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The Land of Midian, Vol. 2

R >> Richard Burton >> The Land of Midian, Vol. 2



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The Land of Midian (Revisited).

By Richard F. Burton.

In Two Volumes.

Vol. II.

C. Kegan Paul & Co.
London:

1879.





To the Memory of My Much Loved Niece,
Maria Emily Harriet Stisted,
Who Died at Dovercourt,
November 12, 1878.





CONTENTS



PART II.
The March Through Central and Eastern Midian. (Continued)

Chapter XI. The Unknown Lands South of the Hismá--Ruins of
Shuwák and Shaghab
Chapter XII. From Shaghab to Zibá--Ruins of El-Khandakí and Umm
Ámil--The Turquoise Mine--Return to El-Muwaylah
Chapter XIII. A Week Around and Upon the Shárr Mountain--Résumé
of the March Through Eastern or Central Midian
Chapter XIV. Down South--To El-Wijh–Notes on the Quarantine--
The Hutaym Tribe.
Chapter XV. The Southern Sulphur-Hill--The Cruise to El-Haurá-
-Notes on the Baliyy Tribe and the Volcanic
Centres of North-Western Arabia
Chapter XVI. Our Last March--The Inland Fort--Ruins of the
Gold-Mines at Umm El-Karáyát and Umm El-Haráb
Chapter XVII. The March Continued to El-Badá--Description of the
Plain Badais
Chapter XVIII. Coal a "Myth"--March to Marwát--Arrival at the
Wady Hamz
Chapter XIX. The Wady Hamz--The Classical Ruin--Abá'l-
Marú, The Mine of "Marwah"--Return to El-
Wijh--Résumé of the Southern Journey
Conclusion

Appendix I. Dates of the Three Journeys (Northern,
Central, and Southern) made by the Second
Khedivial Expedition
Appendix II. EXpenses of the Expedition to Midian,
Commanded by Captain R. F. Burton, H.B.M.
Consul, Trieste
Appendix III. Preserved Provisions and other Stores,
Supplied by Messrs. Voltéra Bros., of the
Ezbekiyyah, Cairo
Appendix IV. Botany and List of Insects
Appendix V. Meteorological Journal

Index





PART II.
The March Through Central and Eastern Midian.
(Continued.)





Chapter XI.
The Unknown Lands South of the Hismá–Ruins of Shuwák and Shaghab.



We have now left the region explored by Europeans; and our line
to the south and the south-east will lie over ground wholly new.
In front of us the land is no longer Arz Madyan: we are entering
South Midian, which will extend to El-Hejáz. As the march might
last longer than had been expected, I ordered fresh supplies from
El-Muwaylah to meet us in the interior viâ Zibá. A very small boy
acted dromedary-man; and on the next day he reached the fort,
distant some thirty-five and a half direct geographical miles
eastward with a trifling of northing.

We left the Jayb el-Khuraytah on a delicious morning (6.15 a.m.,
February 26th), startling the gazelles and the hares from their
breakfast graze.

The former showed in troops of six; and the latter were still
breeding, as frequent captures of the long-eared young proved.
The track lay down the Wady Dahal and other influents of the
great Wady Sa'lúwwah, a main feeder of the Dámah. We made a
considerable détour between south-south-east and south-east to
avoid the rocks and stones discharged by the valleys of the
Shafah range on our left. To the right rose the Jibál el-Tihámah,
over whose nearer brown heights appeared the pale blue peaks of
Jebel Shárr and its southern neighbour, Jebel Sa'lúwwah.

