Travels in Syria and the Holy Land Part 36

EL THEGHAR

[p.452] a superst.i.tious belief among the Bedouins, that the desert is inhabited by invisible female demons, who carry off travellers tarrying in the rear of the caravans, in order to enjoy their embraces. They call them Om Megheylan (Arabic), from Ghoul (Arabic). The frequent loss of men who, exhausted by fatigue, loiter behind the great pilgrim caravans, and are cut off, stripped, and abandoned, by Bedouin robbers, may have given rise to this fable, which afforded my companions a subject of numerous jokes against me. ?You townsmen,? said they, ?would be exquisite morsels for these ladies, who are accustomed only to the food of the desert.?

We marched for four hours over uneven ground, and then reached a level plain, consisting of rich red earth fit for culture, and similar to that of the northern Syrian desert. We crossed several Wadys, in which we started a number of hares. At every twenty yards lay heaps of bones of camels, horses, and a.s.ses, by the side of the road. At six hours was a chain of low hills to the S. of the road, and running parallel with it.

In seven hours we crossed Wady Nesyl (Arabic), overgrown with green shrubs, but without trees. At the end of ten hours and a half we reached the mountainous country called El Theghar (Arabic), or the mouths, which forms a boundary of the Desert El Ty, and separates it from the peninsula of Mount Sinai. We ascended for half an hour by a well formed road, cut in several places in the rock, and then followed the windings of a valley, in the bed of a winter torrent, gradually descending. On both sides of the Hadj road we saw numerous heaps of stones, the tombs of pilgrims who had died of fatigue; among others is shewn that of a woman who here died in labour, and whose infant was carried the whole way to Mekka, and back to Cairo in good health. At the end of fifteen hours we alighted in a valley of the Theghar, where we found an abundance of shrubs and trees.

MABOUK

[p.453] September 1st.?We continued descending among the windings of the Wady, turning a little to the southward of the Hadj route. Among the calcareous hills of the Wady deep sands have acc.u.mulated, which have been blown thither from the sh.o.r.es of the Red sea; and in several parts there are large insulated rocks of porous tufwacke. After a march of four hours and a half we had a fine view of the sea, and gained the plain which extends to its sh.o.r.es, and which is apparently much below the level of the desert El Ty; it is covered with moving sands, among which a few low shrubs grow. The direction of our route was W.S.W. In seven hours we reached the wells of Mabouk (Arabic), to our great satisfaction, as we had not a drop of water left in our skins. These wells are in the open plain, at the foot of some rocks. Good water, but in small quant.i.ties, is found every where on digging to the depth of ten or twelve feet. There were about half a dozen holes, five or six feet in circ.u.mference, with a foot of water in each; on drawing up the water the holes fill again immediately. We here met some shepherds of the Maazye, a tribe of Bedouins of the desert between Egypt and the Red sea, who were busy in watering a large herd of camels.They were so kind as to make room for us, in consideration of our being strangers and travellers; and we were occupied several hours in drawing up water.

These wells were filled up last year by the Moggrebyn Hadj, on its pa.s.sage, to revenge themselves upon Mohammed Ali, with whose treatment they were dissatisfied. The Egyptian pilgrims take a more northern route, but the Arabs who accompany them fill the water skins for the use of the caravan at these wells, and rejoin the Hadj by the route we travelled this morning. Near the wells are the ruins of a small building, with strong walls, which was probably constructed for the defence of the water, when the Hadj was still in its ancient splendour.

ADJEROUD

[p.454] On quitting the wells we turned off in the direction of Suez, our route lying W.N.W. There are no traces of a road here, for the track of caravans is immediately filled up by the moving sands, which covered the plain as far as I could discern, and in some places had collected into hills thirty or forty feet in height. At ten hours from our setting out in the morning we entered a plain covered with flints, and again fell in with the Hadj road. Here we took a W. by N. direction. At the end of eleven hours the plain was covered with a saline crust, and we crossed a tract of ground, about five minutes in breadth, covered with such a quant.i.ty of small white sh.e.l.ls, that it appeared at a distance like a strip of salt. Sh.e.l.ls of the same species are found on the sh.o.r.es of the lake of Tiberias. Once probably the sea covered the whole of this ground. At twelve hours and a half Suez bore S. about an hour and an half distant from us. To our right we saw marshy ground extending northwards, which the people informed me was full of salt; it is called, like all salt marshes, Szabegha (Arabic). At the end of thirteen hours we crossed a low and narrow Wady, perhaps the remains of the ca.n.a.l of Ptolemy; and at fourteen hours and a half, alighted in Wady Redjel (Arabic), where there were many Talh trees, and plenty of food for our camels.

