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The Land of Midian, Vol. 1

R >> Richard Burton >> The Land of Midian, Vol. 1




Yet the Bedawin of Midian have till late years been a turbulent
"mixed multitude," and are ready to become troublesome again. It
is only by building forts and by holding the land militarily,
that the civilized can hope to tame this vermin. I repeat,
however, my conviction that the charming Makná Valley is fated to
see happy years; and that the Wild Man who, when ruled by an iron
hand, is ever ready to do a fair day's work for a fair wage
(especially victuals), will presently sit under the shadow of his
own secular vines and fig-trees.

About midnight on February 2nd, the tempestuous northerly gale,
which had now lasted four days and five nights, ceased almost
suddenly: the signs of the approaching calm were the falling of
the mercury, the increased warmth of the atmosphere, and the
shifting of the wind towards the east. All hailed the change with
joy. The travellers looked forward to ending their
peregrinations, while the voyagers, myself included, hoped safely
to steam round the Gulf el-'Akabah, and to trace, as correctly as
possible, the extent, the trend, and the puissance of the
quartz-formations. At Cairo Mr. Consul Rogers told me he had
found them in large quantities veining the red grits of Petra;
and I thought it possible that the "white stone" may extend under
the waters of 'Akabah into the peninsula of Sinai.





Chapter VII.
Cruise from Maknáto El-'Akabah.



This "Red Sea in the Land of Edom" (1 Kings ix. 26) is still, as
Wellsted entitles it, "a vast and solitary Gulf." It bears a
quaint resemblance to that eastern fork of the northern Adriatic,
the Quarnero, whose name expresses its terrible storms; while the
Suez branch shows the longer stretch of the Triestine
bifurcation. Yamm Elath or Eloth, as the Hebrews called
El-'Akabah, has, by the upheaval of the land, lost more of its
fair proportions than its western sister. It was at one time the
embouchure of the Jordan, extending up the Wady el-'Arabah to the
Asphaltite Lake (Dead Sea), before the former became, so to
speak, a hill and the latter a hole. This view dates from olden
times. "Si suppone," says Cornelius à Lapide,[EN#119] "che sia un
sollevamento che accadde, mentre un abbassamento formava il Mar
Morto; e che il Giordano si gettasse nel Golfo Elanitico (Yamm
Ailath), ciò é nel Mar Rosso, prima della destruzione di Sodoma."
For the latter date we have only to read, "When a movement of
depression sank the lower Jordan Valley, and its present
reservoirs, the Tiberias Lake and the Dead Sea, to their actual
level." There is nothing marvellous nor unique in the feature, as
it appears to those suffering from that strange malady, "Holy
Land on the Brain." The Oxus and the Caspian show an identical
formation, only the sinking has been on a smaller scale.

Wellsted was unfortunate, both in his weather and in his craft.
To encounter a "sea of breakers" and "northerly gales with a high
and dangerous swell" in a wretched "bugalá" (i.e. Sambúk), and in
that perfect tub, the Palinurus, was somewhat like tempting
Providence,--if such operation be possible. No wonder that "in
this Gulf, in a course of only ninety miles, the nautical mishaps
were numerous and varied." The surveyor, however, neglected a
matter of the highest interest and importance, namely, to
ascertain whether there be any difference of level between the
heads of the Suez and the 'Akabah waters. The vicinity of
continuous maritime chains, varying from six to nearly nine
thousand feet, suggests an amount of attraction (theoretically)
sufficient to cause a sensible difference of plane. It would be
well worth while to run two lines of survey, one from El-'Akabah
to Suez, and the other down the eastern flank of the Sinaitic
Peninsula.