At nine a.m. we turned abruptly eastward up the Wady
el-Sulaysalah, whose head falls sharply from the Shafah range.
The surface is still Hismá ground, red sand with blocks of ruddy
grit, washed down from the plateau on the left; and, according to
Furayj, it forms the south-western limit of the Harrah. The
valley is honeycombed into man-traps by rats and lizards, causing
many a tumble, and notably developing the mulish instinct. We
then crossed a rough and rocky divide, Arabicè a Majrá, or, as
the Bedawin here pronounce it, a "Magráh,"[EN#1] which takes its
name from the tormented Ruways ridge on the right. After a hot,
unlively march of four hours (= eleven miles), on mules worn out
by want of water, we dismounted at a queer isolated lump on the
left of the track. This Jebel el-Murayt'bah ("of the Little
Step") is lumpy grey granite of the coarsest elements, whose
false strata, tilted up till they have become quasi-vertical, and
worn down to pillars and drums, crown the crest like gigantic
columnar crystallizations. We shall see the same freak of nature
far more grandly developed into the "Pins" of the Shárr. It has
evidently upraised the trap, of which large and small blocks are
here and there imbedded in it. The granite is cut in its turn by
long horizontal dykes of the hardest quadrangular basalt,
occasionally pudding'd with banded lumps of red jasper and
oxydulated iron: from afar they look like water-lines, and in
places they form walls, regular as if built. The rounded forms
result from the granites flaking off in curved laminæ, like
onion-coats. Want of homogeneity in the texture causes the
granite to degrade into caves and holes: the huge blocks which
have fallen from the upper heights often show unexpected hollows
in the under and lower sides. Above the water we found an immense
natural dolmen, under which apparently the Bedawin take shelter.
After El-Murayt'bah the regular granitic sequence disappears, nor
will it again be visible till we reach Shaghab (March 2nd).

About noon we remounted and rounded the south of the block,
disturbing by vain shots two fine black eagles. I had reckoned
upon the "Water of El-Murayt'bah," in order to make an
exceptional march after so many days of deadly slow going. But
the cry arose that the rain-puddle was dry. We had not brought a
sufficient supply with us, and twenty-two miles to and from the
Wady Dahal was a long way for camels, to say nothing of their
owners and the danger of prowling Ma'ázah. In front water lay
still farther off, according to the guides, who, it will be seen,
notably deceived us. So I ordered the camp to be pitched, after
reconnoitering the locale of the water; and we all proceeded to
work, with a detachment of soldiers and quarrymen. It was not a
rain-puddle, but a spring rising slowly in the sand, which had
filled up a fissure in the granite about four feet broad; of
these crevices three were disposed parallel to one another, and
at different heights. They wanted only clearing out; the produce
was abundant, and though slightly flavoured with iron and
sulphur, it was drinkable. The thirsty mules amused us not a
little: they smelt water at once; hobbled as they were, all
hopped like kangaroos over the plain, and with long ears well to
the fore, they stood superintending the operation till it was
their turn to be happy.

Our evening at the foot of El-Ruways was cheered, despite the
flies, the earwigs, and the biting Ba'úzah beetle, which here
first put in an appearance, by the weird and fascinating aspect
of the southern Hismá-wall, standing opposite to us, and distant
about a mile from the dull drab-coloured basin, El-Majrá. Based
upon mighty massive foundations of brown and green trap, the
undulating junction being perfectly defined by a horizontal white
line, the capping of sandstone rises regular as if laid in
courses, with a huge rampart falling perpendicular upon the
natural slope of its glacis. This bounding curtain is called the
Taur el-Shafah, the "inaccessible part of the Lip-range." Further
eastward the continuity of the coping has been broken and
weathered into the most remarkable castellations: you pass mile
after mile of cathedrals, domes, spires, minarets, and pinnacles;
of fortresses, dungeons, bulwarks, walls, and towers; of
platforms, buttresses, and flying buttresses. These Girágir
(Jirájir), as the Bedawin call them, change shape at every new
point of view, and the eye never wearies of their infinite
variety. Nor are the tints less remarkable than the forms. When
the light of day warms them with its gorgeous glaze, the
buildings wear the brightest hues of red concrete, like a certain
house near Prince's Gate, set off by lambent lights of lively
pink and balas-ruby, and by shades of deep transparent purple,
while here and there a dwarf dome or a tumulus gleams sparkling
white in the hot sun-ray. The even-glow is indescribably lovely,
and all the lovelier because unlasting: the moment the red disc
disappears, the glorious rosy smile fades away, leaving the pale
grey ghosts of their former selves to gloom against the gloaming
of the eastern sky. I could not persuade M. Lacaze to transfer
this vividity of colour to canvas: he had the artist's normal
excuse, "Who would believe it?"

