Part 24

“How much?”

“At least four times the customary wages and hire will be necessary.”

“But Sheikh, Allah, the Most High, preserve thee: these are demands which no one will be willing to grant. Praise the Prophet!”

“God, the Preserver of all, be glorified and His messengers blessed! Thou art in error, my friend: the merchant who has his camp over there has offered me double what I ask; only my friendship for thee has allowed me to make so small a demand.”

In vain seems all haggling, all further business. Fresh pipes are brought and are smoked; renewed courtesies are exchanged; the names of Allah and His Prophet are freely misused on both sides; most precise inquiries after health and comfort are made mutually; until at length the studied courtesy of the native begins to waver and the traveller from the North loses patience.

“Then know, Sheikh, that I am in possession of a letter authorizing a demand for means of convoy from the Khedive and likewise one from the Sheikh Soliman; here are both of them, what dost thou demand now?”

“But, sir, if thou holdest a safe-conduct from his high majesty, why dost thou not demand the head of thy slave? It is at thy service, on his orders. I take thy wishes on my eyes and on my head. Command and thy servant obeys. Thou knowest the government prices. Allah protect thee; in the morning I shall send thee men, beasts, and water-skins.”

If any one imagines that all the preparations for the desert journey were thus brought to a satisfactory conclusion, he is indeed totally ignorant of the manners and customs of the people. In the morning none of the promised drivers or beasts had put in their appearance; only by afternoon did they begin to come in; not even on the following morning, but at soonest about the time of afternoon prayer, could one think of starting. “Bukra inshallah--to-morrow, if God will”--is their motto, and it baffles all commands. Indeed, there is much to do, much to arrange, and much to be planned before the journey can be undertaken.

In course of time the tent is the centre of a gay and lively picture. The sunburnt children of the desert bustle about among the baggage. Their activity is unbusiness-like to a degree, but they seem to try to make up for this by incredible noisiness. The baggage, which had been arranged in a sort of barricade, is scattered about; individual pieces are lifted and tested as regards both weight and bulk; one package is compared with another, selected and then rejected, strapped together and then pulled apart again. Each driver tries to outwit his neighbour, each endeavouring to secure the lightest load for his own beast; each one rushes about in opposition to the rest, and all are shouting and roaring, screaming and scolding, swearing and cursing, entreating and execrating. In anticipation of what is coming the camels also add to the noise right lustily, and if, instead of roaring, and growling and grumbling, they should keep silence for a while, that only means: Our time has not yet come, but it is coming! Anyhow, with or without the camels’ accompaniment, the stranger’s ear is harassed, literally tortured, by all the medley of sounds which fall upon it at once. For hours together the bustle, the racket, the uproar continues; the men scold and quarrel over the loads until they have had enough or more than enough; and at last the prelude comes to an end.

After peace is concluded they begin to twist the bast fibres of the date-palm into cords and ropes. With these they sling the bales and boxes cleverly together; they make hooks and eyes so that the two bundles may be fastened quickly to the saddle and as quickly loosened; they mend the ready-made nets which they have brought to hold the smaller packages; and they test the large and small skin bags, patching them where need be, and finally smearing them with ill-smelling varnish of colocynth. Lastly, they examine the sun-dried flesh, fill several bast bags with Kaffir-millet or dhurra, others with wood-charcoal, and some perhaps with camels’ dung, rinse out the skin-bags and fill them with water fresh from the stream. As the tedious business is brought to a close one hears each utter a hearty “Thank God”--“El hamdu lillahi”.