The Mukhbir, like the Palinurus, promised a certain amount of
excitement. Her boiler, I have said, was honeycombed; it was easy
to thrust one's fist through it. Mr. David Duguid, the engineer,
who on one occasion worked thirty-six hours at a stretch, had
applied for sixty new tubes, and he wanted one hundred and fifty:
we began with two hundred and forty; we lost, when in the Gulf,
from three to nine per diem, a total of seventy five; and the
work of the engine-room and the ship's carpenters consisted in
plugging fractures with stays, plates, and wedges. Presently the
steam-gauge (manomètre) gave way, making it impossible to
register pressure; the combustion chamber showed a rent of
eighteen inches long by one wide, the result of too rapid
cooling; and, lastly, the donkey-engine struck work. Under these
happy circumstances bursting was not to be expected; breaking
down was, a regular collapse which would have left us like a log
upon the stormy waves. A new boiler might have cost, perhaps,
£900, and the want of one daily endangered a good ship which
could not be replaced for £9000. I therefore determined upon a
"Safer Khoriyyah," that is, steaming by day and anchoring at
night in some snug bay. It was also agreed, nem. con., to tow the
Sambúk El-Musahhil, in order that, should accidents happen, it
might in turn act tug to the steamer; or even, at a pinch, serve
us as a lifeboat.

Nothing becomes Makná better than the view on leaving it. A
varied and attractive picture this, with the turquoise-blue of
the deep water, the purple and leek-green tints of the shoaly and
sandy little port, and the tawny shore dotted by six distinct
palm-tufts. They are outliers of the main line, yon flood of
verdure, climbing up and streaming down from the high, dry, and
barren banks of arenaceous drift, heaped up and filmed over by
the wind, and, lastly, surging through its narrow "Gate," with
the clifflets of conglomerate forming the old coast. Add the
bluff headland of the Ras el-Tárah to the north of the harbour,
and behind it the Rughámat Makná, the greenish-yellow,
flat-backed "horse" of Madyan, which, shimmering in the sunset
with a pearly lustre, forms the best of landmarks. Finish to the
south of the Wady with the quaint chopping outlines of the Jebel
el-Fahísát, resembling from afar a huge alligator lying on the
water; with the similar but lower forms to the north of the
valley, both reflected in the Jibál el-Hamrá (the Red Hills),
whose curtains of green-black trap are broken by sheets of dull
dead-white plaster. Cap the whole with the mighty double quoin of
gypseous Jebel el-Kharaj, buttressing the eastern flank of its
valley, and with the low, dark metal-revetted hills of the Kalb
el-Nakhlah, a copy of the Fahísát. Throw in the background,
slowly rising as you recede from the shore, a curtain of plutonic
peaks and buttresses, cones, quoins, cupolas, parrot-beaks; with
every trick of shape, from the lumpy Zahd to the buttressed and
pinnacled 'Urnub; with every shade of mountain-tint between
lapis-lazuli and plum-purple. Dome the whole with that marvellous
transparent sky, the ocean of the air, that spreads loveliness
over the rugged cheek of the Desert; and you have a picture
which, though distinctly Arabian, you can hardly expect to see in
Arabia.

From the offing, also, we note how the later formations, granite
and syenite, seamed with a network, and often topped by cones, of
porphyritic trap, have upthrust, pierced, and isolated the older
Secondaries. We traced this huge deposit of sulphates and
carbonates of lime from the southern Wady Hamz, through the
islets at the mouth of the Birkat 'Akabah, all along the shore of
North Midian. Here it crosses diagonally the northern third of
the 'Akabah Gulf, and forms the north-eastern base of the
Sinaitic Peninsula; whilst eastward it stretches inland as far as
Magháir Shu'ayb. The general disposition suggests that before the
upheaval of the Gháts, the Jibál el-Tihámah, this vast gypseous
sheet was a plain and plateau covering the whole country, till a
movement of depression, caused by the upheaval of the igneous
mountains, sank in it the Gulf of 'Akabah. At present the surface
is here flat, there hilly like huge billows breaking mostly to
the north, and reaching an altitude of twelve hundred feet above
the surface. Hence the lines stretching north-south, the Fahísát,
the Red Hills, and the Kalb el-Nakhlah, look like so many
volcanic island-reefs floating in a sea of greenish-yellow
Secondaries.

