs, who, at this hungry season, rarely push their lean beasts beyond three and a half to four miles an hour. Lieutenant Amir, who is invaluable in the field, would have pressed forward: not so the European.
I did not see Shaykhs Khizr or ‘Brahím for many a day; nor did we attempt any more reconnaissances to the north of Magháir Shu’ayb.
Not the least pleasant part of our evening’s work was collecting information concerning the origin of the tribes inhabiting modern Midian; and, as on such occasions a mixed multitude was always present, angry passions were often let rise. As my previous volume showed, the tribes in this Egyptian corner of North-Western Arabia number three–the Huwaytát, the Maknáwi, and the Beni ‘Ukbah; the two former of late date, and all more or less connected with the Nile Valley. Amongst them I do not include the Hutaym or Hitaym, a tribe of Pariahs who, like the Akhdám (“serviles”) of Maskat and Yemen, live scattered amongst, although never intermarrying with, their neighbours. As a rule the numbers of all these tribes are grossly exaggerated, the object being to impose upon the pilgrim-caravans, and to draw black-mail from the Government of Egypt. The Huwaytát, for instance, modestly declare that they can put 5000 matchlocks into the field: I do not believe that they have 500. The Ma’ázah speak of 2000, which may be reduced in the same proportion; whilst the Baliyy have introduced their 37,000 into European books of geography, when 370 would be nearer the mark. I anticipate no difficulty in persuading these Egypto-Arabs to do a fair day’s work for a fair and moderate wage. The Bedawin flocked to the Suez Canal, took an active part in the diggings, and left a good name there. They will be as useful to the mines; and thus shall Midian escape the mortification of the “red-flannel-shirted Jove,” while enjoying his golden shower.
I first took the opportunity of rectifying my notes on the origin of the Huwayta’t tribe.[EN#92] According to their own oral genealogists, the first forefather was a lad called ‘Alayán, who, travelling in company with certain Shurafá (“descendants of the Apostle”), and ergò held by his descendants to have been also a Sherif, fell sick on the way. At El-‘Akabah he was taken in charge by ‘Atíyyah, Shaykh of the then powerful Ma’ázah tribe, who owned the land upon which the fort stands. A “clerk,” able to read and to write, he served his adopted father by superintending the accounts of stores and provisions supplied to the Hajj. The Arabs, who before that time embezzled at discretion, called him El-Huwayti’ (“the Man of the Little Wall”) because his learning was a fence against their frauds He was sent for by his Egyptian friends; these, however, were satisfied by a false report of his death: he married his benefactor’s daughter; he became Shaykh after the demise of his father-in-law; he drove the Ma’ázah from El-‘Akabah, and he left four sons, the progenitors and eponymi of the Midianite Huwaytát. Their names are ‘Alwán, ‘Imrán, Suway’id, and Sa’id; and the list of nineteen tribes, which I gave in “The Gold-Mines of Midian,” is confined to the descendants of the third brother.
The Huwaytát tribe is not only an intruder, it is also the aggressive element in the Midianite family of Bedawin; and, of late years, it has made great additions to its territory. If it advances at the present rate it will, after a few generations, either “eat up,” as Africans say, all the other races or, by a more peaceful process, assimilate them to its own body.
We also consulted Shaykh Hasan and his cousin Ahmed, alias Abú Khartúm, concerning the origin of his tribe, the Beni ‘Ukbah. According to our friend Furayj, the name means “Sons of the Heel” (‘Akab) because, in the early wars and conquests of El-Islám, they fought during the day by the Moslems’ side; and at night, when going over to the Nazarenes, they lost the “spoor” by wearing their sandals heel foremost, and by shoeing their horses the wrong way. All this they indignantly deny; and they are borne out by the written genealogies, who derive them from “Ukbah, the son of Maghrabah, son of Heram,” of the Kahtániyyah (Joctanite) Arabs, some of the noblest of Bedawi blood. They preserve the memory of their ancestor ‘Ukbah, and declare that they come from the south; that is, they are of Hejázi descent, consequently far more ancient than the Huwaytát. At first called “El-Musálimah,” they were lords of all the broad lands extending southward between Shámah (Syria) and the Wady Dámah below the port of Zibá; and this fine valley retains, under its Huwayti occupants, the title of ‘Ukbíyyah–‘Ukbah-land. Thus they still claim as Milk, or “unalienable property,” the Wadys Gharr, Sharmá, ‘Aynúnah, and others; whilst their right to the ground upon which Fort el-Muwaylah is built has never been questioned.
The first notable event in the history of the Beni ‘Ukbah was a quarrel that arose between them and their brother-tribe, the Beni ‘Amr. The ‘Ayn el-Tabbákhah,[EN#93] the fine water of Wady Madyan, now called Wady Makná, was discovered by a Hutaymi shepherd of the Beni ‘Ali clan, while tending his flocks; others say that the lucky man was a hunter following a gazelle. However that may be, the find was reported to the Shaykh of the Musálimah (Beni ‘Ukbah), who had married ‘Ayayfah, the sister of Ali ibn Nejdi, the Beni ‘Amr chief, whilst the latter had also taken his brother-in-law’s sister to wife. The discoverer was promised a Jinu or Sabátah (“date-bunch”) from each palm-tree; and the rivals waxed hot upon the subject. The Musálimah declared that they would never yield their rights, a certain ancestor, ‘Asaylah, having first pitched tent upon the Rughámat Makná, or white “horse” of Makná. A furious quarrel ensued, and, as usual in Arabia as in Hibernia, both claimants prepared to fight it out.
To repeat the words of our oral genealogist, Furayj: “Now, when the wife of the Shaykh of the Musálimah had heard and understood what Satan was tempting her husband to do against her tribe, she rose up, and sent a secret message to her brother of the Beni ‘Amr, warning him that a certain person (Fulán) was about to lay violent hands on the beautiful valley of El-Madyan. Hearing this, the Beni ‘Amr mustered their young men, and mounted their horses and dromedaries, and rode forth with jingling arms; and at midnight they found their opponents asleep in El-Khabt,[EN#94] the beasts being tied up by the side of their lords. So they cut the cords of the camels, they gagged the hunter who guided the attack, they threatened him with death if he refused to obey, and they carried him away with them towards Makná.
“When the Musálimah awoke, they discovered the deceit, they secured their beasts, and they hastened after the enemy, following his track like Azrail. Both met at Makná, when a battle took place, and Allah inclined the balance towards the Beni ‘Amr. The Musálimah, therefore, became exiles, and took refuge in Egypt. And in the flow of days it so happened that the Shaykh of the Beni’ Amr awoke suddenly at midnight, and heard his wife, as she sat grinding at the quern, sing this quatrain:–
‘If the handmill (of Fate) grind down our tribe We will bear it, O Thou (Allah) that aidest to bear! But if the mill grind the foeman tribe, We will pound and pound them as thin as flour.’
“Whereupon the Shaykh, in his wrath, seized a stone, and cast it at his wife, and knocked out one of her front teeth. She said nothing, but she took the tooth and wrapped it in a rag, and sent it with a message to her brother, the Shaykh of the Musálimah. Now, this chief was unable to revenge his sister single-handed, so he travelled to Syria, and threw himself at the feet of the great Shaykh of the Wuhaydi tribe, who was also a Sherif.
“The Wuhaydi despatched his host together with the warriors of the Musálimah, and both went forth to do battle with the Beni ‘Amr. The latter being camped in a valley near ‘Aynúnah, tethered their dogs and, some say, left behind their old people,[EN#95] and lit huge bonfires; whence the name of the place is Wady Umm Nírán (‘the Mother of Fires’) to this day. Before early dawn they had reached in flight the Wady ‘Arawwah of the Jibál el-Tihámah. In the morning the Musálimah and the Wuhaydi, finding that a trick had been practiced upon them, followed the foe, and beat him in the Wady ‘Arawwah, killing the Shaykh. And the chief of the Musálimah gave his widowed sister as wife to the Wuhaydi, and settled with his people in their old homes. The Beni ‘Amr fled to the Hismá, and exiled themselves to Kerak in Syria, where they still dwell, owning the plain called Ganán Shabíb. There is now peace between the Beni ‘Ukbah and their kinsmen the Beni ‘Amr.”
The second event in the history of the tribe, the “Tale of Abú Rísh,”[EN#96] shall also be told in the words of Furayj:–“After the course of time the Beni ‘Ukbah, aided by the Ma’ázah, made war against the Shurafá, who were great lords in those days, and plundered them and drove them from their lands. The victors were headed by one Salámah, a Huwayti who dwelt at El-‘Akabah, and who had become their guest. In those ages the daughters of the tribe were wont to ride before the host in their Hawádig (‘camel-litters’), singing the war-song to make the warriors brave. As Salámah was the chief Mubáriz (‘champion in single combat’), the girls begged him to wear, when fighting, a white ostrich feather in his chain-helmet, that they might note his deeds and chant in his name. Hence his title, Abú Rísh–the ‘Father of a Feather.’ The Sherifs, being beaten, made peace, taking the lands between Wady Dámah and El-Hejaz; whilst the Beni ‘Ukbah occupied Midian Proper (North Midian), between ‘Dámah’ and ‘Shámah’ (Syria).
“Abú Rísh, who was a friend to both victor and vanquished, settled among the Sherifs in the Sirr country south of Wady Dámah. He had received to wife, as a reward for his bravery, the daughter of the Shaykh of the Beni ‘Ukbah; and she bare him a son, ‘Id, whose tomb is in the Wady Ghál, between Zibá and El-Muwaylah. On the Yaum el-Subúh (‘seventh day after birth’), the mother of ‘Id followed the custom of the Arabs; and, after the usual banquet, presented the babe to the guests, including her father, who made over Wady ‘Aynúnah in free gift to his grandson. Now, ‘Id used to lead caravans to Cairo, for the purpose of buying provisions; and he was often plundered by the Ma’ázah, who had occupied by force the Wadys Sharmá, Tiryam, and Surr of El-Muwaylah.
“This ‘Id ibn Salámah left, by a Huwayti woman, a son ‘Alayán, surnamed Abú Takíkah (‘Father of a Scar’) from a sabre-cut in the forehead: he was the founder of the Tugaygát-Huwaytát clan, and his descendants still swear by his name. Once upon a time, when leading his caravan, he reached the Wady ‘Afál, and he learned that his enemies, the Ma’ázah, and the black slaves who garrisoned El-Muwaylah, were lurking in the Wady Marayr. So he placed his loads under a strong guard; and he hastened, with his kinsmen of the Huwaytát, to the Hismá, where the Ma’ázah had left their camels undefended: these he drove off, and rejoined his caravan rejoicing. The Ma’ázah, hearing of their disaster, hurried inland to find out the extent of the loss, abandoning the black slaves, who, nevertheless, were still determined to plunder the Káfilah. ‘Alayán was apprized of their project; and, reaching the Wady Umm Gehaylah, he left his caravan under a guard, and secretly posted fifty matchlock-men in El-Suwayrah, east of the hills of El-Muwaylah. He then (behold his cunning!) tethered between the two hosts, at a place called Zila’h, east of the tomb of Shaykh Abdullah,[EN#97] ten camel-colts without their dams. Roused by the bleating, the negro slaves followed the sound and fell into the ambush, and were all slain.