The next morning saw the Expedition afoot at six a.m., determined
to make up for a half by the whole day's work so long intended.
The track struck eastward, and issued from the dull hollow, Majrá
el-Ruways, by a made road about a mile and a half long, a cornice
cut in the stony flanks of a hill whose head projected southwards
into the broad Wady Hujayl ("the Little Partridge"). This line
seems to drain inland; presently it bends round by the east and
feeds the Wady Dámah. Rain must lately have fallen, for the earth
is "purfled flowers," pink, white, and yellow. The latter is the
tint prevailing in Midian, often suggesting the careless European
wheat-field, in which "shillock" or wild mustard rears its
gamboge head above the green. Midian wants not only the charming
oleander and the rugged terebinth, typical of the Desert; but
also the "blood of Adonis," the lovely anemone which lights up
the Syrian landscape like the fisherman's scarlet cap in a
sea-piece. This stage introduced us to the Hargul (Harjal, Rhazya
stricta), whose perfume filled the valley with the clean smell of
the henna-bloom, the Eastern privet--Mr. Clarke said
"wallflowers." Our mules ate it greedily, whilst the country
animals, they say, refuse it: the flowers, dried and pounded,
cure by fumigation "pains in the bones." Here also we saw for the
first time the quaint distaff-shape of the purple red Masrúr
(Cynomorium coccineum, Linn.), from which the Bedawi "cook
bread." It is eaten simply peeled and sun-dried, when it has a
vegetable taste slightly astringent as if by tannin, something
between a potato and a turnip; or its rudely pounded flour is
made into balls with soured milk. This styptic, I am told by Mr.
R. B. Sharpe, of the British Museum, was long supposed to be
peculiar to Malta; hence its pre-Linnaean name (Fungus
Melitensis).[EN#2] Now it is known to occur through the
Mediterranean to India. Let me here warn future collectors of
botany in Midian that throughout the land the vegetable kingdom
follows the rule of the mineral: every march shows something new;
and he who neglects to gather specimens, especially of the
smaller flowers, in one valley, will perhaps find none of them in
those adjoining.

A denser row of trees lower down the Wady Hujayl led to the water
of Amdán (Mídán?), about an hour and a half from our last
nighting-place; yesterday it had been reported six hours distant.
High towering on our left (north) rose three huge buttresses of
the Girágir. In front stood a marvellous background of domes and
arches, cones and ninepins, all decayed Hismá, blurred and broken
by the morning mist, which could hardly be called a fog; and
forming a perspective of a dozen distances. Now they curve from
north-east to south-west in a kind of scorpion's tail, with
detached vertebrae torn and wasted by the adjacent plutonic
outcrops; and looking from the west they suggest blood-red islets
rising above the great gloomy waves of trap and porphyry. This
projection will remain in sight until we reach Shuwák; and in
places we shall see it backed by the basalts and lavas of the
straightlined Harrah.

Presently turning sharp to the right (south-east), we struck
across a second divide, far more shallow than the first; and fell
into the northern basin of the great Dámah valley, also known as
El-Rahabah, "the Open;"--the Rehoboth ("spaces") of the Hebrews.
Like yesterday's, the loose red sand is Hismá; and it is also
scattered with Harrah lava. After a four hours' ride we halted to
enable the caravan to come up. Our Shaykhs were bent upon making
twelve miles the average day's work; and their "little game" was
now to delay as much as possible. Here we again found flocks of
sheep and goats tended by young girls, who ran away like
ostriches, and by old women who did not: on the contrary, Sycorax
enjoyed asking the news and wrangling over a kid. The camels
throughout this country seem to be always under the charge of men
or boys.