September 2d.?We continued to travel over the plain, route W. by N. In two hours we reached Adjeroud (Arabic), an ancient castle, which has lately been completely repaired by Mohammed Ali, who keeps a garrison here. There are two separate buildings, the largest of which is occupied by the soldiers, and the smaller contains a mosque with the tomb of a saint; they are both defended by strong walls against any attack of the Arabs. Here is also a copious well, but the water is very bitter, and can be used only for watering camels. The garrison is supplied from the wells of Mousa, opposite to Suez. Our road was full of the aromatic

WADY MOUSA

[p.455] herb Baytheran (Arabic), which is sold by the Arabs at Ghaza and Hebron.

Beyond Adjeroud many Wadys cross the plain. To the left we had the chain of mountains called Attaka. At the end of five hours, and about one hour to the right of the road, begins the chain of low mountains called Oweybe (Arabic), running parallel with the Attaka. Our route lay W. by N. At eight hours the Attaka terminated on our left, and was succeeded by a ridge of low hills. The plain here is sandy, covered with black flints. We again pa.s.sed several Wadys, and met two large caravans, transporting a corps of infantry to Suez. At the end of ten hours and a half we stopped in Wady Djaafar (Arabic), which is full of low trees, shrubs, and dry herbs. From hence a hilly chain extends north-eastwards.

September 3d.?After a march of six hours along the plain, the ground began to be overspread with Egyptian pebbles. Route W. We pa.s.sed several Wadys, similar to those mentioned above when describing Wady Rowak. At nine hours, we descried the Nile, with its beautiful verdant sh.o.r.es; at eleven hours began a hilly tract, the last undulations of Djebel Makattam; and in thirteen hours and a half we reached the vicinity of Cairo. Here my Arab companions left me, and proceeded to Belbeis, where, they were informed, their princ.i.p.al men were encamped, waiting for orders to proceed to Akaba. I discharged my honest guide, Hamd Ibn Hamdan, who was not a little astonished to see me take some sequins out of the skirts of my gown. As it was too late to enter the town, I went to some Bedouin tents which I saw at a distance, and entered one of them, in which, for the first time, I drank of the sweet water of the Nile. Here I remained all night.A great number of Bedouins were at this time collected near Cairo, to accompany the troops which were to be sent into Arabia after the Ramadhan.

CAIRO

[p.456] September 4th.?I entered Cairo before sunrise; and thus concluded my journey, by the blessing of G.o.d, without either loss of health, or exposure to any imminent danger.

[p.457]

JOURNAL OF A TOUR

IN THE

PENINSULA OF MOUNT SINAI,

IN THE SPRING OF 1816.

ABOUT the beginning of April 1816 Cairo was again visited by the plague.

The Franks and most of the Christians shut themselves up; but as I neither wished to follow their example nor to expose myself unnecessarily in the town, I determined to pa.s.s my time, during the prevalence of the disease, among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, to visit the gulf of Akaba, and, if possible, the castle of Akaba, to which, as far as I know, no traveller has ever penetrated. Intending to pa.s.s some days at the convent of Mount Sinai, I procured a letter of introduction to the monks from their brethren at Cairo; for without this pa.s.sport no stranger is ever permitted to enter the convent; I was also desirous of having a letter from the Pasha of Egypt to the princ.i.p.al Sheikh of the tribes of Tor, over whom, as I knew by former experience, he exercises more than a nominal authority. With the a.s.sistance of this paper, I hoped to be able to see a good deal of the Bedouins of the peninsula in safety, and to travel in their company to Akaba. Such letters of recommendation are in general easily procured in Syria and Egypt, though they are often useless, as I found on several occasions during my first journey into Nubia, as well as in my

KAYT BEG

[p.458] travels in Syria, where the orders of the Pasha of Damascus were much slighted in several of the districts under his dominion.

A fortnight before I set out for Mount Sinai I had applied to the Pasha through his Dragoman, for a letter to the Bedouin Sheikh; but I was kept waiting for it day after day, and after thus delaying my departure a whole week, I was at last obliged to set off without it. The want of it was the cause of some embarra.s.sment to me, and prevented me from reaching Akaba. It is not improbable that on being applied to for the letter, the Pasha gave the same answer as he gave at Tayf, when I asked him for a Firmahn, namely, that as I was sufficiently acquainted with the language and manners of the Arabs, I needed no further recommendation.

The Arabs of Mount Sinai usually alight at Cairo in the quarter called El Djemelye, where some of them are almost constantly to be found.

Having gone thither, I met with the same Bedouin with whom I had come last year from Tor to Cairo; I hired two camels from him for myself and servant, and laid in provisions for about six weeks consumption. We left Cairo on the evening of the 20th of April, and slept that night among the ruined tombs of the village called Kayt Beg, a mile from the city.

