John Ball

“ Wadi Elemikan is the name given to an ill-defined system of drainage channels meandering over the plain south of Gebel Abu Gurdi. It originates on the main watershed, and at its head there is a very easy pass over into the Wadi Lahami, which descends to the sea. At this point, which is 590 metres above the sea, the watershed is ill-defined, being a sandy plain; but while to the west the plain continues with only a slight fall, to the east it soon gives place to rugged country through which narrow wadis descend rapidly towards the sea coast. ”

“ It is best ascended by a very winding tributary of the Wadi Gemal; this gully, up which there is a road, leads past the south-west foot of the hill, and the climb is only one of some 200 metres. The rocks round Madaret Um Gamil are mostly schists, but the top of the hill is a hard gabbro like that of Gebel Atut, weathered into rusty looking blocks. A good view seawards is obtained from the summit, some very red granite forming a conspicuous feature in the low hills between it and the coast. ”

“ Above the spring, the steepness of the wadi renders its ascent very difficult for loaded camels, and there is no road through its head, but guides state that there is good grazing at certain seasons in its upper parts, and animals are taken there to feed. Below the spring, the wadi opens out and curves eastward round the foot of the remarkable rounded peak of Abu Hodeid Oqla to join Wadi Hasium on the plain. ”

“ After receiving the Wadi Zabara, Wadi Ghadir continues its course south-east past Gebel Ghadir, from the slopes of which numerous small feeders enter the main channel. Almost due south of Gebel Ghadir, in the southern one of two branches into which the wadi splits as it passes round a low island-like mass of hills, is Bir Ghadir, a well sunk in the alluvium of the wadi floor. When I visited it early in 1906 this well was filled by downwash, and the Arabs of the district deferred digging it out until the rock basins were empty; it is an important water source and is said to yield good supplies. ”

“ The Elba district is, I believe, the only place in the Eastern Desert of Egypt where vegetable growth is so abundant as seriously to hinder one’s caravan in approaching the mountains; for the progress of baggage camels to be arrested while still four or five kilometres from a peak by the steep and stony nature of the ground is common enough; but for the arrest to be due to trees and scrub was a new and interesting experience. Even the sand dunes on the west side of Wadi Yahameib are half-covered with coarse grasses, and look green instead of the usual yellow. ”

“ In the country south of the administrative frontier, the wells and vegetation are sufficiently abundant, in proportion to the population, for the question of ownership never to be a matter of heated controversy in ordinary years; and I am told that the present relationships of the tribes are so friendly that although each tribe would resent any statement as to ownership of its traditional grounds by the others, yet as a matter of fact no objection is raised to camels and sheep of one tribe grazing in the grounds of another, a give-and-take policy being usual. ”

“ But often we find great boulders mixed with the sand at immense distances from the parent mountain mass; the heavier rain storms which occasionally break over the mountains produce for short periods such immense rushes of water down the wadis, that great boulders are swept along and incorporated in the finer material which is deposited in times of more normal rainfall. Thus it is no uncommon thing in sinking a well in a wadi fifty kilometres or more from the mountains to encounter great boulders in the sandy alluvium. ”

“ The Bisharin devote much attention to camel-breeding, and supply many animals annually to the Coast Guard Administration. Their camels are very superior animals, and need to be hardy in order to negotiate the steep mountain passes of their country. Sheep and goats can be bought cheaply in the south, and are driven in to Aswân for sale at the higher rates there prevailing. It is common to find a flock of hundreds of sheep being watered at wells such as Bir Abu Hashim and Qoleib on the route to Kom Ombo; but many animals drop and die on the weary march from well to well. ”

“ Not only is the sandstone absent from the main mountains, but it is never found in such close proximity to them as to render a decisive answer to our question. Thus the eastern scarp of the sandstone plateau in the north part of the area overlooks a broad tract of low country between it and the mountains; and similarly from Gebel Anfeib one overlooks low country to the north, east, and south. On the eastern side of the mountains the sandstone deposits are restricted to small patches considerably removed from the main summits, and even in most cases from their foot-hills. ”

