The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 by Richard Burton

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A whole day was spent in inspecting the soldiers and mules; in
despatching a dromedary-post to Suez with news of our
unexpectedly safe arrival, and in conciliating the claims of
rival Bedawin. His Highness the Viceroy had honoured with an
order to serve us Hasan ibn Salim, Shaykh of the Beni 'Ukbah, a
small tribe which will be noticed in a future page. Last spring
these men had carried part of our caravan to 'Aynunah; and they
having no important blood-feuds, I had preferred to employ them.
But 'Abd el-Nabi, of the Tagayat-Huwaytat clan, had been spoilt
by over-kindness during my reconnaissance of 1877; besides, I had
given him a bowie-knife without taking a penny in exchange. In my
first volume he appears as a noble savage, with a mixture of the
gentleman; here he becomes a mere Fellah-Bedawi.

The claimants met with the usual ceremony; right hands placed on
the opposite left breasts--this is not done when there is bad
blood--foreheads touching, and the word of peace, "Salam,"
ceremoniously ejaculated by both mouths. Then came the screaming
voices, the high words, and the gestures, which looked as if the
Kurbaj ("whip") were being administered. The Huwayti stubbornly
refused to march with the other tribe, whom, moreover, he grossly
insulted: he professed perfect readiness to carry me and mine
gratis, the while driving the hardest bargain; he spoke of "our
land," when the country belongs to the Khediv; he openly denied
his allegiance; he was convicted of saying, "If these Christians
find gold, there will be much trouble (fitneh) to us Moslems;"
and at a subsequent time he went so far as to abuse an officer. I
had "Shaykh'd" him (Shayyakht-uh), that is, promoted him in rank,
said the Sayyid 'Abd el-Rahim; and the honour had completely
changed his manners. "Nasaggharhu" (We will "small" him), was my
reply. The only remedy, in fact, was to undo what had been done;
to cut down, as Easterns say, the tree which I had planted. So he
was solemnly and conspicuously disrated; the fee, one dollar per
diem, allotted as travelling and escort-allowance to the chiefs,
was publicly taken from him, and he at once subsided into an
ignoble Walad ("lad"), under the lead of his uncle, Shaykh
'Alayan ibn Rabi. The latter is a man of substance, who can
collect at least two thousand camels. Though much given to
sulking, on the whole, he behaved so well that, the Expedition
ended, I recommended him to his Highness the Viceroy for
appointment to the chieftainship of his tribe, and the usual
yearly subsidy. With him was associated his cousin, Shaykh
Furayj, an excellent man, of whom I shall have much to say; and
thus we had to fee three Bedawi chiefs, including Hasan. The
latter was a notable intriguer and mischief-maker, ever breeding
bad blood; and his termper was rather violent than sullen. When
insulted by a soldier, he would rush off for his gun,
ostentatiously light the match, walk about for an hour or two
threatening to "shyute," and then apparently forget the whole
matter.

All wanted to let their camels by the day, whereas the custom of
Arabia is to bargain for the march. Thus, the pilgrims pay one
dollar per stage of twelve hours; and the post-dromedary demands
the same sum, besides subsistence-money and "bakhshi'sh." But our
long and frequent halts rendered this proceeding unfair to the
Bedawin. I began by offering seven piastres tariff, and ended by
agreeing to pay five per diem while in camp, and ten when on the
road.[EN#19] Of course, it was too much; but our supply of money
was ample, and the Viceroy had desired me to be liberal. In the
Nile valley, where the price of a camel is some L20, the average
daily hire would be one dollar: on the other hand, the animal
carries, during short marches, 700 lbs. The American officers in
Upper Egypt reduced to 300 lbs. the 500 lbs. heaped on by the
Sudani merchants. In India we consider 400 lbs. a fair load; and
the Midianite objects to anything beyond 200 lbs.

