A Pilgrimage to Nejd, the Cradle of the Arab Race. Vol. 1 [of 2]

Soon after this we came upon a real Roala camp, at least a camp of their slaves. The men were not negroes, though very dark and ill-looking. They explained that they belonged to Beneyeh ibn Shaalan, a cousin of Sotamm’s, and the head of the tribe now in the Nefûd. They gave us some fresh camel’s milk, the first we have tasted this year. We then began to descend into a long valley, which here intersects the Nefûd, and in which stand the wells of Shakik. Close to one of these we now are, camped on a bit of hard ground, under the first wave of sand beyond the wells. There are four wells known as Shakik; the one where we now are and another near it, and two others, three or four miles distant, up and down the valley. They are all, we hear, of the same depth, two hundred and twenty-five feet, and are apparently very ancient, for this one is lined with cut stones, and the edges are worn through with long usage of ropes in drawing water. There is, however, here, a little wooden pulley for the rope to pass over, a permanent arrangement very unusual in the desert, where everything removable is as a matter of course removed. A rope or a bucket would have no chance of remaining a week at any well. There was a dead camel near the well, on which a pair of vultures and a dog were at work, but nothing else living.

While we were looking over our ropes, and wondering whether we could make up enough, with all the odds and ends tied together, to reach to the water, a troop of camels came flourishing down upon us, cantering with their heads out, and their heels in the air, and followed by some men on delúls. These proved to be Ibn Shaalan’s people, and, to our great surprise and delight, one of them, a man named Rashid, recognized us as old acquaintances. We had met him the year before at the Roala camp at Saikal far away north. He had come, he said, with Abu Giddeli to our tent, and we remember the circumstance perfectly. It is pleasant to think of finding friends in such a place as this, and it shows how far the tribes wander during the year. Saikal is five hundred miles from Shakik, as the crow flies. Rashid at once offered to draw us all the water we wanted, for he had a long rope with him, and coffee was drunk and dates were eaten by all the party. Amongst them are two sons of Beneyeh’s, Mohammed and Assad, the elder a shy boorish youth, but the younger, nine years old, a nice little boy. To him we entrusted our complimentary message to his father. Beneyeh ibn Heneyfi ibn Shaalan is the Sheykh of a large section of the Roala, the very one we heard of last year as having stayed in Nejd. He is on ill terms with Sotamm on account of a chestnut mare Sotamm took from him by force, some years ago. The children had never seen a European in their lives, or been further north than the Wady Sirhán. We should like to pay Beneyeh a visit, but his tents are many miles out of our way, and we dare not trifle with the Nefûd.

A camel foal was born to-day by the well. I went to look at the little creature which was left behind with its mother, when the rest were driven home. I noticed that it had none of those bare places (callosities) which the older camels get on their knees and chest from kneeling down, and that its knees were bruised by its struggles to rise. We helped it up, and in three hours’ time it was able to trot away with its mother.

January 15. – This morning, as I looked out of the tent, I saw a halo round the moon, and thought there would be rain; but no such luck has come, though the sky was overcast and the day sultry. We made a great effort to get off early, and there was a great deal of “yalla, yalla” from Mohammed with very little result, for the men had been celebrating our passage of the Nefûd, which began seriously to-day, with a final feast on kid, and were dull and slow in consequence. Wilfrid made them a short speech last night, about the serious nature of the journey we were undertaking, the hundred miles of deep sand we have to cross, and the necessity of husbanding all our strength for the effort. With the best despatch we can hardly hope to reach Jobba under five days, and it may be six or seven. No heavily laden caravan such as ours is, has ever, if we may believe Radi, crossed the Nefûd at this point, and if the camels break down, there will be no means of getting help, nor is there any well after Shakik. Abdallah has accordingly been made sheykh of the water, with orders to dole it out in rations every night, and allow nobody to drink during the day. The Arabs are very childish about meat and drink, eating and drinking all day long if they get the chance, and keeping nothing for the morrow. But here improvidence can only bring disaster, and we think Abdallah as well as Mohammed are impressed with the situation. There is something sobering and solemn in these great tracts of sand, even for the wildest spirits, and we have begun our march to-day in very orderly fashion.

