f.i r 1 .. „¦ 3 9002 06551 9077 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY QJ DESERT LIFE. RECOLLECTIONS OF %n €^Mmn m l^e Snnbait, BY B. SOLTMOS (B. E. EALKONBERG), CITIL ENQINEES. LONDON : "W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATEELOO PLACE, S.W, PDBLISHEKS TO THE IHDIA OFMOB. 1880. ERco.^l^ LONDON ; PKIHTED BY WOODFAIL AHD KIHDEB, 31ILF0KD LANE, STRAND, W.C. PREFACE. Several years ago, when fully engaged in professional work on the Continent, a strong and twofold desire grew upon me, which continually increased in fascina tion and strength. This feeling, which grew from desire to longing, and ripened from longing into resolve, was composed of a primary desire to see and study some of the great engineering schemes projected by the late Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha, through the agency and ability of Mr. John Eowler ; and intermingled with this was a more romantic wish to look upon the land of Egypt, to see those golden sands reflecting the eternal sunshine, to dream and be silent near the solemn antiquity of the Pyramids and the mysterious, far-seeing eyes of the Sphinx, to sail upwards along the course of the broad and fertilizing Nile (itself a thing of constant wonder and of almost pardonable worship), and frequently to stop upon its banks to view the ruins of godlike temples and the remains of the cities of a mighty race which grew and flourished and decayed before Athens or Rome had shown signs of infant life. Then, after passing through this continuous succession of the grand remains of those iv PREFACE. ancient and princely peoples, my longing led me on to penetrate further, into Nubia and the Soudan, where the vestiges of men are scarce indeed, though not entirely wanting, but where Nature reigns with almost undis puted and often terrifying power. For a time other work and duties prevented me from fulfilling these wishes, though I never ceased to cherish them, and they grew daily stronger ; until in the early part of 1875, and just after my arrival in England on a visit I had designed to last some time, my happy star brought within my power the possibility of realizing my twofold resolve at once. I seized upon the chance with eager acceptance, although, like all the gifts which the gods give us, this was not one of unalloyed delight, for it compelled me to yield for a time another plan long made and just commenced, that of spending a time of rest and holiday in England, to see the land and people I had looked upon with love and admiration from my early youth, and to study with my own eyes the characteristics which make a nation great. But the unexpected good fortune soon made me forget my minor disappointment; and I started off one evening from Charing Cross with my through ticket to Alex andria in a frame of mind most happy, for I was filled with expectation of the wonders to be seen and studied in the mysterious Soudan and the shadowy wide-spread ing wilderness. Without a pause we went through sunny France, too preface. V sunny for a continuous railway journey even in May, and productive of a parboiled lassitude and general feeling of ferment and wretchedness as the train carries one through the flat and uninteresting country of the South. At last Marseilles, and time for a much needed bath and breakfast ; then step on to one of the fine and well-appointed boats of the Messageries, and sigh with a tranquil sense of rest for a few days, a somewhat volcanic security, it is true, if one is not a good sailor. After a safe arrival at Alexandria, and some four or five months spent in studies in the Delta of Egypt for a system of canalization, we started up the Nile for our more extensive and enterprising engineering work in the interior ; one party of engineers to investigate a route for a railway from where the Nile bends at Abu Groosi, direct along the Wady Mokattem, to Khartoom ; the other four engineers with the doctor to penetrate at once south-west into the interior, to reach the capital of the newly conquered province of Dar-Fur, and, return ing thence towards the Nile to meet the first party from Khartoom advancing to meet them through Sotahl, the first group of wells inland from the river. Thus the first party, of which I was a member, had opportunity and time both to make a rapid military survey and study of the tracts lying between old Dongola and Khartoom on their forward joui'ney, and then, retracing their steps along the same general direction, to make the surveys necessary for a line of railway, so detailed that it might \i preface. be made to-morrow. Then, when they had got back over their old course to Sotahl, they continued the careful survey along the ground traversed by the second party, who by this time had reached their journey's end at El Fasher, and were commencing to bring back the chain of survey to meet that brought onward by the author's party from Sotahl. All this was done, and the meeting was at Um-Bahdr, the furthest point to which the author penetrated. Beyond that place the bush grows thicker, the vegetation more profuse, and the trees of larger growth. The great and beautiful Adan- sonia appears at more frequent intervals, sometimes in large groves, and for many miles the party which made the survey from El Fasher had to cut its way through thick continuous clumps of the close-growing bushes of the country, appallingly clothed with thorns. If the reader has been able to wade through these dry details, and has referred occasionally to our little map, he will have some idea of the position of the country traversed, and of the very favourable opportunities the Author had for studying and carefully observing and noting the characteristics and features of the country, the people, the animals, the vegetation ; aU new and strange, and greatly opposed to the popular notion of a desert, which I take to be somewhat of this sort : — A howling wilderness of illimitable sand and stones and barren rocks, where the parched and lonely wanderer struggles on despairingly towards the far away oasis, preface. vu his suflferings aggravated by a frequent distant vision of palm trees and green herbs and broad sheets of water, aU very beautiful to look upon, but often filled with a tremulous motion, as though agitated by the breath from the laughter of innumerable mocking fiends ; for this is the mirage. In all this picture there is truth, but it applies only in its utter barrenness to the regions of the Great Sahara and the vast deserts lying north of the limit of tropical rains, separated from the country I have tried to describe by a line almost as sharp as that drawn upon the map along the 18th parallel of north latitude. I think that now enough has been said to show the reader where to look upon the map ; but as I must not leave the two parties of engineers as if remaining in the heart of Africa, it remains only to be told that, after their meeting at Um-Bahdr, and a stay for rest, they started off towards the Nile, but by a more roundabout and circuitous route than the straight forward one down the Wady Milkh, for the end of the dry season had come, and many of the wells were entirely dried up. To avoid therefore this horror of water failure, they had to strike east and south to Kordofan, and grope out a route from well to well through Kahjah, Sahfy, and minor wells till they again arrived at Sotahl and the Nile at Abu Goosi, after a month's march by night, and the loss of many camels from exhaustion, heat, and rapid travel, for they were compelled to push forward to get to the river and avoid being caught by viu preface. the tropical rains, which would have rendered the camels useless for locomotion, and perhaps detained the party amid tempest and damp and fever till the three months' rain had stopped. Having thus, dear reader, endeavoured to lay before you in the preface the dry details of circumstance and place, I wiU say farewell ; standing like a showman before my booth, in which, I trust, you will find things both new and strange, and such as you will be able to regard with pleasure and favour with applause, for to their descrip tion and setting forth I have given all my heart and soul. CONTENTS. Inteodttctoey. ' ^ Dreaming by the Way — A Fantastic Beginning ... 1 Awakening . . . .~ 4 BOOK I.— THE COUNTET. Climatic Expeeiences 11 Sky and Ground 30 Wells and Thirst 49 Vegetation: its Liee and Physiognomy .... 59 Grasses 60 Mushrooms ,63 The Solitary Mimosa 63 Desert Box . . 65 EuPHORBiTTM Bowers 67 Vegetable Goblin . . 69 Candle Tree ... 70 Herbs 70 Thorny Tracts ... . .... 71 Desert Harbours 74 Vegetation between Two Zones 77 Nile Borders .... 81 Animation 84 Large Animals 92 Lion 92 GiRAiTES . 93 Jerboa 93 Two-Horned Viper 94 Ehinoceeos Viper 95 contents. The Boa Constrictor Wild Cows Other Antelopes Of Small Game Birds in General The Jackals The Frogs Tortoises . The Lizards The Crocodile . Ichneumons Fish . Small Creatures BeetlesAnis . HornetsButterfliesTermites Locusts Pharaoh's "Horses Flies . Gnats.Camel Ticks On Scorpions . CentipedesCrimson Arachnids The Big Spiders The Big Spiders in Combat PAGE 9596 979798 100 100101 102 102 102103104104104106 107 109 no111112114114116 119119 120126 BOOK II.— THE MEN. Human Phenomena . Arbivais into Camp Type op Arrival the First ' Second Third Fourth 133165156158160 164 CONTENTS. XI PAGE Camp Life in Particular , 167 Aspects and Sounds op the Camp .... 167 Sanitary Notes . . 175 Air, Heat, Tents, Soil, and Light . .178 On Regime in General 184 Water and other Drinks . . . 189 Food and Cooking . . ]94 Chief Occupations ... . . . . 200 Communism and Society . . . . . 218 Sundays . ... 225 BOOK III.— THE CARAVAN. Idol Breaking :— i-An Essay on the Treatment of the Camel in Science, Art, and Literature The Start General Review of the Caravaj.'* .... Reconnoitring and Manoeuvring Operations MARTiiL Display . . . . 236 266 287328 339 Pinal Tableau. . . .367 DESERT LIFE. INTRODUCTORY. DREAMING BY THE WAY.— A FANTASTIC BEGINNING. A COUPLE of steamers and a barge took the party and their provisions from Cairo, up the much-described way, to the Second or Great Cataract. As when a distinguished Oriental walks alone in Lon don on his first Sunday — and that a wet one — tetchily melancholy, depressed in body and soul ; and arrives at his fine but dreary hotel, and reads, in his warm bath, a note which invites him to an old friend's house, and after driving there meets several kind and cheerful Orientalists more hospitable than their Club, and is delighted by a plan of studies and a programme of amusements by which shapeless London is transformed for him into as delightful and comprehensive a picture as that polypetalous flower which stood in his boyhood for the map of the world ; so fresh, settled,, and cheer ful felt our party on leaving Cairo after some protracted but indescribable vexations from various sources.