To look after all these preparations is the duty of the Chabir or leader of the caravan. According to its importance is his rank, but in all cases he must be what his title signifies--one who knows the way and the existing conditions. Experience, honesty, cleverness, mettle, and bravery are the requirements of his difficult, and not rarely dangerous office. He knows the desert as a mariner the sea, he can read the stars, he is familiar with every oasis and every spring on the course of the journey, he is welcome to the tent of every Bedouin or nomad chief, he understands all sort of precautions against break-down or peril by the way, he can cure snake-bite and scorpion-sting, or at least alleviate the sufferings of the injured, he wields the weapons of the warrior and of the huntsman with equal skill, he has the word of the Prophet not only on his lips but in his heart, he utters the “Fatiha” at starting, and discharges the obligations of Mueddin and Iman at the appointed times; in a word, he is the head of the many-membered body which travels through the desert. In the solitudes where nothing seems to point the way which other caravans have taken, where the wind obliterates every track almost as soon as the last camel has passed, he finds signs unseen by others which guide him aright. When the dry, ill-boding dust of the desert hides the everlasting heavens, his genius is his guiding star; he tests the drifting sand, measures its waves, and estimates their direction; he reads the points of the compass on a stem of grass. On him every caravan, every traveller depends without mistrust. Ancient and in part most remarkable laws, inscribed in no charter, yet known to all, make him responsible for the welfare of the journey and for the life of each traveller, except in so far as any inevitable dispensation of the Ordainer of destiny may decree otherwise.

At the sacred hour, the time of afternoon prayer, the leader announces to travellers and drivers that all is ready for the start. The brown men rush around, catching, leading, saddling, and loading the camels. Resisting to the utmost the beasts are forced to obey; they seem to have a vivid foreboding of a stretch of toilsome days. Their time has now come. Roaring, screaming, snarling, and grumbling, in obedience to the inimitable guttural commands of their masters and sundry gentle hints from the whips, they sink down on their bended knees; bellowing they adjust themselves to receive the unwelcome burden on their humped backs, and still bellowing they rise with their load. Not a few kick and bite in their efforts to resist being loaded, and it indeed requires all the inexhaustible patience of the drivers to subdue the obstinate creatures. But patience and tact master even camels. As soon as the rebellious beast has consented to kneel, one of the drivers stands up on its bent fore-legs, and with a quick grip seizes the upper part of the muzzle so that by pressing the nose he can stop the camel’s breathing; meanwhile two others from opposite sides lift the equally poised burden on to the saddle; a fourth runs fastening pegs through the loops of the ropes; and the fractious camel is loaded before he has quite regained his senses. As soon as all are loaded, the march begins.

It is now the turn of the well-saddled trotting camels. Each traveller fastens his weapons and indispensable personal luggage to the high, trough-shaped saddle fixed over the hump. He then proceeds to mount his steed. For the novice this is usually a critical business. With a bold spring he must leap into the saddle, and, as soon as he touches this, the camel bolts up. He rises backwards, first on his fore-knees, immediately afterwards on his long hind-legs, and finally on his fore-legs. To the second jerk the novice in camel-riding usually falls a victim, he is hurled out of the saddle and either kisses mother earth or falls on the beast’s neck and holds on tightly. The camel is much too ill-humoured to treat this as a joke or an accident. An angry cry bursts from its ugly lips; it flies into a passion with the poor traveller, hanging in a most unenviable position on its neck, and proceeds to shake itself free both of him and his baggage. It takes some time before the traveller from the North learns to bend his body forwards and backwards at the right moment so as to keep his seat as the camel springs up.

For our own part, we swing ourselves into the saddle with the agility of natives. Urging on our steed with a few strokes of the whip, and keeping it in due check by means of a fine nose-rein, we hasten after the leader. Our camel, a lank, loosely-built, long-legged creature, falls at once into that uniform, persistent, long-stepping, and most effective trot, to which it is trained from earliest youth, and which raises it high above all beasts of burden, and closely follows the leaders. The small head is stretched far in front; the long legs swing quickly backwards and forwards; behind them sand and small stones rise into the air. The burnooses of the riders flutter in the wind; weapons and utensils clatter together; with loud calls we spur on the beasts; the joy of travel seems to give our spirits wings. Soon we overtake the caravan of baggage-camels which had preceded us; soon every trace of human settlement disappears; and on all sides there stretches in apparent infinitude--the desert.

