The Land of Midian (Revisited) Volume I Part 14

Adieu, small spitfire of a Gulf! The change from the inside to the outside of the Birkat el-Akabah was magical. We at once glided into summer seas, a mosaic of turquoise and amethyst, fanned by the softest of breezes, the thermometer showing on deck 63 deg F. Perhaps the natural joy at our lucky escape from "making a hole in the water" caused the beauties of the weather and the glories of the scenery to appear doubly charming. Our captain might have saved fifteen miles by taking the short cut north of Tiran Island, under whose shelter we required a day for boiler-tinkering. His pilot, however, would not risk it, and we were compelled, nothing loth and little knowing what we did, to round for a second time the western and southern sh.o.r.es.

The "Hill of Birds," which some have identified with the cla.s.sical Island of Isis,[EN#139] shows a triune profile, what the Brazilians call a Moela or "gizzard." Of its three peaks the lowest is the eastern; and the central is the highest, reaching seven hundred, not a thousand, feet. Viewed from within the Gulf, it is a slope of sand which has been blown in sheets up the backing hills. The ground plan, as seen from a balloon, would represent a round head to the north, a thin neck, and a body rudely triangular, the whole measuring a maximum of five miles in length: the sandy northern circlet, connected by the narrowest of isthmuses, sweeping eastward, forms the noted port. The material is the normal Secondary formation, sulphates and carbonates of lime supporting modern corallines and conglomerates of sh.e.l.l.

Horizontal lines of harder stone are disposed in huge steps or roads that number three to six on the flank of the western peak: the manganese-coloured strata which appeared at Maghair Shu'ayb, and in the rent bowels of the Rughamat Makna, are conspicuous from the south. The whole has been upheaved by syenite, which, again, has been cut by d.y.k.es of plutonic stone, trap and porphyry.

At two p.m. we anch.o.r.ed in a roadstead to the south-east of the island, open to every wind except the norther. I had sent Lieutenant Amir and sundry quarrymen ash.o.r.e, to inspect what looked like a vein of sulphur. They delayed two hours, instead of a few minutes; the boiler was grumbling for rest, and, not wis.h.i.+ng to leave them adrift in an open boat, I imprudently consented to await them in a roadstead where the coast was dangerous, instead of proceeding, as had been intended, to the fine land-locked port, nature-hollowed in the eastern side of the island. The old captain pitifully represented to me that his crew could not row; and this I found to be generally the case: ten miles with the oar would be considered a terrible corvee by the Egyptian man-o'-war's man.

After blowing off steam, we at once went a-fis.h.i.+ng. The only remarkable result was the discovery that this corner of the Red Sea is a breeding-ground for sharks: we had not seen one in the Gulf of El-'Akabah, where last April they swarmed. Here, however, the school contained all sizes and every age, and they regarded us curiously with their cat's eyes, large, dark, and yellow-striped down the middle. A small specimen, that had just cut its teeth, was handed over to the cook, despite his loudly expressed disgust. The meat was somewhat mealy and shortfibred; but we p.r.o.nounced in committee the seadog to be thoroughly eatable when corrected by pepper, garlic, and Worcester sauce.

The corallines near the sh.o.r.e were finely developed: each bunch, like a tropical tree, formed a small zoological museum; and they supplied a variety of animalculae, including a tiny shrimp. The evening saw a well-defined halo encircling the moon at a considerable distance; and Mr. Duguid quoted the Scotch saw--

"A far-awa' bruch's a near-awa' blast."

The blast was nearer than we expected; and, during the rest of the journey, the "bruch" rarely if ever deceived us. Yet the night was not much disturbed by the furious northerly gusts, showing that the storm which we had escaped was raging in the still-vexed 'Akabah.

Next morning we landed to the south-west of Tiran's easternmost peak, with a view of prospecting and adding to our collections.

On the sh.o.r.e, about three hundred feet from the sea, is a bank of dead sh.e.l.ls which are not found on the northern or sandy end of the island: near the water most of them are tenanted by paguri ("hermits"). We caught a number of crabs and small fish, and we carried off a single rock-oyster: as yet we had not found out that the Ustrida--the vulgar form of the h.e.l.lenic and cla.s.sical "Istiridiya"--abounds in these seas. After thirty minutes' walk up the southern plane of the prism, composed of gypseous and coralline rocks, veins of white petrosilex resembling broken columels, streaks of magnetic black sand, and scatters of grit and harder stones, we reached the summit of the little ridge. It afforded a fine bird's-eye view of the splendid middle port; of the false harbour; of the real shoal to its south-east, and of the basin which seems to form Sinafir Island.

We now bent to the south-west. Here the surface is much cut and broken by sandy Wadys, dotted with a few straggling plants: to our right was a Goz or inclined arenaceous bank, where the south wind had sifted the sand from the gravel, disposing the former in the hollows, and the latter on the crest of the ripples.