- 3 DESERT LIFE. The genial sunshine (its heat tempered by the water), and the gentle airs which frequently blow in the early morning, seem to have a very soothing power on those who require rest. The sun's rays are known to have restored invalid desk-doters. The very birds, with their long wings, seem to take their swoop leisurely, with no more noise than the motley mosquitoes on the steamer, and the broad, winding " Jove-sprung " river itself — " a giant at its birth " — if not exceptionally panting under waves five and six feet high, lulls one into dreaming. One scarcely passes more of these spherico- triangular sails than if on the high seas, or living in the times of Icarus, — more celebrated on account of his folly than his father is remembered for his genius. As you look round from the deck, you might fancy the horizon a cameo : the grand features of this dear old recluse — ^the mighty Nile — deeply sunk into the blank desert. His features are ruffled only at the rapids. His very overboiling he tempers into an act of kind ness to his offspring. This is the only river that could have been embodied as he is in that lovely marble group at Eome, as a noble athlete reclining (after his mighty struggle with Phoebus himself), with a host of his diminutive fat children playfully sporting over his body. A fine old gentleman he is, compared with other rivers. But though some of his teeth — the venerable massive columns and other colossi — are damaged, that little furrow in his features, the crocodile, forbids mockery. What low-bred loons our rivers are: how roaring and brutal in their wrath when drunk. Parental Nile, affluent without affluents, in fifteen hundred miles runs his course through the desert like an exemplary camel carrying provision both for self and the men about him. DREAMING BY THE WAY. 3 The protracted lethargic condition of the present Egyptians, after a succession of such thousands of years, seems to be the effect of that somnolence which long contemplation of grandeur would produce. With the hieroglyphics before me, I am tempted, amidst a swarm of other fancies, to recall the patriarchal age, and to dwell on those myths and fables which made beasts and plants to talk : as I muse about the unfolding of the idea of stereotyping, as it were, in imitation of fossils, the fleeting sounds of words by fixed images. It seems as if the Creator had, in order to teach archaic man, affectionately placed before him those pre-Mosaic stone slabs which, as soon as opened, became the seed-lobes of civilization. Here, in the course of my hesitating endea vours to make this chapter what the Egyptian trinity of Art, Science, and Eeligion is to its sequel abroad, — a fantastic beginning, — I am startled by reaching " That point where sense and dulness meet." Accordingly, after invoking the great spirit of intel lectual lawgivers to keep me silent in the right places, I break my way through a whole army of crooked interrogation marks which, wavering high between variously balanced loads of doubts, have tried to tempt me off my task. As I stand again firmly gazing at these pyramids, porches, columns, statues, and inscriptions — these crys tallized mountains, blooming Adansonias, and tattooed mammoths, the creation of a bygone civilization, I find I am not pliant enough to be carried all the length of that scholar's enthusiasm who tells me in his book that one particular sight in Egypt will form the epoch of my life. But I cannot refrain from excitement and scarcely B 2 4 DESERT LIFE. from assault and battery when I see a modern savage defacing the relics of the past by scratching his name on them, a proceeding as foolish as it is improper. In first wandering among these human formations, which, if not invulnerable, are at least not perceptibly changeable in the equal climate, we feel almost crushed by their grandeur and pained by their desolation. But as we get somewhat acquainted with them — say, by making some of the mysterious idols divest them selves of their animal masks, and smilingly come forward as well-bred priests, to talk on subjects familiar to us — we are surprised and charmed. We are delighted by this throbbing life, inspired with the same modern spirit of painstaking which succeeded in animating matter into machinery, and in vivifying humanity by reducing death-rates and vice, and working good deeds in a way ever more truly Christian, even among aliens and enemies. There, is the sculpture of a Pharaonic mummy being revived by its soul in the shape of a bird returned from its decreed cycles of wandering ; here, are the people of Egypt, — and their ancient spirit is return ing from Europe trying to revive them again. The latest scions developed through much cultivation, but sprung from those seeds of improvement which we may regard as obtained from Egypt, have been brought back to be engrafted on the old stock, in order that they may burst forth in more gorgeous flower and more luscious fruit than ever. May the old stock be treated with assi duous and tender care ! AWAKENING. In the desert opposite Wady Haifa we disembarked : or I should say, were cast out. The transition was sudden, and the change great. For the last three weeks, or AWAKENING. 0 thereabouts, we had a thorough holiday — and more than the usual comforts of a sea-voyage and a railway-trip combined. Now we had to tranship from floating vessels to walking ones — the camels. And besides this change, here our party were to separate into halves, for at least eight or nine months, and perhaps for ever. But we had a few days of combined work for preparation ; and at our dinners we might exchange some laconic or spasmodic mirth. The Soudan, as Ethiopia is now called in Arab fashion, — though you translate the old word as " burning " or the new as " black " [as to skin] — is known as the Siberia of Egypt. Being regarded, and made use of, as a place of banishment by the Egyptians, wliat will it be to Englishmen ? Given up by life- assurance companies, we were like a set of exposed infants, with only the chance of being saved by some strange milch-beasts. The mysterious treatment we received at the hands of some of our Caireen friends shortly before leaving, became now plain to us. We were looked upon as lost, and some remarks were to be construed in no other way but that we were never even intended to return. And the place ! The banks of this proverbially fruitful river, here and as far as visible, are more barren than a shell-less seashore Strewed with wrecks. And in the river-bed the rapid waters are eddying, broken among the mazes of barren rocks. The changes in land, too, are not of life, but of destruction. Hills of sand, and heaps of rock broken and breaking into stones, characterize the scenery. The nearest semblance to life in the savage bleak prospect is the vehemence with which the very soil, forsaken by all, seems endeavouring to escape the place, or flee from itself, when stretching up its supplicatory hands at the top of the arm-like wrest- 6 DESERT LIFE. ling sand-pillars. But stop, here is something reminding one of life, and that human: a spectacle of death unmourned, justifying the expression of dying several deaths. The characteristic corner is a decaying pedi gree of decays : an ancient building full of hieroglyphics, all but buried under less antique ruins and natural debris. On the top is buried an Englishman, said to have died a few years ago — by his own hand. ..." And forgive us our trespasses." . . . We turn, and discover a spot, with a trace of life iu the shape of one or two sycamores, probably planted in the time of the first Christians. Each succeeding year seems now only to split and bend them down more and more. In this prostrating old age their memory is weaker too : buried or effaced are many of the Greek names, and those of the Arabs of the " heathen " age, once plainly engraven in their bark. — Nor are pains taken to plant and tend any succeeding trees. What people are these whom not even electricity can stir? for the place is, after all — to use a European expression — inhabited : it is a telegraph-station, and — supplies an Oriental necessity — a caravanserai. As it is, it is hardly more than a series of mud-walls for a lean-to, some thing in the shape of flat clouds set on their edges for a time. Another turn a little higher up, and, looking back, we see vigorous life among our two rows of twenty-four tents. We hasten forwards and take our share in the work. The first thing to be done was to attack some huge ramparts of boxes of stores which were packed neither by English hands, nor, in the hurry of our preparations, under English eyes. Accordingly, the continental flimsy, loose medley, we reformed and organ ized into insular, manageable packing. AWAKENING. 7 One afternoon, after the champion-shot of the party, selecting the shade of my tent as the quietest place, had done trying his rifles and my nerves, and I was quietly engaged in the heavens — making astronomical notes — copying out, for reference, constellations of the coming months, formulae, etc., — there suddenly burst a shell of alarm in camp. " A meteor " I might have muttered in the train of my thoughts. The noise was that of a sustained fight between fiends and monsters, or dwarfs and giants, lions and elephants, on the one side ; and of our soldiers and servants on the other. There was no need to rush out of tent with a revolver though : a good tropical shower from a passing cloud would have been enough for these natives and camels, who had arrived in due time. The passionate affray among the new comers arose from everyone's hot en deavour to secure for his own camels reasonable loads from among the packages ranging about the camp. The puerile and feminine voices of the swarthy but fine fellows reminded me of Tasso's verses : " Peregrim perpetui usano intomo Trarne gli albergi, e le cittadi erranti. Han qnesti femminil voce " . . . . And the rattling, querulous, thundering, growl of the camels, sounded much stronger than the voices of the smaller breed of Egypt. That afternoon some of us selected our special camels, and took our riding lesson. Next morning we started in the caravan. BOOK I. THE COUNTRY. CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. The keenest interest, next to that of preparation and work, we took in the thermometer. The first effects of the climate, noticed during the early days of our rides was, that even the darkest of our servants were burnt stUl darker. The exposed skins of our white friends became glowing red, then white as bone, then they died off — ^the skins that is — when a brick-red hue supervened, a tint lighter perhaps than the complexion of the chief conquering race on these ancient Egyptian bas-reliefs : in fact it was the virgin complexion of the first lord of the Earth.* Our great surprise was to find the nights in December and January as cold as 45° E. on a rough average, never so much as 50°, and in three nights (Jan. 22, 25, 27) as near the freezing-point as 38-J°, 37^°, and 36°. Those baths at sun-rise in the airy tents on the Nile shore were cold ! My first annoy ance was due to an error all are liable to. I asked, and listened to some one I had thought expert, persuading me to leave in London the furs I desired to bring. I am often favoured with advice of this kind before starting on travels and journeys. Such advice — * This, according to Josephns' Hebrew Archaeology : 'O 8' SvBpamos ovros "ASa/ios iKkr)6ri. 'Srjfmivet 8e tovto Kara y\S>TTav ttjv 'E^paiav rrvppov, eVf(8ij n-ep otto rijs 'nvppas yfjs (jnipadeia-rjs eyeyovef roiavrr) yap iariv ij irapBivos yr\ Koi aKrjBivri. Though modem Britons, who know more Hebrew than did the Hebrew Josephus in the first century a.d., reject this pretty etymology. 12 desert life. when unasked — be it said in kindness — is highway robbery. As I and those like me cannot resist — being afterwards incapable of correcting our error — ^we crave forbearance. We whom ^schylus and Shakespeare called more persuasible than mulberries — TreiraiTepos fiopwv — implore all human glow-worms to shade their piercing light for which we are dying. Temper your prudence with the milk-glass of kindness — ^into wisdom. And may our own guardian spirits stUl keep us from absolute knowledge ! Being, then, defectively dressed, the piercingly cold winds — blowing during the first two months for several hours before noon — afflicted my flesh with burning rheumatism. (Bugs alone, specially cloth rugs, are " nowhere " in this weather.) This qualification of the expression " burning desert " does not seem generally known.