Sharply defined all around, this immense and unique region covers the greater part of North Africa, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, from the Mediterranean to the Soudan, including whole countries in its range, embracing tracts of fertile land; presenting a thousand varieties, and yet always and everywhere the same in its essential features. In area, this wonderful region is nine or ten times larger than the whole of the German Empire, and three or four times larger than the Mediterranean. No mortal has thoroughly explored or even traversed it; but every son of earth who has set foot on it and crossed some part of it, is in his inmost heart impressed with its size and grandeur, its charm and its horror. Even on the most matter-of-fact Northerner who sojourns in the desert a lasting, ineffaceable impression is left by the glowing splendour of the sunlight and the parching heat of its days, by the heavenly peacefulness and the magical phantoms of its nights, by the witchery of the radiant atmosphere, by the dreadfulness of its mountain-moving storms; and many a one may have experienced, what the children of the desert so acutely feel--a longing to return, to breathe its air for a day, an hour, to see its pictures again with the bodily eye, to experience again that “unutterable harmony” whose echoes the desert awakens in the poetic soul. In short, there is a home-sickness for the desert.

It is literally and truly “El Bahhr bela maa”--the sea without water--the sea’s antithesis. To the sea the desert is not subject as are other parts of the earth; the might of the vitalizing and sustaining element is here annulled. “Water silently embraces all things”--the desert alone excepted. Over the whole earth the winds bear the clouds, the sea’s messengers, but these fade away before the glow of the desert. It is rarely that one sees there even a thin, hardly perceptible vapour; rarely can one detect on a leaf in the morning the damp breath of the night. The flush of dawn and the red glow of sunset are indeed seen, but only, as it were, in a breath which is scarce formed when it passes away. Wherever water gains the mastery, the desert changes into fertile land, which may, indeed, be poor enough, but the limits between them are always sharply defined. Where the last wave of the sacred Nile, raised above its level by man’s ingenuity, loses itself in the sand, the contrast is seen; the traveller, whose way lies from the river to the hills adjacent, may stand with one foot on a field of sprouting grain, and with the other touch the desert. It is not the sand itself which hinders the growth of plants, but solely the scorching heat which radiates through it. For, wherever it is irrigated or periodically watered, there, amid the otherwise plantless desert, a green carpet of vegetation is spread, and even shrubs and trees may grow.

Barren, pitifully barren is the desert, but it is not dead--not, at least, to those who have eyes to see its life. Whoever looks with a dull eye sees nothing but sandy plains and rocky cones, bare low grounds and naked hills, may even overlook the sparse reed-like grasses and shrubby trees of the deeper hollows, and the few animals which occur here and there. But he who really wishes to see can discover infinitely more. To the dull-eyed the desert is a land of horrors; they allow themselves to be so depressed by the glowing heat of the day that the blissfulness of the night brings them no comfort or strength; they ride into the desert trembling, and leave it shuddering; their sensations are all for the terrible, their feelings for the annoyances attendant on the journey; for the infinite sublimity of the desert such hearts are too small. But those who have really learned to know the desert judge otherwise.

Barren the desert is, we confess, but it is not dead. Thus, although the general aspect is uniform, the nature of the surface varies greatly. For wide stretches the desert is like a rocky sea, with strangely-shaped cones, abrupt precipitous walls, deeply-riven gorges, sharp-angled ridges, and wondrous towering domes. Over these the ceaselessly-blowing wind drifts the sand, now filling up hollows, now emptying them again, but always grinding, polishing, hollowing out, sharpening, and pointing. Black masses of sandstone, granite, or syenite, more rarely of limestone or slate, and here and there of volcanic rock glow in the sun, and rise in expressively-outlined ranges. On one side the wind robs these of every covering, driving the fine sand uninterruptedly over their summits, completely enveloping them in a veil in times of storm, and leaving no particle of sand at rest until it has been blown across the ridge. On the lee side, protected from the wind, lie golden yellow beds of the finest rolled sand, which form terraces one above another, each about a yard in height. But they also are in ceaseless movement, continually displacing one another from above downwards, and being renewed from the other side of the range. Strikingly contrasted with the black walls of the exposed side, these terraces of sand are visible from afar, and in certain lights they sparkle like broad golden ribbons on the hills. We may venture to call such ranges the regalia of the desert. No one unacquainted with the glowing South can picture the marvellous wealth of colour, the splendour and glamour, and the infinite charm which the overflowing sunlight can create on the dreariest and wildest mountains of the desert. Their sides are never clothed with the welcome green of woodland, at most the highest peaks bear a scant covering of bushes, to which the precipitation of vapour at this height allows a bare subsistence and a stunted growth. One misses the whispering of the beeches, and the rustling of the firs and pines; there is none of the familiar murmuring, or joyous chatter, or echoing roar of running water, which lays silver ribbons on our mountains at home, fringing them here with verdure, while in another place the sun shining upon rushing waterfall and whirlpool enhaloes them with rainbow colours; there is no mantle of ice and snow which the sun can transfigure into purple at dawn and sunset, or into glowing brightness at noon; and there is no fresh green from any mead. In short, all the witchery and charm of Northern mountain scenery is absent; and yet the desert mountains are not deficient in wealth of colour, and certainly not in majesty. Every individual layer and its own peculiar colour comes into prominence and has its effect. And yet, brilliant as may be the brightly-coloured and sometimes sharply-contrasted strata, it is on the continuously sand-polished, grandly-sculptured cones, peaks, gullies, and gorges that the light of heaven produces the finest play of colour. The alternations of light and shade are so frequent, the flushing and fading of colours so continuous, that a very intoxication of delight besets the soul. Nor do the first and last rays of the sun fail to clothe the desert mountains in purple; and distance sheds over them its blue ethereal haze. They, too, live, for the light gives them life.

