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The Land of Midian, Vol. 2

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




Crossing the heads of sundry watercourses, we fell into the Wady
Umm el-Karáyat:[EN#57] it begins, as is here the rule, with a
gravelly bed, nice riding enough; it then breaks into ugly rocky
drops and slides, especially at the hill shoulders, where
thorn-trees and other obstacles often suggest that it is better
to dismount; and, finally, when nearing the mouth, it becomes a
matured copy of its upper self on an enlarged scale. Presently we
turned to the left over a short divide, and stared with
astonishment at the airy white heap, some two hundred feet high,
which, capped and strewed with snowy boulders, seemed to float
above our heads. The Wady-bed at our feet, lined along the left
bank with immense blocks of similar quartz, showed the bases of
black walls--ruins. "Behold Umm el-Karáyát!" exclaimed Nájí, the
guide, pointing with a wave of the arm, his usual theatrical
gesture, to the scene before us. We could hardly believe our
eyes: he had just assured us that the march from the fort is four
hours, and we had ridden it in two hours and fifteen minutes (=
six miles and a quarter).

Dismounting at once, and ordering the camp to be pitched near the
ruins, we climbed up the south-eastern face of the quartz-hill,
whose appearance was a novelty to us. Instead of being a regular,
round-headed cone, like the Jebel el-Abyaz for instance, the
summit was distinctly crateriform. The greater part of the day
was spent in examining it, and the following are the results.
This Jebel el-Marú showed, for the first time during the whole
journey, signs of systematic and civilized work. In many parts
the hill has become a mere shell. We found on the near side a
line of air-holes, cut in the quartz rock, disposed north-south
of one another; and preserving a rim, sunk like that of a
sarcophagus, to receive a cover. Possibly it was a precaution
against the plunder which ruined Brazilian Gongo Soco. The Arabs
have no fear of these places, as in Wellsted's day, and Abdullah,
the mulatto, readily descended into one about twelve feet below
the surface. Messrs. Clarke and Marie explored the deepest by
means of ropes, and declared that it measured sixty feet. They
had to be ready with their bayonets, as sign of hyenas was
common; and the beast, which slinks away in the open is apt, when
brought to bay in caverns, to rush past the intruder, carrying
off a jawful of calf or thigh.

This pit had two main galleries, both choked with rubbish,
leading to the east and west; and the explorers could see light
glimmering through the cracks and crevices of the roof--these
doubtless gave passage to the wild carnivore. In other parts the
surface, especially where the earth is red, was pitted with
shallow basins; and a large depression showed the sinking of the
hollowed crust. Negro quartz was evidently abundant; but we came
to the conclusion that the rock mostly worked was, like that of
Shuwák, a rosy, mauve-coloured schist, with a deep-red fracture,
and brilliant colours before they are tarnished by atmospheric
oxygen. It abounds in mica, which, silvery as fish-scales,
overspreads it in patches; and the precious metal had probably
been sought in the veinlets between the schist and its
quartz-walling. In two pieces, specks, or rather paillettes, of
gold were found lightly and loosely adhering to the "Marú ;" so
lightly, indeed, that they fell off when carelessly pocketed
Veins of schist still remained, but in the galleries they had
been followed out to the uttermost fibril.

Reaching the crateriform summit, we found that the head of the
cone had either "caved in," or had been carried off bodily to be
worked. Here traces of fire, seen on the rock, suggested that it
had been split by cold affusion. A view from the summit of this
burrowed mound gave us at once the measure of the past work and a
most encouraging prospect for the future. We determined that the
Marwah or "quartz-hill" of Umm el-Karáyát was the focus and
centre of the southern mining region, even as the northern
culminates in the Jebel el-Abyaz. Further experience rejected the
theory, and showed us half a dozen foci and centres in this true
quartz-region. The main hill projects a small southern spur, also
bearing traces of the miner. The block of green trap to the
south-west has a capping and a vein-network of quartz: here also
the surface is artificially pitted. Moreover, there are detached
white-yellow pitons to the north-east, the east, and the south;
whilst a promising hillock, bearing nearly due north, adjoins the
great outcrop. All have rounded conical summits and smooth sides,
proving that they are yet virgin; and here, perhaps, I should
prefer to begin work.