* We might have fared worse in these " hot " deserts. Snow does not, to my knowledge, fall and lay here where the average temperature is the highest on the globe ; — as it falls and lays in Jerusalem, Algiers, and on some mountains of the Central Sahara — but frosts and ice stand recorded, f Duveyrier registers frost twenty-six times between December and March in the plains of the Central Sahara. Bromfield speaks of sharp hoar frost, and ice a quarter of an inch thick, at Ehoda on the Nile, 28° latitude. The Imperial Gazetteer says as much about Syene. Denham and Clapperton men tion hard frost occurring at 13° latitude, in the Sahara, or rather Soudan or Southern Sahara. Captain Lyon * It seems not known, even to all the learned and expert gentlemen whom it took to furnish a stately paper on Personal Equipment of Officers, in a minute volume of the United Service Institution of 1879. They say offhand, one needs no warm clothes whatever in Egypt. t " He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycomore trees with frost." — Psalm Ixxviii. 47. CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. 13 records six degrees frost in the Libyan deserts, and adds frequent instances of temperatures below freezing- point — mentioning ice half-an-inch thick on several mornings. Similar statements are made about the neighbourhood of what is popularly known as one of the oases. These last statements were made in this decade by officers of an Egyptian surveying party, or as some of those appointed called it, a " German expedition." — ^No need, therefore, in these tropical winter nights to cool one's bottled white wines by covering them with loose earth and then burning straw ; or of making ice in a still, dry, and clear night by letting water evaporate in a flat pan on dry straw in a pit. But here ! That rifle barrel is red hot from the heat No : the great differences, through the greater part of the year, between day and night tem peratures, were only just strong enough to squeeze out such a " soupgon " of dew as sufficed to veil our rifles with a faint tinge of rust, about every three nights. We had no dew recording instrument. The daily North winds, peeling off nether lips and noses, were losing their ferocity by the end of January. On the 31st I have it recorded that it begins to get [feel] warm — about 90" E. in the shade. During the six or eight weeks of chilling winds — specially before noon — ending with January, the daily maximum varies between 71° and 92°. The very cold winds were relieved on January 20, 23, and 24, by sand-storms (temperatures between 41° and 77°), heaving heavy tarpaulined carpets to heights of two feet, like a rough stage sea made of cloth under which crouching boys are kept dancing. February, at least the first half of it, seems to have 14 DESERT LIFE. been a lovely month with us. The breezes were regular and moderate. It felt warm, and perhaps hot some times, but not oppressive to our seasoned organisms. Moreover, the temperatures throughout Eebruary undu lated almost rhythmically between 51° and 64° at night, and 79° and 95° P. by day. During the latter half of the month — when we camped on the Nile shore near Khartum, — the wind interfered for several days with taking a photograph of the camp, which was pitched in a thick palm grove and bushy gardens. On March 1st, however, the wind became powerfal. The day is marked in my small French diary, burdened with a useless geography, but containing irritatingly bad paper, as " Cendres." The sandstorm (54° F.) began at night and continued through the darkness ; and in the morning we could judge of its strength, as our heavy levels, theodolites, and surveying-tables could not stand firm till 9 o'clock, when the air became calmer and thinner and warmer ; indeed, the curve of maximal heat peaked as high after the storm as 97°. While the blast was at its worst, we felt gloomy and fretful in turns; relieved, perhaps, by thinking of the grand description of desert sandstorms in Lucan's Pharsalia. We started in the lesser storm with nerves strung as tight as those strong elastic bands which pressed down the crackling mimic musketry fire from the heavy leaves of our open notebooks. Taking March as a whole, I find it to have been quite as distinctly marked and consistent as February in its kind. But there was more variety in March. (Day -maxima between 86° and 106^°.) The great move ment in the range of the night temperatures, however, —between 481° and 78° — was of no consequence; as the nights felt cool throughout the month, and the CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. 15 evenings pleasant ; although we noted the phenomena of clouded evenings on the 8th and the 9th. Up to the 8th there was little wind, and therefore the day- temperatures of from 86° to 98° felt as close as in the catacombs of Memphis. There were headaches in camp. On the 8th, with the clouds came a strong South wind ; a comrade fell iU : the maximum day-temperature rose to 105°, and fell very slowly, so that at 9 o'clock at night it was stUl 90° ; nor did it fall through the night more than to 78°. Next day, 9th, at noon, it was already 91^° in the air and shade [in the saddle-bag 112°]; at 1 P.M., and for nearly five hours 104^°, 101° at 6, stUl 93° at 7, when clouds showed again. Tormenting thirst in camp, only lulled during bathing and drinking and eating. A Hnen scull-cap with little holes em broidered, which I wear under my helmet, was given to the servants just before dinner after dark, and it was brought back washed, rinsed, dry, and ironed, when the coffee was being served. The sick man, however, who ate nothing that night, and little before, began to rally, thanks to small doses of champagne. People drew crackling sparks from their beards, before they supposed themselves dry from the bath. A poet might describe this electric phenomenon as combing out the last fire drops after the long past shower of hot dry light. This is that weather during which at night horses and lions shake stars from their manes, and whip off with their astrifex tails the terrified flies, or a scorpion. The vulgar author of the clownish " Miinch- hausiad," on the masterpiece of Bruce — half a century after the traveller's death, too — might have invented a leonine illumination, more fair and natural, by the agency of a little electric spark of ability, than he has done by flrst blackening the great traveller's memory 16 DESERT LIFE. with a pitchy wreath of spleen. At bed-time, about 10 o'clock — such was the hot dryness — whole blankets, as they were being drawn one over another, or even slightly shifted, blazed up like sheet-lightning in the dark tents. These fits of diamond-like virtue occurred stronger in the hot nights of May. Some time before this period we had exchanged our small bivouac tent, which had been pitched for our own lunch, for a large one. But about the end of March two more tents were raised for the short time of lounging lunch, to accommodate the soldiers and servants. The calm intervals between the hot gusts were oppressively hot. These gusts broke upon us in the wake of the waltzing sand pillars seen all over the threshing-floor of our horizon. After the sweeping tail of these familiar meteors had upset some of our tents, and the winds con tinued hot, we thought of camping in a captive balloon. . . . Where is my pocket-lore? . . . Ah, . . . The air cools one degree Celsius for every 187 metres in height etc. . . But by-and-by we managed to get up at dawn, and to have done with field-work before the afternoon glow sets in. — Of course matches were lit by touching the sand with them. People who worked their metal instruments without gloves — and every one except your effeminate servant here, did — got awkward big blisters. Even the mahogany tripods — unfortunately not polished — were painfully hot, and an eye-lid too near the brass work of the telescope was instantly baked into a pretty loaf. This was, of course, in the sun at temperatures between 150° and 180°, as win be further mentioned in the chapter or essay on Sky and Soil. It is amusing to be told by a mediaeval Arab who had travelled over these same rocks, of its being some- CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. 17 thing like madness or tempting Providence to stir out of the shade after noon. Considering that moving in the day heat is not worse than constituting oneself an invalid every afternoon in bad tents, I am not surprised at the practice of some of our colleagues who were working from Wady Haifa along the Nile to Dongola and Shendy some years ago in a good season. After a very substantial late breakfast they worked from nine A.M. till sunset like the very jinns they were possibly supposed to be. A noble friend of ours, in sun-forsaken poor dear England, starting what he calls his work at midday, says this is " entering in medias res." That afternoon glow felt sustained till sunset. I say "felt" because people's sensations were not commensu rable with thermometric degrees — even if it were not the traditional custom, to feel in the sun and to measure in the shade.* Sir T. Douglas Forsyth and his colleagues made the same observations in the Gobi desert. The " fervent " heat certainly felt even greater towards eve. I would never admit it was because the heat preyed upon my strength, to speak with Dr. Johnson. The practically unabated discharge of the vesper raysf hit us everywhere as we turned about our instruments : only the tops of our shaven heads were properly protected — our soles were on embers, or rather our feet wading in a sand furnace. - 1 sometimes felt as I did one night when lost in the brands of a fresh burnt reed prairie in Hungary — the sparks I kicked up with hot boots from under the soot at every step making me think of the shining nails in a black velvet coffin. * But even sun temperatures, measured with black bulbs, are indif ferent criteria of physiological effects. t Because theoretically the heat of these rays is an insignificant fraction of noon-heat. 0 18 DESERT LIFE. The lower the sun declined the more directly were our bodies smitten. On our faces the fiery rays felt like burning insult from a retiring enemy ; on our throats like vicious throttling. While one is engaged in optical operations the attendant should shade one in the afternoon, not with an umbrella — we often spitefully scorned their use — but with a pavise, which should have a level, small brim on top, and should be cut into mobile shadelets or lids, into "jalousies," as a shelter, fanning, or admitting the Western breeze if any should blow. The news chronicled with April the 1st was that it smelt hot — it was over blood-heat long before this— otherwise somebody or other " rather liked " the 109° between one and half-past three o'clock. To begin with the nights, many of which were remarkably cool — one 50^° — there is no complaint on record ; though the nights of the first week were in deed among the hottest of the period — over 80°. This passing high night temperature came in the van and continued through those three or four days before the 8th, when high hot winds from the East were prevailing — causing headaches. During these few days the sun appeared veiled and curtained. The first seven day-temperatures continued at between 109° and 114°. At the flare of heat on April the 2nd the amateur recorder pricked his ears. It was Sunday, and therefore leisure to catch the exact moment of maximum. This (111^°) was reached — some tepid wind, in long, low waves blowing — at eleven in the morning in the cooled tent. The tent was not refrigerated in gorgeous Indian fashion by revolving fans (punkahs*) sifting * Valuable accounts of the latest improvements— let us hope, more fortunate than the name Thermantidote, for one— for cooling hospitals and railway carriages, are found in recent volumes of the [Eoorkee] " Professional Papers on Indian Engineering." CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. 