A "LOST OASIS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 9 (Supplement)

A "LOST OASIS."

MYSTERY OF THE SAHARA.

LONG QUEST FOR ZARZURA.

IS IT BENEATH THE SANDS?

The very sudden, death of Sir Robert Clayton-East-Clayton, which was due, it is believed, to some germ picked* up during his recent visit to the Libyan Desert, recalls the young explorer's attempt to discover, by means of' aeroplanes, the legendary oasis Zarzura, says a special correspondent in a recent issue of the London "Observer." In the early summer of this year Sir Robert, together with Count de Almasy, established a base at Dakhla, the most westerly of the Egyptian oases, and from the air reconnoitred the waste of sand that extends' from Dakhla for a distance of some three Hundred miles. They saw and photographed a wide wadi (valley) containing a large amount of sunt (acacia) trees, and as this part of the Libyan Desert is devoid of vegetation of any kind it is thought that the trees can be accounted for only by thu presence of water rising to or near to the surface, and that the wadi is probably the famous lost oasis of Zarzura. Unfortunately, the terrific heat and shortage of water made the risk of a landing exceedingly dangerous, and further exploration was postponed until tie winter. Whether the oasis actually exists in the form that oases usually take, i.e.f a spring flowing to the surface with dense palm groves, is a very moot point, but the local Arab legends are very firm on the matter, and all ancient Arab historians speak of a wonderful town set in ideal surroundings, where a race of men cut off from the outside world have lived sinoe the days of the Persians. Ancient Mystery. For the better part of a century the neighbouring Oasis of Kufra, recently captured from the Senussi by the Italians, was shrouded in.mystery, and was described by Arabs as being a dream city with roofs of gold, but when Sir Ahmed Hassanein Bey, with Mrs. Rosita Forbes, discovered it shortly after the war it was found to be a very ordinary oasis village with mud brick buildings, and its inhabitants were in almost every respect similar to the rather mixed race to be found in Kliarga, Dakhla and the Baharia at the present time. In the past a very considerable caravan trade from -Equatorial Africa to Egypt via Kufra and the Baharia existed, and reports persisted of Arabs, who had lost their way in the awe-inspir-ing waste of sand south-west of Baharia, coming suddenly upon a wonderful oasis with a golden minaxet rising above the palm trees and a lake of sparkling water. Attempts were made by these Arabs to retrace their tracks, but apparently they were always unsuccessful, and it seems reasonable to suppose that the delirium brought on by thirst and despair, coupled with a particularly clear mirage, were responsible for these reports. Desert Travel. Since the war the improvement in motor cars has made travel in the desert comparatively simple as compared with the past difficulties attending a slowmoving camel convoy, but the sea of huge rolling sand dunes that extends for a distance of three hundred miles west of Dakhla Oasis has proved a very formidable obstacle. It has been found, however, that these dunes run in straight lines from the north, that the intervening spaces are of han&gravel, and that it is possible in 1 some parts, by using wire ladders, to get cars over the chains of dunes. In 1922.Prince Kamel el Din Hussein, the cousin of the King of Egypt who

died this year, accompanied "by Major C. S. Jarvis, the present Governor of Sinai, and Dr. Ball, of the Survey of Egypt, penetrated to a depth of 200 miles into the sand waste, and the two following years he further his operations, finding amongst other things the dump made by Regenfeldt, the German explorer, in 1879.

In fact, the only!thing of any real interest discovered was the dump of pottery water jars found by Prince Kamel el Din one hundred and fifty miles west of Dakhla. For a time it was thought that possibly these were left by King Cambvses' Persian Army, which, about 500 8.C., marched out from Dakhla to subdue the Ammonites in Siwa Oasis and who, according to Herodotus, were- engulfed in a sand storm and utterly lost in the desert. however, gave it as th'eir opinion that the jars were of a type made in Equatorial Africa and were only two to three hundred years old. . From the huge encroachments of drift sand that have occurred in the Oases of Kharga and Dakhla in the lifetime of man it is obvious that a small, deep depression in the general level of the desert might easily fill up in less than a century. If Zarzura ever existed, therefore, it is probably now lying at a depth of some hundred feet below the sand, and that in course of time the normal drift of dunes to the south may once •again lay it bare, though whether it ever possessed a golden minaret and a thriving population is extremely doubtful.