In other regions the desert is for wide stretches either flat or gently undulating. For miles it is covered with fine-grained, golden-yellow sand, into which man and beast sink for several centimetres. Here one often sees not a single stem of grass nor living creature of any kind. The uniformly blue sky roofs in this golden surface, and contributes not a little to suggest the sea. In such places the track of the “ship of the desert” is lost as it is made; they are pathless as the sea; for them as for the ocean was the compass discovered. Less monotonous, but not more pleasant, are those regions on which loose, earthy, or dusty sand forms a soil for poisonous colocynth-gourds and the wholesome senna. Long low hills alternate with shallow and narrow hollows, and a carpet of the above-named plants, which from a distance seems green and fresh, covers both alike. Such places are avoided by both man and beast, for the camel and his driver often sink a foot deep into the loose surface-soil. Other tracts are covered with coarse gravel or flints, and others with hollow sand-filled balls, rich in iron, which look almost as if they had been made by human hands, and whose origin has not yet been very satisfactorily explained. On such stretches, where the camel-paths are almost like definite highways, thousands of quartz crystals are sometimes exposed, either singly or in groups, like clusters of diamonds set by an artist hand. With these the sun plays magically, and such stretches gleam and sparkle till the dazzled eye is forced to turn away from them. In the deepest hollows, finally, the dust forms a soil, and there one is sure to find the reed-like, but very hard, dry, sharp, dark-green alfa, umbrella-shaped mimosas, and perhaps even tom-palms, pleasant assurances of life.

But of animal life also there is distinct evidence. To think of the desert as a dead solitude is as erroneous as to call it the home of lions. It is too poor to support lions, but it is rich enough for thousands of other animals. And all these are in a high degree remarkable, for in every respect they prove themselves the true children of the desert.

It is not merely that their colouring is always most precisely congruent with the dominant colour of the ground, that is generally tawny, but the desert animals are marked by their light and delicate build, by their strikingly large and unusually acute eyes and ears, and by a behaviour which is as unassuming as it is self-possessed. It is the lot of all creatures born in the desert to be restless wanderers, for sufficient food cannot be found all the year round at one place, and the children of the desert are endowed with incomparable agility, indefatigable endurance, untiring persistence; their senses are sharpened so that the pittance which is offered is never overlooked, and their clothing is adapted to conceal them alike in flight or in attack. If their life is perhaps somewhat hard, it is certainly not joyless.

The fact that almost all the desert animals agree in colouring with their surroundings explains why the traveller, who is not an experienced observer, often sees, at first at least, but little of the animal life. Moreover, the desert seems far poorer than it is, since it is not till dusk that most of its tenants leave their places of rest and concealment and begin to be lively. Some, however, force themselves on the attention of the least observant. Even though the traveller may fail to notice the various species of desert-lark which cross his path everywhere, and are noteworthy for their likeness to the ground and for their extraordinarily developed powers of flight, he cannot possibly overlook the sand-grouse; and though he may ride unobserving over the burrows of the jerboas, he is sure to observe a gazelle feeding not far from his path.