“‘Alayán returned to the Sirr country, when his tribe, the Huwaytát, said to him, ‘Hayya (up!) to battle with these Ma’ázah and Beni ‘Ukbah; either they uproot us or we uproot them!’ So he gathered the clan, and marched to a place called El-Bayzá,[EN#98] where he found the foe in front. On the next day the battle began, and it was fought out from Friday to Friday; a truce was then made, and it was covenanted to last between evening and morning. But at midnight the enemy arose, left his tents pitched, and fled to the Hismá. ‘Alayán followed the fugitives, came up with them in the Wady Sadr, and broke them to pieces. Upon this they took refuge in Egypt and Syria.
“After a time the Beni ‘Ukbah returned, and obtained pardon from ‘Alaya’n the Huwayti, who imposed upon them six conditions. Firstly, having lost all right to the land, they thus became ‘brothers’ (i.e. serviles). Secondly, they agreed to give up the privilege of escorting the Hajj-caravan. Thirdly, if a Huwayti were proved to have plundered a pilgrim, his tribe should make good the loss; but if the thief escaped detection, the Beni ‘Ukbah should pay the value of the stolen property in coin or in kind. Fourthly, they were bound not to receive as guests any tribe (enumerating a score or so) at enmity with the Huwaytát. Fifthly, if a Shaykh of Huwaytát fancied a dromedary belonging to one of the Beni ‘Ukbah, the latter must sell it under cost price. And, sixthly, the Beni ‘Ukbah were not allowed to wear the ‘Abá or Arab cloak.”[EN#99]
The Beni ‘Ukbah were again attacked and worsted, in the days of Sultan Selim, by their hereditary foe, the Ma’ázah. They complained at Cairo; and the Mamlúk Beys sent down an army which beat the enemy in the Wady Surr. They had many quarrels with their southern neighbours, the Baliyy: at last peace was made, and the land was divided, the Beni ‘Ukbah taking the tract between Wadys Da’mah and El-Muzayrib. Since that time the tribe has been much encroached upon by the Huwayta’t. It still claims, however, as has been said, all the lands between El-Muwaylah and Makná, where they have settlements, and the Jebel Harb, where they feed their camels. They number some twenty-five to thirty tents, boasting that they have hundreds; and, as will appear, their Shaykh, Hasan el-‘Ukbi, amuses himself by occasionally attacking and plundering the wretched Maknáwis, or people of Makná, a tribe weaker than his own.
Chapter VI.
To Makná, and Our Work There–the Magáni or Maknáwis.
After a silly fortnight at old Madiáma, I resolved to march upon its seaport, Makná, the
call also “Madyan.”[EN#100] We set out at seven a.m. (January 25th); and, after a walk of forty-five minutes, we were shown by Furayj a Ghadír, or shallow basin of clay, shining and bald as an old scalp from the chronic sinking of water. In the middle stood two low heaps of fine white cement, mixed with brick and gravel; while to the west we could trace the framework of a mortared Fiskíyyah (“cistern”), measuring five metres each way. The ruin lies a little south of west (241 deg. mag.) from the greater “Shigd;” and it is directly under the catacombed hill which bears the “Praying-place of Jethro.” A tank in these regions always presupposes a water-pit, and there are lingering traditions that this is the “Well of Moses,” so generally noticed by mediæval Arab geographers. It is the only one in the Wady Makná, not to mention a modern pit about an hour and a half further down the valley, sunk by the Bedawin some twenty feet deep: the walls of the latter are apparently falling in, and it is now bone-dry. But the veritable “Moses’ Well” seems to have been upon the coast; and, if such be the case, it is clean forgotten. True, Masá’íd, the mad old Ma’ázi, attempted to trace a well inside our camp by the seashore; but the Beni ‘Ukbah, to whom the land belongs, had never heard of it.
After marching about six miles, we entered a gorge called Umm el-Bíbán, “the Mother of Gates,” formed by the stony spurs of the Wady bank: the number of birds and trees, especially in the syenitic valleys, showed that water could not be far off. At 10.10 a.m. a halt was called at the half-way place, a bay or hollow in the left cliff, El-Humayrah–“the Little Red”–an overhanging wall of ruddy grit some eighty feet high, with strata varying in depth from a few lines to as many fathoms, all differing in colour, and all honeycombed, fretted, and sculptured by wind and rain. Above the red grit, weathered into a thousand queer shapes, stood strata of chloritic sand, a pale yellow-green, and capping it rose the usual dull-brown carbonate of lime. Large fossil oysters lay in numbers about the base, suggesting a prehistoric feast of the Titans. Amongst them is the monstrous Tridacna (gigantea), which sometimes attains a growth of a yard and a half; one of these is used as a bénitier at the church of Saint Sulpice, Paris. Amongst the layers were wavy bands of water-rolled crystals, jaspers, bloodstones, iron-revetted pebbles, and “almonds,” which, in the Brazil, accompany and betray the diamond.[EN#101] We had no time to make a serious search; but, when the metals shall be worked, it will, perhaps, be advisable to import a skilled prospecter from the Brazil or the Cape of Good Hope.
At noon we met the “heaven-sent, life-sustaining sea-breeze;” and now the broad and well-marked Wady Makná, with its rosy-pink sands, narrowed to a gut, flanked and choked on both sides, north and south, by rocks of the strangest tricolour, green-black, yellow-white, and rusty-red. The gloomy peak, which had long appeared capping the heights ahead, proved to be the culmination of a huge upthrust of porphyritic trap. Bottle-green when seen under certain angles, and dull dead sable at others, it was variegated by cliffs and slopes polished like dark mirrors, and by sooty sand-shunts disposed at the natural slope. Crumbling outside, the lower strata pass from the cellular to the compact, and are often metalliferous when in contact with the quartz: at these Salbandes the richest mineral deposits are always found. Set in and on the black flanks, and looking from afar like the gouts of a bloodstone, are horizontal beds, perpendicular spines, and detached blocks of felsitic porphyry and of rusty-red syenite, altered, broken, and burnt by plutonic heat. In places, where the trap has cut through the more modern formations, it has been degraded by time from a dyke to a ditch, the latter walled by the ruddy rocks, and sharply cut as a castle-moat. And already we could see, on the right of the Wady, those cones and crests of ghastly, glaring white gypsum, which we had called “the Hats.”
These gloomy cliffs, approaching the maritime plain, sweep away to the south, and melt into the “Red Hills” visited on our first excursion. They are known as the Jebel el-‘Abdayn–“of the Two Slaves:” this, perhaps, is the Doric pronunciation of the Bedawin for Abdín–“slaves.” Presently we sighted the familiar features of the seaboard, described in my first volume, especially the Rughámat el-Margas to the north; and westward the Gulf of ‘Akabah, looking cool and blue in the Arabian glare. After five hours and thirty minutes (= seventeen miles and a half) in the saddle we reached Makná.
I had thought of encamping near the “Praying-place of Moses,” a fine breezy site which storms would have made untenable. As at Sharmá, camels must turn off to the right over the banks when approaching the mouth of the Wady Madyan, whose bed is made impassable by rocks and palm-thicket. We then proposed to pitch the tents upon the valley sands within the “Gate,” but this was overruled by the Sayyid, who told grisly tales of fever and ague. Finally, we returned to our former ground, near the old conglomerates and the mass of new shells, which ledge the shore of the little harbour. Approaching it, we were delighted to see the gunboat Mukhbir steaming up, despite the contrary wind, from Sharm Yáhárr; she was towing the Sambúk, which brought from ‘Aynúnah Bay our heavy gear, rations, and tools. This was a stroke of good luck: already we were on half rations, and provant for men and mules threatened to run short.
Our week at Makná (January 25–February 2) justified the pleasant impression left by the first visit, and enabled us to correct the inaccuracies of a flying survey.
This “Valley of Waters,” with its pink and yellow (chloritic) sands, is bounded on the right near the sea by a sandbank about one hundred feet high, a loose sheet thinly covering the dykes of syenite and the porphyritic trap which in places peep out. Possibly it contains, like the left flank, veins of quartz, lowered by corrosion, and concealed by the sand-drift spread by the prevalent western winds. The high-level abounds in detached springs, probably the drainage of the Rughámat Makná, the huge “horse” or buttress of gypsum bearing north-east from the harbour. The principal veins number three. The uppermost and sweetest is the Ayn el-Tabbákhah; in the middle height is El-Túyuri (Umm el-Tuyúr), with the dwarf cataract and its tinkling song; whilst the brackish ‘Ayn el-Fara’í occupies the valley sole. Besides these a streak of palms, perpendicular to the run of the Wady, shows a rain-basin, dry during the droughts, and, higher up, the outlying dates springing from the arid sands, are fed by thin veins which damp the rocky base. Hence, probably, Dr. Beke identified the place with the “Elim” of the Exodus: his artist’s sketch from the sea (p. 340) is, however, absolutely unrecognizable.
The high-level spring and the middle water rise in sandy basins; course down deeply furrowed beds of grit; and, after passing through a tangle of vegetation, a dense forest of palms, alive and dead, and open patches sown with grain, wilfully waste their treasures in the upper slope of the right bank. This abundance of water has developed a certain amount of industry; although the Bedawin tear to pieces the young male-dates, whose tender green growth, at the base of the fronds, supplies them with a “chaw.” A number of artificial runners has been trained to water dwarf barley-plots, whose fences of date-fronds defend them from sheep and goats; and further down the bank are the fruit trees which first attracted our attention.
The low-level water consists of two springs. The upper is the ‘Ayn el-‘Aryánah, springing from the sands under the date-trees which line the right and left sides: apparently it is the drainage of a gypsum “hat,” called El-Kulayb, “the Little Dog”–in their Doric the Bedawin pronounce the word Galáib. Further down the bed, and divided by a tract of dry sand, is the ‘Ayn el-Fara’i, which also rises from both banks, forms a single stream, sleeps in deep pellucid pools like fairy baths among the huge boulders of grey granite, and finally sinks before reaching the shore. When these waters shall again be regulated, as of old, they will prove amply sufficient for the vegetable and the mineral. Anton, the Greek, who everywhere saw the shop, was so charmed with the spot, that he at once laid out his establishment: here shall be the hotel; there the billiard and gambling room, and there the garden, the kiosk, the buvette–in fact, he projected a miner’s paradise.