19 draughts through constantly irrigated foliage or loose mat (khus-khus tattie) ; neither by Italian windmills, chasing air from caves over flowers; nor even by Egyptian cooling chimneys and double tunnels. We simply had a couple of waterskins hung up against the breeze. During those high hot winds (Khamsin), under the pressure of dry mists or beneath the cover of sterile clouds, the atmosphere, as if confined in a pot, felt as though in a state of sputtering seething ; though the thermometers, still primitive though modern, were far from alarming us by the dangerous temperatures vulgarly known as between 121 (in May at Esne, Egypt, according to Burckhardt), 122, and 133, which (or rather the unrecorded sun-temperatures corresponding or not corresponding) for weeks were killing poor Eitchie and trying Captain Lyon sore in the " happy " oasis. In desponding moments one would call this state a plague, during which each serpentine current of the air is hissing forth darting projectiles in the form of precious burning-glasses of transparent sand- granules, and shrapnels bursting into heat-gorged salt particles. (Whenever this heat is let loose, one feels as hot, and one's thirst is as irremediable as over the saltest zones of tropical oceans.) Under a clear sky, with cool Northern winds, the pointed particles are mere wild oats of youth, or feel like snow pelts from children. Indeed, I as gladly take the hot cornlets in a cool breeze as I relish cayenne and salt in some sweet fish sauce or cream soup. But, after that op pressed, incensed, and turbulent hot crowd, — fit to render royal ruby pale, — had passed, the calm, clear glow was refreshing, even though the obliging themometer was over 105°. c 2 20 DESERT LIFE. On the 8th of April " at last" (I should think every one was gasping) a cool wind set in : at noon only 103°, and nothing said about the day's private maximum of 109°. There is a serene blank — no wrinkles in the diary — till the 25th : only smiles of such words as " cool wind," " pleasant breeze all morning." On the 25th, however, "head-aches" are mentioned: 108°; nothing more, though it continued at this figure. April and May, taken together, were hotter than June. The maximum of the year, as far as recorded, was 115° in the shade, in the beginning of May; but I am not sure whether the heat before, and after, was not felt more ; especially while the hot samum sup plied the action of the cutting afternoon rays even at noon, and supplemented them after noon and before. The nights and the breezy mornings were generally pleasant : often the evenings also. May ^ih. — At sunset and a little after, I lay prone on a very thick double rug, calculating, about six yards from the skirts of a tent, and heat registered 72°; and on the table, under the roof of the open high tent, the thermometer rose at once to 85°, which showed the power of unin- tercepted radiation in the then calm clear air outside. The noon and afternoon heats, even in the draughts of open tents, were somewhat trying, though not very much while one was yet able or willing to move. All dry objects in the shade were hot to the touch, indeed, the paper on which we were working, or the sleeve of a friend whom we might touch. This latter was some times an odd sensation, as it would make one half think that the other man is warmer than oneself. It would take much caressing and bathing to cool a hot glass. Forks and spoons were sometimes cooled by evaporating wrappers, like bottles of wine by damp CLIMATIC EXPERTENCKS. 21 towels ; or our levels in the field by wet paper slips, to coax the hiding bubble from under the bridge by changing its pout into a smile. The pores of our earthen water-jugs were choked with sand long ago, so that these had to be cooled like glass bottles. Even chemical changes were observed, ot which I will men tion one instance connected with the great evaporating power of perfumes. A hot silver spoon, in the safe centre of a large portmanteau, was found black one day from the action of scent which had all escaped from a bottle with a glass stopper tied down firm in a leathern cap. The full bottle, secured for transport by the manufacturer, was never opened. In a cooler place, in September, the empty bottle could be opened only after great and risky effort and many contrivances, during an hour. It was when the thoroughly tired people in camp were dying for a snatch of rest that the heat was most exacting. The contrivances in India for cooling rooms down to thirty degrees below the ordinary shade- temperature, may act injuriously on people obliged to move much abroad ; but we should have risked the change, some of us, if it had there and then been pro curable. After you have lain for some time on the hot bed, or in the warm draught of your tucked-up tent on the floor, reposing in siesta, your head on a pillow of ghazel, your lair gets cooled down to the temperature of your body. The evaporation of the mark of one's head from the pillow aids this cooling. But if one did not feel, or resisted feeling very tired from work, one would prefer to lounge studying with a pencil, keeping the head up in the draught. Fortu nately this play at headaches did not last beyond two hours; as after four, or half past, the shade of the 22 DESERT LIFE. tents was long enough to permit reading, writing, or drawing, prone in the open. The proper day-shelters in these places would, and for invalids should be large canopies, with four or more poles, each secured with stays, ten feet high. Two feet under the roof of thick light quilt another stout sheet of Bedawi-make should be spread, and the space between filled with skins. For a couch, the skin-net called an Arab bedstead, un covered ; for a pillow, a gigantic Maltese sponge should be procured, if nothing more porous and springy can be had. Walls should be light mattresses of whalebone shavings or desert grass {alfah), rolling easily both from their tops and bottoms. I think the reasons for aU these arrangements against the marvellously piercing force of these sunbeams, and against stagnation of air, are obvious. On May 13, led on by a chorus of infuriated " devils " (sand-spouts), we had the first EAIN, at a distance of 400 kilometres S.W. from Abu Gusi. May 20. — Hot all day, 103° in the evening; hot wind ; unslakeable thirst ; headaches ; general state of nervousness, intermittent with apathy. May 21.— Morning cool, 111^° at noon, 112^° at one, 109 at half-past five. May 23. — Great shower — fearful wind. The water- jets felt, through clothes and a caoutchouc cloak, as if tipped with metal points. The country was inun dated. The refreshing influence of this phenomenon was so gratefully felt for nearly a week that I find notes like "not oppressive" made against such sil houettes of temperature as 109°. Thermometrical tables, and our present state of meteorology, so long as not better connected with physiology, are very in complete I CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. 23 May 30. — Cloudy. ** For the rest of the period under record, the heat was relieved and aggravated irregularly. The average day temperature in June was lower than in the previous two months, yet kept above 100°, once rising to 108°; and the average of the minimum night temperatures was over 70°. The last ten nights of the month were exceedingly stormy. June 5 and 6. — Eains. June 7. — Clouds. June 11 was clouded aU over. June 13. — Cool soft wind. On 14th, day and night temperatures were the nearest to each other during the year, viz., 91° and 78°: it was cloudy in the morning. June 28. — Great storm all night, spoilt everybody's sleep (wells of Kajah). July 1. — Wind. Very agreeable temperature; be tween 78°, 102°, and 80°. Lunch tent (on travel) upset by " devil," i.e. sandspout. July 2. — Showers morning and eve. Quinine is taken all round as precautionary " bitters " before dinner — doctor setting the example. Eefreshing to see doctor conform to his own prescription. My comrades are all heroes : they scorn accepting my insinuating wafer-en velopes, and take a grim delight in shivering for half an hour from the caustic bitterness of the powder. They might have been less tormented by some mild ague. July 3. — Electric storm, and shower in the afternoon. Giddy, stunned sensations for several evenings. July 4. — At night, gusty showers. July 5. — Rain and storms all night. Broken sleep. Colds on chests, in throats, bad coughs, &c. July 7. — Maximum 111°. 24 DESERT LIFE. July 8.— MaximiMn 105°; gentle breeze before noon. Nocturnal storms always, breaking every tired man's sleep (fatigue dangerously excessive). Fearful thirst. July 9. — Highest, 106°. Evening, rain with high wind. The gratefully accepted boon of these rains was " no stint of water for tubs." But the drawback kept on during the intervals also, even on clearer, cloudless days : the hot moisture of the wind prevented cooling, whether by evaporation of the water-skins or of steeped bottle-swathings. (We had no moisture recorder, I regret again to say.) We had nothing but warm drink, having slighted the idea of bringing an ice-machine, as our friends did in this neighbourhood a few years ago for a vernal trip when it was not much wanted. The storms, truly tropical, whether sandy or showery, but usually prevailing or most felt at night, would tear and toss not only tents and furniture, but upset the heaviest boxes — (memorandum for some future designer of railway carriages in these parts). Pity we had no wind-gauges with us. Books, clothes, the articles in the dinner tents, everything had to be packed up and secured firmly before going to bed. Caught by such storms, our own caravan did not indeed crouch down and half bury heads ; but few, if any, powerful and bulky camels could face the mightier squalls. Stronger than the greatest dry storm which once at midnight overtook us, and reduced each man's horizon into a bubble of his own height and his camel's length, — was a wet storm one afternoon in July. From a hundred yards ahead, instead of sky and air and clouds and soil, came a mass of indigo, deeper than that with which the Egyptians tattoo their skins, and calling to mind those latest chaotic productions of Turner which I have never yet succeeded in understanding. We were CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. 25 swallowed in what was perhaps a mild tornado, with much noise, electric and otherwise. As soon as my camel, on whose monumental height " I was seated, a patient gurgoyle," was willing to turn ahead again, and the pricking of the rain, like volleys of pins and needles through my fourfold wrappers had abated, I found the darkness subsiding fast, with rather moderate wind in its wake. July 15. — (Neighbourhood of the Wells Sotahl and Matul.) Eesting day. My usual exercise was hardly more this day than half an hour's walk over rock and sand ; yet I returned — as most people would call it — exhausted. Bending to pick up a few of the larger amber-like pebbles from among the yellow sand, I felt almost stunned— such was the power of the noon-day rays on my back. Then I squatted down a few times with back erect, as if under infantry drill; but the radiation surging up my neck and face was so fearful that, rising, and almost reeling, I considered simple walking with my face in the 150° of the upper air quite exhilarating. July 16. — High winds at night, as usual of late. July 17. — Strong wind and rain. "Stuffy." July 18. — From ten till five, 104°. Scorching and cracking of our skins. Baths, whether from the black iron tanks or the now not perspiring skins, scalding from accumulated heat. On the Nile boat, at Dongola, 107^° both on July 19 and 20. Here I was reminded of the necessity of keeping dressed thick (though light), as usual, even under a stout awning of bedding. During an hour's lounging under this shelter, while dressed, for experi ment's sake, only in a thin calico robe, more than half my body burnt red and smarting. 