Like the old Irish post-horse, the difficulty and danger of our
"kettle" consisted in starting it: two tubes at once burst, and a
new hole yawned in the boiler; moreover, our anchor had been
thrown out in a depth of seventy-three feet. Enfin! At nine a.m.
(February 3rd) we stood straight for the Sinaitic shore, distant
thirteen miles (direct geographical), and in three hours we made
the Sharm, Marsá or Minat el-Dahab--the "Golden Anchorage, Cove,
or Port."[EN#120] Another hour was spent in steaming southwards
to the Dock-harbour, wrongly so called in the charts; the pilots,
and the many Sambúks that take refuge in it, know the place only
as Mínát Ginái (Jinái). The northern baylet, preferred when
southerly winds blow, is simply the embouchure of the Wady Dahab
("Fiumara of Gold"). The name is properly applied to the
sub-maritime section of the valley draining the eastern flanks of
the so-called Mount Sinai. This great watercourse breaks through
the Gháts which, always fringing similar peninsulas, peak to the
south. It reaches the Gulf at a shallow sag marked by a line of
palms, the centre of three: they are fed by their several
Nullahs, and are watered with the brackish produce of sundry
wells. The statio malefida is defended to the north by a short
sandspit and a submerged reef; and southwards by a projection of
sandstone conglomerate. The latter, running from north-east to
south-west, subtends this part of the coast, and serves to build
up the land; after a few years the débris swept down by the
watercourses will warp up the shallows, dividing shore from
outlier. Such, in fact, seems to be the general origin of these
sandspits; beginning as coralline reefs, they have been covered
with conglomerates, and converted into terra firma by the rubbish
shot out by the Wady-mouths.

The southern port, "Ginái," is formed by a bend in the reef which
sweeps round from east to south-west like a scorpion's tail. The
natural sea-wall, at once dangerous and safety-giving, protects,
to the south and south-east, diabolitos of black rock visible
only at high tide: inshore the sickle-shaped breakwater runs by
east to south-west, becoming a "sandy hook," and enclosing a
basin whose depth ranges from seven to twelve fathoms. Its
approach from the south is clean; and the western opening is
protected by the tall screen of coast cliffs, the Jebel el-Ginái,
whose deep-black porphyritic gorge seemingly prolongs that of
Midianite Tayyib Ism. This is a section of the Jibál el-Samghi,
the coast-range which extends as far north as the Wady Wati'r.
The Dock-port, so useful when the terrible norther blows, has an
admirable landmark, visible even from Sináfir Island, and
conspicuous at the entrance of the Gulf. Where the sandy slopes
of South-Eastern Sinai-land end, appears a large white blot,
apparently supporting a block, built, like a bastion, upon a tall
hill of porphyritic trap. We called this remnant of material
harder than the rest, Burj el-Dahab--"the Tower Hill of Dahab." I
have been minute in describing the Golden Harbour: scant justice
has been done to it by the Hydrographic Chart, and it will prove
valuable when the Makna' mines are opened. Ahmed Kaptán vainly
attempted soundings--he was too ill to work. Wellsted's
identification of the site with Ezion-geber (ii. ix.), and the
reef with the rock-ledge which wrecked Jehosaphat's fleet, has
one great objection--no ruins are known to exist near it.[EN#121]

The formation of this part of Sinai, as far as we can see from
the shore, reflects, in wilder forms and more abrupt lines, the
opposite coast of Midian: there is, however, the important
difference that the Secondaries and the quartz-veins, there so
important, are here wanting. The skeletons of mountain and hill
appear as if prolonged under water. The ruddy syenite is dyked
and veined by the familiar network of green-black porphyritic
trap; the filons are disposed in parallels striking north-south,
with a little easting; the dip is westerly (about 35 degrees
mag.), and the thickness extends to hundreds of feet, often
forming a foundation for the upper cliff. The subaerial parts are
the same warty and pimply growth which appears on the other side.
Nothing could be more wearisome to the Alpine climber than such a
country: he would scale the peaks and ridges for fifty feet, to
descend thirty on the other side; and the frequent Wadys,
ankle-deep in loose sand, generally end in steep stony couloirs.
The watercourses, whose broad mouths are scattered with thin
green, contain pebbles and rolled quartzes, including fine
specimens of the crystallized variety.

