Volume II Part 2 (1/2)
Here the best of news was in store for us. Lieutenant Yusuf, who had this morning rejoined the Expedition, brought our mails from the Sambuk, which I had ordered by letter at El-?Akabah; and reported that his Highness's frigate Sinnar, an old friend, would relieve the lively Mukhbir in taking us to our last journey southwards. Rations for men and mules, and supplies for ourselves, all were coming. We felt truly grateful to the Viceroy and the Prince Minister for the gracious interest they had taken in the Expedition; and we looked forward with excitement to the proper finish of our labours. Without the third march, the exploration of Midian would have been Abtar, as the Arabs say, ”tail-less;” that is, lame and impotent in point of conclusion.
But I would not be beaten by the enemy upon the subject of the lapis Pharanitis mine. During the course of the day, a Jerafin Bedawi, Selim ibn Musallim, brought in scoriae of copper and iron; and on the morrow I sent him as guide to Lieutenant Yusuf, with an escort of two soldiers and eight quarrymen on seven camels. After three days' absence (March 8--10) the officer rejoined us and reported as follows:--
Leaving the Mahattat el-Ghal, he rode up its watercourse, and then turned southwards into the long Wady Umm Jirmah. After seven miles and a half (= direct five and three-quarters), he came upon the Jebel el-Fayruz. It is a rounded eminence of no great height, showing many signs of work, especially three or four cuttings some twenty metres deep. A hillock to the north-west supplied the scoriae before mentioned. Lieutenant Yusuf blasted the chocolate-coloured quartzose rock in four places, filled as many sacks, and struck the pilgrim-road in the Wady el-Mu'arrash, leaving its red block, the Hamra el-Mu'arrash, to the left. His specimens were very satisfactory; except to the learned geologists of the Citadel, Cairo, who p.r.o.nounced them to be carbonate of copper! Dr. L. Karl Moser, of Trieste, examined them and found crystals of turquoise, or rather ”johnite,” as Dana has it, embedded in or spread upon the quartz. One specimen, moreover, contained silver. So much for the Ziba or southern turquoise-diggings.
Our journey ended on March 8th with a dull ride along the Hajj-road northwards. Pa.s.sing the creek Abu Sharir, which, like many upon this coast, is rendered futile by a wall of coral reef, we threaded a long flat, and after two hours (= seven miles) we entered a valley where the Secondary formation again showed its debris. Here is the Mahattat el-Husan (”the Stallion's Leap”), a large boulder lying to the left of the track, and pitted with holes which a little imagination may convert into hoof-prints.
The name of the n.o.ble animal was El-Mashhur; that of its owner is, characteristically enough, forgotten by the Arabs: it lived in the Days of Ignorance; others add, more vaguely still, when the Beni ?Ukbah, the lords of the land, were warring with the Baliyy. The gorge was then a mere cutting, blocked up by this rock. El-Mashhur ”negotiated” it, alighting upon the surface like a Galway hunter taking a stone wall; and carried to Wady Tiryam its rider, whose throat was incontinently cut by the foeman in pursuit. The legend is known to all, and the Bedawin still sc.r.a.pe away the sands which threaten to bury the boulder: it has its value, showing that in regions where the horse is now unknown, where, in fact, nothing but a donkey can live, n.o.ble blood was once bred. The same remark is made by Professor Palmer (”The Desert of the Exodus,” p. 42) concerning the Mangaz Hisan Abu Zena (”Leap of the Stallion of the Father of Adultery”), two heaps of stone near the Sinaitic Wady Gharandal. There, however, the animal is cursed, while here it is blessed: perhaps, also, the Midianite tradition may descend from a source which, still older, named the <greek>. Is this too far-fetched? And yet, peradventure, it may be true.
We then fell into the Wady Jibbah; pa.s.sed the Jebel el-Kibrit, examined M. Philipin's work, and, led over a very vile and very long ”short cut,” found ourselves once more on board the Mukhbir.
Note on the Supplies Procurable at Ziba.
The chief stores are:--
Rice (good Yemani), per Kis, or bag of five and a half Kaylah (each twenty-one Ratl = eighteen pounds), four to six dollars.
Durrah (Sorghum), per Ardebb (each = twelve Kaylah), seven and a half to eight dollars.
Dukhn (millet), not common, per Ardebb, eight dollars.
Wheat, always procurable, per Ardebb, ten to twelve dollars.
Barley, always procurable, per Ardebb, five to six dollars.
?Adas (lentils, Revalenta Arabica), per Ardebb, ten to twelve
Samn (liquified b.u.t.ter), per Ratl, seven and a half to eight dollars.