On the crest of this right bank, above the vegetation, lies the traditional Musallat Musá (“Moses’ Oratory”), of which the foundations, or rather the base-stones, are in situ. The larger enceinte measures, without including two walls projecting from the north-east and north-west angles, an oblong of thirty-seven by twenty-five feet; and, as usual with Midianite ruins, it has been built of all manner of material. The inner sanctum opens to the west, the northern and southern basement-lines only remaining: the former is composed of eight blocks of gypsum resembling alabaster, five being larger than the others; and the southern of three. Upon these the Bedawin still deposit their simple ex-votos, oyster and other shells, potsherds, and coloured pebbles.[EN#102]
The left or opposite bank, which wants water, is formed by the tall conglomerate-capped cliffs, which support the “Muttali'” or hauteville, and by the warty block called Jebel el-Fahísát. In “The Gold-Mines of Midian” (Chap. XII.) it is called El-Muzayndi, an error of my informants for El-Muzeúdi: the latter is the name of the small red hill north of our camp. I again visited the high town, which is about a hundred feet above the valley: presently it will disappear bodily, as its base is being corroded, like the Jebel el-Safrá of Magháir Shu’ayb. The walls still standing form a long room running north-south; and the two adjoining closets set off to the north-east and south-east. This sadly shrunken upper settlement covers the remnant of the rocky plateau to the east: there are also traces of building on the southern slopes. Ruined heaps of the usual material, gypsum, dot and line the short broad valley to the north, which rejoices in the neat and handy name, Wady Majrá Sayl Jebel el-Marú. Here, however, they are hardly to be distinguished from the chloritic spines and natural sandbanks that stud the bed. The only antiquities found in the “Muttali”‘ were a stone cut into parallel bands, and the fragment of a basalt door with its pivot acting as hinge in the upper part: it reminded me of the Græco-Roman townlets in the Haurán, where the credulous discovered “giant Cities” and similar ineptitudes. Our search for Midianite money was in vain; Mr. Clarke, however, picked up, near the sea, a silver “Taymúr,” the Moghal, with a curiously twisted Kufic inscription. (A.H. 734).
The ‘Ushash or frond-huts of the Maknáwi and the Beni ‘Ukbah were still mostly empty. At this season, all along the seaboard of North-Western Arabia, the Bedawin are grazing their animals in the uplands, and they will not return coastwards till July and August supply the date-harvest. The village shows the inconséquence of doors and wooden keys to defend an interior made of Cadjan, or “dry date-fronds,” which, bound in bundles, make a good hedge, but at all times a bad wall. One of its peculiar features is what looks like a truncated and roofless oven; in this swish cylinder they pound without soaking the date-kernels that feed their camels, sheep, and goats. A few youths, however, who remained in this apology for a “deserted village,” assisted us in night-fishing with the lantern; and they brought from the adjoining reefs the most delicate of shell and scale fish. The best were the langoustes (Palinurus vulgaris), the clawless lobsters called crawfish (crayfish) in the United States, and the agosta or avagosta of the Adriatic: it was confounded by the Egyptian officers with “Abú Galambo,”[EN#103] the crab (Cancer pelagicus). The echinidae of various species, large-spined and small-spined, the latter white as well as dull-red, were preserved in spirits.[EN#104] Amongst the excellent fish, the Marján (a Scina) the Sultan el-Bahr, the Palamita (Scomber), the Makli (red mullets, Mugil cephalus), and the Búri, were monstrous animals, with big eyes and long beaks like woodcocks; some of these were garnished with rows of ridiculously big teeth. I failed to procure live specimens of small turtle, and yet the huts were full of carapaces, all broken and eight-ribbed. One species, the Sakar, supplies tortoise-shell sold at Suez for 150 piastres per Ratl or pound; the Bísa’h, another large kind without carapace, is used only for eating: both are caught off the reefs and islets. An eel-like water-snake (Marrína = Murna Ophis) showed fight when attacked. The Arabs do not eat it, yet they will not refuse the Shaggah, or large black land-snake.
The enforced delay at Makná gave us the opportunity of making careful reconnaissances in its neighbourhood. During the last spring I had heard of a Jebel el-Kibí’t (“sulphur-hill”) on the road to ‘Aynúnah, but no guide was then procurable. Shortly after our return, a Bedawi named Jázi brought in fine specimens of brimstone, pure crystals adhering to the Secondary calcaire, and possibly formed by decomposition of the sulphate of lime. If this be the case we may hope to find the mineral generally diffused throughout these immense formations; of course, in some places the yield will be richer and in others poorer. Further investigation introduced us, as will be seen, to two southern deposits, without including one heard of in Northern Sinai. All lie within a short distance of the sea, and all are virgin: the Bedawin import their sulphur from the “Barr el-‘Ajam,” the popular name for Egypt, properly meaning Persia or any non-Arab land. Thus, in one important article Midian rivals, if not excels, the riches of the opposite African shore, where for a single mine thirty millions of francs have been demanded by way of indemnity.
Betimes on January 26th, a caravan of four camels, for the two quarrymen and the guide, set off southwards, carrying sacks, tools, and other necessaries. They did not return till the morning of the third day; Jázi had lost the road, and the Bedawin rather repented of having been so ready to disclose their treasures. Of course, our men could not ascertain the extent of the deposits; but they brought back rich specimens which determined me to have the place surveyed. Unfortunately I had forgotten a sulphur-still; and the engineer vainly attempted to extract the ore by luting together two iron mortars, and by heating them to a red heat. The only result was the diffusion of the sulphur crystals in the surrounding gypsum. This discovery gave me abundant trouble; the second search-party was a failure; and it was not till February 18th that I could obtain a satisfactory plan of the northern Jebel el-Kibrít.
At Makná I was much puzzled by the presence of the porous basalt, which had yielded to the first Expedition a veinlet of “electron”–gold and silver mixed by the hand of Nature. The plutonic rock, absent from the Wady Makná, appears in scatters along the shore to the north. Our friend Furayj knew nothing nearer than El-Harrah, the volcanic tract bounding the Hismá on the east, and distant some five days’ march. This was going too far; querns of the same material, found in all the ruins, suggested a neighbouring outcrop. Moreover, during the last spring, I had heard of a mining site called Nakhil Tayyib Ism, the “Palm-orchard (of the Mountain) of the Good Name,” in the so-called range to the north of Makná.
Lieutenant Amir was despatched (January 27th) to seek for basalt, with a small dromedary-caravan, under the lead of Shaykh Furayj. After winding for about two hours along the shore, which is cut by the broad mouths of many a Wady; and whose corallines, grits, and limestones are weathered into the strangest shapes; he left to the right (east) the light-coloured Jebel Sukk. On the southern side of the Wady (Sukk) which drains it to the sea, a hill of the porous stone which the Arabs call “Hajar el-Harrah” appeared. The specimens brought home, si vera sunt exposita, if they be really taken from an outcrop, prove that volcanic centres, detached, sporadic, and unexpected, like those found further north, occur even along the shore. As will afterwards appear, another little “Harrah” was remarked by Burckhardt (“Syria,” p. 522), about one hour and a quarter north of Sinaitic Sherm. He says, “Here for the first and only time, I saw volcanic rocks,” and he considers that their extension towards Ras Abú(?) Mohammed may have given rise to the name
Wellsted,[EN#105] who apparently had not read Burckhardt, makes the same remark. The many eruptive centres in the limestones of Syria and Palestine were discovered chiefly by my late friend, the loved and lamented Charles F. Tyrwhitt-Drake. It would be interesting to ascertain the relation which they bear to tile great lines of vulcanism in the far interior, the Haura’n and the Harrah, subtending the coast mountains. And Dr. Beke, another friend now no more, would have been delighted to know that his “True Mount Sinai” was not unconnected with a volcanic outbreak.
Beyond the Wady Sukk, a bad rough path leads along the base of the Tayyih Ism Mountain; then the cliffs fall sheer into the sea, explaining why caravans never travel that way. Yet there was a maritime road, for we know that Abú Sufyán, on his way from Syria to fight the battle of “Bedr” (A.H. 2), passed by a roundabout path for safety, along the shore of Midian. Thus compelled, the track bends inland, and enters a Nakb, a gash conspicuous from the Gulf, an immense cañon or couloir that looks as if ready to receive a dyke or vein. Curious to say, a precisely similar formation, prolonged to the south-west, cuts the cliffs south of Marsá Dahab in the Sinaitic Peninsula. The southern entrance to the gorge bears signs of human habitation: a parallelogram of stones, 120 paces by 91, has been partially buried by a land-slip (?); and there are remnants of a dam measuring about a hundred metres in length (?). About three hundred yards higher up, water appears in abundance, and palm clumps grow on both sides of it. Here, however, all trace of man is wanting; the winter torrents must be dangerous; and there is no grass for sheep. The crevasse now becomes very wild; the Pass narrows from fifty to ten paces, and, in one section, a loaded camel can hardly squeeze through; whilst the cliff-walls of red and grey granite (?) tower some two thousand feet above the thread of path.[EN#106] Water which, as usual, sinks in the sand, is abundant enough in three other places to supply a large caravan; and two date-clumps were passed. Hence, if all here told be true, the “Nakhil (palm-plantation) Tayyib Ism” reported to the first Expedition.
After covering sixteen miles in five hours, the caravan had not made more than half the distance to the Bir el-Máshi, where a small Marsá, or anchorage-ground, called El-Suwayhil (“the Little Shore”) nestles in the long sand-slope between the mountain Tayyib Ism and its huge northern neighbour, the Mazhafah block. From this “Well of the Walker,” a pass leads to the Wady Marsha’, where, according to certain Bedawin, are found extensive ruins and Bíbán (“doors”), or catacombs. The whole is, however, an invention; our Sayyid had ridden down the valley during his journey to El-Hakl.
On the next day another reconnaissance was made. I had been shown fine specimens of quartz from the Eastern highlands; moreover, a bottle of “bitter” or sulphur-water from the Wady Mab’úg, the “oblique” or “crooked” valley, mentioned in “The Gold-Mines of Midian,”[EN#107] had been brought to us with much ceremony. Those who tasted it, indeed, were divided as to whether it smacked more of brimstone or of ammonia. Accordingly, Mr. Clarke and Lieutenant Yusuf walked up the Wady Makná, and ascended the Mab’úg, where the mineral spring proved to be a shallow pool of rain-water, much frequented by animals, camels included. Search for the “Marú” was more successful: they found a network of veins in the sandstone grits (?) of the Jebel Umm Lasaf; and they thus established the fact that the “white stone” abounds to the east as well as to the south of Makná.
Meanwhile we were working hard at the Jebel el-Fahísát, the great discovery of the northern journey. I had been struck by the name of the watercourse to the north of the hauteville, Wady Majrá Sayl Jebel el-Marú–“the Nullah of the Divide of the Torrent (that pours) from the Mountain of Quartz.” Moreover, a Makna’wi lad, ‘Id bin Mohsin, had brought in fine specimens of the Negro or iridescent variety, offering to show the place. Lastly, other Bedawi had contributed fine specimens of Marú, with the grey copper standing out of it in veins. On the evening of January 27th we walked up the picturesque mouth of the Makná valley. After passing the conglomerate “Gate,” and the dwarf plantations on both sides above it, we reached in forty-five minutes the spot where the lower water, ‘Ayn el-Fara’í, tumbles over rocks of grit and granite. On the left bank, denoted by a luxuriant growth of rushes, is an influent called Sha’b el-Kázi, or “the Judge’s Pass.”[EN#108] Ascending it for a few paces, we struck up the broad and open Fiumara, which I shall call for shortness “Wady Majrá.” The main trunk of many branches, it is a smooth incline, perfectly practicable to camels; with banks and buttresses of green-yellow chloritic sands, and longitudinal spines outcropping from the under surface. It carries off the surplus water from the north-western slopes of that strange wavelike formation, the Jebel el-Fahísát, which bounds the right (southern) bank of the Wady Makná. Presently we sighted the Jebel el-Maru’, the strangest spectacle. The apex of the gloomy porphyritic trap is a long spine of the tenderest azure-white, filmy as the finials of Milan Cathedral, and apparently melting into thin air. Its crest seems abnormally tall and distant; and below it a huge grey vein, horizontal and wavy, cuts and pierces the peaklet of red rock; and is cut and pierced, in its turn, by two perpendicular dykes of porphyritic trap, one flanking the right and the left shoulders of the low cone. When standing upon the hauteville during my first visit, I had remarked this “white Lady” of a vein, without, however, attaching to it any importance.