Presently we reached a strange formation which, seen from the east, appears a huge vein, red and rusty, beginning close to the sea, and crossing the body of the island from south to north, while a black cone is so disposed that its southern front simulates a crater. A narrow gorge opens upon a semicircular hollow lined with ochraceous or ferruginous matter; in fact, part of the filon, which sends off fibrils in all directions. The confusion of formations was startling. The floor was here of white petrosilex, there of grey granite, variegated with squares and lozenges, drops and pineapples, red, green, neutral tinted, and disposed by oxides of iron and copper in natural designs that looked artificial. Scattered over the bed of the upper ravine beyond the hollow, were carbonates of lime, ruddy brown and chocolate-hued, here a pudding-stone, there porous like basalt: the calcareous sulphates were both amorphous and crystalline, the latter affected by contact with plutonic matter. The walls of the gash showed a medley of clay breccias, disposed in every imaginable way; and divided by horizontal veins of heat-altered quartz. A few paces further led to the head of the ravine, where a tumble of huge rocks, choking the bed, showed that the rain-torrents must at times be violent.

Meanwhile, Mr. Clarke and Lieutenant Amir had walked to the large central harbour, hoping there to hit upon sweet water and some stray Hutaym fishermen, who would show us what we wanted. They did not find even the vestige of a hut. The two exploring parties saw only three birds in the "Isle of Birds," and not one of the venomous snakes mentioned at "Tehran" by Wellsted (II. ix.), and described as "measuring about thirty inches, of a slender form, with black and white spots." We also utterly failed to discover the sulphur which was once abundant and the naphtha which, according to the same authority, was produced here in considerable quant.i.ties, and was used "by the Arab mariners to pay their boats."

The evening was exceptionally fine and calm; and we expected on the morrow (February 11th) a quiet return to El-Muwaylah. Yet a manner of presentiment induced me to summon the engineer and his native a.s.sistants, and to promise the latter a liberal "bakhs.h.i.+sh," if by hard work at the boiler all night, and by rigging up the s.h.i.+p's pump instead of a donkey-engine, they could steam off at dawn.

Unexpectedly, about four a.m., a violent sandy and misty wester began to blow; and all fancied that we had set sail to the south.

Quite the contrary! The engine was still under repair. The Mukhbir was being tossed and rolled by the insh.o.r.e set, and the sequel is quickest told by an extract from my "Penny":--

"Written in sight of Death. Wind roaring furiously for victims: waves worse. No chain can stand these sledge-hammer shocks. Chain parts,[EN#140] and best sheet-anchor with it. Bower and kedge anchors thrown out and drag. Fast stranding broadside on: sharp coralline reef to leeward, distant 150 yards. Sharks! Packed up necessaries. Sambuk has bolted, and quite right too! Engine starts some ten minutes before the b.u.mp. Engineer admirably cool; never left his post for a moment, even to look at the sea. Giorgi (cook) skinning a sheep: he has been wrecked four times, and don't care. Deck-pump acting poorly. Off in very nick of time, 9.15 a.m. General joy, damped by broadside turned to huge billows. Lashed down boxes of specimens on deck, and wore round safely. Made for Sinafir, followed by waves threatening to p.o.o.p us. Howling wind tears mist to shreds. Second danger worse than first. Run into green water: fangs of naked rock on both sides within biscuit-throw; stumps show when the waves yawn. Nice position for a band-box of old iron! With much difficulty slipped into blue water. Rounded south end of spit, and turned north into glorious Sinafir Bay. Safe anchorage in eight fathoms. Anchor down at 10:15 a.m., after one hour of cold sweat. Distance seven miles on chart, nine by course: Mukhbir never went so fast; blown like chaff before wind. Faces cleared up. All-round shaking of hands; ?El-Hamdu li'llahi,' followed by a drink. Some wept for joy."

The engine, or rather the engineer, had saved us: as the saying is, it was touch and go--the nearest thing I ever did see. Had the rotten old boiler struck work for five minutes when we were clearing out of Tiran, or steaming along Sinafir sh.o.r.e, nothing could have kept the s.h.i.+p afloat. Those who behaved best, a fireman, a boy who crept into the combustion-chamber to clear it, and helmsman who, having been at Liverpool, spoke a little English, were duly "bakhs.h.i.+sh'd." The same reward was given by mistake to the boilermaker, Mohammed Sa'id Haddad, who had malingered, instead of working, through the night. At Suez he had the impudence to ask me for a Shahadah ("testimony") to his good character. On the whole the conduct of the crew was worthy of all praise.