At our feet, and in north lat. 26° 13', lies the settlement, in a
short gravelly reach disposed north-west to south-east; and the
bed is enclosed by a rim of trap and quartz hills. The ruins lie
upon a fork where two gorges, running to the east and the
north-east, both fall into the broad Wady el-Khaur, and the
latter feeds the great Wady el-Miyáh, the "Fiumara of the
Waters," of which more presently. The remains on the upper
(eastern) branch-valley show where the rock was pulverized by the
number of grinding implements, large and small, coarse and fine,
all, save the most solid, broken to pieces by the mischievous
Bedawi. Some are of the normal basalt, which may also have served
for crushing grain; others are cut out of grey and ruddy
granites: a few are the common Mahrákah or "rub-stones," and the
many are handmills, of which we shall see admirable specimens
further on. One was an upper stone, with holes for the handle and
for feeding the mill: these articles are rare. I also secured the
split half of a ball, or rather an oblate spheroid, of serpentine
with depressions, probably where held by finger and thumb; the
same form is still used for grinding in the Istrian island of
Veglia. This is one of the few rude stone implements that
rewarded our careful search.

The north-eastern, which is the main Wady, has a sole uneven with
low swells and falls. It was dry as summer dust: I had expected
much in the way of botanical collection, but the plants were not
in flower, and the trees, stripped of their leaves, looked "black
as negroes out of holiday suits." Here lie the principal ruins,
forming a rude parallelogram from north-east to south-west. The
ground plan shows the usual formless heaps of stones and pebbles,
with the bases of squares and oblongs, regular and irregular,
large and small. There were no signs of wells or aqueducts; and
the few furnaces were betrayed only by ashen heaps, thin scatters
of scoriæ, and bits of flux--dark carbonate of lime. Here and
there mounds of the rosy micaceous schist, still unworked, looked
as if it had been washed out by the showers of ages. The general
appearance is that of an ergastulum like Umm Ámil: here perhaps
the ore was crushed and smelted, when not rich enough to be sent
down the Wady for water-working at the place where the inland
fort now is.

The quarrymen, placed at the most likely spots, were ordered to
spall rock for specimens: with their usual perversity, they
picked up, when unwatched, broken bits of useless stuff; they
spent the whole day dawdling over three camel-loads, and they
protested against being obliged to carry the sacks to their
tents. Meanwhile Nájí, who had told marvellous tales concerning a
well in the neighbouring hills, which showed the foundations of
houses in its bowels, was directed to guide Lieutenant Amir. He
objected that the enormous distance would be trying to the
stoutest mule, and yet he did not blush when it was reached after
a mile's ride to the southwest (240° mag.). It proved to be a
long-mouthed pit, sunk in the trap hill-slope some four fathoms
deep, but much filled up; and, so far from being built in, it had
not even the usual wooden platform. Eastward of it, and at the
head of the Wady Shuwaytanah, "the Devilling," lay a square ruin
like a small Mashghal of white quartz: here also were three
stones scribbled with pious ejaculations, such as Yá Allah! and
Bismillah, in a modern Kufic character.

Umm el-Karáyát, "the Mother of the Villages," derives her title,
according to the Baliyy, from the numerous offspring of minor
settlements scattered around her. We shall pass several on the
next day's march, and I am justified in setting down the number
at a dozen. The Wady el-Kibli, the southern valley, was visited
by Lieutenants Amir and Yusuf on April 8th, when we were encamped
below it at Abá'l-Marú[EN#58]. After riding about six miles to
the north-north-west, down the Wady el-Mismáh and up the Wady
el-‘Argah, they reached, on the left bank of the latter, the
ruins known as Marú el-Khaur. The remains of the daughter are
those of the "mother." There are two large heaps of quartz to the
north and to the south-east of the irregular triangle, whose
blunted apex faces northwards: the south-eastern hill shows an
irregular Fahr ("pit") in the reef of white stone, leading to a
number of little tunnels.

