The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 by Richard Burton

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Our Rosh ha Shanah ("New Year's Day") was further distinguished
by the discovery of a vein and outcrop of metalliferous quartz,
about half an hour's walk, and bearing nearly east (80 degrees
mag.) from camp. We followed the Wady Sharma, and found above its
"gate" the masonry-foundation of a square work; near it lay the
graves of the Wild Men, one with the normal awning of palm-fronds
honoris causa. There were signs of stone-quarrying, and at one
place a road had been cut in the rock. Leaving on the north the
left side of the watercourse, with its rushes (Scirpus), and
huge-headed reeds (Arundo donax), its dates and Daums--the two
latter often scorched and killed by the careless Bedawi--we
struck into a parallel formation, the Wady el Wuday, bone-dry and
much trodden by camels. Arrived at the spot, we found that the
confused masses of hill subtending the regular cliff-line of the
old coast, are composed of grey granite, seamed with snowy
quartz, and cut by the usual bands of bottle-coloured porphyritic
trap, which here and there becomes red. Some of the heights are
of greenish-yellow chloritic felspar, well adapted for
brick-making. The surface of the land is scattered with fragments
of white silex and fine red jasper, banded with black oligistic
iron: this rock, close, hard, and fine enough to bear cutting,
appears everywhere in scatters and amongst the conglomerates.
Only one fossil was picked up, a mould so broken as to be quite
useless.

We also followed out M. Marie's find, to which he had been guided
by a patch of red matter, conspicuous on the road from Tiryam to
Sharma. For forty minutes we skirted the seaward face of the old
cliff, a line broken by many deep water-gashes and buttressed by
Goz, or high heaps of loose white sand. We then turned eastwards
or inland, ascended a Nakb ("gorge"), and saw, as before, the
corallines and carbonates of lime altered, fused, scorified, and
blackened by heated injections; the grey granite scored with
quartz veins, running in all rhumbs; and the porphyritic trap
forming crests that projected from the sands. The cupriferous
stone struck east-west, with a dip to the south; the outcrops,
visible without digging, measured fifteen to twenty metres long,
by one to one and a half in breadth.

New Year's Day also restored to us the pup "Paiji." When quite a
babe, it had walked up to me in the streets of Cairo, evidently
claimed acquaintanceship, and straightway followed me into
Shepheard's, where; having a certain sneaking belief in
metempsychosis, I provided it with bed and board. During our
third march to the White Mountain, being given to violent yelps,
which startled both mules and camels, the small thing had been
left to walk, and had apparently made friends with an Arab
goatherd. After nine days' absence without leave, "Paiji"
reappeared, with dirty rags tied round its bony back and wasted
waist, showing an admirable skeleton, and making the most frantic
demonstrations of joy. The loss of the poor little brute had
affected all our spirits: we thought that the hyenas and the
ravens had seen the last of it; and it received a warm welcome
home.

M. Lacaze, unlike the rest, took a violent fancy for the Wady
Sharma: the water-scenery enchanted him. His sketches were almost
confined to the palm-growth, and to the greenery so unexpected in
arid Midian, where, according to the old and exploded opinion,
Moses wrote the Book of Job. The idea of Arabia is certainly not
associated with flowing rills, and waving trees, and rustling
zephyrs. Every morning I used to awake surprised by the song of
the Naiad, the little runnel whimpling down its bed of rushes,
stone, and sand; and the response of the palms making music in
the land-breeze.

Finally, on New Year's Day, Lieutenant Amir, guided by Shaykh
Furayj, and escorted by soldiers and miners, made a three days'
trip to the Wady 'Urnub. There he surveyed a large isolated
"Mara," or quartz-hill, some twenty-two to twenty-five direct
miles south-east of the main outcrop; thus giving a considerable
extent to the northern mining-focus. This feature is described as
being four or five times larger than the Jebel el-Abyaz (proper);
and the specimens of quartz and grey granite proved it to be of
the same formation. It showed a broken outline, with four great
steps or dykes, which had apparently been worked. In the basal
valleys, and spread over the land generally, was found a heavy
yellow sand, calcareous and full of silex: the guide called it
Awwal Hisma (the "Hisma frontier").