Radi, the little guide (his name signifies willing), has proved a great acquisition to our party, willing to give every sort of information when asked, and not impertinently talkative. He is a curious little old man, as dry and black and withered as the dead stumps of the yerta bushes one sees here, the driftwood of the Nefûd. He has his delúl with him, an ancient bag of bones which looks as if it would never last through the journey, and on which he sits perched hour after hour in silence, pointing now and then with his shrivelled hand towards the road we are to take. He is carrying with him on his camel one of the red sand-stone mortars of the Jôf for a relation of Ibn Rashid’s, and this seems to balance the water-skin hanging on the other side. From time to time, however, he speaks, and he has told us more than one interesting tale of those who have perished here in former days. In almost every hollow there are bones, generally those of camels, “Huseyn’s camels,” Radi calls them, and if anybody asks who Huseyn was, there is a laugh. At the bottom, however, of one fulj there are bones of another sort. Here a ghazú perished, delúls and men. They were Roala who had crossed the Nefûd to make a raid upon the Shammar, and had not been able to reach Shakik on their way back. The bones were white, but there were bits of skin still clinging to them, though Radi says it happened ten years ago. In another place, he shewed us two heaps of wood, thirty yards apart which mark the spot where a Shammar which had been lifting camels in the Wady Sirhán, was overtaken by their owner, a Sirhan sheykh, who had thrown his lance these thirty yards at the akid of the Shammar and transfixed him, mare and all. Again, he pointed out the remains of forty Suelmat camel riders, who had lost their way, and perished of thirst.

The sand, for several miles after leaving the wells, was covered with camel tracks, Roala camels no doubt, and here and there we came across the track of a horse, but the further one gets into Arabia, the rarer horses seem to be. After these first few miles, however, there appeared no trace of living creatures except lizards. Radi took us first in a nearly southerly direction, till he hit a line of landmarks, invisible to us but well known to him, running-south-south-east. This he calls the road, the road of Abu Zeyd, and told us the following legend in connection with it (there was no more trace of a road than there might have been on the sea). Many years ago, says Radi, there was a famine in Nejd, and the Beni Hellal were without bread. Then Abu Zeyd, sheykh of the tribe, spoke to his kinsmen Merrey and Yunis, and said, “Let us go out towards the west, and seek new pastures for our people,” and they travelled until they came to Tunis el-Gharb, which was at that time ruled by an Emir named Znati, and they looked at the land and liked it, and were about to return to their tribe with the news, when Znati put them all into prison. Now Znati had a daughter who was very beautiful, named Sferi, and when she saw Merrey in the dungeon, she fell in love with him, and proposed that he should marry her, and promised that his life and all their lives should be spared. But Merrey did not care for her and would not at first consent. Still she persisted in her love, and sought to do them good, and interceded with her father to spare their lives. Now Znati began to be perplexed with his prisoners, hearing from his daughter that they were of noble birth, and not knowing what to do with them. And when she told them this, they proposed that one of them should be released, and sent home to bring a ransom for his fellows, but in their hearts they were determined that Abu Zeyd should be the one sent, and that he should return, not with a ransom, but with all his people to Tunis, and so set them free. And Sferi carried the proposal to her father, and said, “Two of these men are of noble birth, but the third is a slave, but I know not which it is. Let then the slave go and get ransom for his masters.” And Znati said, “How shall we discover the slave amongst them, and distinguish him from the others?” and she said, “By this. Take them to a muddy place, where there is water, and bid them pass over it. And you shall see that whichever is the slave amongst them will gather up his clothes about him carefully, while the nobly born will let their clothes be soiled.” And her father agreed, and it happened so that on the following day the three men were brought out of their dungeon, and made to pass through a muddy stream. And Abu Zeyd, being warned by Sferi, put his abba on his head, and lifted up his shirt to the waist, while Merry and Yunis walked through without precaution. So Abu Zeyd was set free and returned to Nejd, and gathering all his people together there, he led them across the Nefûd by this very way, making the road we had just seen, to enable them to come in safety. He then marched on to Tunis, and laid siege to the town.