I have no intention of troubling the reader with a detailed
account of our three first stages from El-Muwaylah to the Jebel
el-Abyaz, or White Mountain.[EN#20] On December 21st, leaving
camp with the most disorderly of caravans--106 camels instead of
80, dromedaries not included--we marched to the mouth of the Wady
Tiryam, where we arrived before our luggage and provisions,
lacking even "Adam's ale." The Shaykhs took all the water which
could be found in the palm-boothies near the shore, and drank
coffee behind a bush. This sufficed to give me the measure of
these "wall-jumpers."

Early next morning I set the quarrymen to work, with pick and
basket, at the north-western angle of the old fort. The latter
shows above ground only the normal skeleton-tracery of coralline
rock, crowning the gentle sand-swell, which defines the lip and
jaw of the Wady; and defending the townlet built on the northern
slope and plain. The dimensions of the work are fifty-five metres
each way. The curtains, except the western, where stood the Bab
el-Bahr ("Sea gate"), were supported by one central as well as by
angular bastions; the northern face had a cant of 32 degrees east
(mag.); and the northwestern tower was distant from the sea
seventy-two me'tres, whereas the south-western numbered only
sixty. The spade showed a substratum of thick old wall, untrimmed
granite, and other hard materials. Further down were various
shells, especially benitiers ( Tridacna gigantea) the harp (here
called "Sirinbaz"), and the pearl-oyster; sheep-bones and palm
charcoal; pottery admirably "cooked," as the Bedawin remarked;
and glass of surprising thinness, iridized by damp to rainbow
hues. This, possibly the remains of lachrymatories, was very
different from the modern bottle-green, which resembles the old
Roman. Lastly, appeared a ring-bezel of lapis lazuli;
unfortunately the "royal gem," of Epiphanus was without
inscription.

Whilst we were digging, the two staff-officers rode to the
date-groves of Wady Tiryam, and made a plan of the ancient
defences--the results of the first Khedivial Expedition had
either not been deposited at, or had been lost in, the Staff
bureau, Cairo. They found that the late torrents had filled up
the sand pits acting as wells; and the people assured them that
the Fiumara had ceased to show perennial water only about five or
six years ago.

The second march was disorderly as the first: it reminded me of
driving a train of unbroken mules over the Prairies; the men were
as wild and unmanageable as their beasts. It was every one's
object to get the maximum of money for the minimum of work. The
escort took especial care to see that all their belongings were
loaded before ours were touched. Each load was felt, and each box
was hand-weighed before being accepted: the heaviest, rejected by
the rich, were invariably left to the poorest and the lowest
clansmen with the weakest and leanest of animals. All at first
especially objected to the excellent boxes--a great comfort--made
for the Expedition[EN#21] at the Citadel, Cairo; but they ended
with bestowing their hatred upon the planks, the tables, and the
long tent-poles. As a rule, after the fellows had protested that
their camels were weighted down to the earth, we passed them on
the march comfortably riding--for "the 'Orban can't walk." And no
wonder. At the halting-place they unbag a little barley and
wheat-meal, make dough, thrust it into the fire, "break bread,"
and wash it down with a few drops of dirty water. This copious
refection ends in a thimbleful of thick, black coffee and a pipe.
At home they have milk and Ghi (clarified butter) in plenty
during the season, game at times, and, on extraordinary
occasions, a goat or a sheep, which, however, are usually kept
for buying corn in Egypt. But it is a "caution" to see them feed
alle spalle altrui.

Nothing shabbier than the pack-saddles; nothing more rotten than
the ropes. As these "Desert ships" must weigh about half the
sturdy animals of Syria and the Egyptian Delta, future
expeditions will, perhaps, do well to march their carriage round
by El-'Akabah. The people declare that the experiment has been
tried, but that the civilized animal sickens and dies in these
barrens; they forget, however, the two pilgrim-caravans.