26 ' DESERT LIFE. August 2. — Again on the march, northwards bound along the edge of the Nile valley ; greatest heat, ther mometer kept shaded from the sunshine in which we moved, 113°. Clouds. Rain at half-past four. August 2». — Towards noon, and for several hours, 113° on the side of the tent. The thermometer was shifted at noon from the W. to the E. side and hung five feet from the ground. Breeze. August 4. — Forenoon 113°. Samum. Continuous parching thirst day and night : drinking makes no dif ference. Humming and whistling tried with some success, in remembrance of the good effect of Orpheus' music on Tantalus. August 5. — Far from the river, in high desert, 107°, samum always. August 6. — Wind shifted : heat subsides — even the thermometer of centiped habits shows less, viz., 104°. August 7. — 106°. August 8. — 111°. August 9. — 106°. Pleasant wind. The journeys, through the whole nights and some parts of the days — uninterrupted for the caravan — had widely differing effects on different characters and con stitutions amongst the riders. There were instances of exasperated despair ; and dogged despondency ; and intense enjoyment of the fourteen hours' rides, which cheated even that chronic thirst. I myself was among those who rather enjoyed these bravours, self ishly speaking. At the same time I cannot but agree with Colonel Potto, the authority on steppe campaigns, who is most positive in condemning the ruinous practice of consecutive night marches. ' The fragments of day sleep on the hot beds were generally felt oppressive ; and we seemed as if on the brink of serious maladies. CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. 27 Yet we pulled through all this thirst and risky fatigue somehow, for a marvel. The snatches at the novelty of Nile-views, and the procurability of fresh VEGETABLES and othcr fresh food; whole hours, some times two, spent in fuU baths from the hymned river ; an encampment or two in airy palm groves ; a doze or lounge on a leather grate in their shade in the open, and perhaps, the proneness for " spurting " between last stages, may have conspired to save us. At night, between the 9th and the 10th, hot north wind — the samum driven backwards. Not only metals, but pommels of saddles, and other wood and leather, even the skins holding water, felt hot to an ungloved hand during this night. August 10. — Hot sand storm, 110° on the precious thermometer, traditionally to be kept shaded as if in a vestal hareem. Between 10th and 11th, and through the 11th, hot north and north-west samum, very high. Several tents blown down. Choking sand, not mere floury dust or mineral pollen. Heat 109° among clothes in a trunk in the shade of tent; 111° in the wind among the sand accumulating on the shaded green tent-carpet. August 12. — 111°. Calm. Not unpleasant (for a change). Combs, vulcanite, bone, or horn, become brittle and useless ; so that the shaving of heads, or plaiting and fixing the hair with varnish, appears explained. The demand for " angaribs " (net-work bedsteads), as a relief from hot beds, exceeds the supply. At midnight, and some time after, while reclining near my excellent camel and a servant or two, I let the caravan pass by and heaped up a pillow of sand under my rug. The sand felt hot five or six inches below the surface, the surface being only warm. 28 DESERT LIFE. August 1 3. — Wady Haifa. End of caravan travelling. Note. — The last minimum and maximum thermo meters were broken in the beginning of July. The heats recorded after that time I owe to occasional observations of a small mercury instrument under my own care. As may be inferred from the preceding notes, we were fortunate enough never to have been caught abroad by any disastrous samum, or any of the much more fatal desert deluges. It is advisable to guard against these sudden cataclysms, in which, and by the blocks and lesser debris they carry, more people are killed than by samums. These latter would parch and bake dead some of the prostrate caravan when lasting strong for many hours ; but they would not bury them alive. " The cages of woode " on camelback (mentioned, I think, in an early translation of Barthema), in which some travellers even now ride "to save themselves from being drowned" in imaginary sand-drifts, are, most likely, quite as much worse than fair riding for men as is camping in hot small tents. It is the pore-choking dryness of the sandy, hot, salt samum which is its most serious quality. A blooming dewy plant, uprooted during the miroitage or wrestling between lofty sunbeams and hissing, gliding cold wind, would parch crisp in one's hand in an hour ; but in a blast of the gloomy samum the plants are scorched as they stand. Well protected by furs — less will hardly do — from the blasts of the keen cold wind, and from the blows called sunstroke, most fatal in winter, you enjoy the regular change of warm and cool air, at stated hours, while you have also cool waters. But during the restless wallowing of the deozonizing samum, day and night, there is no opportunity for calm, clear, cooling radiation. The human system, thus made CLIMATIC EXPERIENCES. 29 restless already, would easily succumb under a prostrat ing hot storm. If, then, some phenomenal hot sand storm, by deepening the cracks of the calcined skin and congesting the lungs, kill people weak by nature and further debilitated by want and fatigue, it will, we* repeat, not bury them under that little sand which may collect in six or ten hours, and which could be stopped by a dry bush. But if it takes the mere samum a long time to kill even delicate people, the burial process by the creeping of the sand-dunes in moderate circling breezes is almost of geological slowness. Towns have been swal lowed in Norfolk and Brittany and the Gobi desert by the encroachment of low sand-hills — each town, perhaps, in the lapse of a cycle — and they will reappear in the course of nature ; the dunes passing on under the same law as the shifting sand-banks in a river. When the dunes are suddenly damaged in their sheltered depths by some irregular wind, the spoils disperse, and the dune does not move one step till the roundness of its tail is slowly reintegrated. This links with the next chapter. I have refrained from detailing the third and greatest of the dangers due to the last season from the climate alone and our own sufferings and losses through it, and have deferred it to the sanitary chapter. I only men tion that, however boldly some of us may have faced the first onslaught of the climate, the whole of our return journey, lasting for many weeks, was a justly alarmed flight, perhaps injudiciously precipitate ; " an eternal rout," as Canon Cook, Her Majesty's learned and eloquent Chaplain, translates a passage in a series of Egyptian hieroglyphics. * My authorities on the meteorology of deserts are too numerous to mention all by name. 80 SKY AND GROUND. Our having had to travel south from Wady-Halfa for fifteen days in the Nile Yalley on camelback, before facing the desert south-east and south-west, was like a gentle weaning from familiar life. The wide river itself changes into a desert, barren of ships, but thorny instead thereof, with rock -points for hundreds of miles of rapids formed by small cataracts. But, as in every desert, so in this also — there are oases; only on this Nile they are few, small, and sharply defined. In following the shorter — and, for the most part, the only practicable — -ways over the arid brims of the plateau, the caravan does not, as a rule, see the river, except once in a day or two. The small hamlets we then see close on the gnarled river are like the pink-and-tearose figs sessile on the bulky stems and thick boilghs of the Nile-sucking sycamores. Their harbours seldom float a boat, and if they do, it is for crossing only. But, for an irony on current navigation, one sees occasionally some foul bird plume himself on a quick -floating carcase — for corpses, animal and human, are comparatively frequent in this dangerous part of the river, which looks harmless enough to one who has not yet seen a village or encampment in alarm at the distress of a champion swimmer in mid-river. In passing by the villages of SKY AND GROUND. 31 mud-boxes inhabited by half passive, half " farouche " people, we inevitably come by the low grave-yards, well out in the glare, with rough paving-stones for monuments here and there near the flat pebble beds. A scuU is sometimes, but rarely seen at the ends of these pebble banks. Not a domelet, not a wall, not a carving or scratch with a meaning, and not a root with dry haulms is there to remind one of affection or of resurrection. During one of our first journeys, when struggling across rugged heights and sandy depths in an undulating horizon, which made me think of the blank scenery of the moon, a camel dropped, was unladen, and, I think, shot in mercy. Its bones will soon get unfleshed like those of scores of others which daily checker our paths in this borderland, which is much more frequented than the desert proper. Brave animals are camels : even anticipating their end, they allow themselves to be harnessed to die in the battle of life. 0, Nature is busy still ! See the strings of vultures making for the fallen — and it would be extraordinary if another eager agent — from the " States " — would not come to continue the work on the skeletons. [A year after this crossed my mind, some " citizen " did fetch those bones.] The undulating and broken flow of my narrow hori zon expands on a flatter table-land, haunted in broad day-hght by the ghosts of a sea. It is hardly a century since these mischievous ghosts lured to death some regi ments deaf to their guides' warnings. Speaking of this mirage, I once half-dreamily asked myself whether those dry light clouds we see sometimes in accumulated tufts are not merely mirage. .... You are right inferring that these very deso- 32 DESERT LIFE. late beginnings in these three chapters — impending climate and ghostly scenery — must, to suit with nature, develop into some pleasant sequel : unless the most acute, and chronic, and fatal of all calamities in nature — human perversity let loose — does not spoil whatever ground for joyous praise may be in store. Turning away from the river, after having received into the hitherto dry flow of our caravan the tributary of the water-laden camels, let my species of Fata Morgana present before you a dissolving view of some thing real, gleaned from the scattered features of our long race-course. At sunset the sun, the lower sky, and the earth are cleared of their mistiness or chaotic light ; and, with hardly any glow on sun or sky, every object in the landscape becomes defined. All elevated surfaces are lit up as if by intense foot-lights, appearing thereby as if really drawn upwards ; and outlines, ere now lost in the general glare, stand well out like muscles awaken ing to powerful effort. This effect — almost sudden — which draws our attention to the new flashes of light when its source is all but gone, brings to mind the first jerk of one's ascending camel, which projects one's head with force. Such objects as pointed hiUocks, to all appearance actually rising, recall, by their edges, raised hands joined in evening prayer. At sunset, then, " when all Africa is dancing," ranged in advancing columns along what we may call meridians, we natu rally turn slowly about, trying how far we may see the checkerwork now raised by this singular light. .... Then we almost start as if under a shock, our head jerking a little upwards, as when our camel gives us the final shaking lift in the saddle. For the upright lights on a camel, a tent, a Bedawi, a bush, and a vista SKY AND GROUND. 