Here began our study of the great Wady Da'mah, whose fame as an
Arabian Arcadia extends far and wide, and whose possession has
caused many a bloody battle. We now see it at its best, in early
spring morning, when

"The landscape smiles
Calm in the sun, and silent are the hills
And valleys, and the blue serene of air."

This notable feature is a Haddúdah ("frontier divider"), which in
ancient days separated the ‘Ukbíyyah ("Ukbah-land") to the north
from the Balawi'yyah ("Baliyy-land") south. The latter still
claim it as their northern limit; but the intrusive Egypto-Arabs
have pushed their way far beyond this bourne. Its present Huwayti
owners, the Sulaymiyyín, the Sulaymát, the Jeráfín, and other
tribes, are a less turbulent race than the northerns because they
are safe from the bandit Ma'ázah: they are more easily managed,
and they do not meet a fair offer with the eternal Yaftah
‘Allah--"Allah opens."[EN#3]

The head of the Dámah, a great bay in the Hismá-wall to the east,
is now in sight of us; and we shall pass its mouth, which
debouches into the sea below Zibá. This tract is equally abundant
in herds (camels), flocks, and vegetation: in places a thin
forest gathers, and the tree-clumps now form a feature in the
scenery. The sole, a broad expanse of loose red arenaceous
matter, the washings of the plateau, is fearfully burrowed and
honeycombed; it is also subject, like its sister the Sadr, to the
frequent assault of "devils," or sand-pillars. That it is
plentifully supplied with water, we learn from the presence of
birds. The cries of the caravane, the "knock-kneed" plover of
Egypt, yellow-beaked and black-eyed, resounded in the more barren
belts. A lovely little sun-bird (Nectarinia oseœ?), which the
Frenchmen of course called colibri, with ravishing reflections of
green and gold, flashed like a gem thrown from shrub to shrub:
this oiseau mouche is found scattered throughout Midian; we saw
it even about El-Muwaylah, but I had unfortunately twice
forgotten dust-shot. The Egyptian Rakham (percnopter), yellow
with black-tipped wings; a carrion-eater, now so rare, and the
common brown kite, still so common near civilized Cairo, soared
in the sky; while the larger vultures, perching upon the
rock-ridges, suggested Bedawi sentinels. The ravens, here as
elsewhere, are a plague: flights of them occupy favourite places,
and they prey upon the young lambs, hares, and maimed birds.

We advanced another five miles, and crossed to the southern side
of the actual torrent-bed, whose banks, strewed with a quantity
of dead flood-wood entangling the trees, and whose flaky clays,
cracked to the shape of slabs and often curling into tubes of
natural pottery, show that at times the Hismá must discharge
furious torrents. We camped close to the Dámah at the foot of the
Jebel el-Balawi; the water, known as Máyat el-Jebayl ("of the
Hillock"), lay ahead in a low rocky snout: it was represented as
being distant a full hour, and the mules did not return from it
till three had passed; but thirty minutes would have been nearer
the truth. The Nile-drinkers turned up their fastidious noses at
the supply, but Lieutenant Amir, who had graduated in the rough
campaigning-school of the Súdán, pronounced it "regular."

The nighting-place on the Dámah was as pretty and picturesque as
the Majrá was tame and uncouth. While the west was amber clear,
long stripes of purpling, crimson, flaming cloud, to the south
and the east, set off the castled crags disposed in a semicircle
round the Wady-head; and the "buildings" appeared art-like
enough to be haunted ground, the domain of the Fata Morgana, a
glimpse of the City of Brass built by Shaddaá, son of ‘Ad. When
the stars began to glitter sharp and clear, our men fell to
singing and dancing; and the boy Husayn Ganinah again
distinguished himself by his superior ribaldry. Our work was more
respectable and prosaic, firing a mule with a swollen back.

Within a mile or so of us stood some Bedawi tents, which we had
passed on the march: they were deserted by the men, here
Sulaymát, who drive their camels to the wilds sometimes for a
week at a time. An old wife who brought us a goat for sale, and
who begged that Husayn, the Básh-Buzúk, might pass the night with
her, in order to shoot an especially objectionable wolf, had a
long tale to tell of neighbouring ruins. She also reported that
near the same place there is a well with steps, into which the
Arabs had descended some seven fathoms; presently they found
houses occupying the galleries at the bottom, and fled in terror.