At this season the beasts are half-starved. Their "kitchen" is a
meagre ration of bruised beans, and their daily bread consists of
the dry leaves of thorn trees, beaten down by the Makhbat, a
flail-like staff, and caught in a large circle of matting
(El-Khasaf). In Sinai the vegetation fares even worse: the
branches are rudely lopped off to feed the flocks; only "holy
trees" escape this mutilation. With the greatest difficulty we
prevented the Arabs tethering their property all night close to
our tents: either the brutes were cold; or they wanted to browse
or to meet a friend: every movement was punished with a wringing
of the halter, and the result may be imagined.

We slept that night at Wady Sharma. Of this ruined town a plan
was made for "The Gold-Mines of Midian," by Lieutenant Amir, who
alone is answerable for its correctness. We afterwards found
layers of ashes, slag, and signs of metal-working to the
north-east of the enceinte, where the furnace probably stood. The
outline measures 1906 metres, not "several kilometres;" and
desultory digging yielded nothing but charcoal, cinders, and
broken pottery. It was not before nine a.m. on the next day that
I could mount my old white, stumbling, starting mule; the delay
being caused by M. Marie's small discovery, which will afterwards
be noticed. We crossed both branches of the Sharma water; and,
ascending the long sand-slope of the right bank, we again passed
the Bedawi cemetery. I sent Lieutenants Amir and Yusuf to
prospect certain stone-heaps which lay seawards of the graves;
and they found a little heptangular demi-lune, concave to the
north; the curtains varying from a minimum length of ten to a
maximum of eighty me'tres, and the thickness averaging two
metres, seventy-five centimetres. It was possibly intended, like
those above Wady Tiryam, to defend the western approach; and,
superficially viewed, it looks like a line of stones heaped up
over the dead, with that fine bird's-eye view of the valley which
the Bedawi loves for his last sleeping-place.

Thence we passed through the dry Bab ("sea gap"), cut by a
torrent in the regular line of the coralline cliff, the opening
of the Wady Mellah, off which lay our Sambuk. Marching up the
Wady Maka'dah, our experienced eyes detected many small outcrops
of quartz, formerly unobserved, in the sole and on the banks. The
granite hills, here as throughout Midian, were veined and dyked
with two different classes of plutonic rock. The red and pink are
felsites or fine-grained porphyries; the black and bottle-green
are the coarse-grained varieties, easily disintegrating, and
forming hollows [Illustration with caption: Fortification on the
cliff commanding the right bank of Wady Sharma'.] in the harder
granite. The ride was made charming by the frontage of
picturesque Jebel 'Urnub, with its perpendicular Pinnacles upon
rock-sheets dropping clear a thousand feet; its jutting bluffs;
its three huge flying Buttresses, that seemed to support the
mighty wall-crest; and its many spits and "organs," some capped
with finials that assume the aspect of logan-stones. There was no
want of animal life, and the yellow locusts were abroad; one had
been seized by a little lizard which showed all the violent
muscular action of the crocodile. There were small long-eared
hares, suggesting the leporide; sign of gazelles appeared; and
the Bedawin spoke of wolves and hyenas, foxes and jackals.

We camped upon the old ground to the southwest of the Jebel
el-Abyaz; and at the halt our troubles forthwith began. The
water, represented to be near, is nowhere nearer than a two
hours' march for camels; and it is mostly derived from
rain-puddles in the great range of mountains which subtends
maritime Midian. But this was our own discovery. The half-Fellah
Bedawin, like the shepherds, their predecessors, in the days of
Abimelech and Jethro, are ever chary of their treasure; the only
object being extra camel-hire. After eating your salt, a rite
whose significance, by-the-by, is wholly ignored throughout
Midian and its neighbourhood, they will administer under your
eyes a silencing nudge to an over-communicative friend. 'The very
children that drive the sheep and goats instinctively deny all
knowledge of the Themail ("pits") and holes acting as wells.