“ I obtained the following names for the small anchorages north and south of Halaib, though I could not locate them exactly on the maps, as the sailors could not read a map sufficiently well, and the harbours themselves are mere gaps through the outer coral reef, not visible indentations of the actual coast-line. Starting from Bir Adal Deib and going southward, Mersa Abu el Qâsim is near the mouth of Wadi el Kiraf; a big tree forms a landmark for entering it. ”

“ Zergat Naam is a mass of syenite rising through schists, but the northern summits are formed by east and west bands of a very hard quartz felsite. From the summit, looking northwards one sees long lines of north-and-south felsite dykes forming ridges on either side of the head of Rod el Kharuf, while close south of one is the enclosed sloping plain across which run the feeders of Wadi el Kreim. To the south-south-east, a range of lower hills runs north-westward from the end of the main range, and between the two there appears to be a remarkably sudden drop into the head of Wadi Abu Seyal. ”

“ The name Wadi el Mukhit is also given to other ill-marked drainage lines entering Port Berenice from the sandy tract between the hills of the main land and the hills of the peninsula of Ras Benas. Some three kilometres north-east of the mouth of Wadi Naait, on the coast plain, is a conspicuous isolated low hill, forming a well-known landmark and called Grain el Rih. The plain drained by Wadi el Mukhit is a dreary sandy waste, and the crossing of it in a high wind is very trying by reason of the immense clouds of sand raised and carried in the air. ”

“ The disintegrated matter accumulates as heaps of debris and sand, ready to be transported towards the Nile or the sea by the streams which follow the next rainfall. Both in erosion and in the transport of sand, wind is a very active agent, and accounts for the formation and distribution of immense quantities of sand. Thus the mountains are slowly being lowered, and the rocky valleys between them are being widened and deepened, even at the present day, and the accumulations of sand on the coast-plain and elsewhere are being slowly increased in thickness. ”

“ After the change from this rainy climate to the dry one of to-day, erosion still went on, though more slowly, in the hills; but on the plains and along the coast accumulation of sands took place, partly owing to wind transport, and partly owing to the insufficiency of the drainage waters to carry their load as far as the Nile or sea. The abundance of coral-reefs in the Red Sea is largely conditioned by the lack of in-flowing streams of silt-laden water; for the coral animal flourishes only where the water is clear. ”

“ The better desert guides, on the other hand, love the wilderness, and they have a perfectly marvellous geographic instinct. The skeleton on which they arrange their knowledge is always the system of drainage. If [33] a map of their country is laid before them, and a few points named to them, they will delight in tracing out and naming all the wadis and peaks. But they have very vague ideas of proportion, and can only read a map when it is laid on the ground in its true orientation with respect to the meridian. ”

“ As will be seen from a glance at the geological map on Plate XX, sedimentary strata are to be found only in the north-western and central portions of the area, where the Nubian sandstone which covers so much of the country close east of the Nile terminates in a long south-easterly projection, and along certain portions of the coast, where small outliers of Nubian sandstone and patches and strips of gypseous limestones and coral reef occur. The oldest rocks of undoubted sedimentary origin, the Nubian sandstones, are of Cretaceous age. ”

“ Gebel Is, the next great mountain to the south, forms the main watershed just north of the Sudan frontier, the triangulation cairn on its summit having the position latitude 22° 2′ 36′′, longitude 35° 28′ 4′′, altitude 1,736 metres above sea. As seen from the north, Gebel Is is a somewhat flat-topped mountain of dark aspect; but judging by analogy the apparent flat top is probably only a narrow ridge seen broadside on. From the main mass a long spur of flanking mountains runs westward, and a high ridge, more or less detached, rises to 1,474 metres six kilometres south-east of the main summit. ”