In a decently equipped English steamer we should have laughed at this storm, and whistled for more wind; but the condition of the Mukhbir quite changed the case. The masts might have rolled out, or she might have sprung a leak at any moment. And supposing that we had escaped the crash upon the reef, the huge waves, and the schools of sharks, our situation would have been anything but pleasant. The Island of Tiran, as has been shown, is a grisly sc.r.a.p of desert: it has no sweet water; and its three birds would not long have satisfied thirty hungry men. It is far from the mainland; the storm, which lasted through two days, was too violent for raft or boat to live, and at so early a season native craft are never seen on these seas. Briefly, a week might have elapsed before our friends at El-Muwaylah, who were startled by the wildness of the wind, could have learned our plight, or could have taken measures to relieve the castaways.

Sinafir Island, which we have to thank for giving us hospitality on two occasions, consists mainly of a bay. Viewed by the norma verticalis, it is shaped like an ugly duckling, with an oval (Wellsted says a circular) body of high ground disposed north-east to south-west; and with head and neck drooping westward so as to form a mighty pier or breakwater. The watery plain within is out of all proportion to the amount of terra firma. The body-profile shows straight-backed heaps of gypsum, some two hundred feet high, which become quoin-shaped about the middle of the isle: these hillocks are connected by low strips of sand growing the usual vegetation, especially the pink Statice pruinosa.

Presently our Sambuk, which had also lost chain and anchor before she could run out of the storm, appeared to the north-west of the bay; and a pilgrim-craft, bound for Suez, was our companion in good fortune. A party landed to examine Sinafir, which still shows signs of a junction with Tiran. In days when the Secondary formation was an unbroken street, the whole segment of a circle, extending from Sharm Yaharr to northern Sinai, must have been dry land; these reefs and islands are now the only remnants. The islet itself seems lately to have been two: the neck and head are one, and the body is another; an evident sea-cliff marks the junction, and what appears like a Wady below it, is the upraised sea-bed of coralline. To the north-west, and outside this strip, lies the little port defended by a network of reefs, in which our Sambuk had first taken refuge. The bay-sh.o.r.e bears traces of more than one wreck; and in the graveyard used by the native sailor, an open awning of flotsam and jetsam looks from afar like a tumble-down log-hut. The number of reefs and shoals shown by stripes of vivid green water promised excellent fis.h.i.+ng, and failed to keep its promise.

At length, after a third wasted day, we managed, despite a new hole in the old boiler, to steam out of hospitable Sinafir at 6:30 a.m. on the auspicious Wednesday, February 13. The appearance of the Mukhbir must have been originale enough: her canvas had been fished out of the hold, but in the place of a mainsail she had hoisted a topsail. We pa.s.sed as close as possible to the islet-line of Secondary formation, beginning with Shu'shu', the wedge bluff-faced to south: the Palinurus anch.o.r.ed here in a small bight on the north-east side, between two reefs, and narrowly escaped being wrecked by a northerly gale. At 10:45 a.m. we were alongside of Barahkan, a double feature, lumpy and cliffy, connected by a low sandy isthmus: the eastern flank gives good shelter to native crafts. Lastly came Yuba', the compound quoin, the loftiest of the group, upwards of 350 feet high, with its low-lying neighbour Walih. These islets have cla.s.sical names, as I have before mentioned,[EN#141] and appear once to have been inhabited: even at Yubu', the least likely of all, we heard from several authorities of a deep rock-cut well, covered with a stone which the Arabs could not raise.

And now we were able to cast an intelligent glance in review of the scenes made familiar by our first or northern march. The surpa.s.sing purity of the transparent atmosphere, especially at this season, causes the land to look as near at twenty as at ten miles; and thus both distances, showing the horizon with the utmost distinctness, appear equally close to the s.h.i.+p. Beginning towards El-?Akabah, the Jebel el-Zanah behind Maghair Shu'ayb, and its mighty neighbour, the Jebel el-Lauz, form the horizon of mountains which are not the least amongst the giants. Southwards appear the Jibal el-Tihamah, the n.o.ble forms of the seaboard, the parallel chains noting the eastern boundary of Madyan (Proper); while behind them the Jibal el-Shafah, reduced to blue heads and fragments of purple wall, are evidently disposed on a far more distant plane.

As regards the Jibal el-Tihamah, I have registered ad nauseam the names of the eight several blocks into which, between El-Zahd north and El-Sharr south, the curtain, rising from a sea-horizon, seems to divide itself. Every one consulted gave me a new or a different term; and apparently seamen and landsmen have their separate nomenclature. Thus, the pilots call the Fas, Harb and Dibbagh blocks, Jibal el-Musaybah, Tiryam, and Damah, after the Wadys and main valleys that drain them. The Bedawin, again, will name the whole block after the part most interesting to them: thus the tower-like formation characterizing Jebel Dibbagh was often called "Jebel el-Jimm," and even this, as will afterwards appear, was not quite exact.[EN#142]

We fired a gun off El-Muwaylah, where our camp, ranged in long line, looked clean and natty. At five p.m. we were once more at home in our old quarters, the Sharm Yaharr: the day's work had numbered fifty direct geographical miles between Sina'fir and El-Muwaylah, with five more to our dock.