Abu Zeyd besieged Tunis for a year but could not enter, and he never would have taken it, but for Sferi who was plotting for his success outside. Sferi was a wise woman. She could read and write, and knew magic and could interpret prophecies. And there was a prophecy concerning Znati that he could be killed by no one in battle but by a certain Dib ibn Ghanim, a robber in the neighbouring desert. And Sferi sent word of this to Abu Zeyd, who took this robber into his service, and on the next occasion sent him against Znati when he came out to fight. And the Emir was slain.

Then Abu Zeyd became Emir of Tunis and Merrey married Sferi.

Such is Radi’s story, which it may be hoped is not exactly true as to Sferi’s betrayal of her father. As to the road legend, it is impossible to say that the road is there “to witness if he lies.” Road or no road we have been wandering about in zigzags all day long, sometimes toiling up steep slopes, at others making a long circuit to avoid a fulj, and sometimes meandering for no particular reason yet always on a perfectly untrodden surface of yielding sand. The ground is more broken than ever, the fuljes bigger and the travelling harder. But both mares and camels have marched bravely, and we have got over about twenty-one miles to-day. Our camp this evening, though in a fulj, is five hundred and sixty feet higher than the wells of Shakik.

January 16. – A thunderstorm in the night which has turned the sand crimson. Radi congratulates us upon this, as he says now we shall get to Jobba, inshallah! He seems to have been a little doubtful before. But the heavy rain has hardened the ground, and we have been able to push on at almost as good a rate as if we had been travelling on gravel. As we get deeper into the Nefûd, the fuljes are further apart and the cross ridges lower. The fuljes seem to run in pretty regular strings from east to west, or rather from east by south to west by north. It is interesting to observe the footmarks of wild animals on the sand, for they are now clearly marked as on fresh fallen snow. The most common are those of hares answering in size to our rabbits at home, and to-day the greyhounds have put up and coursed several of them, though quite in vain, for the ghada trees and bushes soon screen them from the dogs. We have had a gallop or two, and there is no danger of losing ourselves, for we only have to go back on our footsteps to find the caravan. Besides the hares there are several sorts of small birds, linnets, wrens, desert larks, wheatears, and occasionally crows. I also saw a pair of kestrels evidently quite at home. Reptiles are still much more numerous, the whole surface of the desert being marked with lizard tracks, while here and there was the trail of a snake. Our people killed two to-day of the sort called suliman, common in most parts of the desert, a long, slim, silvery snake, with a little head, and quite harmless. The warm sunshine after the rain had brought them out. We have been inquiring of Radi after the more dangerous species, and he describes very accurately the horned viper and the cobra. I was surprised to hear of the latter, but it is impossible to mistake his description of a snake which stands on its tail, and swells out its neck like wings. These, he says, are only seen in the summer. Gazelles there seem to be none in the Nefûd, but we crossed the quite fresh track of two “wild cows” (antelope). This animal, Radi assures us, never leaves the Nefûd and never drinks. Indeed there is no water here above ground anywhere nearer than Jebel Aja, and it must be able to do without. The slot was about the size of a red deer fully grown. We are very anxious to see the beast itself, which they assure us is a real cow, though that can hardly be. We have also kept a good look-out for ostriches but without result. In the way of insects, we have seen a few flies like houseflies, and some dragonflies and small butterflies. There is a much better sort of grass in the Nefûd and more of it than on the outskirts, which I suppose is from the absence of camels.

I find that Radi makes out his course almost entirely by landmarks. On every high sand-hill he gets down from his delúl, and pulls some ghada branches, which are very brittle, and adds them to piles of wood he has formerly made. These can be seen a good way off. We have learned, too, to make out a sort of road after all, of an intermittent kind, marked by the dung of camels, and occasionally on the side of a steep slope there is a distinct footway. Along this line our guide feels his way, here and there making a cast, as hounds do when they are off the scent. Neither he nor Mohammed, nor any of the Arabs with us, have the least notion of steering by the sun, and when Wilfrid asked Mohammed if he thought he could find his way back to Shakik, he answered, “How could I do so? Every one of these sand-hills is like the last.”