This antelope may be regarded as typically a desert animal. Although it is proportionate in all its parts, the head and sense-organs seem almost too large, and the limbs too delicate, in fact almost fragile. But this head carries a brain of unusual cleverness for a ruminant, and those limbs are as if made of steel, exceedingly strong and elastic, admirably suited for agility and untiring endurance. One must not judge the gazelle of the desert from its appearance in captivity, cooped up in a narrow space. What activity, adroitness, suppleness, grace, and spirit, it displays in its native haunts! How well it deserves to have been chosen alike by the Oriental and by the native of the desert as the image of feminine beauty. Trusting to its tawny coat, as well as to its incomparable agility and speed, it gazes with clear, untroubled eyes at the camels and their riders. Without seeming to be disturbed by the approaching caravan, it continues to browse. From the blossoming mimosa it takes a bud or a juicy shoot; between the sharp alfa leaves it finds a delicate young stem. Nearer and nearer comes the caravan. The creature raises its head, listens, sniffs the air, gazes round again, moves a few steps, and browses as before. But suddenly the elastic hoofs strike the ground, and the gazelle is off, quickly, lightly, and nimbly, as if its almost unexcelled speed were but play. Over the sandy plain it skims, quick as thought, leaping over the larger stones and tamarisk bushes as if it had wings. It seems almost to have left the earth, so surprisingly beautiful is its flight; it seems as if a poem of the desert were embodied in it, so fascinating is its beauty and swiftness. A few minutes of persistent flight carry it out of reach of any danger with which the travellers can threaten it, for the best trotter would pursue in vain, and not even a greyhound could overtake it. Soon it slackens its speed, and in a few moments it is browsing as before. And if the bloodthirsty traveller begins the chase in earnest, the sly creature has a tantalizing way of allowing him to get near it again; a second and a third time it cleverly gets out of range of his murderous weapons, until at length, becoming scared, it leaves all danger far behind. The further it gallops the more slender seem its body and limbs; its outline begins to swim before the eyes; at length it disappears on the sandy flat, merging into it and seeming to melt away like a breath of vapour. Its home has received and concealed the fugitive, removed it, as if magically, from vision, and left not a trace behind. But if the vision is lost to the eye it remains in the heart, and even the Western can now understand why the gazelle has become such a richly-flowering bud in the poesy of the East, why the Oriental gives it so high a rank among beasts, why he compares the eyes which kindle fires in his heart to those of the gazelle, why he likens the neck around which he throws his arms in love’s secret hour to that of the swiftest of the desert’s children, why the nomad brings a tame gazelle to the tent of his gladly-expectant spouse, that she may gaze into its tender eyes and reflect their beauty on the hoped-for pledge of their wedlock, and why even the sacred poet finds in the fair creature a visible emblem of his longing after the Most High. For even he, removed from the world, must have felt a breath of the passion which has purified the words and made smooth the verses and rhymes of the fiery songs in praise of the gazelle.