I lost all patience with Wellsted,[EN#59] whose blunders
concerning the Umm el-Karáyát are really surprising, even for a
sailor on camel-back. He reaches the ruins after ten miles from
the fort, when they lie between twelve and thirteen from El-Wijh.
He calls the porphyritic trap "dark granite." He makes the grand
quartz formation "limestone, of which the materials used for
constructing the town (coralline!) appear to have been chiefly
derived." He descends the "caves" with ropes and lights; yet he
does not perceive that they are mining shafts and tunnels, puits
d'air, adits for the workmen, and pits by which the ore was
"brought to grass." And the Hydrographic Chart is as bad. It
locates the inland fort six miles and three-quarters from the
anchorage, but the mine is thrust eastwards ten miles and a
quarter from the fort; the latter distance being, as has been
seen, little more than the former. Moreover, the ruins are placed
to the north, when they lie nearly on the same parallel of
latitude as El-Wijh. Ahmed Kaptán fixed them, by solar
observations, in north lat. 26° 13', so that we made only one
mile of southing. It ignores the porphyritic sub-range in which
the "Mother of the Villages" lies: and it brings close to the
east of it the tall peaks of the Tihámat-Balawíyyah' which, from
this point, rise like azure shadows on the horizon. Finally, it
corrupts Umm el-Karáyát to Feyrabat. "Impossible, but true!"

The night at the ruins was dry and cool, even cold; disturbed
only by the coughing of the men, the moaning of the camels, and
the bleating of the sheep. We would willingly have spent here
another day, but water and forage were absolutely wanting; and
the guides assured us that even greater marvels, in the shape of
ruins and quartz-reefs, lay ahead. We set out shortly after five
a.m. (March 31st): the morning was pearly and rosy; but puffs of
a warmer wind announced the Dufún (local Khamsin), which promised
us three days of ugly working weather. Leaving Umm el-Karáyát by
the upper or eastern valley-fork, we soon fell into and descended
its absorbent, the broad (northern) Wady el-Khaur. Upon the right
bank of the latter rose the lesser "Mountain of Quartz," a cone
white as snow, looking shadowy and ghostly in the petit jour, the
dim light of morning. For the next two hours (= seven miles) we
saw on both sides nothing but veins and outcrops of "Marú,"
worked as well as unworked. All was bare and barren as the
gypsum: the hardy ‘Aushaz (Lycium), allied to the tea-tree, is
the only growth that takes root in humus-filled hollows of the
stone.

Presently the quartz made way for long lines and broad patches of
a yellow-white, heat-altered clay, often revetted with iron, and
passably aping the nobler rock: from one reef I picked up what
appeared to be trachyte, white like that of Shaghab. The
hill-casing of the valley forms no regular line; the heaps of
black, red, and rusty trap are here detached and pyramidal, there
cliffing as if in presence of the sea. The vegetation improved as
we advanced; the trees were no longer black and heat-blasted; and
we recognized once more the dandelion, the thistle, the senna,
the Aristida grass, and other familiar growths. Tents, shepherds,
and large flocks of goats and kids showed that water was not
distant; and, here in Baliyy-land, even the few young women
seemed to have no fear of the white face.