Our travellers returned by a parallel line, southerly and more
direct. In the Wady 'Urnub, the Ma'azah of the Salimat clan
received them with apparent kindness, inwardly grumbling the
while at their land being "spied out;" and they especially
welcomed Furayj, who, being a brave soldier, is also noted as a
peacemaker. All the men were armed, and wore the same dress as
the Huwaytat; like these, they also breed camels and asses--that
is, they are not cow-Arabs. Certain travellers on the Upper Nile
have distributed the Bedawin into these two groups; add
horse-Arabs and ass-Arabs, and you have all the divisions of the
race as connected with the so-called "lower animals." About three
hours (= eleven miles) from Sharma camp, some pyramids of sand
were pointed out in the Wady Ratiyah: the Bedawin call one of
them the Goz et-Hannan ("Moaning Sand-heap"). They declare that
when the Hajj-caravan passes, or rather used to pass, by that
way, before the early sixteenth century, when Sultan Selim laid
out his maritime high-road, a Naubah ("orchestra") was wont to
sound within its bowels. This tale, which, by-the-by, is told of
two other places in Midian, may have been suggested by the Jebel
el-Nakus ("Bell Mountain") in Sinai-land; but as the Arabs
perform visitation and sacrifice to the "Moaning-heap," the
superstition probably dates from ancient days. Ruins are also
reported to exist in the Jebel Fa's, the southern boundary of the
'Urnub valley; and, further south, in the Jebel el-Harb, I was
told by some one whose name has escaped me, of a dolmen mounted
upon three supports. Lieutenant Amir also brought copper ore from
the Wady 'Urnub, and from the Ras Wady el-Mukhbir specimens of a
metal which the Arabs use as a kohl or collyrium. It proved,
however, iron, not antimony; and the same mistake has been made
in the Sinaitic Peninsula.

At Wady Sharma we rigged up, under the superintendence of M.
Philipin, a trough and a cradle for washing the black sands, the
pounded quartz of the Jebel el-Abyaz, and the red sands; these
latter had shown a trace of silver (1/10000) to the first
Expedition. We mixed it with mercury and amalgamed it in
goatskins; the men moved them to and fro; but, of course, the
water evaporated, and the mass speedily became dry. The upper or
superficial white yielded only, as far as our engineer could
judge, a little copper and bright knobs of pyrites. The Negros,
or iridized formations, of the "Filon Husayn" on a lower horizon,
gave the dubious result already alluded to. All the experiments
were conducted in the rudest way. Of course, a quantity of metal
may have escaped notice; and a fair proportion of the powdered
stone was reserved for scientific treatment in Europe.

During our first trip we had found, upon the right jaw of the
Wady Sharma, a ruined village of workmen, probably slaves, whose
bothans measured some twelve feet by eight. They differ from the
Nawamis, or "mosquito-huts," as the word is generally translated,
only in shape--the latter are circular, with a diameter of ten
feet--and they perfectly resemble the small stone hovels in the
Wady Mukattab, which Professor Palmer ("Desert of the Exodus," p.
202) supposes to have been occupied by the captive miners and
their military guardians. This time we ascended the coralline
ridge which forms the left jamb. At its foot a rounded and half
degraded dorsum of stiff gravel, the nucleus of its former self,
showed a segment of foundation-wall, and the state of the stone
suggested the action of fire. Possibly here had been a furnace.
The summit also bears signs of human occupation. The southern
part of the buttress-crest still supports a double concentric
circle with a maximum diameter of about fifteen feet; the outside
is of earth, apparently thrown up for a rampart behind a moat,
and the inside is of rough stones. Going south along the dorsum,
we found remains of oval foundations; a trench apparently cut in
the rock, pottery often an inch and more thick, and broken
handmills made of the New Red Sandstone of the Hisma. Finally, at
the northernmost point, where the cliff-edge falls abruptly, with
a natural arch, towards the swamp, about one kilometre broad at
the Bab, we came upon another circle of rough stones. We were
doubtful whether these rude remains were habitations or old
graves; nor was the difficulty solved by digging into four of
them: the pick at once came upon the ground-rock. Hitherto these
ruins have proved remarkably sterile; the only products were
potsherds, fragments of hand-mills, and a fine lump of white
marble (Rukham), supposed to come from the Jebel el-Lauz.