“ In the uppermost rock of Gebel Um Bisilla we have an example of troctolite, a form of gabbro in which there is no pyroxene but only felspar and olivine.
In the field, mountains and hills formed of gabbro are typically of dark aspect, though frequently less dark than a freshly broken surface of the rock, owing to a film of iron-oxide which forms on weathered faces. This film is most strongly marked in the olivine-bearing varieties of the rock; it is very thin, good sound rock being usually found at a depth of a millimetre or so below the exposed surfaces. ”

“ Gebel Shabih is a very remarkable granite mountain rising abruptly from the sandy plain traversed by Wadi Feqoh in latitude 22° 45′, about twelve kilometres east of Gebel Mishbih. From the north, it looks like a very perfect cone, but as one passes it going south it is seen to be slightly elongated meridionally, and to have two distinct peaks, of which the northern and higher one rises to 1,117 metres, or about 650 metres above the plain. Its sides are very steep, and an ascent would probably be a matter of some difficulty. The Wadi Feqoh passes close west of the mountain. ”

“ Gebel Sikait is drained from the west by the Wadi Sikait, a tributary of Wadi Nugrus, and from the east by the Wadi Um Gamil. The best place to climb it from is the Wadi Sikait, and the ascent, not a difficult one, is rendered interesting by the ruins and old mines encountered; part of the way one passes over an ancient made road, now broken in many places by the downwash from the hill. ”

“ Though sometimes occurring as rounded bosses, as at Gebels Muelih, Selaia, and Faraid, granite typically forms rather jagged mountains, more especially in the south parts of the area; the mountains of Mishbih and Elba, for instance, abound in spiky peaks, while Qash Amir, the “Scragged Hill” of the Admiralty Chart, is an extreme example of this mode of weathering. The spikes are often made up of more or less rounded blocks piled one on another, the separation and rounding of the blocks being brought about by jointing and the more rapid weathering of the corners of the separated masses. ”

“ Granites are the most abundant and most widely distributed of the igneous rocks of South-Eastern Egypt. They form a large proportion of the most prominent mountain masses, such as Gebels Hamrat Wogud, Nugrus, Hamrat Mukbud, Hamata, Faraid, Um Reit, Mishbih, Adar Qaqa, Adar Aweib, and Elba. They also occur in some great plain tracts, such as those round Gebel Selaia and to the west of Gebel Um Reit, where low hills of the rock rise through the coarse granitic sand which covers most of the plain. ”

“ The mass of Elba forms a very fine view from the north, but the prevalence of clouds about its summits frequently hides it from view for months together. The views from the mountain-tops are extensive and beautiful, especially at sunrise and sunset, when the peaks take on wonderful colours, and the views from the summits when the entire lower landscape is bathed in clouds, through which only the higher peaks project like islands from a great sea, are not less remarkable. ”

“ It would, I think, be unfair to tax the true desert Arabs of Egypt, even to the moderate extent which is done for the Arabs of the Sudan, for their country is much more barren than that of the Bisharin, and their sources of income are consequently fewer. In a year of little or no rainfall, there is not enough vegetation to feed their animals, so that many are lost, and the only way a tax could be raised at such times would be by cutting down trees for charcoal ”

“ Wadi Muqur heads in the eastern mountains of the Gerf group, which are sometimes called Gebel Muqur. Here the drainage from several steeply falling rocky gullies collects into a single winding gorge shut in by the mountains. The limit to which camels can go up the gorge is marked by a well called Bir Muqur. At the time of my visit to this, in February 1908, the well was filled up by debris, through which, however, the water constantly rose and trickled into pools in a series of rock basins at slightly lower levels. ”

“ As will be seen on looking through the list of water sources on pp. 244 to 250, springs are less common than wells and rock basins, but some of the best known water sources, such as those of Abraq, Abu Saafa, Abu Hodeid, and Meneiga, belong to this class. The Arabic word for spring is Ain, but the Bedouin seldom use this word, calling springs and wells alike Bir, which properly signifies a well. Small springs are called Megal by the Ababda, and Megwel by the Bisharin tribes.
Springs may occur in any kind of rock, but the rock must be either of a porous nature or must contain fissures. ”