After a quarter of an hour’s walk up the Wady Majrá, we came to the sandy base of the rocky Fahísát; and climbed up a torrent-ladder with drops and stiff gradients, which were presently levelled for the convenience of our quarrymen. A few minutes’ “swarming” placed us upon the narrow knife-like ridge of snowy quartz, so weathered that it breaks under the hand: this is the aerial head which from below appears so far. The summit, distant from our camp about one direct mile and a quarter, gives 355 degrees to the Gypsum-hill, Ras el-Tárah, on the shore; 358 degrees to the palm-clump nearest the sea, and due north (360 degrees, all magnetic) to the tents, which are well in sight. The altitude is about six hundred feet (aner. 29.40).
The view from this summit of the Fahísát is charming as it is extensive. Westward and broad stretching to the north-west lies the fair blue gulf that shows, on its far side, the broken mountains of the Sinaitic Peninsula. Northwards, at our feet, stretch the palm-groves of Makná, a torrent of verdure pouring towards the shore. A little to the left, sheltered from the boreal wind by the white gypseous ridge, Ras el-Târah (“the Head that surrounds”), and flanked at both ends by its triangular reefs, the Sharm Makná, the past and future port of the mines, supports the miniature gunboat no larger than a “cock,” and the Sambúk dwarfed to a buoy. Beyond the purpling harbour, along the glaring yellow shore, cut by broad Wady-mouths and dotted here and there with a date-clump, the corallines, grits, and sandstones are weathered to the quaintest forms, giant pins and mushrooms, columns and ruined castles. These maritime lowlands are bounded on the north by heights in three distinct planes: the nearest is the Jebel Sukk, low and white; farther rises Tayyib Ism, a chocolate-coloured mass studded with small peaks; while the horizon is closed by the grand blue wall, the Jebel el-Mazhafah. In places their precipices drop bluff to the sea; but the huge valley-mouths separating the two greater ridges, have vomited a quantity of sand, forming the tapering tongue and tip known as the “Little Shore.” Turning to the east and the south-east we have for horizon the Wady el-Kharaj (El-Akhraj?), backed by its immense right bank of yellow gypsum, which dwarfs even the Rughámat Makná, and over it we catch sight of the dark and gloomy Kalb el-Nakhlah, a ridge which, running parallel with and inland of the Fahísát, will be worked when the latter is exhausted.
We at once recognized the value of this discovery when, reaching the tents, we examined the quartz, and found it seamed and pitted with veins and geodes containing Colorado, earthy and crumbling metallic dust, chlorure, iodure, and bromure of silver, with various colours, red, ochre-yellow, and dark chocolate-brown. It stained the fingers, and was suspiciously light–n’importe. I must regret that here, as indeed throughout the exploration, all our specimens were taken from the surface: we had not time to dig even a couple of feet deep. The lad ‘Id almost fainted with joy and surprise when the silver dollars were dropped into his hand, one by one, with the reiteration of “Here’s another for you! and here’s another!” This lavishness served to stimulate cupidity, and every day the Bedawin brought in specimens from half a dozen different places. But the satisfaction was at its height when the crucible produced, after cupellation, a button of “silver” weighing some twenty grammes from the hundred grammes of what the grumbling Californian miners had called, in their wrath, “dashed black dust;”[EN#109] and when a second experiment yielded twenty-eight grammes (each fifteen grains and a half) and ten centigrammes from 111 grammes, or about a quarter of a pound avoirdupois. In the latter experiment also, the culot came away without the litharge, which almost always contains traces of silver and antimony. Hence we concluded that the proportions were 30:110–a magnificent result, considering that 12-1/2:100 is held to be rich ore in the silver mines of the Pacific States.[EN#110] The engineer was radieux with pride and joy. The yellow tint of the “buttons” promised gold–two per cent.? Three per cent.? Immense wealth lay before us: a ton of silver is worth 250,000 francs. Meanwhile–and now I take blame to myself–no one thought of testing the find, even by a blow with the hammer.
Alas! THE “SPLENDID BUTTONS” PROVED TO BE IRON, CONTAINING ONLY TWO AND A HALF GRAMMES OF SILVER TO ONE HUNDRED KILOGRAMMES.[EN#111]
I can afford to make merry on the absurd mistake, which at the time filled the camp with happiness. The Jebel el-Fahísát played us an ugly trick; yet it is, not the less, a glorious metalliferous block, and I am sure of its future.
The rest of our time at Makná was given to the study of this discovery. The great quartz-wall or vein runs nearly due north and south, with a dip of 5 degrees west; it has pierced the syenite, forming a sheet down one peak, spanning a second, and finally appearing in an apparently isolated knob, that bore from the apex 215 degrees (mag.) The upper part, like that of the Jebel el-Abyaz, is apparently sterile: at a lower horizon it becomes panaché; and at last almost all is iridescent–in fact, it is the Filon Husayn, still richer in veins and geodes. The filets and fibrils of dust are exposed to sight in the flanks, and near the base of the great quartz-vein: we should never have been able to remove the barren upper capping.
Every day’s work brought with it some novelty. The Jebel el-Mará, the centre or focus of the formation, was found to push out veins to the north, extending within a few yards of the Wady Makná’s mouth. Here, however, the quartz imbedded in grey granite appears cupriferous, producing fine grey copper (?); and the same is the case to the east of the Fahísát block. Other green-tinged veins were found bearing 205 degrees (mag.) from our camp. There is also a quartz-hill whose valley-drain, about a mile and a third long, leads down to the sea, about two minutes’ walk south of the southern clump of “tabernacles” occupied by the Maknáwis. The dust is richest, as usual, at the walls where the vein is in immediate contact with the heat-altered granites, whose red variety, containing very little mica, becomes quasi-syenitic. Certain of the Expedition thought that the Fahísát showed signs of having been worked by the ancients: my eyes could see nothing of the kind. And here, as in other parts of our strange country, there is a medley, a confusion of different formations.
On February 2nd, the day before we left Makná, the Arabs brought in heavy masses of purple-black, metalliferous rock, scattered over the gorges and valleys south of the Jebel el-Fahísát; while others declared that they could point out a vein in situ. Our engineer declared it to be argentiferous galena, but it proved to be magnetic iron. His assays were of the rudest: he broke at least one crucible per day, lamenting the while that he had been supplied with English articles, instead of creusets de Bourgogne. And no wonder! He treated them by a strong blast in a furious coal-fire without previous warming. His muffle was a wreck, and such by degrees became the condition of all his apparatus. However, as we sought, so we found: hardly a Bedawi lad in camp but unpouched some form of metallic specimens. The Shaykhs declared that the wealth of “Kárún” must have been dug here; and I vainly told them that the place of punishment of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram is still shown by Christians in the Convent of Mount Sinai.[EN#112]
On January 28th, after a ruddy and cloudy sunset, El-Ayli, the ‘Akabah wind, beginning at eleven p.m., gave us a taste of his quality. These northers are the Tyrants of the Gulf; which, comparatively unbroken by capes and headlands, allows them all their own way, carrying a strong swell, and at times huge waves, to meet the tide inflowing from the Red Sea. The storm began with a rush and a roar, as if it came from above. The gravel, striking the canvas, sounded like hail or heavy rain-drops; it then kicked down at one blow the two large tents: they had been carefully pitched above the reach of water, when wind only was to be guarded against. Fortunately most of our goods were packed, in expectation of embarking on the morrow; but the fall broke all the breakables that were not under cover, and carried newspapers and pamphlets, including–again, alas!–the Reseau Pentagonal of Elie de Beaumont, over the plain southwards till arrested by the heights of Jebel el-Fahísát. This Bora, as it would be called on the Adriatic, makes the air exceptionally cold and raw before dawn: it appears to abate between noon and sunset, and it is most violent at night: it either sensibly increases or lessens in turbulence with moonrise; and it usually lasts from three to seven days. We rigged up one of the native huts with the awning of a tent, till it looked very like a Gypsy dwelling, and in patience we possessed our souls, grumbling horridly like Britons.
Poor Captain Mohammed of the Mukhbir, who had already escaped one shipwreck, was in mortal terror: he at once got up steam, and kept his weary vigil all night. He was perfectly safe, as the northern reef, under which the Sambúk Musahhil rode easily as if in smooth water, and the headland, Ras el-Tárah, formed a complete defence against the Aylí, while the natural pier to the south would have protected him from its complement, the Azyab or “south-easter.” But it would have been very different had the storm veered to the west, and the terrible Gharbi set in. The port of Makná, which has been described in “The Gold-Mines of Midian,”[EN#113] can hardly be called safe; on the other hand, its floor has not been surveyed, and a single brise-lame seawards would convert it into a dock. I should propose a gallegiante, a floating breakwater, tree-trunks in bundles strongly bound together with iron cramps and bands, connected by stout rings and staples and made fast by anchors to the bottom. And, at any rate, on the Sinaitic shore opposite, at the distance of thirteen knots, there is, as will appear, an admirable harbour of refuge.
Next day the cloud-veil lifted; and the mountains of Sinai and Midian, which before had been hidden as if by a November fog in London, again stood out in sharp and steely blue. I proposed to board the gunboat. Afloat we should have been much more comfortable than ashore in the raw, high, and dusty-laden wind. The Egyptian officers, however, quoted the unnautical Fellah’s favourite saws, El-barro birr li-Ahlihi–“Earth is a blessing to those upon her”–Zirtat el-Jimál, wa lá tasbíh el-Samak–“The roar of the camels and not the prayer[EN#114] of the fish;” and the sailors’ saying, Kalb el-Barr, wa lá Sabá el-Bahr–“Better be a dog ashore than a lion afloat.” The public voice was decidedly against embarking; so two more days of gale were spent in adding to our collection of mineralogy. On the other hand, the Sayyid and the three Shaykhs were anxious for a speedy return to El-Muwaylah, where the Hajj-caravan was expected on Safar 10 (= February 11th), and where their presence would be officially required.
On the last day of January I boated off to the Mukhbir several tons of the specimens collected during the northern march; including the iron, the sulphur, and the fine white gypsum, crystalline and amorphous, which forms the Rughámat Makná Lieutenant Yusuf and M. Philipin were directed to remain in camp until they should have collected and placed upon the seashore, ready for embarkation on our return, one ton of white quartz, three tons (= one cubic metre) of the iridescent variety, and four boxes half full of the “silver” (iron) dust whose veins and pockets seam the Negro. They were also to wash in the cradle two tons of the pounded Cascalho (conglomerate gravel); one ton of the green-yellow chloritic or serpentine sand forming the under surface of the Wady Makná, reduced to four Girbahs or “water-sacks;” and five tons of the dark metal (not argentiferous galena). After that they were to visit the northern Sulphur-hill; estimate its contents, trace, if possible, its connection with adjoining formations; map the country and prospect for wood, water, and harbour. Lastly, they were ordered to march with the whole camp, including our mules, upon El-Muwaylah, and there to await my return.