33 of scattered sandheaps and piles of stone now suddenly dive, anon jump — no, dive, go out, and, being extin guished, each sends up sparks — the stars. Very intent, I feel with the upward movement just as nervous people might feel on a camel rising : as if the earth were falling from beneath me, and I were comically fain to catch at the nearest object. My eye then, when the earthly lights suddenly vanish, catches at the " nearest," lowest, star ; and, after feeling rescued, climbs to higher constellations. I fancy myself in a new world, and as if tossed up into a sphere nearer to the stars, from the effect of their sudden and distinct appearance close down to the horizon, as soon as the sun has set. The quickness of aU the other stars arraying themselves and breaking upon our sight in full lustre is likewise a new charm to me. By the time the Southern Cross appears, we see it singularly clear in spite of its low position. It does not here seem like something grand in isolation, but forms only one of a crowded assembly of constella tions and groups, less defined, but more thronged. There are, at least, three grand constellations, all cruciform and even larger than "the" Southern Cross. Such old friends as Orion — the " camel stallion grazing," as he moves in the heavens — whom we can see aU night, and the moving throng of the galaxy appears as bright as if just burnished in the sharp sand, to speak in analogy with a Homeric expression. Some of us noticed even more colour in the stars, and others said they dis tinctly saw the candle-flame like mist (imitating the aspiring ground lights just gone) of the zodiacal light, the nightcap-Hke extinguisher of the sun, just " gone to bed." I will not say more about the playful moon beginning Orientally supine, and making faces as else- 34 DESERT LIFE. where, than that De Quincey hunted up evidence of her here " burning " exposed peoples' skins. The belief that the moon here causes severe eye complaints, and even blindness, has been modified by referring the cause to the great chill caused by radiation. In the open air of these deserts, even when the moon does not shine, the eyes should be kept during sleep under a veil. On the other hand, the chemical effect of the moonbeams on minerals in general, and on desert rocks in particular, has been shown, I think, in the " Comptes Eendus," The celestial compensation for the earth's poverty is indeed generous ; although even this poverty is suscep tible of widely various estimation by different minds. Many find ample amends in the glorious sense of liberty in wandering through these Aleian plains, with hardly ever a thought approaching to melancholy Bellerophon's feelings, whose eyes must have been fixed somewhere under his chin, like the eyes of an isopod crawling on the sea-bottom. People here are always in company — indeed, too much so, according to general complaint — and live constantly under pressure. Even a postUion on his trusty camel, racing on for twenty hours at a stretch—^ awakened by a burning slow-match tied to his foot — even he finds companions. Greeting them, he con verses, during his manly achievements, with the friendly features of soil and sky. And the features of this desert soil, as we shall see by-and-by, have for an old acquaintance the poetic charm of some new, mobile expression at every meeting. Not a tenth do people in the desert feel the solitariness of an average bachelor in town, a place which belies its sweet name of a metro polis. The most kindred thing — if it is not the same — ^to a great city is, — in the eyes of those hundreds of SKY AND GROUND. 85 thousands who care neither for what they may have of so-called society, nor for crowds, — ^the pagan Hades with a touch of other infernoes, as far as brute noise is concerned. The human forms, for all practical pur poses, are walking mute shadows, unless to those noisy few who, Ulysses-like, have a mind to collect, and can afford to collect, select, and dissolve the lips of such as they might choose — making them talk by the flow of frothy riches, or sparkling success, seasoned with the necessary grace of manner, and tempered by the humour of human kindness. But I am straying; and it is a pity to do so from a well-appointed caravan, or from the landscape and the life in it about to become miraged before us. In about eight hundred mUes which we levelled, I found only one single straight stretch of eight or nine miles really plain and almost level. All the rest is a quick roUing of billows, each about one or two yards high and a hundred yards long. The two hundred miles from Abu Gusi south-east to Khartum are heaved into several high ridges. The caravan route itself, though selecting the lowest ridges, winds like ivy on inclined thyrsi, climbing up and down along slopes of, now a hundred, and again a hundred and fifty yards in height, counting from the bottom of the lowest valley. But the main and all but steady rise to the south-west to the chief place in Dar-Fur, is merely one in two thousand —also corrugated by waves of one or two yards high every hundred yards or so. Even the flattest stretches of the plain undulate to this extent. The whole horizon in this country of extreme temperatures is rolling with mounds from a couple to scores of metres high. And so thickly are these ruffled plains covered with isolated hiQs and hillocks, that they resemble a grater, or my D 2 36 DESERT LIFE. goose's skin covered with pimples when shivering in the morning cold, or shuddering with heat at noon or eve,* or when afflicted for weeks or months in the Nile Delta with prickly heat, agitating the burning skin in the ebbing and flowing billows of a mimic earthquake. In conformity with the " Nile-boils " usually linger ing at one's foot, the hillocks would, at rare intervals, consolidate into table-lands of a journey's length and breadth, or more. The tops of these plateaux have the same rolling surfaces as the plains. At some places not generally visited, the soil of the plain is abruptly sunk into wide cisterns — well-defined, saline dry lake-beds — many with nooks of unexpected vegetation. Besides the ordinary mountainous districts between Dongola and Khartum, and the table-lands, depressions, cupolas, and pyramids of these plains, we saw no characteristic features. Certainly I never found here any of the natural obelisks, or rather pillars resembling termite towers (" white-ant-hiUs " ), so characteristic of other African deserts, and called " Witnesses " — supposed to be left by some geological flood "like navvies leave pillars " for measuring the depth of their earthworks. But many of our pyramidal or conical hills may have been transformed from those desert- beacons ; for the generality of these rocky hiUs are, properly speaking, not hUls, but heaps — piles of boul ders, stones, pebbles, or sand. Those of the dark porphyry masses, which had evidently cooled after their molten state, level and con fined in some craters, appear indeed little broken by present agencies, and only made to look like unpolished leather by the friction of the blown sand. Yet its * What a delightfully shivering place for a certain class of novel writers. SKY AND GROUND. 37 surface is, perhaps, more like that of a corium — like sherds soldered by the lower lava. Eeminding one of the " sea of glass mingled with fire " in St. John's Eeve- lations, these flat places look as if once slightly crusting a molten mass ; and as if that crust had been broken small and tossed about, and then consolidated again into a " porcellanate " surface. These consolidated tile- fragments are relieved in several places by circular fences, six or ten feet wide or wider, and defined by three or four thicknesses of upright sherds, ranged in rings like the funeral wreaths carved or soldered on slabs covering graves. They look as if arisen during the eruption of some mighty bubbles, or as if broken through by some meteoric boulder. All the other rocky hills I ever noticed in these deserts — except perhaps some of sandstone — are sharply broken, usually into rough, angular fragments. And many seem a heap of stones sorted into sizes, as equal as if they had been worked upon by some huge sifting rock-disintegrators. Admirably done are these stones in Her Majesty's Scotch limner's latest and grand picture " Satan watching the Sleep of Christ in the Wilderness of Temptation." Though deserted by the fashionables of the day, I would not give this picture, with its power from its complete unity, for the whole Academy exhibiting at the same time. Professor Blackie, in this case, surely says not too much, " Sir Noel is a man of ideas ; he might have been a great poet if he had not chosen to be a great painter " — "Ea-nv 6 l-Kirevs 'i^or)X avTjp (^(cav vorjfiaTa' irapTiv avrS evSo^^ jevecrdai ttom^t^, ei fir] eTvy^ave fioXKov ayairojv ttjv i,Kriv, But the following lines speak for Sir Noel Baton's being a poet as well ; 38 DESERT LIFE. " Even as a vulture, bird obscene, from far Tracks the sick wanderer from the woolly fold, And perches near, with ravening eye accurst ; So stole in silent rage the baffled Fiend To where the Saviour on His couch of stone, Foredone with conflict, slept ; so, in his breast Revolving subtler treasons to entoil His erewhile Conqueror, sate he moveless there The live-night long. While as the Holy One In troubled dream traversed his wiles once more. Bruising once more the Serpent's head — as told From the beginning : the Eternal Strength Made perfect in His weakness ; while on high The starry watchers round the unswerving Pole Wheeled in bright squadrons — and the dawn drew near." The machinery by which this stone-breaking has been, and is still, being done continually, is remarkable enough. Earthquakes, in these volcanic regions, do here more visible havoc than they would in places covered by elastic soil and thick vegetation. But the most powerful agent of disintegration is the change of temperature to which the salt be-sprinkled rocks are exposed. With a pocket-thermometer, in tended for theoretical " shade " temperatures, I found the sand in which we walked, sometimes 146° F., but with a better instrument for measuring practical, direct heat in these places, where shelters are a myth, 170° F. might have been obtained, a temperature found recently at Jaffa,.* as coming nearer the truth. Duveyrier, equipped suitably to his purposes, found the Sahara one day over 182° F., or 73° C. The same authority registered within one year no less a difference than be tween 163° and 20° F., or - 5° and 67°-7 C. Mr. Harding, according to a paper read before the Eoyal Geographical Society, recorded at a spot of the Atacama * " Climate of the Levant," in Blaokwood's Magaxine for March, 1879.- SKY AND GROUND. 