From this village, at which the Bedouins usually alight, the caravans for Suez often depart; it is also the resort of smugglers from Suez and Syria.

April 21st.?We set out from Kayt Beg in the course of the morning, in the company of a caravan bound for Suez, comprising about twenty camels, some of which belonged to Moggrebyn pilgrims, who had come by sea from Tunis to Alexandria; the others to a Hedjaz merchant, and to the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, who had brought pa.s.sengers from Suez to Cairo, and were now returning with corn to their mountains. As I knew the character of these Bedouins by former experience, and that the road was perfectly

DERB EL ANKABYE

[p.459] safe, at least as far as the convent, I did not think it necessary this time to travel in the disguise of a pauper. Some few comforts may be enjoyed in the desert even by those who do not travel with tents and servants; and whenever these comforts must be relinquished, it becomes a very irksome task to cross a desert, as I fully experienced during several of my preceding journeys.

The Bedouins of Sinai, or, as they are more usually denominated, the Towara, or Bedouins of Tor, formerly enjoyed the exclusive privilege of transporting goods, provisions, and pa.s.sengers, from Cairo to Suez, and the route was wholly under their protection. Since the increased power of the Pasha of Egypt, it has been thrown open to camel-drivers of all descriptions, Egyptian peasants, as well as Syrian and Arabian Bedouins; and as the Egyptian camels are much stronger, for a short journey, than those of the desert, the Bedouins of Mount Sinai have lost the greater part of their custom, and the transport trade in this route is now almost wholly in the hands of the Egyptian carriers. The hire of a strong camel, from Cairo to Suez, was at this time about six or eight Patacks, from one and a half to two Spanish dollars.

The desert from Cairo to Suez is crossed by different routes; we followed that generally taken by the Towara, which lies mid-way between the great Hadj route, and the more southern one close along the mountains: the latter is pursued only by the Arabs Terabein, and other Syrian Bedouins. The route we took is called Derb el Ankabye [Arabic].

We proceeded on a gentle ascent from Kayt Beg, and pa.s.sed on the right several low quarries in the horizontal layers of soft calcareous stone of which the mountain of Mokattam, in the neighbourhood of Cairo, is composed; it is with this stone that the splendid Mamelouk tombs of Kayt Beg are built. At the end of

EL MOGAWA

[p.460] an hour, the limestone terminated, and the road was covered with flints, petrosilex, and Egyptian pebbles; here are also found specimens of petrified wood, the largest about a foot in length. We now travelled eastward, and after a march of three hours halted upon a part of the plain, called El Mogawa [Arabic], where we rested during the mid-day heat. Beyond this spot, to the distance of five hours from Cairo, we met with great quant.i.ties of petrified wood. Large pieces of the trunks of trees, three or four feet in length, and eight or ten inches in diameter, lay about the plain, and close to the road was an entire trunk of a tree at least twenty feet in length, half buried in sand. These petrifactions are generally found in low grounds, but I saw several also on the top of the low hills of gravel and sand over which the road lies.

Several travellers have expressed doubts of their being really petrified wood, and some have crossed the desert without meeting with any of them.

The latter circ.u.mstance is easily accounted for; the route we were travelling is not that usually taken to Suez. I have crossed this desert repeatedly in other directions, and never saw any of the petrifactions except in this part of it. As to its really being petrified wood there cannot be any reason to doubt it, after an inspection of the substance, in which the texture and fibres of the wood are clearly distinguishable, and perfectly resemble those of the date tree. I think it not improbable, that before Nechos dug the ca.n.a.l between the Nile and the Red sea, the communication between Arsinoe or Clysma and Memphis, may have been carried on this way; and stations may have been established on the spots now covered by these petrified trees; the water requisite to produce and maintain vegetation might have been procured from deep wells, or from reservoirs of rain water, as is done in the equally barren desert between Djidda and Mekka. After the completion of the ca.n.a.l, this route was perhaps neglected, the trees, left without a

EL MOGRAH

[p.461] regular supply of water, dried up and fell, and the sands, with the winter rains and torrents, gradually effected the petrifaction. I have seen specimens of the petrified wood of date trees found in the Libyan desert, beyond the Bahr bala ma, where they were observed by Horneman in 1798, and in 1812, by M. Boutin, a French officer, who brought several of them to Cairo. They resemble precisely those which I saw on the Suez road, in colour, substance, and texture. Some of them are of silex, in others the substance seems to approach to hornblende.