Amongst our followers was a "Kazi of the Arabs," one Jabr bin
'Abd el-Nabi, who is a manner of judge in civil, but not in
criminal matters. Before the suit begins the plaintiff, or his
surety, deposits a certain sum in coin, corn, or other valuables,
and lays his damages at so much. The defendant, if inclined to
contest the claim, pays into court the disputed amount, and the
question is settled after the traditional and immemorial customs
of the tribe. This man, covetous as any other disciple of
Justinian, was exceedingly anxious to obtain the honorarium of a
Shaykh, and he worked hard to deserve it. Shortly before our
departure from Sharma, he brought in some scoriae and slag,
broken and streaked with copper--in fact, ekvolades. They are
thinly scattered over the seaward slope of the left jaw, where
the stone nowhere shows a trace of the mineral in situ. As,
however, the Expedition had found native copper in three places,
more or less near the Jebel el-Abyaz, it was decided that the ore
had been brought from the interior.

We were again much puzzled concerning the form of industry which
gave rise to such a large establishment as Sharma. Agriculture
was suggested and rejected; and we finally resolved that it was a
branch-town that supplied ore to the great smelting-place and
workshop of the coast, 'Aynunah, and possibly carbonate of lime
to serve for flux.

The distance along the winding Wady, between the settlement and
the sea westward, where the watercourse ends in sand-heaps, is
seven to eight miles, and the coast shows no sign of harbour or
of houses. About three miles, however, to the northwest is the
admirable Bay of 'Aynu'nah, unknown to the charts. Defended on
both sides by sandspits, and open only between the west and the
north-west, where reefs and shoals allow but a narrow passage,
its breadth across the mouth from east to west measures at least
five thousand metres, and the length inland, useful for refuge,
is at least three thousand. At the bottom of this noble Liman,
the Kolpos so scandalously abused by the ancients, are three
sandy buttresses metalled with water rolled stones, and showing
traces of graves. Possibly here may have been the site of an
ancient settlement. The Arabs call the southern anchorage, marked
by a post and a pit of brackish water, El-Musaybah or Musaybat
Sharma. Its only present use seems to be embarking bundles of
rushes for mat-making in Egypt. The north-eastern end of the
little gulf is the Gad (Jad), or Mersa of El-Khuraybah, before
described as the port of 'Aynu'nah.

At the Musaybah I stationed our tender, the Sambuk El-Musahhil,
which carried our heavy goods, specimens by the ton; rations and
stores; forge, planks, and crowbars. The sailors lost no time in
showing their rapacity. Every day they dunned us for tobacco; and
when we made a counter-demand for the excellent fish which was
caught in shoals, they simply asked, "What will you pay for it?"
I imprudently left my keg of specimen-spirits on board this
ignoble craft, and the consequence was that it speedily became
bone-dry. The Musaybah bight is a direct continuation of the Wady
el-Mellah, which, joining that of El-Maka'dah, runs straight up
to the Jebel el-Abyaz and to the Filon Husayn. These
metalliferous quartzes cannot be further from the coast than a
maximum distance of fourteen miles, and the broad, smooth
watercourse, with its easy gradients, points it out as the site
of the future tramway. I should prefer a simpler form of the
"Pioneer Steam Caravan or Saddleback-Railway System," patented by
Mr John L. Haddan, C.E., formerly of Damascus.[EN#29] He
recommends iron as the best material for the construction; and
the cost, delivered at Alexandria, would not exceed L1200,
instead of L3000 to L20,000 per kilometre, including the rolling
stock. As the distance from the port is nothing, L300 per
kilometre would be amply sufficient for "fixing up;" but I should
reduce the price to L500 for the transport of some 50 tons per
diem. By proper management of the rails or the main rail, it
would be easy for trained camels to draw the train up the Wady;
and the natural slope towards the sea would give work only to the
brake where derailments are not possible.