The three normal days of El-Aylí had come and gone; still the Fortuna[EN#115] did not fall. The water, paved with dark slate, and domed with an awning of milky-white clouds, patched here and there with rags and shreds of black wintry mist that poured westward from the Suez Gulf, showed us how ugly the Birkat ‘Akabah can look. As in Iceland also, the higher rose the barometer, the higher rose the norther; the latter being a cold dry wind is, consequently, a heavy wind. And when the sky was comparatively clear and blue, the display of cirri was noticeable. In some places they formed filmy crosses and thready lozenges; in others the wrack fell into the shape of the letter Z; and from the western horizon the curl-clouds shot up thin rays, with a common centre hid behind the mountains of Sinai, affecting all the airs of the sun.
Before leaving Makná I must give an account of its peculiar tribe, concerning which “The Gold-Mines of Midian”[EN#116] contained sundry inaccuracies. These men are not the “pauper descendants of the wealthy Midianites; they cannot boast of ancient race or of noble blood; and their speech differs in nothing from that of the Arabs around them. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that they represent in any way the ancient Nabathæans. In features, complexion, and dress they resemble the half-settled Bedawin around them; and, like these, they show a kind of connection with the Sinaitic tribes. The Magáni,[EN#117] to whom only the southern clump of huts at Makná belongs, call themselves Fawá’idah, Zubáidah, and Ramázání, after families of the Juhayni stock; and the Fawá’idah have, by descent, some title to the name. They are, however, considered to be Khaddamín (“serviles”), like the Hutaym race, by their neighbours, who give tile following account of their origin.
An Egyptian silk-seller, who accompanied the Hajj-caravan, happened to fall asleep at Kubázah, between the stations of ‘Aynúnah and Magháir Shu’ayb. His companions went their ways, and he, like a “bean-eater” as he was, fearing to follow them alone, made for Makná. Having married and settled there, and seeing in the fertility of the soil a prospective spec., he sent to his native country for Fellahín–cultivateurs and peasants–who were collected from every part of Pharoah-land and its neighbourhood. The new-comers were compelled to pay one-half of their harvest, by way of El-Akháwah (“the brother-tax”), in token of subjugation, to the Beni ‘Ukbah, the owners of the soil. They have gradually acquired Milk (“legal title”) to the ground. According to some, they first settled at Makná in the days of the Beni ‘Amr, whom they subsequently accompanied to the Hismá, when flying from the victorious Musálimah. After peace was patched up, they were compelled to make over one-fourth of the date-harvest as El-Akháwah to the ‘Imrán-Huwaytát and to the Ma’ázah; whilst the Tagaygát-Huwaytát claimed a Bursh, or “mat of fine reeds,” as a poll-tax from every head of man. Under these hard conditions they are left unmolested; and everything taken from them is restored by the Shaykhs who receive tribute. They have no chief, although one Sálim ibn Juwayfili claims the title.
Before 1866 the Magáni numbered about a hundred tents: the Wady Makná was then, they say, a garden; and its cultivators were remarkable for their goodness and hospitality to strangers. But in that year a feud with the Beni ‘Ukbah was excited, as often happens, by the belli teterrima causa; the women quarrelled with one another, saying,
“Thy husband is a slave to my husband,” and so forth. The little tribe, hoisting two flags of red and white calico with green palm-fronds for staves, dared the foe to attack it; after a loss of four killed and sundry wounded, all ran away manfully, leaving their goods at the mercy of the conqueror. Shaykh Hasan el-‘Ukbí was assisted by the Ma’ázah in looting the Magáni huts, and in carrying off the camels, while Shaykh Furayj vainly attempted conciliation. Shortly afterwards the Maknáwis went in a body to beg aid from Hammád el-Sofi, Shaykh of the Turábín tribe, which extends from Ghazzah (Gaza) westwards to Egypt. Marching with a host of armed followers, he took possession of the palm-huts belonging to the Beni ‘Ukbah, when the owners fled in turn, leaving behind their women and children. Furayj hastened from ‘Aynúnah to settle the quarrel; and at last the Sofi said to him, “Whilst I protect the Magáni, do thou protect the Beni ‘Ukbah.” Whereupon the latter returned from their mountain-refuge to El-Muwaylah. The Magáni at the present time are mostly camped about ‘Aynúnah; and only some fifteen head, old men, women, and boys, who did not take part in the fight, and who live by fishing, remain at Makná under the protection of the Beni ‘Ukbah. Hence the waters are waste and the fields are mostly unhoed.
Such is the normal condition of Arabia and the Arabs. What one does the other undoes; what this creates, that destroys. Professor Palmer tells us, “Another misconception is that all Arabs are habitual thieves and murderers.”[EN#118] Fear of the terrible vendetta, the blood feud and the blut-geld, amounting to about eight hundred dollars, prevents the Bedawin, here as elsewhere, slaying any but strangers. The traveller’s experience, however, was chiefly of the Towarah or Sinaitic Bedawin, a race which, bad as bad could be in the early quarter of the present century, has been thoroughly tamed and cowed by the “fear of Allah and the Consul.” And the curse pronounced by the Jews against their brother Ishmael, “his hand shall be against every man,” etc., must, as was known even in the days of Gibbon, be taken with many a grain of salt.
Yet the Bedawin of Midian have till late years been a turbulent “mixed multitude,” and are ready to become troublesome again. It is only by building forts and by holding the land militarily, that the civilized can hope to tame this vermin. I repeat, however, my conviction that the charming Makná Valley is fated to see happy years; and that the Wild Man who, when ruled by an iron hand, is ever ready to do a fair day’s work for a fair wage (especially victuals), will presently sit under the shadow of his own secular vines and fig-trees.
About midnight on February 2nd, the tempestuous northerly gale, which had now lasted four days and five nights, ceased almost suddenly: the signs of the approaching calm were the falling of the mercury, the increased warmth of the atmosphere, and the shifting of the wind towards the east. All hailed the change with joy. The travellers looked forward to ending their peregrinations, while the voyagers, myself included, hoped safely to steam round the Gulf el-‘Akabah, and to trace, as correctly as possible, the extent, the trend, and the puissance of the quartz-formations. At Cairo Mr. Consul Rogers told me he had found them in large quantities veining the red grits of Petra; and I thought it possible that the “white stone” may extend under the waters of ‘Akabah into the peninsula of Sinai.
Chapter VII.
Cruise from Maknáto El-‘Akabah.
This “Red Sea in the Land of Edom” (1 Kings ix. 26) is still, as Wellsted entitles it, “a vast and solitary Gulf.” It bears a quaint resemblance to that eastern fork of the northern Adriatic, the Quarnero, whose name expresses its terrible storms; while the Suez branch shows the longer stretch of the Triestine bifurcation. Yamm Elath or Eloth, as the Hebrews called El-‘Akabah, has, by the upheaval of the land, lost more of its fair proportions than its western sister. It was at one time the embouchure of the Jordan, extending up the Wady el-‘Arabah to the Asphaltite Lake (Dead Sea), before the former became, so to speak, a hill and the latter a hole. This view dates from olden times. “Si suppone,” says Cornelius à Lapide,[EN#119] “che sia un sollevamento che accadde, mentre un abbassamento formava il Mar Morto; e che il Giordano si gettasse nel Golfo Elanitico (Yamm Ailath), ciò é nel Mar Rosso, prima della destruzione di Sodoma.” For the latter date we have only to read, “When a movement of depression sank the lower Jordan Valley, and its present reservoirs, the Tiberias Lake and the Dead Sea, to their actual level.” There is nothing marvellous nor unique in the feature, as it appears to those suffering from that strange malady, “Holy Land on the Brain.” The Oxus and the Caspian show an identical formation, only the sinking has been on a smaller scale.
Wellsted was unfortunate, both in his weather and in his craft. To encounter a “sea of breakers” and “northerly gales with a high and dangerous swell” in a wretched “bugalá” (i.e. Sambúk), and in that perfect tub, the Palinurus, was somewhat like tempting Providence,–if such operation be possible. No wonder that “in this Gulf, in a course of only ninety miles, the nautical mishaps were numerous and varied.” The surveyor, however, neglected a matter of the highest interest and importance, namely, to ascertain whether there be any difference of level between the heads of the Suez and the ‘Akabah waters. The vicinity of continuous maritime chains, varying from six to nearly nine thousand feet, suggests an amount of attraction (theoretically) sufficient to cause a sensible difference of plane. It would be well worth while to run two lines of survey, one from El-‘Akabah to Suez, and the other down the eastern flank of the Sinaitic Peninsula.
The Mukhbir, like the Palinurus, promised a certain amount of excitement. Her boiler, I have said, was honeycombed; it was easy to thrust one’s fist through it. Mr. David Duguid, the engineer, who on one occasion worked thirty-six hours at a stretch, had applied for sixty new tubes, and he wanted one hundred and fifty: we began with two hundred and forty; we lost, when in the Gulf, from three to nine per diem, a total of seventy five; and the work of the engine-room and the ship’s carpenters consisted in plugging fractures with stays, plates, and wedges. Presently the steam-gauge (manomètre) gave way, making it impossible to register pressure; the combustion chamber showed a rent of eighteen inches long by one wide, the result of too rapid cooling; and, lastly, the donkey-engine struck work. Under these happy circumstances bursting was not to be expected; breaking down was, a regular collapse which would have left us like a log upon the stormy waves. A new boiler might have cost, perhaps, £900, and the want of one daily endangered a good ship which could not be replaced for £9000. I therefore determined upon a “Safer Khoriyyah,” that is, steaming by day and anchoring at night in some snug bay. It was also agreed, nem. con., to tow the Sambúk El-Musahhil, in order that, should accidents happen, it might in turn act tug to the steamer; or even, at a pinch, serve us as a lifeboat.
Nothing becomes Makná better than the view on leaving it. A varied and attractive picture this, with the turquoise-blue of the deep water, the purple and leek-green tints of the shoaly and sandy little port, and the tawny shore dotted by six distinct palm-tufts. They are outliers of the main line, yon flood of verdure, climbing up and streaming down from the high, dry, and barren banks of arenaceous drift, heaped up and filmed over by the wind, and, lastly, surging through its narrow “Gate,” with the clifflets of conglomerate forming the old coast. Add the bluff headland of the Ras el-Tárah to the north of the harbour, and behind it the Rughámat Makná, the greenish-yellow, flat-backed “horse” of Madyan, which, shimmering in the sunset with a pearly lustre, forms the best of landmarks. Finish to the south of the Wady with the quaint chopping outlines of the Jebel el-Fahísát, resembling from afar a huge alligator lying on the water; with the similar but lower forms to the north of the valley, both reflected in the Jibál el-Hamrá (the Red Hills), whose curtains of green-black trap are broken by sheets of dull dead-white plaster. Cap the whole with the mighty double quoin of gypseous Jebel el-Kharaj, buttressing the eastern flank of its valley, and with the low, dark metal-revetted hills of the Kalb el-Nakhlah, a copy of the Fahísát. Throw in the background, slowly rising as you recede from the shore, a curtain of plutonic peaks and buttresses, cones, quoins, cupolas, parrot-beaks; with every trick of shape, from the lumpy Zahd to the buttressed and pinnacled ‘Urnub; with every shade of mountain-tint between lapis-lazuli and plum-purple. Dome the whole with that marvellous transparent sky, the ocean of the air, that spreads loveliness over the rugged cheek of the Desert; and you have a picture which, though distinctly Arabian, you can hardly expect to see in Arabia.