We landed, after an hour's row in the gig, at the central or main
line of palms; and on the banks of Wady Dahab, here a full mile
wide, we found the works of man, like those of Nature, a copy of
Makná. The date trees and clumps are hedge-closed; two scatters
of 'Ushash (tabernacles) show round towers of rough stone, broken
and patched with palm-frond; and, further north of the Golden
Valley, a few old Arab graves have been weathered into mere heaps
of large stones. These are the Kubur el-Nasárá ("Nazarene's
Graves") of Burckhardt,[EN#122] a name apparently forgotten by
the present generation. We vainly sought and asked after ruins:
of old, however, "Dí'zahab" might have served to disembark cargo
which, by taking the land-route northwards, as the Christian
pilgrims still do from El-Nuwaybi', would avoid the dangerous
headwaters of El-'Akabah. Nor could we believe with
Pococke[EN#123] that the place derived its name from the mica
shining like gold; his theory is stultified by the fact that mica
is by no means a prominent feature, even had the Ancients been so
ignorant as to be deceived by it.

The people were by no means communicative. An elderly man, with a
red turban and sword by side, hurried away from us when we
addressed him, leaving his middle-aged wife to follow with a babe
on shoulder and a boy in hand: she also refused to speak, waving
her hand by way of reply to every question. At last a
semi-civilized being, acquainted with the Convent of St.
Catherine, Selím bin Husayn, of the Muzaynah tribe, satisfied our
curiosity in view of tobacco, and offered a rudely stuffed
ibex-head for a shilling. In the evening our fishermen visited
the reef, which supplied admirable rock-cod, a bream (?) called
Sultan el-Bahr, and Marján (a Sciæna); but they neglected the
fine Sirinjah ("sponges"), which here grow two feet long. The
night was dark and painfully still, showing nought but the
youngest of moons, and the gloomiest silhouettes of spectral
mountains.

We set out at seven a.m. on the next day, when an Azyab or
south-easterly wind was promised by the damp air, the slaty sea,
and the gloomy nimbi on the hill-tops. A small party landed after
two hours' steaming, in search of quartz, which proved to be
chloritic sandstones and limestones. In the broad valley they
found a few Muzayni families, with their camels, sheep, and
goats. These unfortunates had no tents, sleeping under the trees;
they were desperate beggars, and, although half-starved, they
asked a napoleon for a kid, declaring that such was its price at
the quarantine station of Tor. Here the errors of the
Hydrographic Chart, which have been copied literally by the
latest and best popular books such as Professor Palmer's "Desert
of the Exodus," began to excite our astonishment. For instance,
Ras Kusayr ("the Short One") becomes Ras Arser--what a name for a
headland! A good survey will presently become a sine quâ non.
Unfortunately Ahmed Kaptán was suffering so much that I could not
ask him to make solar observations; while the rest of us had
other matters in hand. It was a great disappointment, where so
much useful work remains to be done.

Hereabouts the sterile horrors of the hideous Sinaitic shore seem
to reach their climax. The mountains become huge rubbish-heaps,
without even colour to clothe their indecently nude forms; and
each strives with its neighbour for the prize of repulsiveness.
The valleys are mere dust-shunts that shoot out their rubbish,
stones, gravel, and sand, in a solid flow, like discharges of
lava. And, as Jebel Mazhafah, on the opposite coast, is the apex
of the visible eastern Gháts, so beyond this point the Sinaitic
sea-chain of mountains begins to decline into mere hills, while
longer sand-points project seawards. Such is the near, the real
aspect of what, viewed from Makná, appears a scene in fairy-land,
decked and dight in heavenly hues of blue and purple and rosy
light--

"Where the bald blear skull of the Desert
With golden mountains is crowned."