Coffee (green), per pound, eighteen-pence.
?Ajwah (pressed dates), 100 to 110 piastres per Kantar (= 100 Ratl).
Eggs, thirty-five to the s.h.i.+lling.
It is generally possible to buy small quant.i.ties of Hummus (lupins or chick-peas), Kharru'b (carob-pods), ”hot” and coa.r.s.e tobacco for the Arabs, and cigarette-paper, matches, etc.
Chapter XIII.
A Week Around and upon the Sharr Mountain?Resume of the March Through Eastern or Central Midian.
For months the Jebel Sharr, the grand block which backs El-Muwaylah, had haunted us, starting up unexpectedly in all directions, with its towering heads, that s.h.i.+fted shape and colour from every angle, and with each successive change of weather. We could hardly leave unexplored the cla.s.sical ”Hippos Mons,” the Moslem's El-Isharah (”the Landmark”), and the Bullock's Horns of the prosaic British tar.[EN#16] The few vacant days before the arrival of the Sinnar offered an excellent opportunity for studying the Alpine ranges of maritime Midian.
Their stony heights, they said, contain wells and water in abundance, with palms, remains of furnaces, and other attractions. Every gun was brought into requisition, by tales of leopard and ibex, the latter attaining the size of bullocks (!) and occasionally finding their way to the fort:--it was curious to hear our friends, who, as usual, were great upon ”le shport,”
gravely debating whether it would be safe to fire upon le leopard. I was anxious to collect specimens of botany and natural history from an alt.i.tude hitherto unreached by any traveller in Western Arabia; and, lastly, there was geography as well as mineralogy to be done.
The Hydrographic Chart gives the Mountain a maximum of nine thousand[EN#17] feet, evidently a clerical error often repeated--really those Admiralty gentleman are too incurious: Wellsted, who surveyed it, remarks (II. X.), ”The height of the most elevated peak was found to be 6500 feet, and it obtained from us the appellation of ?Mowilabh High Peak”'--when there are native names for every head. We had been convinced that the lesser is the true measure, by our view from the Hisma plateau, 3800 feet above sea-level. Again, the form, the size, and the inclination of the n.o.ble ma.s.sif are wrongly laid down by the hydrographers. It is a compact block, everywhere rising abruptly from low and sandy watercourses, and completely detached from its neighbours by broad Wadys--the Surr to the north and east, while southwards run the Kuwayd and the Zahakan. The huge long-oval prism measures nineteen and a half by five miles (= ninety-seven and a half square miles of area); and its lay is 320 (mag.), thus deflected 40 westward of the magnetic north. The general appearance, seen in profile from the west, is a Pentedactylon, a central apex, with two others on each side, tossed, as it were, to the north and south, and turning, like chiens de faence, their backs upon one another.
Moreover, the Chart a.s.signs to its ”Mount Mowilah” only two great culminations--”Sharp Peak, 6330 feet,” to the north; and south of it, ”High Peak, 9000.” The surveyors doubtless found difficulty in obtaining the Bedawi names for the several features, which are unknown to the citizens of the coast; but they might easily have consulted the only authorities, the Jerafin-Huwaytat, who graze their flocks and herds on and around the mountain. As usual in Arabia, the four several main ”horns” are called after the Fiumaras that drain them. The northernmost is the Abu Gusayb (Kusayb) or Ras el-Gusayb (the ”Little Reed”), a unity composed of a single block and of three k.n.o.bs in a knot; the tallest of the latter, especially when viewed from the south, resembles an erect and reflexed thumb--hence our ”Sharp Peak.” Follows Umm el-Furut (the ”Mother of Plenty”), a mural crest, a quoin-shaped wall, cliffing to the south: the face, perpendicular where it looks seawards, bears a succession of scars, upright gashes, the work of wind and weather; and the body which supports it is a slope disposed at the natural angle. An innominatus, in the shape of a similar quoin, is separated by a deep Col, apparently a torrent-bed, from a huge Beco de Papagaio--the ”Parrot's Bill” so common in the Brazil. This is the Abu Shen.a.z.ir or Shaykhanib (the ”Father of Columns”); and, as if two names did not suffice, it has a third, Ras el-Huwayz (”of the Little Cistern”). It is our ”High Peak,” the most remarkable feature of the sea-facade, even when it conceals the pair of towering pillars that show conspicuously to the north and south. From the beak-shaped apex the range begins to decline and fall; there is little to notice in the fourth horn, whose unimportant items, the Ras Lahyanah, the Jebel Mai'h, and the Umm Gisr (Jisr), end the wall. Each has its huge white Wady, striping the country in alternation with dark-brown divides, and trending coastwards in the usual network.