At Sharma we saw the crescent, when the Englishmen turned their
money in their pockets, and the Egyptian offficers muttered a
blessing upon the coming moon. Every day we waxed more weary of
the place; possibly the memories of the first visit were not
pleasant. Many in camp still suffered; and an old Bedawi, uncle
to Shaykh 'Alayan, died and was buried at 'Aynunah. The number of
servants also made us uncomfortable. The head Dragoman, whose
memory was confined to his carnet, forgot everything; and, had we
trusted to him, half the supplies would have returned to Suez,
probably for the benefit of his own shop at Zagazig. I soon found
his true use, and always left him behind as magazine-man,
storekeeper, and guardian of reserve provisions. He was also a
dangerous, mischief-making fellow; and such men always find
willing ears that ought to know better. Petros, the Zante man,
was the model of a tipotenios (an "anybody"), who seemed to have
been born limp, without bones or brains. He was sent back as soon
as possible to Cairo. The worst point of these worthies was, that
they prevented, for their own reasons, the natives working for
us; while they preferred eternal chatter and squabbles to working
themselves. So the Greek element was reduced to George the cook,
a short, squat, unwashed fellow, who looked like a fair-Hercules
out of luck; who worked like three, and who loudly clamoured for
a revolver and a bowie-knife. His main fault, professionally
speaking, was that he literally drenched us with oil till the
store happily ran out. His complexion was that of an animated
ripe olive, evidently the result of his own cookery. His surprise
when I imperatively ordered plain boiled rice, instead of a mess
dripping with grease; and when told to boil the fish in sea water
and to serve up the bouillon, was high comedy. Doubtless he has
often, since his return, astounded his "Hellenion" by describing
our Frankish freaks and mad eccentricities.

The stationary camp also retained Lieutenant Yusuf and MM. Duguid
and Philipin, with thirteen soldiers and sixteen miners. The six
camels were placed under Gabr, Kazi el-'Orban; and all the
stay-behinds were charged with washing the several earths, with
scouring the country for specimens, and with transporting sundry
tons of the black sand before mentioned. Old Haji Wali, probably
frightened by the Arabs, and maddened by the idea that, during
his absence in the thick of the cotton season, the Fellahs of
Zagazig would neglect to pay their various debts, began to
"malinger" with such intensity of purpose, that I feared lest he
would kill himself to spite us. The venerable Shylock, who ever
pleaded poverty, had made some L300 by lending a napoleon, say,
on January 1st, which became a sovereign on February 1st; not to
speak of the presents and "benevolences" which the debtor would
be compelled to offer his creditor. So he departed for
El-Muwaylah, whence some correspondent had warned him that a
pilgrim boat was about to start; declaring that he was dying, and
trotting his mule as hard as it would go, the moment a safe
corner was turned. He stayed two days on board the gunboat, and
straightway returned to Egypt and the cotton season:--we had the
supreme satisfaction, however, to hear that he had gone through
the long quarantine at Tor. Yet after our return he reproached
me, with inimitable coolness and effrontery, for not having
behaved well to him.

On the morning of January 7th, a walk of two hours and twenty
minutes (= seven miles) northwards, and mostly along the shore of
the noble "Musaybat Sharma," transferred us to well-remembered
'Aynunah. The sea in places washed over slabs of the fine old
conglomerates which, in this country, line the banks and soles of
all the greater Wadys: these are the Cascalho of the Brazil, a
rock which is treated by rejecting the pebbles and by pounding
the silicious paste. The air was softer and less exciting than
that of Sharma; and, although the vegetation was of the crapaud
mort d'amour hue--here a sickly green, there a duller brown than
April had showed--the scene was more picturesque, the "Gate" was
taller and narrower, and the recollection of a happy first visit
made me return to it with pleasure. Birds were more abundant:
long-shanked water-fowl with hazel eyes; red-legged rail; the
brown swallow of Egypt; green-blue fly-catchers; and a black
muscivor, with a snowy-white rump, of which I failed to secure a
specimen. We also saw the tern-coloured plover, known in Egypt as
Domenicain and red kingfishers. The game species were fine large
green mallard; dark pintail; quail, and red-beaked brown
partridge with the soft black eye.