The first sign of a change of formation appeared near the "Lower
(southern) Nuwaybi'" ("the Little Spring"), which the chart calls
"Wasit." Here the shore shows blots of dead-white and mauve-red,
in which our engineer at once detected quartz. Seeing it
prolonged in straight horizontal lines, and the red overlying the
white, I suspected kaolin and the normal Tauá (coloured clays):
my conjecture was confirmed on the next day. Hereabouts, Wellsted
(ii. 151) also remarked the colouring of the hills, which
resemble those of "Sherm;" some of a deep-blue tinge, and others
streaked with a brilliant red and violet. We then doubled a long
sandspit running out to sea eastward, and forming, on the north,
a deep bay well protected from the souther; whilst several lines
of reef and shallow to the north defend it from the angry Bora.
This anchorage is known to the pilots as "Wásit;" and it occupies
the southern half of the bay, the northern half and its
palm-groves being called the "Upper Nuwaybi'." About "Wásit" the
date-palms are scattered, and the large sand-drifts ever threaten
to bury them alive. Behind it yawns the great gash, "Wady Watír,"
which shows its grand lines even from the opposite side of the
gulf: this is the route by which Christian pilgrims from Syria
make the Sinai monastery, rounding on camels the northern end of
El-'Akabah. The main valley receives from the north the Wady
el-'Ayn, which can be reached in half a day. From the south,
distant one whole march, comes the Wady el-Hazrah. This is
doubtless the Hazeroth of the Exodus, meaning the fenced
enclosures of a pastoral people; and a modern traveller figures
and describes it as "the most beautiful and romantic landscape in
the Desert." At least, so said the lately shipped guide, Mabru'k
ibn Sulayyim el-Muzayni.

After a run of six hours and thirty minutes (= thirty miles), we
cast anchor off Wásit: there was nothing to see ashore, save some
wretched Muzaynah, two males and three females, helpmates meet
for them, living like savages on fish and shell-molluscs;
drinking brackish water, and sleeping in the "bush," rather than
take the trouble to repair the huts. They have no sheep, but a
few camels; and, by way of boats, they use catamarans composed of
two palm-trunks: their home-made hooks resemble the schoolboy's
crooked pin. Yet these starvelings would not fetch specimens of
the white stuff, distant, perhaps, two direct miles of cross-cut,
seen near Nuwaybi', and still visible. They also refused, without
preliminary "bakhshísh," to show or even to tell where certain
ruins, concerning which they spoke or romanced, are found in
their hills. And yet there are theologians who would raise
Poverty, the most demoralizing of all conditions, to the rank of
an "ecclesiastical virtue."

At 6 30 a.m. on the next day, the Mukhbir stood eastwards to
avoid the northern reef. Presently we passed the "Upper
Nuwaybi'," a creeklet to the north-west of Wásit, with a
straggling line of palms fed by the huge Wady Muzayríj. From this
point to the 'Akabah head all the coast is clean of man. The
Jibál el-Samghi now become the Sinaitic Jibál el-Shafah ("Lip
Mountains"), the latter stretching northwards to the Hajj-road,
and forming the western wall of the 'Arabah valley, whose name
they assume (Jibál el-'Arabah). The scene abruptly shifts. A
mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and
relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant
rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays,
gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland,
peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries of
the coast, pale quoins and naked cones again show the familiar
Secondary formation of Midianitish Makná. We were not surprised
to hear that sulphur had been found in the gypsum of these
eastern Gháts of Sinai, when a Jebel el-Kibí't, approached by the
Wady Suwayr, was pointed out to us. The natural deduction is that
the brimstone formation is, like the turquoise, the copper, and
the manganese, a continuation of the beds that gave a name to
Mafka-land; while the metalliferous strata round, in
horseshoe-form, the head of El-'Akabah, and run down the Arabian
shore, till they become parallel with those subtending the
seaboard of Africa.

The view of the eastern or Midianite coast was even more varied
and suggestive. Far inland, and tinged light-blue by distance,
rose the sharp, jagged, and sawlike crests of El-Sharaf, under
which the Hajj-caravan wends its weary way, thus escaping the
mountains which dip perpendicularly into the sea. Then come the
broad and sandy slopes, here and there streaked with dark ridges,
spanned by the Sultáni or Sultan's high-road, and stretching from
the Gulf to the inner heights. The latter are no longer a double
parallel chain: they bend from south-south-east to
north-north-west, and become the Jibál el-Shará', anciently
"Mount Seir;" in fact, the eastern retaining-wall of the great
Wady 'Arabah. Evidently they are primary, but a white and purple
patch, visible from afar, suggested a Secondary remnant. Several
of the peaks, especially the blue block El-Yitm, appeared to be
of great height; we all remarked its towering stature and trifid
headpiece, apparently upwards of five thousand feet high, before
we had heard the tale attached to it. Abreast of us and on the
shore, lie the large inlet and little islet El-Humayzah: the
surveyors have abominably corrupted it to "Omeider." North of it
a palm grove, lining the mouth of a broad Wady which snakes high
up among the sands and stones, denotes the Hajj-station, El-Hakl
(Hagul), backed by tall arenaceous buttresses.