After a slow, dull ride in the burning and sickly wind, we
crossed the head of our former route, Wady Zurayb the Ugly, and
presently entered the Wady el-Kubbah ("of the Cupola,"), where
our immediate destination rose before us. It is a grisly black
saddleback, banded with two perpendicular stripes of dark stone
that shines like specular iron; and upon its tall northern end,
the pommel, stands a small ruin, the oft spoken of "Dome."
Sketches of paths wind up the western flank; but upon this line,
we were assured, no ruins are seen save a few pits. So we rounded
the block by the north, following the broad Wady to the Máyat
el-Kubbah, water-pits in the sand whose produce had not been
libelled when described as salt, scanty, and stinking. The track
then turned up a short, broad branch-Wady, running from south to
north, and falling into the left bank of the "Dome Valley:" a few
yards brought us to a halt at the ruins of El-Kubbah. We had
pushed on sharply during the last half of the way, and our
morning's ride had lasted four hours (= thirteen miles).

The remains lie in the uneven quartzose basin at the head of the
little lateral watercourse: they are built with good cement, and
they evidently belong to the race that worked the "Mother of the
Villages;" but there is nothing to distinguish them except the
ruins of a large Sákiyah ("draw-well"), with its basin of
weathered alabaster. We were perplexed by the shallow conical
pits in the porphyritic trap, to the east and west of the "Dome
Hill;" the ground is too porous for rain cisterns, and the depth
is not sufficient for quarrying. The furnaces showed the normal
slag; but the only "metals" lying around them were poor
iron-clay, and a shining black porphyry, onyxed with the whitest
quartz. There were, however, extensive scatters of Negro, which
had evidently been brought there; and presently we found large
heaps of rosy-coloured, washed-out schist.[EN#60] These explained
the raison d'être of this dreary and dismal hole.

Meanwhile the juniors ascended the rocky "Kubbah" hill, which
proved to be a small matter of 120 feet (aner. 29.34) above the
valley-sole (aner. 29.46). The "Dome" was nothing but a truncated
circle of wall, porphyry and cement, just large enough to hold a
man; the cupola-roof, if there ever had been one, was clean gone;
and adjoining it yawned a rock-cut pit some fifteen feet deep. I
came to the conclusion that here might have been a look-out
where, possibly, the "bale-fire" was also lit. The
"ascensionists" brought back a very healthy thirst.

We rested till noon in the filmy shade of the thorn-trees. The
caravan was at once sent forward to reach the only good water,
lying, said the guides, many a mile beyond. We had made up our
minds for a good long march; and I was not a little vexed when,
after half an hour, we were led out of the Wady el-Kubbah, whose
head, our proper line, lies to the north, into its eastern
influent, the Wady el-Dasnah. Here, after an afternoon "spell" of
forty-five minutes (= two miles and a half), and a total of four
hours and forty-five minutes (= fifteen miles and a half), a day
nearly half wasted, we found the tents pitched. The heat had
strewed the Wady with soldiers and quarrymen; and the large pit
in the bed, supplying "water sweet as the Nile,', showed a swarm
of struggling blacks, which the Egyptian officers compared with
Aráfít or "demons;" we with large pismires. A sentinel was placed
to prevent waste and pollution at the Máyat el-Dasnah, whose
position is in north lat. 26° 23'.

April Fools' day was another that deserved to be marked with a
white stone. I aroused the camp at 3.30 a.m., in order that the
camels might load with abundance of water: we were to reach the
springs of Umm Gezáz, but a presentiment told me that we might
want drink. At that hour the camp was a melancholy sight: the
Europeans surly because they had discussed a bottle of cognac
when they should have slept; the good Sayyid without his coffee,
and perhaps without his prayers; Wakíl Mohammed sorrowfully
attempting to gnaw tooth-breaking biscuit; and the Bedawin
working and walking like somnambules. However, at 5.10 a.m. we
struck north, over a low divide of trap hill, by a broad and
evidently made road, and regained the Wady el-Kubbah: here it is
a pleasant spectacle rich in trees, and vocal with the cooing of
the turtle-dove. After an hour's sharp riding we reached its
head, a fair round plain some two miles across, and rimmed with
hills of red, green, and black plutonics, the latter much
resembling coal. It was a replica of the Sadr-basin below the
Hismá, even to the Khuraytah or "Pass" at the northern end. Here,
however, the Col is a mere bogus; that is, no raised plateau lies
beyond it.