Lieutenant Amir was sent to sketch and survey the site next
morning; and he was lucky enough to be guided by one Sa'id bin
Zayfullah, the Sulaymi, whose prime dated from the palmy days of
the great Mohammed Ali Pasha. He acknowledged as his friends the
grandfather, and even the father, of our guide Furayj; but the
latter he ignored, looking upon him as a mere Walad ("lad").
Moreover, he remembered the birth of Shaykh Mohammed ‘Afnán,
chief of the Baliyy, which took place when he himself had already
become a hunter of the gazelle.[EN#4] According to him, the
remains are still known as the Dár ("house") or Diyár ("houses")
El-Nasárá--"of the Nazarenes," that is, of the Nabathaeans. The
former term is retained here, as in Sinai, by popular tradition;
and the latter is clean forgotten throughout Midian.[EN#5]

Riding down the Wady Dámah to the southwest, Lieutenant Amir came
upon a spring in a stone-revetted well near the left bank: this
Ayn el-Bada' is not to be confounded with the Badí' water, or
with the Badá plain, both of which we shall presently visit. A
strew of broken quartz around it showed the atelier, and
specimens of scattered fragments, glass and pottery, were
gathered. The settlement-ruins, which the guide called
El-Kantarah, lie further down upon a southern influent of the
main line: they are divided into two blocks, one longer than the
other. Lieutenant Amir made a careful plan of the remains, and
then pushed forward to Shuwák by the direct track, westward of
that taken by the caravan. He arrived in camp, none the worse for
a well-developed "cropper;" his dromedary had put its foot in a
hole, and had fallen with a suddenness generally unknown to the
cameline race.

By way of geographical exercitation, we had all drawn our several
plans, showing, after Arab statement, the lay of Shaghab and
Shuwák, the two ruins which we were about to visit. Nothing could
be more ridiculous when the sketch-maps came to be compared. This
was owing to the route following the three sides of a long
parallelogram; whilst the fourth is based upon the Wady Dámah,
causing considerable complication. And, the excursus ended, all
were convinced that we had made much southing, when our furthest
point was not more than five miles south of Zibá (north lat. 27°
20').

We quitted the great valley at six a.m. (February 28th), and
struck up the Wady Shuwák, an influent that runs northwards to
the Dámah's left bank. On the stony ground above the right side
of this Fiumara lay six circles of stones, disposed in a line
from north-east to south-west: they may have been ruins of Hufrah
("water-pits"). As we rose the Nullah surface was pied with white
flowers, the early growth which here takes the place of
primroses. I had some difficulty in persuading our good friend
Furayj, who had not seen the country for fifteen years, to engage
as guide one of the many Bedawin camel-herds: his course seemed
to serpentine like that of an animal grazing--he said it was
intended to show the least stony road--and, when he pointed with
the wave of the maimed right hand, he described an arc of some
90°. The Sulaymi lad caught the nearest camel, climbed its sides
as you would a tree, and, when the animal set off at a lumbering
gallop, pressed the soles of his feet to the ribs, with exactly
the action of a Simiad; clinging the while, like grim Death, to
the hairy hump.