At the head of the Wady el-Maka'dah we halted six days (December
24--30); this delay gave us time to correct the misapprehensions
of our flying visit. The height of the Jebel el-Abyaz, whose
colour makes it conspicuous even from the offing when sailing
along the coast, was found to be 350 (not 600) feet above the
plain. The Grand Filon, which a mauvais plaisant of a reviewer
called the "Grand Filou," forms a "nick" near the hill-top, but
does not bifurcate in the interior. The fork is of heavy greenish
porphyritic trap, also probably titaniferous iron, with a trace
of silver,[EN#22] where it meets the quartz and the granite.
Standing upon the "old man" with which we had marked the top, I
counted five several dykes or outcrops to the east (inland), and
one to the west, cutting the prism from north to south; the
superficial matter of these injections showed concentric circles
like ropy lava. The shape of the block is a saddleback, and the
lay is west-east, curving round to the south. The formation is of
the coarse grey granite general throughout the Province, and it
is dyked and sliced by quartz veins of the amorphous type,
crystals being everywhere rare in Midian (?) The filons and
filets, varying in thickness from eight metres to a few lines,
are so numerous that the whole surface appears to be quartz
tarnished by atmospheric corrosion to a dull, pale-grey yellow;
while the fracture, sharp and cutting as glass or obsidian, is
dazzling and milk-white, except where spotted with
pyrites--copper or iron. The neptunian quartz, again, has
everywhere been cut by plutonic injections of porphyritic trap,
veins averaging perhaps two metres, with a north-south strike,
and a dip of 75 degrees (mag.) west. If the capping were removed,
the sub-surface would, doubtless, bear the semblance of a
honeycomb.

The Jebel el-Abyaz is apparently the centre of the quartzose
outcrop in North Midian (Madyan Proper). We judged that it had
been a little worked by the ancients, from the rents in the reef
that outcrops, like a castle-wall, on the northern and eastern
flanks. There are still traces of roads or paths; while heaps,
strews, and scatters of stone, handbroken and not showing the
natural fracture, whiten like snow the lower slopes of the
western hill base. They contrast curiously with the hard
felspathic stones and the lithographic calcaires bearing the
moss-like impress of metallic dendrites; these occur in many
parts near the seaboard, and we found them in Southern as well as
in Northern Midian. The conspicuous hill is one of four mamelons
thus disposed in bird's-eye view; the dotted line shows the
supposed direction of the lode in the Jibal el-Bayza, the
collective name.

On the plain to the north of the Jebel el-Abyaz also, I found
curdles of porphyritic trap, and parallel trap-dykes, cutting the
courses of large-grained grey granite: as many as three outcrops
of the former appeared within fourteen yards. This convinced me
that the whole of the solid square, thirty kilometres (six by
five), where the quartz emerges, is underlaid by veins and
veinlets of the same rock. Moreover, I then suspected, and
afterwards ascertained, that the quartz of the Jibal el-Bayza, as
the Bedawin call this section, is not a local peculiarity. It
everywhere bursts, not only the plain between the sea and the
coast-range, but the two parallels of mountain which confine it
on the east. In fact, throughout our northern march the Arabs,
understanding that its object was "Maru," the generic name for
quartz,[EN#23] brought us loads of specimens from every
direction. Nothing is easier than to work the purely superficial
part. A few barrels of gunpowder and half a dozen English miners,
with pick and crowbar, suffice. Even our dawdling, feckless
quarrymen easily broke and "spelled" for camel loading some six
tons in one day.