After six hours (= twenty-two knots and a half), we anchored in
the deep channel, about three-quarters of a kilometre wide, that
separates the Sinaitic mainland from the northern one of the only
two islands known in the 'Akabah Gulf, a scrap of rock crowned
with picturesque grey ruins. The Jezírat Fara'ún of the maps, the
Isle of Pharaoh, concerning whom traditions are still current, it
is known to the 'Akabites only as Jebel el-Kala'h or "Fort-hill:"
hence El-Graa in Laborde, and Jezírat El-Q reieh in
Arconati.[EN#124] Burckhardt alone mentions that the ruins are
known as El-Dayr--"the Convent." This human lair is encircled by
barrier-reefs of coralline, broad to the south-west and large in
scattered places: eastward they form a shallow wall-like ledge,
beyond which blue water at once begins. The island-formation is
that of the opposite coasts, Midian and Sinai, grey granite dyked
with decaying porphyritic trap, and everywhere veined with white
and various-coloured quartzes. The shape is a long oval of about
three hundred and twenty by one hundred and fifty-two metres; a
saddleback with two stony heads, the higher to the north, rising
a hundred feet or so above sea-level. Pommel and cantle are
connected by a low seat, a few yards of isthmus; and the three
divisions, all strongly marked, bear buildings. The profile from
east and west shows four groups: to the extreme north a tower,
backed by the castle donjon, on the knob of granite here and
there scarped; the works upon the thread of isthmus; and the
walls and bastions crowning the southern knob, which, being
lower, is even more elaborately cut to a perpendicular.

We landed upon the eastern side of the islet rock, where the
trunk of a broken mole is covered in rear by a ruined work. Here,
being most liable to attack, the fortifications are strongest;
whereas on the west side only a single wall, now strewn on the
ground, with square Burj at intervals, defends the little
boat-harbour. The latter appears at present in the shape of a
fish-pond, measuring sixty by forty metres; sunk below sea-level,
fed by percolation, and exceedingly salt. To the east of this
water, black cineraceous earth shows where the smith had been at
work: we applied the quarrymen to sift it, without other results
but bits of glass, copper, and iron nails.

The pier leads to a covered way, enabling the garrison safely to
circulate round the base of the islet. Behind it a path, much
broken and cumbered by débris of the walls, winds up the southern
face of the northern hill, which supports the body of the place:
it meets another track from the west, and a small work defends
their junction. Below it, outside the walls, we found a well sunk
about eight feet in the granite, and cemented with fine lime, the
red plaster in places remaining. Above this pit a Mihráb, or
prayer-niche, fronting Meccah-wards (more exactly 175 degrees
mag.) shows the now ruinous mosque: the Bedawi declare that it
was built by a "Pasha." Higher again, upon a terreplein, are
lines of tanks laid out with all that lavishness of labour which
distinguishes similar works in Syria: it is, however, difficult
to assign any date to these constructions. The cisterns were
explored by Mr. Clarke and Lieutenant Amir, who dug into and
planned them. They descended by ropes, although there are two
flights of steps to the west and the south-west. The tanks are
built up from the base with blocks one foot nine inches long:
seven inches deep of rubbish were cleared away before reaching
the floor, composed of black stones bedded in layers of cement
above and below, and resting upon the ground-rock. The diggings
yielded only big pieces of salt fallen from the walls, and a
broken handmill of basalt. The sides are supported by pilasters
of cut stone, and the crown by four pillars in a double row: the
dividing arches, according to the plan, are not symmetrical. Hard
by, measuring twelve metres by twelve, is the quarry whence the
stone was taken; and near it stands the normal Egyptian
pigeon-tower, with its nest-niches.

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