89 Desert of Bolivia 7° and 98" P., with only four hours time between. These are annual and diurnal ranges with a vengeance, and are enough to make that Colossus at Thebes groan audibly. The Ancient Egyp tians did well to mass, round, harden, polish, gild, keep dusted, clothe, mask, and shelter their huge sculptures. And not without good cause had they a predilection for light granite and dark basalt, so hard that sculptors of our time still wonder with what instruments they could have been worked: till they improve on hints from those who work on glass and those who fashion diamonds. Besides the heat acting upon these calcarious and quartz rocks and upheaved porphyry, there is the roughening, depolishing action of the wind-borne sand. The dusty sandy gusts grind rigid windows in more sheltered countries into opacity and often iridescence. And these fiercer blasts depolish even the elastic eye balls of the Bedawins into blindness, compensated sometimes by bringing out the iridescence of the soul — poetry. Judge then how easily these winds which remove in one dry season the polish off the upper faces of these rolled, hard pebbles, will roughen the ordinary rocks, and so accelerate their destruction by increasing both their absorbing and their radiating intensity. But the sand does more than this : it gets into the chinks of rocks and eats them through. It will penetrate, like damp and ponderous gas, into capillary fissures, and, slowly accumulating, widen and deepen all clefts. I really believe that mineral breath goes working into the very pores of the rock, as it would penetrate into a cooling bird's-egg through those same pores which exhale a "bush" of bubbles when the 40 DESERT LIFE. egg is put into water warmer than itself. Wherever collected in the interstices and sufficiently confined, this heavy dust would mine through and under the rock, then lift the biggest stones and boulders highest, as is the wont of sand, and roll them over to further destruction ; acting thus with the enormous mechanical power of partially confined living vegetable tissues when swelling by growth. It was by the slow and dogged action — hydraulic-press like — of this humble sand, that those tremendous, thick-walled granite sarco phagi in the rock chambers of Memphis were lifted to the heights of the raised entrances. The inside of these prodigious sarcophagi (when you descend into them) you will find as large as an English bedroom of medium size. — Thus the misunderstood desert sands supply the agency of damp and growth in softer climates, gradually, but with unintermittent power, helping towards the destruction of the rocks, and making the parts they can reach like themselves. For it should be known that the sandier these deserts, the less are they deprived of latent water and qualified vegetation and animation. Too much water proves disastrous in softer climes to man's works. But if a sand-range slowly inundates magnificent necropoles, the wonder of all ages, it preserves them ; and even from their worst foe, the most dreadful pestiferous cancer in nature, as said before, from human perversity let loose. There is yet much room for research about the sus tained capillary action of light, as isolated from kindred forces. That light would here furiously agitate the fly of the radiometer, and deeply blacken photographic plates, darken men's skins, and the surface of pale sandstone and limestones as if grasped by algae ; under SKY AND GROUND. 41 certain conditions might render the ferruginous stones, and other minerals, active magnets. Researches on the alternate action on the rocks of highly ozonised torrid dry air charged with electricity, as shown before ; and then of the air in its deozonised state during hot storms, would also well repay labour. We should pause before decidedly rejecting— as has become the hobble-de-hoy fashion— so many tes timonies of phenomena observed without scientiflc preparation. The generality of sand- or "dust"- spouts, known from Australia and Gobi to Dar-Fur, and the Atlas and beyond, in the deserts of Brazil, Mexico, and Bolivia, is harmless enough — to recall from memory a pun of Aristophanes, often strong enough only to make wool fly off: epiaXr): tpiov, oTToXXu/ti. Different from these are the desert torna does, radiating to great distances heat and pungent smells; and snatching up and throwing about bed steads, saddles, quadrupeds, men; and piercing two camels through and pinning them to the ground with a blunt tent-pole or a stake ; and stealing soldiers' metallic weapons, and sending them down from the heavens in other latitudes. Have a day's treat and compare the imperishable description in Lucan's "Phar salia " with the rich account of a recent Illinois Tornado in the " Journal of Science." The action of even the most fleeting showers of loose-clustered big drops of icy cold rain (which I said before I have felt through a thick and hard dress, like arrows), or hail, both from untold heights, discharged with a momentum approaching that of pistols loaded with water, is the more powerful here, as they almost invariably fall on the rocks when they are most heated — in summer, by hot winds, and in the afternoon. 42 DESERT LIFE. Disintegration chiefly by chemical action comes into play in greater force during and after the rains. The fermentation of lime and gypsum, the dissolution and crystallization of nitrates of soda and other salts — con demned to this drainless continent — mines and blasts the rocks in every direction. Nor are the stones of these piles, once rock moun tains, left to tumble over into further decay at the leisure of their gravitation. Down from a heated height, greater than over any part of the earth, burst the sudden cataracts, in which excited lightnings are diving headlong. As the irregular Bashi-Bazook manages to find, and gather taxes from, the most retiring Bedawin tribes, so the stone-heaps and sand-piles, however poor, are made to pay their tribute, diminishing in rolling, annually, or otherwise, into the depressions of the soil. Moun tains of stones, and of mighty boulders, the size of tents, would, in the torrential inundation, sometimes vanish ; to be, perhaps, piled up against some distant bar, or scattered broadcast. Slipper-shaped high dunes — though their shape and situation is a powerful pro tection — nay, whole ranges and districts of thronged sandhills, would be swept away in twenty hours. As, then, the cloud-descending, tumultous roaring cara vans of stones, with their loads, are disgorged into the main valleys or plains, they toss and shake, and break, by their rolling gait and violent stamping, their brittle loads to the utmost, like real water-holding camels, till they, subsiding calmer, deposit rough fragments of limestone, porphyry, granite, and quartz. White quartz blocks, and large pieces of petrified wood, both of these freshly moved and splintered, are very commonly lying about. The petrified logs especially, as if conscious and still SKY AND GROUND. 43 proud of their descent, nobler than the brute stones with unorganized veins, would rather splinter and break, than behave like the " rolling footed " driven ones. But even the other fragments which are obviously depositions from the last stone-breaking rains, look uncommonly rough, splintered, angular, sharp, and as thorny as the vegetation of the place— the phraseology of a hasty treatise on an unripe " theory." True, to relieve the material in such phases, there are the gentle sands in the depths, and the shingle- banks like half-buried tortoises, again conglomerated by new-born clay : others are pristine conglomerates newly broken up. The pebbles, the shingle, the smooth rounded stones, and polished boulders in these plains, I beheve to be the product of other ages, most likely geological, and think that under our own eyes they are but shifted, and that very roughly. These little- draped stones and provident sands distinctly corroborate the conclusions which Frisi has drawn from his hydraulic researches regarding the perennial rivers of Italy. These stone kernels must have broken loose, during the short rushes of deluge, from long baked and compressed conglomerates; and the finer sand must have lain collected and then been shifted here for untold ages, when there were perhaps perennial rivers, and pounded from the more brittle of these ready sandstone rocks — made brittle, may be, as a Prince Eupert's drop, by some sudden geogenetic process, during the infant maladies of the Earth. Nay, it looks as if the present impetuous waters would break the very pebbles, or, with lesser force, at least deface them of the polish acquired long ago. The mountains are too low, too isolated, gorges too short and rough, the plains and torrent beds too flat, and — ^what is stiU more important to judge by — 44 DESERT LIFE. the supplies of the rain too abrupt, and may in former centuries have been rarer and shorter and more violent even than now, to produce that smooth rotundity which — except in confined whirlpools, of which further on — is the effect of long sustained toil. The waters, besides disintegrating, collaborate with other forces which rein tegrate by accumulation, pressure, baking, and chemical compounding. But the rounding and polish of the solid rock requires perhaps as much time, and as con tinual an application, as the ripening of the soil for rounded and smooth organisms. If a constant succes sion of drops, falling, as a rifle-bullet flies, in a screw line from these heights of clouds, could be secured to work on single spots of stones, it would not smoothen a round brim, like drops from low-built eaves, but pound sharp, like a bullet, or pierce like a gimlet ; or, under oscillation, punch pock-marks, and drill combs. Witness the rough, fresh, perpendicular ravines, ton ing off with colours ranging from dark violet and purple, through hazy hues, to pink and rose and fresh snow. Moreover, you see the marks from one short sprinkling eaten into the hard ground, stereotyped for years, and slowly filling up with travelling dust. Scaly and spiky dust, then, is what is constantly being made in the thorn-producing desert, parched or inundated ; it might be called the salt ashes of the burning desert. The waters begin by bringing down much of the dust, — meteoric in two different senses. Then they make new dust. Then they screen it between the stones, and through the very sand ; and, thus sort ing, aggregating, according to size and gravity, lay them at leisure in clay, derived from heavy porphyry, ponderous granite, meteoric iron, and other debris. The drops, hurled from the maximum height of rain SKY AND GROUND. 45 clouds, as Sir William Herschel explained — and more over weighted by the ponderous dust they snatch from the high, galloping winds above— these racing drops often combine to form twisting jets, like snakes, hissing out forked tongues of lightning, before they reach the ground on which they burst at last as plaited, clustered cataracts, in a sudden and tumultuous manner. Long after the mighty efforts of the waters are over, their minute trouble continues ; but this diminishes as the circling, curling puffs of sediment glide, like shoals of small fishes, in coils into convenient niches, as camel-drivers huddle-up behind the new-moon shaped saddle-shelters ; or as pairs of dancers, after a long, straight chasse, arrive at the place to turn again. Becoming thus gradually unloaded, the waters roam and run about, dispersed in playful curves, amid a maze of petty channels found in the rocks, or traced in the fresh soft ground ; doubling native rocks, great nomad boulders, and those well cemented, termite minarets ("white-ant-hills"), whom Neptunine fury alone — even helped by smaller catapult stones — could not destroy. These metamorphosing waters sport on, with occasional jumps from a bar down into soft sedi ment — like children romping in a huge bed, — then down a mimic cataract, tossing up liquid feathers or shuttlecocks, until, tired of continual excitement, and just as the last shreds of the high cloud canopies vanish, — as if a mighty animal shook a wet mane from before his eye, — revealing the angry ogre of a sun, they fall asunder, huddled up as drops, nestling in the down, — many of them smothered and gobbled up by the ogre though .... and then they skip under the bed. But if you go noiselessly (which is easy in the 46 DESERT LIFE. detaining sand), and dog them close, you will catch some roguishly awake, looking up with their open eyes from the depths of rejuvenated wells. In some cisterns, and ancient craters, it would appear as if the waters of the floods, even while in full force, were playing at ball, as they chase round in flat screw- coils. Belted by higher hills, I have mounted one apparently consisting entirely of a lofty pile of hardened equal sandstone balls, the size of peaches. They were as nearly globular as anything in nature — a bubble, a drop, a planet. They might have been formed like children's " marbles," made by whirling round with accelerating machinery a barrel filled with water and rough stones. They must be cemented with some tough ingredients, as they were excessively hard to break. Of rather a funereal aspect were pale sandy hill sides, and the plains near their feet, strewn with those orange-sized nuts of the surface-blackness of iron meteors, known all over Africa as " manganese nodules." The ferruginous dark shell, easily broken, is the thick ness of orange-peel. The kernel is sandstone, very soft, of invariably the liveli-est hues, from light yellow, through all the colours of the rainbow, to deep purple. Duveyrier informs us that the veil-vizored Touareg in the Sahara *' heat these nuts and throw them into milk to preserve it by the iron thus absorbed." Thus — ^to fix this jewel of research in a clumsy setting of my own, as I object to quoting like a parrot — ^the community of castes of whey, cheese, and butter, is kept in sweet harmony, when all are imbued with the same stern principles of iron duty. Before speaking of the wells, often simply tapering holes in the subterraneous rivers of the deserts^ I SKY AND GROUND. 