Our short se'nnight was not wasted; yet I had an uncomfortable
feeling that the complication of the country called for an
exploration of months and not hours. Every day some novelty
appeared. The watercourses of the Ghats or coast-range were
streaked with a heavy, metallic, quartzose black sand which M.
Marie vainly attempted to analyze. We afterwards found it in
almost every Wady, and running north as far as El-'Akabah;
whilst, with few exceptions, all our washings of red earth,
chloritic sand, and bruised stone, yielded it and it only. It is
apparently the produce of granite and syenite, and it abounds in
African Egypt. I was in hopes that tungsten and titaniferous iron
would make it valuable for cutlery as the black sand of New
Zealand. Experiments in the Citadel, Cairo, produced nothing save
magnetic iron with a trace of lead. But according to Colonel
Ross, the learned author of "Pyrology, or Fire Chemistry,"[EN#24]
it is iserine or magnetic ilmenite, titaniferous iron-sand,
containing eighty-eight per cent. of iron (oxides and
sesquioxides), with eleven per cent. of titanic acid.

The Arabs brought in fine specimens of hematite and of copper ore
from Wady Gharr or Ghurr, six miles to the south of camp. Here
were found two water-pits in a well-defined valley; the nearer
some ten miles south-west of the Jebel el-Abyaz, the other about
two miles further to the north-west; making a total of twelve.
About the latter there was, however, no level ground for tents. A
mile and a half walking almost due north led to a veinlet of
copper 30 metres long by 0.30 thick, with an east-west strike,
and a dip of 45 degrees south. This metal was also found in the
hills to the south. Crystalline pyroxene and crystallized
sulphates of lime apparently abound, while the same is the case
with carbonate of manganese, and other forms of the metal so
common in Western Sinai. Briefly, our engineer came to the
conclusion that we were in the very heart of a mining region.

We made a general reconnaisance (December 27th) of a place whence
specimens of pavonine quartz had come to hand. Following the Wady
'Ifriya round the north and east of the White Mountain, we fell
into the Wady Simakh (of "Wild Sumach"), that drains the great
gap between the Pinnacles and the Buttresses of the
'Urnub-Tihamah section. After riding some two miles, we found to
the south-east fragments of dark, iridescent, and metallic
quartz: they emerge from the plain like walls, bearing
north-south, with 36 degrees of westing and a westward dip of 15
degrees to 20 degrees--exactly the conditions which Australia
seeks, and which produced the huge "Welcome Nugget" of Ballarat.
They crop out of the normal trap-dyked grey granite, and select
specimens show the fine panache lustre of copper. M. Marie
afterwards took from one of the geodes a pinch of powder weighing
about half a gramme, and cupelled a bright dust-shot bead
weighing not less than two centigrammes. Without further
examination he determined it to be argentiferous, when it was
possibly iron or antimony. On the other hand, the silver
discovered in the Grand Filon by so careful and conscientious an
observer as Gastinel Bey, and the fact that we are here on the
same line of outcrop, and at a horizon three hundred feet lower,
are reassuring.

This vein, which may be of great length and puissance, I took the
liberty of calling the "Filon Husayn," from the prince who had so
greatly favoured the Expedition. Here we had hit upon the
Negros,[EN#25] or coloured quartzose formations of Mexico, in
which silver appears as a sulphure; and we may expect to find the
Colorado, or argillaceous, that produces the noble metal in the
forms of chlorure, bromure, and iodure. The former appears
everywhere in Midian, but our specimens are all superficial,
taken a ciel ouvert. To ascertain the real value and the extent
of the deposits required exposure of the veins at a horizon far
lower than our means and appliances allowed us to reach. If the
rock prove argentiferous I should hope to strike virgin silver in
the capillary or aborescent shape below. Above it, as on the
summit of the Jebel el-Abyaz, and generally in the "Maru" hills
and hillocks of North Midian, the dull white quartz is
comparatively barren; showing specks of copper; crystals of
pyrites, the "crow-gold" of the old English miner, and dark dots
of various metals which still await analysis.

Thus, I would divide the metalliferous quartzes of this
North-Midianite region into two chief kinds: those stained green
and light blue, whose chief metallic element is copper, with its
derivatives; and the iridescent Negro, which may shelter the
Colorado. In South Midian the varieties of quartz are
incomparably more numerous, and almost every march shows a new
colour or constitution.