Resume

Our journey through Madyan Proper (North Midian) had lasted fifty-four days (December 19, 1877, to February 13, 1878). During nearly two months the Expedition had covered only 105 to 107 miles of ground: this, however, does not include the various by-trips made by the members, which would more than double the total; nor the cruise of two hundred miles round the Gulf of ?Akabah, ending at El-Muwaylah. The total of camels employed varied from 106 to 61, and their hire, including "bakhs.h.i.+sh" and all minor charges, amounted, according to Mr. Clarke, to 316 14s. 3d.

This section of North Midian may be described as essentially a mining country, which, strange to say of a province so near Egypt, has been little worked by the Ancients. The first Khedivial Expedition brought back specimens of free gold found in basalt, apparently eruptive, and in corundophyllite, which the engineer called greenstone porphyry: silver appeared in the red sands, in the chloritic quartz, and in the t.i.taniferous iron of the Jebel el-Abayz; the value being 265 to 300 francs per ton, with traces in the scoriae. The second Expedition failed to find gold, but brought back argentiferous galena in copper-stained quartz, and possibly in the ochraceous red veins seaming the Secondary gypsum; with silicates and carbonates of copper: select specimens of the latter yielding the enormous proportion of forty per cent. In this northern region the great focus of metallic deposit appears to lie between north lat. 28 40' and 27 50'; that is, from the Jebel Tayyib Ism, north of Makna, to the southern basin which contains the Jebel el-Abyaz or "White Mountain." Its characteristics are the argentiferous and cupriferous ores, whereas in South Midian gold and silver were worked; and the parallelogram whose limits are a.s.signed above, might be converted into a Northern Grant. Concerning the immense abundance of gypsum, and the sulphur which is suspected to be diffused throughout the Secondary formation, ample details have been given in the preceding pages.

The princ.i.p.al ruins of ancient settlements, and the ateliers, all of them showing vestiges of metal-working, numbered eight: these are, beginning from the south, Tiryam, Sharma, ?Aynunah, the Jebel el-Abyaz, Maghair Shu'ayb, Makna', Tayyib Ism, and El-?Akabah. Maghair Shu'ayb, the Madiama of Ptolemy, is evidently the ancient capital of the district. It was the only place which supplied Midianitish (Nabathaean) coins. Moreover, it yielded graffiti from the catacombs; fragments of bronze which it will be interesting to compare by a.s.say with the metal of the European prehistoric age; and, finally, stone implements, worked as well as rude.

I will end with a few words concerning the future industry of North Midian.

For the success of these mines the greatest economy will be necessary. The poorest ore can be treated on the spot by crus.h.i.+ng and was.h.i.+ng, where no expenditure of fuel is required. The richer stone, that wants roasting and smelting, would be s.h.i.+pped, when worth the while, from North Midian to Suez: there coal is abundant, and the deserted premises of Dussaud-Bey, belonging to the Egyptian Government, would form an excellent site for a great usine centrale. Finally, the richest specimens--especially those containing, as many do, a medley of metals--would be treated with the least expenditure, and the greatest advantage, at Swansea or in other parts of England, where there are large establishments which make such work their specialty.

The following a.n.a.lyses of the specimens brought home by the first Khedivial Expedition, were made at the Citadel, Cairo, by the well-known chemist, Gastinel-Bey, in conjunction with M. George Marie, the engineer attached to the Expedition:--

a.n.a.lyses (Mm. Gastinel-bey and George Marie of Cairo) of Rocks Brought Home by the First Khedivial Expedition.

(All by Voie Seche.)

Gold (a.s.say on 100 grammes)--

1. In basalt (lava?).

2. In serpentine.

(None in white quartz.)

Silver--

1. In Filon Husayn, 1/1000 = 265 to 300 francs per ton (very good).

2. In red sands, 1/10,000 (= 20 francs per ton).

3. In scoriae, traces.

(None in white quartz or in the black sands.)

Copper--

1. In ?Aynunah quartz, 4 1/2 per 100.

2. In Filon Husayn, 2 1/2 to 3.40 per cent.

Filon Husayn = t.i.taniferous iron, 86.50 Silica, 10.10 Copper, 3.40.

3. In chloritic slate, 1.40 per cent.

(Chloritic slate of Makna' = Silica, 90.50 Carbonate of lime, 5.60 Oxide of iron, 2.30 Copper, 1.40.)

Sulphur (Jebel el-Kibri't of El-Muwaylah)-- 4 per cent. above. 9 ditto below.

Lead everywhere.

Calamine (zinc) very rich.

Part II.