From the offing, also, we note how the later formations, granite and syenite, seamed with a network, and often topped by cones, of porphyritic trap, have upthrust, pierced, and isolated the older Secondaries. We traced this huge deposit of sulphates and carbonates of lime from the southern Wady Hamz, through the islets at the mouth of the Birkat ‘Akabah, all along the shore of North Midian. Here it crosses diagonally the northern third of the ‘Akabah Gulf, and forms the north-eastern base of the Sinaitic Peninsula; whilst eastward it stretches inland as far as Magháir Shu’ayb. The general disposition suggests that before the upheaval of the Gháts, the Jibál el-Tihámah, this vast gypseous sheet was a plain and plateau covering the whole country, till a movement of depression, caused by the upheaval of the igneous mountains, sank in it the Gulf of ‘Akabah. At present the surface is here flat, there hilly like huge billows breaking mostly to the north, and reaching an altitude of twelve hundred feet above the surface. Hence the lines stretching north-south, the Fahísát, the Red Hills, and the Kalb el-Nakhlah, look like so many volcanic island-reefs floating in a sea of greenish-yellow Secondaries.
Like the old Irish post-horse, the difficulty and danger of our “kettle” consisted in starting it: two tubes at once burst, and a new hole yawned in the boiler; moreover, our anchor had been thrown out in a depth of seventy-three feet. Enfin! At nine a.m. (February 3rd) we stood straight for the Sinaitic shore, distant thirteen miles (direct geographical), and in three hours we made the Sharm, Marsá or Minat el-Dahab–the “Golden Anchorage, Cove, or Port.”[EN#120] Another hour was spent in steaming southwards to the Dock-harbour, wrongly so called in the charts; the pilots, and the many Sambúks that take refuge in it, know the place only as Mínát Ginái (Jinái). The northern baylet, preferred when southerly winds blow, is simply the embouchure of the Wady Dahab (“Fiumara of Gold”). The name is properly applied to the sub-maritime section of the valley draining the eastern flanks of the so-called Mount Sinai. This great watercourse breaks through the Gháts which, always fringing similar peninsulas, peak to the south. It reaches the Gulf at a shallow sag marked by a line of palms, the centre of three: they are fed by their several Nullahs, and are watered with the brackish produce of sundry wells. The statio malefida is defended to the north by a short sandspit and a submerged reef; and southwards by a projection of sandstone conglomerate. The latter, running from north-east to south-west, subtends this part of the coast, and serves to build up the land; after a few years the débris swept down by the watercourses will warp up the shallows, dividing shore from outlier. Such, in fact, seems to be the general origin of these sandspits; beginning as coralline reefs, they have been covered with conglomerates, and converted into terra firma by the rubbish shot out by the Wady-mouths.
The southern port, “Ginái,” is formed by a bend in the reef which sweeps round from east to south-west like a scorpion’s tail. The natural sea-wall, at once dangerous and safety-giving, protects, to the south and south-east, diabolitos of black rock visible only at high tide: inshore the sickle-shaped breakwater runs by east to south-west, becoming a “sandy hook,” and enclosing a basin whose depth ranges from seven to twelve fathoms. Its approach from the south is clean; and the western opening is protected by the tall screen of coast cliffs, the Jebel el-Ginái, whose deep-black porphyritic gorge seemingly prolongs that of Midianite Tayyib Ism. This is a section of the Jibál el-Samghi, the coast-range which extends as far north as the Wady Wati’r. The Dock-port, so useful when the terrible norther blows, has an admirable landmark, visible even from Sináfir Island, and conspicuous at the entrance of the Gulf. Where the sandy slopes of South-Eastern Sinai-land end, appears a large white blot, apparently supporting a block, built, like a bastion, upon a tall hill of porphyritic trap. We called this remnant of material harder than the rest, Burj el-Dahab–“the Tower Hill of Dahab.” I have been minute in describing the Golden Harbour: scant justice has been done to it by the Hydrographic Chart, and it will prove valuable when the Makna’ mines are opened. Ahmed Kaptán vainly attempted soundings–he was too ill to work. Wellsted’s identification of the site with Ezion-geber (ii. ix.), and the reef with the rock-ledge which wrecked Jehosaphat’s fleet, has one great objection–no ruins are known to exist near it.[EN#121]
The formation of this part of Sinai, as far as we can see from the shore, reflects, in wilder forms and more abrupt lines, the opposite coast of Midian: there is, however, the important difference that the Secondaries and the quartz-veins, there so important, are here wanting. The skeletons of mountain and hill appear as if prolonged under water. The ruddy syenite is dyked and veined by the familiar network of green-black porphyritic trap; the filons are disposed in parallels striking north-south, with a little easting; the dip is westerly (about 35 degrees mag.), and the thickness extends to hundreds of feet, often forming a foundation for the upper cliff. The subaerial parts are the same warty and pimply growth which appears on the other side. Nothing could be more wearisome to the Alpine climber than such a country: he would scale the peaks and ridges for fifty feet, to descend thirty on the other side; and the frequent Wadys, ankle-deep in loose sand, generally end in steep stony couloirs. The watercourses, whose broad mouths are scattered with thin green, contain pebbles and rolled quartzes, including fine specimens of the crystallized variety.
We landed, after an hour’s row in the gig, at the central or main line of palms; and on the banks of Wady Dahab, here a full mile wide, we found the works of man, like those of Nature, a copy of Makná. The date trees and clumps are hedge-closed; two scatters of ‘Ushash (tabernacles) show round towers of rough stone, broken and patched with palm-frond; and, further north of the Golden Valley, a few old Arab graves have been weathered into mere heaps of large stones. These are the Kubur el-Nasárá (“Nazarene’s Graves”) of Burckhardt,[EN#122] a name apparently forgotten by the present generation. We vainly sought and asked after ruins: of old, however, “Dí’zahab” might have served to disembark cargo which, by taking the land-route northwards, as the Christian pilgrims still do from El-Nuwaybi’, would avoid the dangerous headwaters of El-‘Akabah. Nor could we believe with Pococke[EN#123] that the place derived its name from the mica shining like gold; his theory is stultified by the fact that mica is by no means a prominent feature, even had the Ancients been so ignorant as to be deceived by it.
The people were by no means communicative. An elderly man, with a red turban and sword by side, hurried away from us when we addressed him, leaving his middle-aged wife to follow with a babe on shoulder and a boy in hand: she also refused to speak, waving her hand by way of reply to every question. At last a semi-civilized being, acquainted with the Convent of St. Catherine, Selím bin Husayn, of the Muzaynah tribe, satisfied our curiosity in view of tobacco, and offered a rudely stuffed ibex-head for a shilling. In the evening our fishermen visited the reef, which supplied admirable rock-cod, a bream (?) called Sultan el-Bahr, and Marján (a Sciæna); but they neglected the fine Sirinjah (“sponges”), which here grow two feet long. The night was dark and painfully still, showing nought but the youngest of moons, and the gloomiest silhouettes of spectral mountains.
We set out at seven a.m. on the next day, when an Azyab or south-easterly wind was promised by the damp air, the slaty sea, and the gloomy nimbi on the hill-tops. A small party landed after two hours’ steaming, in search of quartz, which proved to be chloritic sandstones and limestones. In the broad valley they found a few Muzayni families, with their camels, sheep, and goats. These unfortunates had no tents, sleeping under the trees; they were desperate beggars, and, although half-starved, they asked a napoleon for a kid, declaring that such was its price at the quarantine station of Tor. Here the errors of the Hydrographic Chart, which have been copied literally by the latest and best popular books such as Professor Palmer’s “Desert of the Exodus,” began to excite our astonishment. For instance, Ras Kusayr (“the Short One”) becomes Ras Arser–what a name for a headland! A good survey will presently become a sine quâ non. Unfortunately Ahmed Kaptán was suffering so much that I could not ask him to make solar observations; while the rest of us had other matters in hand. It was a great disappointment, where so much useful work remains to be done.
Hereabouts the sterile horrors of the hideous Sinaitic shore seem to reach their climax. The mountains become huge rubbish-heaps, without even colour to clothe their indecently nude forms; and each strives with its neighbour for the prize of repulsiveness. The valleys are mere dust-shunts that shoot out their rubbish, stones, gravel, and sand, in a solid flow, like discharges of lava. And, as Jebel Mazhafah, on the opposite coast, is the apex of the visible eastern Gháts, so beyond this point the Sinaitic sea-chain of mountains begins to decline into mere hills, while longer sand-points project seawards. Such is the near, the real aspect of what, viewed from Makná, appears a scene in fairy-land, decked and dight in heavenly hues of blue and purple and rosy light–
“Where the bald blear skull of the Desert With golden mountains is crowned.”
The first sign of a change of formation appeared near the “Lower (southern) Nuwaybi'” (“the Little Spring”), which the chart calls “Wasit.” Here the shore shows blots of dead-white and mauve-red, in which our engineer at once detected quartz. Seeing it prolonged in straight horizontal lines, and the red overlying the white, I suspected kaolin and the normal Tauá (coloured clays): my conjecture was confirmed on the next day. Hereabouts, Wellsted (ii. 151) also remarked the colouring of the hills, which resemble those of “Sherm;” some of a deep-blue tinge, and others streaked with a brilliant red and violet. We then doubled a long sandspit running out to sea eastward, and forming, on the north, a deep bay well protected from the souther; whilst several lines of reef and shallow to the north defend it from the angry Bora. This anchorage is known to the pilots as “Wásit;” and it occupies the southern half of the bay, the northern half and its palm-groves being called the “Upper Nuwaybi’.” About “Wásit” the date-palms are scattered, and the large sand-drifts ever threaten to bury them alive. Behind it yawns the great gash, “Wady Watír,” which shows its grand lines even from the opposite side of the gulf: this is the route by which Christian pilgrims from Syria make the Sinai monastery, rounding on camels the northern end of El-‘Akabah. The main valley receives from the north the Wady el-‘Ayn, which can be reached in half a day. From the south, distant one whole march, comes the Wady el-Hazrah. This is doubtless the Hazeroth of the Exodus, meaning the fenced enclosures of a pastoral people; and a modern traveller figures and describes it as “the most beautiful and romantic landscape in the Desert.” At least, so said the lately shipped guide, Mabru’k ibn Sulayyim el-Muzayni.
After a run of six hours and thirty minutes (= thirty miles), we cast anchor off Wásit: there was nothing to see ashore, save some wretched Muzaynah, two males and three females, helpmates meet for them, living like savages on fish and shell-molluscs; drinking brackish water, and sleeping in the “bush,” rather than take the trouble to repair the huts. They have no sheep, but a few camels; and, by way of boats, they use catamarans composed of two palm-trunks: their home-made hooks resemble the schoolboy’s crooked pin. Yet these starvelings would not fetch specimens of the white stuff, distant, perhaps, two direct miles of cross-cut, seen near Nuwaybi’, and still visible. They also refused, without preliminary “bakhshísh,” to show or even to tell where certain ruins, concerning which they spoke or romanced, are found in their hills. And yet there are theologians who would raise Poverty, the most demoralizing of all conditions, to the rank of an “ecclesiastical virtue.”