Less attractive, but by no means less interesting, are some other desert animals. Among the sparsely sprouting alfa there is a numerous flock of birds about the size of pigeons. Tripping hither and thither, scratching and scraping with their bills, they seek for food. Without anxiety they allow the rider to approach within a distance of a hundred paces. A good field-glass enables one to see not only every movement, but also the more prominent colours of their plumage. With depressed head, retracted neck, and body held almost horizontally, they run about in search of seeds, the few grains which the desert grasses bear, freshly unfolded panicles, and insects. Some stretch out their necks from time to time and peer circumspectly around, others, quite careless, paddle in the sand, preening their feathers, or lie at ease, half sideways, in the sun. All this one can distinctly see, and one can count that there are over fifty, perhaps nearly a hundred. What sportsman would their presence not excite? Sure of his booty, the inexperienced traveller shuts up his field-glass, gets hold of his gun, and slowly approaches the gay company. But the birds disappear before his eyes. None has run or flown, yet none is to be seen. It seems as if the earth had swallowed them. The fact is that, trusting to the likeness between their plumage and the ground, they have simply squatted. In a moment they have become stones and little heaps of sand. Ignorant of this, the sportsman rides in upon them, and is startled when they rise with simultaneous suddenness, and loudly calling and scolding, take wing and fly noisily away. But if he should succeed in bringing one down, he will not fail to be struck by their colouring and marking, which is as remarkable as their behaviour. The sand-coloured upper surface, shading sometimes into gray, sometimes towards bright yellow, is broken and adorned by broad bands, narrower bars, delicate lines, by dots, spots, points, streaks, and blurs, so that one might fancy at first sight that birds so marked must be conspicuous from a distance. But all this colour-medley is simply the most precise copy of the ground; every dark and light spot, every little stone, every grain of sand seems to have its counterpart on the plumage. It is no wonder then that the earth can, as it were, make the bird part of itself, and secure its safety, which is further assured by the creature’s strong wings, which are capable of incomparably swift flight. And so it is that the poetic feeling of the Arabs has idealized these sand-grouse in luxuriant fancy and flowery words, for their beauty fascinates the eye, and their marvellous swiftness awakens longing in the heart of mortals who are bound to the earth.

All other desert animals display characters like the two which we have described. Thus there is a lynx, the caracal, leaner and lanker, with longer ears and larger eyes than the rest of his race, moreover not striped nor spotted, but sand-coloured all except his black ear-tips, eye-stripes, and lip-spots. His hue varies slightly, being lighter or darker, and with more or less red, according to the locality in which he lives. There is also a desert fox, the fenec, the dwarf of the dog family, with dun-yellow fur, and extraordinarily large ears. The desert also harbours a small rodent, the so-called jumping-mouse, the jerboa: he suggests a miniature kangaroo, and has exceedingly long hind-legs, diminutive fore-legs, and a tail longer than the body with hairs in two rows. He is more harmless and good-natured, but also swifter and more agile than any other rodent.

The birds, the reptiles, and even the insects show the same stamp, though form and colouring may vary greatly. When any other colour besides sandy-yellow becomes prominent, if hair, feather, or scale be marked with black or white, ashy-gray or brown, red or blue, such decorations occur only in places where they are not noticeable when looked at from above or from the side. But where a mountain rises in the midst of the desert, it shows its varied character also in the animal life. On the gray rocks of the mountains in Arabia the steinbok clambers, the hyrax has its home, the bearded vultures nest, and not a few other birds are to be found on the peaks and cliffs, in the chasms and valleys. But from the dark rocks of more low-lying deserts the only sound one hears is the loud but tuneful song of the deep-black wheatear.

Thus the desert exhibits harmony in all its parts and in every one of its creatures, and this fact goes far to strengthen the impression made on every thoughtful, sensitive, and healthy mind--an impression received on the first day in the desert, and confirmed on every succeeding one.

If one would really know the desert and become in any measure at home there, one must have a vigorous constitution, a receptive mind, and some poetic feeling. Whoever shrinks from enduring the discomforts of the journey, whoever fears either sun or sand, should avoid the desert altogether. Even if the sky be clear, and the atmosphere pure and bright, even if a cooling breeze come from the north, the day in the desert is hard to bear. Almost suddenly, with scarce any dawn, the sun begins to exert his masterful power. It is only near the sea or large rivers that the dawn is heralded by a purple flush on the eastern horizon; amid the vast sand-plains the sun appears with the first reddening in the east. It rises over the flats like a ball of fire, which seems as if it would burst forth on all sides. The coolness of the morning is at once past. Directly after sunrise the glowing beams beat down as if it were already noon. And though the north wind, which may blow for months at a time and is often refreshing, may prevent the unequally expanded layers of air from shaping themselves into a mirage, yet it does not bring sufficient cooling to annul the peculiar heaving and quivering of the atmosphere which is seen over the sand. Heaven and earth seem to float in a flood of light, and an indescribable heat streams from the sun, and is reflected again from the sand. With each hour the light and heat increase, and from neither is there any escape.