We crossed a shallow prism and a feeding-basin: an ugly little
gorge then led to the important Wady Sirr. We are now in the
hydrographic area of the Wady Nejd,[EN#61] which, numbering
influents by the dozen, falls into the Salbah (Thalbah) of Sharm
Dumaghah. The Sirr, though still far from its mouth, is at least
three miles broad; and the guides speak of it as the Asl
el-Balawíyyah, or "Old Home of the Baliyy." The view from its bed
is varied and extensive. Behind us lies the Tihámat-Balawíyyah,
the equivalent of the Gháts of North Midian, from the Zahd to the
Shárr. The items are the little Jebel ‘Antar, which, peeping over
the Fiumara's high left bank, is continued south by the lower
Libn. The latter attaches to the higher Libn, whose triad of
peaks, the central and highest built of three distinct
castellations, flush and blush with a delicate pink-white cheek
as it receives the hot caresses of the sun. We are now haunted by
the Libn, which, like its big brother the Shárr, seems everywhere
to accompany us.

Beyond the neutral ground, over which we are travelling, appear
in front the pale-blue heights bordering the Wady Nejd to the
north-west, and apparently connected with the Jebelayn el-Jayy in
the far north (30° mag.). To the north-east the view is closed by
the lumpy Jebel el-Kurr (the Qorh of Arabian geographers?);
followed southwards by the peaked wall of the Jebel el-Ward, and
by El-Safhah with its "Pins." For the last eighteen miles we had
seen no quartz, which, however, might have veined the
underground-rock. The sole of the Sirr now appeared spread with
snow, streaked and patched with thin white paint; the stones were
mostly water-rolled, the discharge of valleys draining from afar.
The ground was unpleasantly pitted and holed; the camels were
weak with semi-starvation and the depressing south-wester;
Lieutenant Amir put his dromedary to speed, resulting in a
nose-flattening fall; and the Sayyid nearly followed suit.

This is our second day of Khamsin; yet on the northern slope of
the great Fiumara we meet the cool land-wind. Either it or the
sea-breeze generally sets in between seven and eight a.m., when
the stony, sandy world has been thoroughly sunned. The short
divide beyond the far bank of the Sirr is strewn with glittering
mica-schist that takes the forms of tree-trunks and rotten wood;
and with dark purple-blue fragments of clay-slate looking as if
they had been worked. A counterslope of the same material, which
makes excellent path-metal placed us in the Wady Rubayyigh ("the
Little Rábigh" or "Green-grown Spring"), a short and
proportionally very broad branch draining to the Sirr. Here large
outcrops of quartz mingled with the clay slate. A few yards
further it abutted upon a small gravelly basin with ruins and a
huge white reef of "Mará," which caused a precipitate
dismounting. We had marched only four hours (= thirteen miles);
but the loss of time has its compensations. Our Arabs, who
consider this a fair day's work, will now, in hopes of a halt,
show us every strew of quartz and every fragment of wall. They
congratulated us upon reaching a part of their country absolutely
unvisited by Europeans.

The site of our discovery was the water-parting of the Wady
Rubayyigh with the Wady Rábigh, both feeders of the Sirr; this to
the north, that to the south. The ruins, known as Umm el-Haráb,
"Mother of Desolation," are the usual basement-lines: they lie in
the utterly waterless basin, our camping-ground, stretching west
of Mará Rubayyigh, the big white reef. This "Mother" bears nearly
north of Umm el-Karáyát, in north lat. 26° 33' 36" (Ahmed
Kaptán): her altitude was made upwards of a thousand feet above
sea-level (aner. 28.92)

At Umm el-Haráb we saw for the first time an open mine,
scientifically worked by the men of old. They chose a pear-shaped
quartz-reef; the upper dome exposed, the converging slopes set
and hidden in green trap to the east and west, and the invisible
stalk extending downwards, probably deep into Earth's bowels.
They began by sinking, as we see from certain rounded apertures,
a line of shafts striking north-north-east (45°--50° mag.) to
south-south-west across the summit, which may measure one hundred
and twenty yards. The intervening sections of the roof are now
broken away; and a great yawning crevasse in the hill-top gives
this saddleback of bare cream-coloured rock, spangled with white
where recently fractured, the semblance of a "comb" or cresting
reef.