We have been entertained by Radi with more blood and bones stories, the most terrible of which is that of some Turkish soldiers,14 who many years ago were treacherously abandoned in the Nefûd. They had occupied Haïl in the days of the first Ibn Rashid, and had been left there as a garrison. But either the Sultan could not communicate with them or forgot them, and after a certain time they wished to go home. Many of them had died at Haïl, and the remainder of them, about five hundred, easily agreed to set out for Damascus under the escort of Obeyd, the Emir’s brother, who had resolved to destroy them. They left Haïl on horseback and followed their Shammar guides to this place, who to all questions as to where they should find wells, answered, a little further, a little further on. At last the Bedouins left them. They seem to have been brave fellows, for the last that was heard of them was a sort of song or chorus which they sang as they struggled on, “Nahnu askar ma nahnu atâsha nahnu askar ma benríd moyeh.” “We are not thirsty, we soldiers want no water.” But at noon that day they must have lost heart, and lain down under the bushes to get a sort of shade, and so they were afterwards found scattered about in the different fuljes. Some of their horses made their way back to Jobba, and became the property of any who could seize them. They were sold by these lucky people for a few sheep or goats each. It is a ghastly tale.

A pleasanter one is that of two young lovers who eloped from Jôf, and were pursued by their relations. Suspecting that they would be tracked, and to avoid scandal, they had agreed that instead of walking together, they would keep parallel lines about a hundred yards apart and so set out on their journey, and when they came to a certain fulj, which Radi pointed out to us, they were too tired and lay down to die each under his bush. Thus they were found and fortunately in time, and their discretion so pleased the relations on both sides, that consent was given to their marriage, and the nuptials celebrated with rejoicings.

At half-past ten we suddenly caught sight of the peaks of Aalem, two conical rocks which jut out of the sand, and make a conspicuous landmark for travellers on their way to Jobba. It was an immense relief to see them, for we had begun to distrust the sagacity of our guide on account of the tortuous line we followed, and now we knew that the worst was over, and that if need were, we could find our way on across the other half of the Nefûd, with some prospect at least of success. We left our camels to follow, and rode on towards the hills. It still took us several hours to reach them, but we were by three o’clock touching the stones with our hands to feel that they were real. It was as if we had been lost at sea and had found a desert island.

We had some time to wait while the caravan laboured slowly on to join us. I remained with the mares and kept a look-out while Wilfrid climbed to the top of the smaller rock. “What a place to be buried in,” he exclaimed. “Mount Nebo must have been like this.” But people who die in the Nefûd have seldom anyone to bury them. As he clambered round the pile of loose stones near the top of the tell, he found to his great delight a painted lady butterfly sunning itself in a sheltered spot. If, as is probable, there is no vegetation suited for the caterpillar of this butterfly nearer than Hebron, this little insect must have travelled at least four hundred miles. Here it seemed happy in the sun. This smaller rock, or rocky hill, was just a hundred feet from the level of the plain, and rose sheer out of it bare and naked as a rock does at sea. The barometer at the top of it shewed 3220 feet. The taller Aalem is perhaps three times its height.

Aalem, Radi says, is Sheykh of the Nefûd, and the little tell is his son. At some miles distance to the north-east there is a cluster of white sand-hills, Aalem’s “harim.” The rocks of Aalem are sandstone weathered black, not granite as we had hoped, and this no doubt is the material from which in the lapse of years the great red sand heaps have been formed. They are not of solid rock but resemble heaps of stones. On the top of the one Wilfrid ascended was a cairn with the remains of some old letters scratched on the stones, of the same kind as those to be seen on Sinai, or rather in the Wady Mokattib. The view was, by Wilfrid’s report, stupendous, but one impossible to draw or even attempt to draw. Here could be seen spread out as on a map the general features of the Nefûd, the uniformity of the ocean of sand streaked with the long lines of its fuljes, Aalem itself rising in their midst like a rock out of a sea streaked with foam.

We are now encamped about two miles beyond Aalem. I have filled a bottle with sand to make an hour-glass with at home.

January 17. – A white frost, some of which was packed up with the tents and carried with us all day.