47 wUl describe the sandiness of those parts we passed in ¦particular. We met no ranges of sand-hills, those moisture providing milk-breasts, adorned here and there with bouquets of vegetation, and extending over many degrees of longitude and latitude, as seen in the north ernmost parts of the Sahara, and others of lesser extent imperfectly explored in the Libyan Deserts. Therefore our wilderness was more barren than the better known parts of the Sahara, which, it is well to remember, were the seats of an important civiliza tion in antiquity. The astonishing subterraneous aqueducts in the rocks of the Sahara originated with the ancient Garamantes; and they might have been the first models of water tunnels made by man and imitated in more famous countries. The dunes, blown and rippled and curled on the surface, by the weaker waltzing whirls of the ruling winds, appear in the shape of watered-silk slippers filled, as far as can be, with sand. They are not numerous here. They are enchantingly attractive for those who are impressible to their shape and movements, so multifariously suggestive of showy physical processes, organic forms, and life. But we will publish here no researches about them, lest by so doing we swamp aU the architecture of the following essays. The greater portion of the sand, often much mixed with clay, is laid flat in the deepest places, and is now and then heaped up irregularly, or arranged as described under the head " Animation." For long stretches it is only inches or fractions of an inch deep, and does not hide half the rocks, stones, and shingle, even in the lower parts of the plains traversed by us. The uncovered rocks are only made to shimmer or glitter by sprinklings of sand and rock-powder. But the air, even during its calmest breathings, is charged with 48 DESERT LIFE. the shining heavy motes of rocks and salts, which penetrate like tropical damp into the best secured boxes. During the calms of winter nights much of the powder comes leisurely down from prodigious heights, as a sort of dry dew. Aware of this sublimed sand, I am tempted to call those waltzing sand pillars rather whirlpools than spouts ; though they are said to arise from the ground, creeping along at first like small twisting horns of smoke. The first desert village we saw, after many months' rambling, was at the watering-station of Um-Bahdr. This was one in a group of several villages. After about a week's journey, we saw the second and last group of villages (near Kahjah). The huts of the first cluster were square straw boxes of thin walls and layers; the second cluster boasted of cyHndrical walls of thatch or stones, with hoods of thatch for roofs. The villages seem to be as gregarious as the deer, and as patriarchal as men. None of them are in the valley: they are all careful to keep high on the hills, and away from the wells, and would rather have a constant service of water-fetching women and beasts than be as imprudent as we boasting Europeans and other barbarians are, who court pestilence by camping at wells. There is much mischief for fools and the uninstructed lurking in those goblin ey^es. Addenduin to the paragraph on grit balls on page 46. — ^According to a communication to the British Association in 1879, by J. Andrews, F.C.S., there are concretion balls, between the size of a nut and the first, formed during a couple of weeks in a mineral water in which probably eddies are tiirned by the steam passing over the surface and heating the water to 164° F. 49 WELLS AND THIRST. Eighty miles, a hundred miles, ninety miles four days, five days, four days (eight or nine hours of them) These three lengths between the neighbouring wells on the central stretch of our opera tions do not sound very formidable. Our pious young desert express (when pious they are all young, like the gods !), on his whirling camel, often ready to do three or even four times the daily journeys of a caravan, seems not to be concerned more deeply than ourselves would by crossing — Inshallah !* — a calm midland sea between (say) Alexandria and the arctic of Lebanon. Four days, five days, four days We have plenty of sound water-vessels, and our camels are often watered at handy wells only as a measure of precaution. Suppose, as often happens, we find one or other of the nearest wells dry ? Well, it would be a question of nine days' thirst, which the ghost of the Persian expe dition from Thebes might tell. Our camels — ^here in the Soodan, at least — would think nothing of that in winter. On January the 26th, 1876, when our camp was two hours' journey from Beer (well) Sotahl, and the camels had been seven days without water, we had to compel the drivers to water the animals. The drivers wanted * "Please God," used by some instead of the frequent " Yes, yes," or BuohUke, when listening with very great concern — to some plan, perhaps. E 50 DESERT LIFE. to go on another three days, when the delay at the weUs would have most awkwardly inconvenienced our work. That they could easily support thirst for ten whole days they showed after the very first start from the Nile. They were taken hale and merry to the wells (at Matool) on January the 15th, after ten days' thirst. True, that during this they had a rest-day or two, and during each of the others they did not march more than we advanced with our work. After such an introduc tion, nobody was surprised to see the animals live with out drink for eight or nine days. No difference in this reserve power was noticed between those breeds we took from the districts about Dongola, and the others which we got at Khartoom. Indeed, their breeders said that the camels could go a fortnight in winter without stopping at wells. The awkward thing is, that it is during the seasons of hot nights that the excellent animals are tried most, by the drying np of the wells. Besides, there are unforeseen delays among people who cannot boast much of the rare genius for organization. Our work, in particular, put the poor brutes to a very severe test. It took us three weeks — it would have taken the best of Germans six, and Frenchmen six-and-twenty — to get our particular operation performed on that stretch of a hundred miles. At one period of this work, during full twelve days in the first half of May, when the day temperature was the hottest of the hot year, two-thirds of our camels were without drink. Two of them, I believe, dropped, indeed, on their way and near to the wells, and had to be subsequently rescued by being watered from the skins which were first filled. The calculation between ourselves and the camel-men as to sparing the animals unnecessary running to and from wells was thus almost too close ; but, of course, it had WELLS AND THIRST. 51 been taken into account — for what it may have been worth — that for ten days they did not work, perhaps, more than about six hours a day, loading and unloading included. We men did our best to economise water, by each of us washing from a basin only, put into the tub. And the brave Bedawins reduced their thirst bji- absten tion. They kept this asceticism secret, though ; evidently to save their camels from driving blows. One of these excellent fellows wanted more drink than the nicely- balanced uniform share the rest were content with. He had more work to do than the rest ; for he served one of us as groom during field-work. This poor fellow could not refrain one day, after helping his patron to dismount in camp, to ask a drop from the latter on the sly. Some people may consider these jealously checked statements about the camel's sobriety as being beyond those made by most authorities ; others, impressed by some recent corypheuses, may think these particulars tamer than what they expected. The statements of the latter authors (of many years' recent experience) that the camels can go several months without water, ay, and also without food, we will lay on one side. The other statements, even more recent and pretentious, that the camels cannot live athirst beyond a week, and that " most camels die, if not watered every fourth day," we win put by the other side. And now let us venture to associate our own evidence with that of others- to justify and explain the simple statements of the fool ishly despised Bedawin witnesses, who told many travellers besides ourselves about their own camels' capacity for supporting a fortnight's thirst. I suppose it is understood that there are camels unprovided 'with water-storing receptacles, which are not able to live away E 2 52 DESERT LIFE. from rivers or close chains of wells. Arabic scholars will, presumably, know that among the Oriental wealth of words referring to the camel there are . names of breeds denoting degrees of abstinence from water, names for breeds which require to be watered every third day, and so forth, np to ten, and "twice-ten." This last fact was noticed, I believe, by General Chesney. Bearing breeds capable of going unwatered twelve days was considered, many centuries ago, by Arab experts a handsome success. But it would seem that the numbers as well as the qualities of the breeds have constantly kept improving, if we may judge from fossils, ancient descriptions, and sculptures, and some of the latest intelligence about the wild herds in Tibet. Of course, the camel is not the only sober mammal. I do not see how the other animals of these deserts could manage to drink very frequently anything but the juices of their food. We have passed over in our mind those typical representatives of the learning of one nation, whose sons are in the habit of advertising themselves as the profound ones, and who would — to keep close to the present subject — go home from their desert surveys without levelling a dry distance of a few days' journey, because, forsooth, it is their dogma that " the " camel's extreme abstinence from water does not exceed a week in winter and three days in summer. These dogmatic conceits and " theories " are not to be shaken by what the breeders themselves timidly assert about that fortnight ; nor would they be shaken, from what I know of their character, if the very camels themselves were to speak out. We have politely declined to take au grand serieuw the minced and seasoned official reports of the marvellous, as kindly presented by typical scholars of another nation. But we WELLS AND THIRST. 53 will seriously mention some vivisecting atrocities, rela tively worse than those of the Spanish Inquisition, done in a country " irredenta " from the charge of murderous cruelty to these very days, where cabinet ministers are cowardly assaulted, and maimed, and half-killed con tinually during several days for a purse of gold. Let me quote, then, a page of Francesco Eedi, referring to some experiments done two hundred years ago. (It is fortunate the great Athena had turned " the distressing conceits of his baneful joy " ¦ — Sva-