At 6 30 a.m. on the next day, the Mukhbir stood eastwards to avoid the northern reef. Presently we passed the “Upper Nuwaybi’,” a creeklet to the north-west of Wásit, with a straggling line of palms fed by the huge Wady Muzayríj. From this point to the ‘Akabah head all the coast is clean of man. The Jibál el-Samghi now become the Sinaitic Jibál el-Shafah (“Lip Mountains”), the latter stretching northwards to the Hajj-road, and forming the western wall of the ‘Arabah valley, whose name they assume (Jibál el-‘Arabah). The scene abruptly shifts. A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays, gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland, peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries of the coast, pale quoins and naked cones again show the familiar Secondary formation of Midianitish Makná. We were not surprised to hear that sulphur had been found in the gypsum of these eastern Gháts of Sinai, when a Jebel el-Kibí’t, approached by the Wady Suwayr, was pointed out to us. The natural deduction is that the brimstone formation is, like the turquoise, the copper, and the manganese, a continuation of the beds that gave a name to Mafka-land; while the metalliferous strata round, in horseshoe-form, the head of El-‘Akabah, and run down the Arabian shore, till they become parallel with those subtending the seaboard of Africa.
The view of the eastern or Midianite coast was even more varied and suggestive. Far inland, and tinged light-blue by distance, rose the sharp, jagged, and sawlike crests of El-Sharaf, under which the Hajj-caravan wends its weary way, thus escaping the mountains which dip perpendicularly into the sea. Then come the broad and sandy slopes, here and there streaked with dark ridges, spanned by the Sultáni or Sultan’s high-road, and stretching from the Gulf to the inner heights. The latter are no longer a double parallel chain: they bend from south-south-east to north-north-west, and become the Jibál el-Shará’, anciently “Mount Seir;” in fact, the eastern retaining-wall of the great Wady ‘Arabah. Evidently they are primary, but a white and purple patch, visible from afar, suggested a Secondary remnant. Several of the peaks, especially the blue block El-Yitm, appeared to be of great height; we all remarked its towering stature and trifid headpiece, apparently upwards of five thousand feet high, before we had heard the tale attached to it. Abreast of us and on the shore, lie the large inlet and little islet El-Humayzah: the surveyors have abominably corrupted it to “Omeider.” North of it a palm grove, lining the mouth of a broad Wady which snakes high up among the sands and stones, denotes the Hajj-station, El-Hakl (Hagul), backed by tall arenaceous buttresses.
After six hours (= twenty-two knots and a half), we anchored in the deep channel, about three-quarters of a kilometre wide, that separates the Sinaitic mainland from the northern one of the only two islands known in the ‘Akabah Gulf, a scrap of rock crowned with picturesque grey ruins. The Jezírat Fara’ún of the maps, the Isle of Pharaoh, concerning whom traditions are still current, it is known to the ‘Akabites only as Jebel el-Kala’h or “Fort-hill:” hence El-Graa in Laborde, and Jezírat El-Q reieh in Arconati.[EN#124] Burckhardt alone mentions that the ruins are known as El-Dayr–“the Convent.” This human lair is encircled by barrier-reefs of coralline, broad to the south-west and large in scattered places: eastward they form a shallow wall-like ledge, beyond which blue water at once begins. The island-formation is that of the opposite coasts, Midian and Sinai, grey granite dyked with decaying porphyritic trap, and everywhere veined with white and various-coloured quartzes. The shape is a long oval of about three hundred and twenty by one hundred and fifty-two metres; a saddleback with two stony heads, the higher to the north, rising a hundred feet or so above sea-level. Pommel and cantle are connected by a low seat, a few yards of isthmus; and the three divisions, all strongly marked, bear buildings. The profile from east and west shows four groups: to the extreme north a tower, backed by the castle donjon, on the knob of granite here and there scarped; the works upon the thread of isthmus; and the walls and bastions crowning the southern knob, which, being lower, is even more elaborately cut to a perpendicular.
We landed upon the eastern side of the islet rock, where the trunk of a broken mole is covered in rear by a ruined work. Here, being most liable to attack, the fortifications are strongest; whereas on the west side only a single wall, now strewn on the ground, with square Burj at intervals, defends the little boat-harbour. The latter appears at present in the shape of a fish-pond, measuring sixty by forty metres; sunk below sea-level, fed by percolation, and exceedingly salt. To the east of this water, black cineraceous earth shows where the smith had been at work: we applied the quarrymen to sift it, without other results but bits of glass, copper, and iron nails.
The pier leads to a covered way, enabling the garrison safely to circulate round the base of the islet. Behind it a path, much broken and cumbered by débris of the walls, winds up the southern face of the northern hill, which supports the body of the place: it meets another track from the west, and a small work defends their junction. Below it, outside the walls, we found a well sunk about eight feet in the granite, and cemented with fine lime, the red plaster in places remaining. Above this pit a Mihráb, or prayer-niche, fronting Meccah-wards (more exactly 175 degrees mag.) shows the now ruinous mosque: the Bedawi declare that it was built by a “Pasha.” Higher again, upon a terreplein, are lines of tanks laid out with all that lavishness of labour which distinguishes similar works in Syria: it is, however, difficult to assign any date to these constructions. The cisterns were explored by Mr. Clarke and Lieutenant Amir, who dug into and planned them. They descended by ropes, although there are two flights of steps to the west and the south-west. The tanks are built up from the base with blocks one foot nine inches long: seven inches deep of rubbish were cleared away before reaching the floor, composed of black stones bedded in layers of cement above and below, and resting upon the ground-rock. The diggings yielded only big pieces of salt fallen from the walls, and a broken handmill of basalt. The sides are supported by pilasters of cut stone, and the crown by four pillars in a double row: the dividing arches, according to the plan, are not symmetrical. Hard by, measuring twelve metres by twelve, is the quarry whence the stone was taken; and near it stands the normal Egyptian pigeon-tower, with its nest-niches.
The donjon or body is defended by an enceinte, opening northwards upon a large yard, where, doubtless, the garrison mustered, and whence a flight of steps leads to the wicket. The inside of the works shows the roofless party-walls still standing; and the ground is scattered over with the remains of many different races: there are drums of columns and fragments of marble pillars, but no sign of an inscription. Even in the upper ramparts two epochs are distinctly traceable, the mediæval and the modern. The lower ashlar, mostly yellow grit, is cut and carefully cemented; the upper part is generally of rough dry stone, the plutonic formations of the islet heaped up with scanty care. The embrasures are framed with decaying palm-trunks; the loop-holes belong partly to the age of archery; and nothing can be ruder than the battlements placed close together, as if to be manned by bowmen, while in not a few places there are the remains of matting between the courses. At the highest part we found another carefully cemented Sehrij, or underground cistern, with two sharp-topped arches divided by a tall column, Saracenic certainly and not Doric:[EN#125] above it a circular aperture, arched round with the finest bricks, serves to lighten the superstructure. It communicates to the north with a Hammám, whose plan is easily traced by the double flues and earthenware tubes, well made and mortared together. Here we found inscribed on the plaster, “Arona Linant 22 Mars 1846.”
The southern knob of the islet supports similar but inferior constructions, still more ruinous withal: its quarry is on the lower slopes, and its granitic base has also been scarped seawards. Two stout walls, twelve feet thick below and six above, crossing the length of the rock from north to south, here meet in a Burj which shows signs of fine tiles on an upper floor; whilst a third wall forms a southern spine bisecting the tail of the “Jezírat.” The castle is much more dilapidated than when sketched by Ruppell, the first Frank who visited El-‘Akabah, in 1826. His illustration (p. 214) of Ruinen auf der Insel Emrag shows a single compact building in good preservation, the towers being round, when all are square; and it is garnished with the impossible foreground and background of his epoch; the former, enlivened with a Noah’s-Ark camel, being placed quite close, when it is distant some ten miles. In the German naturalist’s time, the now desolate island was occupied by die Emradi, a tribe which he suspected to be Jewish, and of which he told the queerest tales: I presume they are the ‘Imrám-Huwaytát of El-Hakl and the Hismá. Wellsted’s short description (II. ix) is still correct as in 1838.
The castle is evidently European, built during the days when the Crusaders held El-‘Akabah; but it probably rests upon Roman ruins; and the latter, perhaps, upon Egyptian remains of far older date. It protected one section of the oldest overland route, when the islet formed the key of the Gulf-head. It subsequently became an eyrie whence its robber knights and barons–including possibly “John, the Christian ruler of ‘Akabah” (A.D. 630), and, long after him, madcap Rainald de Chatillon (A.D. 1182)–could live comfortably and sally out to plunder merchants and pilgrims. The Saracenic buildings may date, as the popular superstition has it, from the reign of Saláh el-Dín (Saladin) who, in A.D. 1167, cleared his country of the Infidel invader by carrying ships on camel-back from Cairo. Later generations of thieves, pirates, and fishermen naturally made it their refuge and abode. I hardly anticipate for it great things in the immediate future, although it has been proposed for a coal-depôt.
After a day given to tube-tinkering with tompions, stays, plugs, plates, and wedges, to the distraction of the ship’s carpenter and blacksmith, steam was coaxed up; and, at 9.15 a.m. (February 7th), we ran northwards through the deep narrow channel, rounding the upper end of the Pharaohnic islet. Here the encircling wall is defended by two square Burj, to the north-east and to the northwest, flanking what is probably the main entrance. On the Sinaitic mainland to port, the broad mouth of the Wady el-Masri leads to the Nakb, the rocky Pass which, so much dreaded till repaired by Abba’s Pasha, is popularly said to be described in El-‘Akabah–“the Steep.” The Bedawin, however, declare that the locale is so called because the Gulf here “heels” (Ya’kkab el-Bahr), that is, comes to an end. At the head of the sea, the confused mass of the Sinaitic mountains range themselves in line to the west, fronting its sister wall, the grand block El-Shará’ (Seir); while in the middle lies the southern section of the “Ghor,” the noble and memorious Wady el-‘Akabah, supposed to have given a name to Arabia.[EN#126] The surface-water still rolls down it after rains; and the mirage veiling the valley-sole prolongs the Gulf-waters far to the north, their bed in the old geologic ages. The view was charming to us; for the first time since leaving Suez we saw the contrast of perpendicular and horizontal, of height and flat. Nothing could be more refreshing, more gladdening to the eye, after niente che montagne, as the poor Italian described the Morea, than the soft sweeps and the level lines of the hollow plain: it was enjoyable as a heavy shower after an Egyptian summer. On the next day also, the play of light and shade, and the hide and seek of sun-ray and water-cloud, gave the view a cachet of its own. I am sorry to see that scientific geologist, Mr. John Milne, F.G.S.,[EN#127] proposing to cut through the two to five hundred feet of elevation which separate the Gulf from the Dead Sea, some thirteen hundred feet below water level. Does he reflect that he simply proposes to obliterate the whole lower Jordan? to bury Tiberias and its lake about eight hundred feet under the waves? in fact, to overwhelm half the Holy Land in a brand-new nineteenth-century deluge, the Deluge of Milne?