We continued our route E. by S. over an uneven and somewhat hilly country covered with black petrosilex; and after a day?s march of eight hours and a quarter, we halted in a valley of little depth, called Wady Onszary [Arabic], where our camels found good pasture. Close by are some low hills, where the sands are seen in the state of formation into sand- rock, and presenting all the different gradations between their loose state and the solid stone. I saw a great quant.i.ty of petrified wood upon one of these hills, amongst which was the entire trunk of a date tree.

April 22d.?From Onszary we travelled E. by S. for one hour, and then E.

At the end of three hours, the hilly country terminates, beyond which, in this route, no petrified wood is met with; we then entered upon a widely extended and entirely level plain, called by the Bedouins El Mograh [Arabic], upon which we rested after a march of five hours and a half. While we were preparing our dinner two ostriches approached near enough to be distinctly seen. A shot fired by one of the Arabs frightened them, and in an instant they were out of sight. These birds come into this plain, from the eastward, from the desert of Tyh; but I never heard that the Bedouins of this country take the trouble of hunting them. The plain of Mograh is famous for the skirmishes which have taken place there, for the caravans that have been plundered in

DAR EL HAMRA

[p.462] crossing it, and for the number of travellers that have been murdered on it. In former times, when this desert was constantly over- run by parties of robbers, the Mograh was always chosen by them as their point of attack, because, in the event of success, no one could escape them on a plain where objects can be distinguished in every direction to the distance of several hours. Even at present, since the route has been made more secure by the vigilance of the Pasha of Cairo, robberies sometimes happen, and in the autumn of 1815 a rich caravan was plundered by the Arabs Terabein.[These Arabs, under their Sheikh Abou Djehame [Arabic], made an excursion about the same time over the mountains towards Cosseir, and plundered a caravan of pilgrims and merchants who were going to Kenne. The Sheikh was seized on his return by the Maazy tribe and carried to Cairo, where he remained a year in close confinement, and after having delivered part of his booty into the treasury of the Pasha, was released a few days before I set out.]

The desert of Suez is never inhabited by Bedouin encampments, though it is full of rich pasture and pools of water during winter and spring. No strong tribes frequent the eastern borders of Egypt, and a weak insulated encampment would soon be stripped of its property by nightly robbers. The ground itself is the patrimony of no tribe, but is common to all, which is contrary to the general practice of the desert, where every district has its acknowledged owners, with its limits of separation from those of the neighbouring tribes, although it is not always occupied by them.

In the afternoon we proceeded over the plain, and in eight hours and three quarters arrived opposite to the station of the Hadj, called Dar el Hamra which we left about three miles to the north of us, and which is distinguished by a large acacia tree, the only one in this plain. At the end of nine hours and a half, and about half an hour from the road, we saw a mound of earth, which,

WADY EMSHASH

[p.463] the Arabs told me, was thrown up about fifty years ago, by workmen employed by Ali Beg, then governor of Egypt, in digging a well there. The ground was dug to the depth of about eighty feet, when no water appearing the work was abandoned. At eleven hours and a quarter, our road joined the great Hadj route, which pa.s.ses in a more northerly direction from Dar el Hamra to the Birket el Hadj, or inundation to the eastward of Heliopolis, four hours distant from Cairo, upon the banks of which the pilgrims encamp, previous to their setting out for Mekka.

Between this road, and that by which we had travelled, lies another, also terminating at Kayt Beg. The southernmost route, which, as I have already mentioned, is frequented only by the Arabs Terabein, branches off from this common route at about six hours distant from Suez, and is called Harb bela ma (the road without water); it is very seldom frequented by regular caravans, being hilly and longer than the others, but I was told that notwithstanding its name, water is frequently met with in the low grounds, even in summer. Just beyond where we fell in with the Hadj route, we rested in the bed of a torrent called Wady Hafeiry [Arabic], at the foot of a chain of hills which begin there, and extend to the N. of the route, and parallel with it towards Adjeroud. Our camels found abundance of pasture on the odoriferous herb Obeitheran [Arabic], Santolina fragrantissima of Forskal, which grew here in great plenty.

April 23d.?Our road lay between the southern mountain and the abovementioned chain of hills to the north, called Djebel Uweybe [Arabic], direction E.S.E. In three hours we pa.s.sed the bed of a torrent called Seil Abou Zeid [Arabic], where some acacia trees grow. The road is here encompa.s.sed on every side by hills.In four hours and a half we reached, in the direction E. by S. Wady Emshash [Arabic], a torrent like the former, which in winter is filled by a stream of several feet in depth.

BIR SUEZ

[p.464] Rains are much more frequent in this desert than in the valley of Egypt, and the same remark may be made in regard to all the mountains to the southward, where a regular, though not uninterrupted rainy season sets in, while in the valley of the Nile, as is well known, rain seldom falls even in winter. The soil and hills are here entirely calcareous.