We descended into this chasm, whose slope varies from a maximum
of 45° to a minimum of 36° at the south. The depth apparently did
not exceed thirty feet, making allowance for the filling up of
centuries; but in places the hollow sound of the hammer suggested
profounder pits and wells. I should greatly doubt that such
shallow sinking as this could have worked out any beyond the
upper part of the vein. Here it measures from six to eight feet
in diameter, diminishing to four and a half and even three below.
The sloping roof has been defended from collapse by large pillars
of the rock, left standing as in the old Egyptian quarries; it
shows the clumsy but efficient practice that preceded timbering.
The material worked was evidently the pink-coloured and
silver-scaled micaceous schist; but there was also a whitish
quartz, rich in geodes and veinlets of dark-brown and black dust.
The only inhabitants of the cave, bats and lizards (Gongylus
ocellatus, L., etc.), did not prevent M. Lacaze making careful
study of the excavation; the necessity of brown shadows, however,
robs the scene of its charm, the delicate white which still
shimmers under its transparent veil of shade. Similar features
exist at El-Muwaylah and El-Aujah, in the wilderness of Kadesh:
but those are latomiæ; these are gold mines.[EN#62]

Another sign of superior labour is shown by the quartz-crushing
implements. Here they are of three kinds: coarse and rough
basaltic lava for the first and rudest work; red granite and
syenitic granite for the next stage; and, lastly, an admirable
handmill of the compactest grey granite, smooth as glass and hard
as iron. Around the pin-hole are raised and depressed concentric
circles intended for ornament; and the "dishing" towards the rim
is regular as if turned by machinery. We have seen as yet nothing
like this work; nor shall we see anything superior to it. All are
nether millstones, so carefully smashed that one can hardly help
suspecting the kind of superstitious feeling which suggested
iconoclasm. The venerable Shaykh ‘Afnán showed a touching
ignorance concerning the labours of the ancients; and, when
lectured about the Nabat (Nabathæans), only exclaimed, "Allah,
Allah!"

In the evening we ascended the porphyry hills to the north of the
little camping-basin; and we found the heights striped by two
large vertical bands of quartz. The eastern vein, like the Jebel
el-Marú, has a north-east to south-west strike (45° mag.); the
western runs east-west with a dip to south. From the summit we
could see that the quartz-mountain, as usual an exaggerated vein,
is hemmed in on both sides by outcrops and hills of trap, black,
green, and yellow, which culminate eastward in the Jebel el-Guráb
(Juráb). We had a fine bird's-eye view of the Wady Rábigh, and of
our next day's march towards the Shafah Mountains: the former was
white with quartz as if hail-strewn. Far beyond its right bank
rose an Ash'hab, or "grey head," which seemed to promise
quartzose granite: it will prove an important feature. Before
sleeping, I despatched to El-Wijh two boxes of micaceous schist
and two bags of quartz, loads for a pair of camels.





Chapter XVII.
The March Continued to El-Badá–Description of the Plain Badais.



After the exciting scenes of the last three days, this stage was
dull riding, and consequently, I fear, it will be dull reading as
well as writing. We set off afoot betimes (5.10 a.m.) in the
still warm morning that augured Khamsín: the third day was now
telling heavily on man and beast. A walk of ten minutes led down
the rough line of the little water-course draining the Marú
Rubayyigh to the Wady Rábigh. At a re-entering angle of the
junction, a shallow pit was sunk; the sand became moist and red,
and presently it was underlaid by a rubble of porphyritic trap.
Nothing more!

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