All were delighted at having reached our northernmost point, without another visit from El-Ayli’. After one hour and thirty-five minutes (= seven miles) the Mukhbir anchored, in twelve fathoms of water, a couple of hundred yards off the fort and its dependent group of brown-grey mud buildings, half concealed by the luxuriant palms. The roads are safe enough: here the north wind has not yet gained impetus; the south-easter is bluffed off by a long point; and in only the strongest Gharbí (“westers”) ships must run for refuge under the cliffs of Sinai.
This is not the place to enter into the history of Elath, Ailat, Ailah, Ælana, ‘Akabah, or ‘Akabat-Aylah: Robinson (i. 250-254) and a host of others give ample and reliable details. Suffice it to say that the site is mentioned in the Wanderings (Deut. ii. 8), which must not be confounded with the Exodus. It is subsequently connected with the gold-fleet (I Kings ix. 26, etc.); and, conquered by Rezin, king of Syria (B.C. 740), it was permanently lost to the Jews (2 Kings xvi. 6). Under the Romans, this great station upon the “Overland” between the southernmost Nabathæan port, Leukè Kóme, and Petra, the western capital, was a Præsidium held by the Tenth Legion; and a highway connected it with Gaza (Ghazzah), measuring one hundred and twenty direct miles, when the Isthmus of Suez numbers only ninety-five. In Christian times it had a prince and a bishop; and, under Mohammed and the early Moslems, it preserved an importance which lasted till the days of the Crusaders. El-Makrízi describes its ruins, and here places the northern frontier of the Hejaz: in his day “Madyan” was thus a section of the Tihámat el-Hejaz, the maritime region of the Moslems’ Holy Land.
A group of camels had gathered on the shore; and inland lay a mob of pilgrims, the Hajj el-Magháribah, numbering some three thousand North-West Africans; an equally large division had already preceded them to Suez. Letters from Egypt assured us that cholera had broken out at Meccah and Jeddah, killing in both places ninety-eight per diem. Here the pilgrims swore by their Allah that all were, and ever had been, in perfect health; it is every man’s business to ignore the truth, to hide the sick, and to bury the dead out of sight. Hard swearing, however, did not prevent the Hajj undergoing a long quarantine before entering Suez. The English journals had reported another disaster: “Now that the Sultán’s power is collapsing, the most powerful Bedaween tribes are rising because their subsidies are withheld. For weeks the great pilgrim-traffic of autumn (? add the other three seasons) was arrested by them; and even between Medina and Mecca the road is unsafe.” Of this I could hear nothing.
We awaited, on board, the departure of the pauper and infected “Mogrebbins:” when the place was clear we fired a gun, and, after an answer of three, I received the visits of the fort officials. They were civility itself; they immensely admired our two “splendid buttons” of poor iron; and they privily remarked, with much penetration, that the colour was that of brass: they were, in truth, far wiser than we had been. With them came Mohammed ibn Jád (not Iját) el-‘Alawí (of the ‘Alawlyyin-Huwaytát), who styles himself “Shaykh of El-‘Akabah:” he is remarkable for frank countenance, pleasant manners, and exceeding greed. He was gorgeously arrayed in an overall (‘Abáyah) of red silk and gold thread (Gasab), covering a similar cloak of black wool: besides which, a long-sleeved Egyptian caftán, striped stuff of silk and wool, invested his cotton Kamís and Libás (“bag-breeches”). To his A’kál or “fillet” of white fleecy wool hung a talisman; his Khuff (“riding-boots”) were of red morocco, and his sword-scabbard was covered with the same material. The Arab ever loves scarlet, and all varieties of the sanguine hue are as dear to him as to the British soldier.
We held sundry long confabs with Shaykh Mohammed, who seemed to know the neighbourhood unusually well. He declared that there were ruins but no trees at ‘Ayn el-Ghadya’n, distant one day’s march up the Wady el-‘Arabah, and lying near the western wall. This is the place first identified by Robinson, who says nothing about the remains, with Ezion-geber, while Dean Stanley (“Sinai,” etc., p. 85) opines that we have no means of fixing the position of the “Giant’s shoulder-blade.”[EN#128] Josephus (“Antiq.,” viii. 6, 4) places it near Ælana; and the present distance from the sea, like that of Heroopolis (Shaykh el-Ajrúd?) from Suez, may show the rise of the Wady el-‘Arabah within historic times. The Shaykh assured us that “Marú” was to be found everywhere among the hills east of El-‘Akabah, and Mr. Milne (Beke, p. 405) brought from the very summit of the “true Mount Sinai” (Jebel el-Yitm) a “fine piece of quartz, the same kind of stone as the Brazilian pebbles of which they make the best spectacles.” We carried off a specimen of native copper from the Sinaitic Jebel and Wady Raddádí, some six hours to the north-west of the fort: it is found strewed upon the ground but not in veins (?). The stone looked so new that we concluded it to be the work of later generations; and the traces of smelting furnaces at old Elath confirmed the idea.
Shaykh Mohammed, who boasted that his tribe could mount five hundred horses–by which understand five–offered his safeguard to the Hismá, three easy marches, without pass or climax, up the Wady Yitm to the east, and behind the range El-Shará’. He made the region begin northwards at one day south of El-Ma’án, the fort lying to the east-south-east of Petra; and he confirmed the accounts of Mabrúk, the guide, who was never tired of expatiating upon its merits. The fountains flow in winter, in summer the wells are never dry; the people, especially the Huwaytát, are kind and hospitable; sheep are cheap as dirt. At Jebel Saur a Maghrabi magician raised a Kidr Dahab (“golden pot”); but, his incense failing at the critical moment, it sank before yielding its treasures.
Pointing north-eastwards to the majestic pile in the Shara” or Seir Mountains, the Jebel el-Yitm,[EN#129] a corruption of El-Yatim, the Shaykh told us a tale that greatly interested us. It appears, I have said, a remarkable formation from whose group of terminal domes and pinnacles the tomb of Aaron on Mount Hor is,[EN#130] they say, visible; and it is certainly the highest visible peak of the grand wall that forms the right bank of the Wady Yitm. Thus it is but one of a long range; and the Bedawin visit it, to make sacrifice, according to universal custom, at the tomb of a certain Shaykh Bákir. Here, some years ago, came an old man and a young man in a steamer (Erin) belonging to his Highness the Khediv: the former told the Arabs that in his books the height was called the Jebel el-Núr (“Mountain of Light”), a title which apparently he had first applied to the Jebel el-Lauz; and the latter climbed to the mountain-top. After that they went their way.
I quite agree with my lamented friend, Dr. Beke, that it is an enormous blunder to transfer Midian, the “East Country,” to the west of El-‘Arabah, and to place it south of the South Country (El-Negeb, Gen. xx. I). I own that it is ridiculous to make the Lawgiver lead his fugitives into a veritable cul-de-sac, then a centre of Egyptian conquest. Evidently we have still to find the “true Mount Sinai,” if at least it be not a myth, pure and simple. The profound Egyptologist, Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey, observes that the vulgar official site lies to the south of and far from the line taken by the Beni Israil, and that the papyri show no route leading to it; whilst many have remarked that the Sinai of the Exodus is described as a single isolated mountain or hill, not as one projection from a range of heights.[EN#131] I would also suggest that the best proof of how empirical is the actual identification, will be found in the fact that the Jews–except only the Rev. Jos. Wolff (1821)–have never visited, nor made pilgrimages to, what ought to be one of their holiest of holy places. This crucial point has been utterly neglected by the officers of the Ordnance Survey of Sinai. It is evident that Jebel Serbal dates only from the early days of Koptic Christianity; that Jebel Musá, its Greek rival, rose after the visions of Helena in the fourth century; whilst the building of the convent by Justinian belongs to A.D. 527. Ras Sufsafah, its rival to the north, is an affair of yesterday, and may be called the invention of Robinson; and Jebel Katerina, to the south, is the property of Ruppell. Thus the oft-quoted legends of the Sinaitic Arabs are mere monkish traditions, adopted by Ishmaelitic ignorance. The great Lawgiver probably led his horde of fugitive slaves over the plains of El-Negeb and El-Tih, north of the so-called Sinaitic mountain-blocks, marching in small divisions like those of a modern Bedawi tribe; and we know from the latest surveys that the land, now alternately a fiery or frozen wilderness, was once well supplied with wood and water. The “true Mount Sinai” is probably some unimportant elevation in the Desert named by moderns after the Wanderings.
Dr. Beke, I am persuaded, is right in denying that Mount Sinai occupies the site at present assigned to it; but I cannot believe that he has found it in the Jebel el-Yitm, near El-‘Akabah. His “Mount Bárghir” is evidently a corruption of the “Wali” on the summit, Shaykh Bákir–a common Arab name. His “Mountain of Light” is a term wholly unknown to the Arabs, except so far as they would assign the term to any saintly place. The “sounds heard in the mountain like the firing of a cannon,” is a legend applied to two other neighbouring places. All the Bedawin still sacrifice at the tombs of their Santons: at the little white building which covers the reputed tomb of Aaron, sheep are slaughtered and boiled in a huge black cauldron. The “pile of large rounded boulders” bearing “cut Sinaitic inscriptions” (p. 423) are clearly Wusúm: these tribal-marks, which the highly imaginative M. de Saulcy calls “planetary signs,” are found throughout Midian. The name of the Wady is, I have said, not El-Ithem, but El-Yitm, a very different word. Lastly, the “Mountain Eretówa,” or “Ertówa” (p. 404), is probably a corruption of El-Taur (El-Hismá), the “inaccessible wall” of the plateau, which Dr. Beke calls Jebel Hismá. My old friend, with his usual candour and straightforwardness, honestly admitted that he had been “egregiously mistaken with respect to the volcanic character of (the true) ‘Mount Sinai.”‘ But without the eruption, the “fire and smoke theory,” what becomes of his whole argument?[EN#132] Save for the death of my friend, I should have greatly enjoyed the comical side of his subject; the horror and disgust with which he, one of the greatest of geographical innovators, regards a younger rival theory, the exodist innovation of Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey. The latter is the first who has rescued the “March of the Children of Israel” from the condition of mere guesswork described by the Rev. Mr. Holland.
Under the guidance of our new acquaintances, we rowed to the site of Elath, which evidently extended all round the Gulf-head from north-east to north-west. Linant and Laborde (“Voyage de l’Arabie Petrée,” etc., Paris, 1830) confine it to the western shore, near the mouth of the Wady el-‘Arabah, and make Ezion-geber to face it as suggested by the writings of the Hebrews. Disembarking at the northern palm-clump, we inspected El-Dár, the old halting-place of the pilgrim-caravan before New ‘Akabah was founded. The only ruins[EN#133] are large blocks under the clearest water, and off a beach of the softest sand, which would make the fortune of a bathing-place in Europe. Further eastward lies an enclosed date-orchard called El-Hammám: the two pits in it are said to be wells, but I suspect the treasure-seeker. Inland and to the north rise the mounds and tumuli, the sole remains of ancient Elath, once the port of Petra, which is distant only two dromedary