About the Jebel el-Abyaz, as in many mining countries, water is a
serious difficulty. The principal deposit lies some three miles
east of the camping ground in a Nakb or gorge, El-Asaybah,
offsetting from the great Fiumara, "El-Simakh;" and apparently it
is only a rain-pool. Throughout Midian, I may say, men still
fetch water out of the rock. M. Philipin, whilst pottering about
this place, saw two Beden (ibex) with their young, which suggests
a permanent supply of drink.[EN#26]

However that may be, Norton's Abyssinian pumps, for which I had
vainly applied at Cairo, would doubtless discover the prime
necessary in the Wadys, many of the latter being still damp and
muddy. Moreover, the crible continue a grilles filtrantes, the
invention of MM. Huet and Geyler, introduced, we are told, into
the mechanical treatment of metals, a principle which greatly
economizes fluid. Founded upon the fact that sands of nearly the
same size, but of different densities, when mixed in liquid and
subjected to rapid vertical oscillation, range themselves by
order of weight, the heavier sinking and not allowing passage to
lighter matter, the new sieve offers the advantages of a single
and simple instrument, with increased facility for treating poor
"dirt." Finally, as I shall show, the country is prepared by
nature to receive a tramway; and the distance to the sea does not
exceed fourteen miles, liberally computed.[EN#27]

Either the rain-water affected the health of the party, or it
suffered from the excessive dryness and variations of the
atmosphere, eight to nine hundred feet above sea-level (aner.
29.10), ranging in the tents between 92 degrees by day and 45
degrees at night, a piercing, killing temperature in the Desert.
Moreover, the cold weather is mostly the unwholesome season in
hot lands, and vice versa: hence the Arab proverb, Hararat
el-Jebel, wa la Bard-ha ("The heat of the hills and not their
cold"). Old Haji Wali lost his appetite, complained of
indigestion, and clamoured to return home; Ahmed Kaptan suffered
from Sulb ("lumbago") and bad headache; whilst Lieutenant Yusuf
was attacked by an ague and fever, which raised the mouth
thermometer to 102 degrees--103 degrees, calling loudly for
aconite. These ailments affected the party more or less the whole
way, but it was not pleasant to see them begin so soon. When our
work of collecting specimens--three tons from the Jebel el-Abyaz,
and three from the Filon Husayn--was finished, I resolved upon
returning to the coast and treating our loads at the Sharma
water. We reached the valley mouth on December 30th, and we
greatly enjoyed the change from the harshness of the inland to
the mildness of the seaboard air.

We stayed at Sharma, much disliking its remarkably monotonous
aspect, for another week, till January 7, 1878. Yule, "the
wheel," despite the glorious tree-logs and roaring fires, had
been a failure at the White Mountain. The Dragoman had killed our
last turkey, and had forgotten to bring the plum-pudding from
El-Muwaylah: there was champagne, but that is not the stuff
wherewithal to wash down tough mutton. New Year's Day, on the
other hand, had all the honours. Its birth was greeted with a
flow of whisky-punch, wherein wine had taken the place of water;
and we drank the health of his Highness, the Founder of the
Expedition, in a bottle of dry Mumm. The evening ended with music
and dancing, by way of "praying the Old Year out and the New Year
in." Mersal, the Boruji, performed a wild solo on his bugle; and
another negro, Ahmed el-Shinnawi, played with the Nai or
reed-pipe one of those monotonous and charming minor-key airs--I
call them so for want of a word to express them--which extend
from Midian to Trafalgar, and which find their ultimate
expression in the lovely Iberian Zarzuela.[EN#28] The boy Husayn
Geninah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge
military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his
ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect
that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank
table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout
the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls
contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious
Midian. And, to make the shock more violent, some friend, male
salsus, sent me copies of the cosmopolitan Spectator and the
courteous Mayfair, which at once became waste paper for Bedawi
cartridges.

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