After some six miles we attempted a short cut, a gorge that
debouched on the left bank of the Shuwák valley. It showed at
once a complete change of formation: the sides were painted with
clays of variegated colours, crystallized lime and porphyritic
conglomerates, tinted mauve-purple as if by manganese. Further
on, the path, striking over broken divides and long tracts of
stony ground, became rough riding: it was bordered by the usual
monotonous, melancholy hills of reddish and greenish trap, whose
slaty and schist-like edges in places stood upright. On the
summit of the last Col appeared the ruins of an outwork, a large
square and a central heap of boulder-stones. Straight in front
rose the block that backs our destination, the Jebel el-Sáni', or
"Mountain of the Maker," the artificer par excellence, that is,
the blacksmith: it is so called from a legendary shoer of horses
and mules, who lived there possibly in the days before Sultán
Selim. It is remarkable for its twin peaks, sharp-topped blocks,
the higher to the east, and called by the Bedawin Naghar and
Nughayr. The guides spoke of a furnace near the summit of these
remarkable cones; excellent landmarks which we shall keep in
sight during several marches. At length, after ten miles of slow
work, we saw before us, stretched as upon a map, the broad valley
with its pink sands; the Daum-trees, the huge ‘Ushr or "Apple of
Sodom," the fan-palm bush, and the large old Jujubes--here an
invariable sign of former civilization--which informed us that
there lay fair Shuwák.

The dull gorge introduced us to what was then a novelty in
Midian; but we afterwards found it upon the cold heights of the
Shárr, where it supplied us with many a dainty dish. This was the
Shinnár[EN#6] (caccabis), a partridge as large as a pheasant, and
flavoured exactly like the emigrant from Phasis.

The coat, the clock! clock! and the nimble running over the
rocks, ever the favourite haunt, denote the "perdix." The head is
black, as in the C. melanocephala of Abyssinia, and the legs and
feet are red like the smaller "Greek" caccabis that inhabits the
Hismá; the male birds have no spurs, and they are but little
larger than their mates. There seems to be no difficulty in
keeping them; we bought a hen and chicks caged at El-Wijh, but
whether they lived or not I neglected to note. Here, too, we
learned the reason why the falcons and the hawks (Falco milvus,
F. gentilis, etc.) are so fierce and so well-fed. The tyrant of
the air raises the partridge or the quail by feinting a swoop,
and, as it hurries away screaming aloud, follows it leisurely at
a certain distance. Finally, when the quarry reaches the place
intended--at least, the design so appears--the falcon stoops and
ends the chase. The other birds were ring-doves, turtles, and the
little "butcher" impaling, gaily as a "gallant Turk," its live
victim upon a long thorn.

Shuwák, which lies in about north lat. 27° 15', can be no other than
the placed by Ptolemy (vi. 7) in north lat. 26° 15'; and, if
so, we must add one degree to his latitudes, which are sixty miles
too low.[EN#7] According to Sprenger ("Alt. Geog.," p. 25),
and do not fit into any of the Alexandrian's routes; and
were connected only with their ports Rhaunathos (M'jirmah?) and
Phoenicon Vicus (Zibá?). But both these cities were large and
important centres, both of agriculture and of mining industry,
forming crucial stations on the great Nabathæan highway, the
overland between Leukè Kóme and Petra. The line was kept up by the
Moslems until Sultán Selim's superseded it; and hence the modern
look of the remains which at first astonished us so much. The
tradition of the Hajj-passage is distinctly preserved by the
Bedawin; and I have little doubt that metal has been worked here as
lately, perhaps, as the end of the last century. But by whom, again,
deponent ventures not to say, even to guess.

The site of Shuwák is a long island in the broad sandy Wady of
the same name, which, as has been remarked, feeds the Dámah. Its
thalweg has shifted again and again: the main line now hugs the
southern or left bank, under the slopes and folds of the Jebel
el-Sáni'; whilst a smaller branch, on the northern side, is
subtended by the stony divide last crossed. At the city the lay
of the valley is from north-east to south-west, and the altitude
is about seventeen hundred feet (aner. 28.28). The head still
shows the castellations of the Hismá. Looking down-stream, beyond
the tree-dotted bed and the low dark hills that divide this basin
from the adjoining Wady to the south, we see the tall grey tops
of the Jebel Zigláb (Zijláb) and of the Shahbá-Gámirah--the
"ashen-coloured (Peak) of Gámirah"--the latter being the name of
a valley. Both look white by the side of the dark red and green
rocks; and we shall presently find that they mark the granite
region lying south and seaward of the great trap formations. We
were not sorry to see it again--our eyes were weary of the gloomy
plutonic curtains on either side.

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