New formations began to develop themselves, and the sickly hues
of the serpentines and the chlorites, so rich in the New World,
appeared more charming than brow of milk or cheek of rose.[EN#30]
There were few changes. A half-peasant Bedawi had planted a strip
of barley near the camping place; the late floods had shifted the
course of the waters; more date-trees had been wilfully burned; a
big block of quartz, brother to that which we had broken, had
been carried off; and where several of the old furnaces formerly
stood, deep holes, dug by the "money-hunter," now yawned. I again
examined the two large fragments of the broken barrage, and found
that they were of uncut stone, compacted with fine cement, which
contained palm-charcoal.

At 'Aynunah we gave only one day to work. While M. Lacaze
sketched the views, we blasted with gunpowder more than half
charcoal the Ma'dan el-Fayruz ("turquoise mine"), as the Arabs
called it, on the right side of the Wady. The colour and texture
were so unlike the true lapis Pharanitis that we began to
suspect, and presently we ascertained from the few remaining
fragments, it had been worked for copper,--the carbonates and the
silicates which characterize Cyprus. Presently good specimens of
the latter were brought to us from the Jebel el-Fara by a Bedawi
pauper, 'Ayd of the Tagaygat-Huwaytat tribe. These half-naked
shepherds and goatherds, who know every stone in the land, are
its best guides; not the Shaykhs, who, as a rule, see little or
nothing outside their tents. From our camp the direction, as
reported by Ahmed Kaptan, was 102 degrees (mag.), and the
distance three miles. I afterwards sent Lieutenant Yusuf from
El-Muwaylah to make a detailed plan.[EN#31]

We also dug in an old pit amongst the Christian graves to the
south-east of the camp, and below the left jamb of the "Gate."
Here also the Bedawin had been at work; and, when unable to work
deep enough, they told us wonderful tales of an alabaster slab,
which doubtless concealed vast treasures. In Arabia, as in
Africa, one must look out for what there is not, as well as for
what there is. After spending a morning in sinking a twelve-feet
shaft, we came upon a shapeless coralline-boulder, which in old
times had slipped from the sea-face of the cliff to the left of
the valley. I ascended this height, and saw some stones disposed
by the hand of man; but there were no signs of a large
slave-miner settlement like that on the other side of the Bab.

In the afternoon Mr. Clarke led a party of quarrymen across the
graveyards to El-Khuraybah, the seaport of 'Aynunah, and applied
them to excavating the floor of a cistern and the foundations of
several houses; a little pottery was the only result. It was a
slow walk of forty minutes; and thus the total length of the
aqueducts would be three miles, not "between four and five
kilometres." I had much trouble and went to some expense in
sending camels to fetch a "written stone" which, placed at the
head of every newly buried corpse, is kept there till another
requires it. It proved to be a broken marble pillar with a modern
Arabic epitaph. In the Gad el-Khuraybah, the little inlet near
the Gumruk ("custom-house"), as we called in waggery the shed of
palm-fronds at the base of the eastern sandspit, lay five small
Sambuks, which have not yet begun fishing for mother-of-pearl.
Here we found sundry tents of the Tagaygat-Huwaytat, the half
Fellahs that own and spoil the once goodly land; the dogs barked
at us, but the men never thought of offering us hospitality. We
had an admirable view of the Tihamah Mountains--Zahd, with its
"nick;" the parrot-beak of Jebel el-Shati; the three
perpendicular Pinnacles and flying Buttresses of Jebel 'Urnub;
the isolated lump of Jebel Fas; the single cupola of Jebel Harb;
the huge block of Dibbagh, with its tall truncated tower; the
little Umm Jedayl, here looking like a pyramid; and the four
mighty horns of Jebel Sharr.