It is curious that now we have passed Aalem the vegetation has changed. Up to that point the ghada reigned supreme, and I could not have believed it could so suddenly disappear, yet such is the case. Now not a bush of ghada is to be seen, and its place is taken by the yerta which before was rare. It seems impossible to account for this, as there is no material change of level, and absolutely no change in the character of the soil. The bushes by which we camped last night were quite the last southwards. We are sorry to lose them, as ghada is the finest firewood in the world. Charcoal made from it, which one finds here and there where there has been a camp fire, is finer than the finest charcoal used for drawing. The yerta is inferior. On the other hand there is more of the grass called nassí for the camels, and of the hamar, a whitish-blue prickly plant which the mares are very fond of, while the adr, a shrub with stiff green leaves and brownish yellow flowers, is still the commonest plant.

The sand has dried again since yesterday, and as the day grew warmer became very heavy for the camels. The labour of trudging through the yielding surface is beginning to tell on them, and to-day most of our men have walked, Mohammed giving the example. Every one was cheerful, in spite of the hard work, and all showed wonderful strength in running on and playing pranks in the sand. Wilfrid, who is in fair training, was quite unable to keep up with them, and I fared still worse as may be imagined, being as yet very lame; we both, however, felt bound to try and walk at intervals for the sake of our mares. Ibrahim el-tawîl (the tall as contrasted with Ibrahim el-kasír, or the short), who has hitherto been the butt of the party, being sent down on fools’ errands to fetch water from fuljes, and up to the tops of sand-hills, to see imaginary mountains, has proved himself to-day most valiant. He, although a Christian, is a match for any Moslem of the party, and gives as much as he takes in the rough games the Arabs indulge in to keep up their spirits. At one moment he got hold of the servants’ tent pole, a very heavy one, and played at quarter-staff with it among them to such effect, that I thought there would have been bones broken. Abdallah, too, when there is any particularly hard piece of climbing to do and the rest seem fagged, generally runs on and stands on his head till they come up. We encourage this mirth as it makes the work lighter.

Our water is now running rather short, for we have had to divide a skin among the mares each day, but this lightens the loads. Two of the camels are beginning to flag, Hanna’s delúl, which has hardly had fair play, as he and Ibrahim have been constantly changing places on its back, and making a camel kneel and get up repeatedly tires it more than any weight; also the beautiful camel we bought at Mezárib. This last, in spite of his good looks, seems to be weakly. His legs are a trifle long, and his neck a trifle short, two bad points for endurance, and then he is only a three year old and has not had the distemper, at least so Abdallah says. A camel can never be depended on till he has had it. The ugly camel, too, which they call Shenuan, seems distressed. He has certainly got the mange, and I wish we had insisted on this point when we suspected the camels at Damascus, but it is too late now. The rest are still in fine order, in spite of the long journey and the absence of fresh pasture, which at this time of year they require. Nothing green has yet appeared, except a diminutive plant like a nemophila, with a purple flower which is beginning to show its head above the sand. Fresh grass there is none, and last year’s crop stands white and withered still without sign of life.

We met a man to-day, a Roala, alone with twelve camels, yearlings and two year olds, which he had bought from the Shammar and was driving home. He had paid twenty-five to thirty-five mejidies apiece for them, but they were scraggy beasts. The Nejd camels are nearly all black, and very inferior in size and strength to those of the north. When we came upon the man we at first supposed he might be an enemy, for anybody here is likely to be that, and Awwad rushed valiantly at him with a gun, frightening him out of his wits and summoning him in a terrible voice to give an account of himself. He was perfectly harmless and unarmed, and had been three nights out already in the Nefûd by himself. He had a skin of water and a skin of dates, and was going to Shakik, a lonely walk.

At half-past three (level 3040 feet) we caught sight of the hills of Jobba, and from the same point could just see Aalem. It was a good occasion for correcting our reckoning, so we took the directions accurately with the compass, and made out our course to be exactly south by east.

To-day all our Mahometans have begun to say their prayers, for the first time during the journey. The solemnity of the Nefûd, or perhaps a doubt about reaching Jobba, might well make them serious; perhaps, however, they merely want to get into training for Nejd, where Wahhabism prevails and prayers are in fashion. Whatever be the cause, Mohammed on the top of a sand-hill was bowing and kneeling towards Mecca with great appearance of earnestness, and Awwad recited prayers in a still more impressive manner, raising his voice almost to a chant.