I left 'Aynunah under the conviction that it has been the great
Warshah ("workshop") and embarking-place of the coast-section
extending from El-Muwaylah to Makna; and that upon it depended
both Wady Tiryam and Sharma, with their respective establishments
in the interior. Moreover, the condition of the slag convinced me
that iron and the baser metals have been worked here in modern
times, perhaps even in our own, but by whom I should not like to
say.

Chapter III.
Breaking New Ground to Maghair Shu'ayb.

On January 9th we left 'Aynunah by the Hajj-road, and passed
along the Quarry Hill visited during my first journey: the crest
has old cuttings and new cuttings, the latter still worked for
Bedawi headstones. The dwarf pillar with the mysterious cup is
reflected by the Nubians, who hollow out the upper part of the
stela to a depth of eight or ten inches without adding any
ornament. Hence, perhaps, the Sawahili custom of the inserted
porcelain-plate.

After issuing from the stony and sandy gorge which forms the
short cut, we regained the Hajj-road, and presently sighted a
scene readily recognized. Fronting us, the northern horizon was
formed by the azure wall of Tayyib Ism,[EN#32] the "Mountain of
the Good Name," backed by the far grander peaks of Jebel
Mazhafah: the latter rises abruptly from the bluer Gulf of
El-Akabah, and both trend to their culminating points inland or
eastward. On our right followed the unpicturesque metalliferous
heap of Jebel Zahd or 'Aynunah Mountain, whose Breche de Roland
seems to show from every angle; its chocolate-coloured heights
contain, they say, furnaces and "Mashghal," or ateliers, where
the Maru ("quartz") was worked for ore. In places it is backed by
the pale azure peaks of Jebel el-Lauz. This "Mountain of Almonds"
is said to take its name from the trees, probably bitter, which
flourish there as within the convent-walls of St. Catherine,
Sinai. They grow, I was told, high up in the clefts and valleys;
and here, also, are furnaces both above and below. Of its white,
sparkling, and crystallized marble, truly noble material, a
tombstone was shown to me; and I afterwards secured a slab with a
broken Arabic inscription, and a ball apparently used for rubbing
down meal. The Lauz appears to be the highest mountain in
Northern Midian-land; unfortunately, it is to be reached only via
Sharaf, two long stations ahead, and I could not afford time for
geographical research to the prejudice of mineralogical. Its
nearer foot-hill is the Jebel Khulayf; and this feature contains,
according to the Bedawin, seven wells or pits whose bottom cannot
be seen. Between the "Almond Block" and its northern
continuation, Jebel Munifah, we saw a gorge containing water, and
sheltering at times a few tents of the 'Amirat Arabs; in the same
block we also heard of a Sarbut or rock said to be written over.

The regular cone of El-Makla' ends the prospect in the
north-eastern direction. Looking westward, we see the ghastly
bare and naked Secondary formation, the Rugham of the Bedawin,
not to be confounded with Rukham ("alabaster or saccharine
marble"). We afterwards traced this main feature of the 'Akabah
Gulf as far south as the Wady Hamz. It is composed of the
sulphates of lime--alabaster, gypsum, and the plaster with which
the Tertiary basin of Paris supplies the world; and of the
carbonates of lime--marble, chalk, kalkspar, shells, and eggs.
The broken crests of the Jibal el-Hamra, the red hills backing
Makna,[EN#33] and the jagged black peaks of their eastern
parallel, the Kalb el-Nakhlah, look like plutonic reefs or
island-chains emerging from the Secondary sea. The latter, whose
bleached and skeleton white is stained, here and there, by
greenish-yellow sands, chlorite and serpentine, stands boldly out
from the chaos of purpling mountains composing Sinai, and ending
southwards in the azure knobs of three-headed Tiran Island. The
country, in fact, altogether changed: quartz had disappeared, and
chlorite had taken its place.

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