ACROSS SINAI

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23073, 25 June 1938, Page 15 (Supplement)

ACROSS SINAI

Lone Woman's Hazardous Journey COUNTRY FAMED IN BIBLE LORE By JOAN M. C. JULLIEN — (Copyright) ON her venturesome excursion described below the writer was accompanied only by a small party of Arabs. No map or official information was obtainable for the inland journey beyond St. Katerina, and she reached £1 Aqaba safely after a 20 days' journey only with the chance help of a Bedouin guide.

ALTHOUGH it may be true that /\ tourist agencies have taken J- ~ the habitable globe under their wing for the benefit of travellers, those who seek the unbeaten path can still venture into the uninhabitable lands. From my own experience I can show that it is still possible for a woman to make an original journey through relatively unknown country, starting from a point only five days distant from London. I accomplished my most recent experiment in unaccompanied travel from guez to El Aqaba, through the Sinai Peninsula, by a route something over 400 miles long. That route, in parts at jeast, -would appear to havo been travelled hitherto only by Bedouin. Travel by Camel When 1 started from Suez, taking five tnmels, six Arabs and supplies for a tnonth, I did so without advice, experience or special preparation. Tho Frontier Police told me there was a track for about 200 miles south-cast as far as the Convent of St. Katerina, but pone beyond. I hoped, nevertheless, to continue eastward to Dahab, on the far coast, and thence double back along the sea north to El Aqaba. Such haphazard travel has some disadvantages, but it enables the adventurer in setting forth to indulge in all the wild surmise proper to pioneers, to cope with surprises, and to enjoy on arrival a fine sense of 'achievement—all

steep and difficult pass held impossible for laden camels. I liad meant to dirtcle the party, but by error the baggage camels embarked on tho wrong path; it quickly became too steep and narrow either to turn or unload them, and we could only continue an ascent which was practically a stairway of boulders. It took five hours, pushing and pulling, to get each beast 1500 ft. to the top, which is over oOOOft. above sea level. A Bluff Succeeds Tho Convent is, of course, a notable plaice, with its library (once the home of the Codex Sinaiticus) a magnet to Biblical scholars, but 1 found the atmosphere marred by a feeling that historical sites were being commercialised and that travellers were liablo to bo exploited. The onlv trouble of the journey arose on our leaving. The local Bedouin claimed a customary right to supply my transport.for the next stage. Heavy payment was demanded should I wish to proceed with my own caravan, and dark hints were let fall of alternative disaster on the way. When I refused to go back, to change camels and men, or to bo blackmailed, and tho monks supported the Bedouin, my Arabs began to panic. They had hoard that the way to Dalmb was worse than the Xaqb-el-Hawa. Also we laid no arms. 1 threatened to report to the Governor of Sinai, not knowing whether his writ ran there, but the bluff succeeded —I found I could go forward. "But no one would guide us until one Sheikh Suleiman el Morgi, of a rival tribe, offered to escort us if we would go the way he prescribed, by way of Nuweibe.. The monks withheld their approval, but I liked his ugly, sunblackened face and I liked his lordly cream Nejdi camel, designing to ride it myself. So we put ourselves under his leadership, our normal armoury of pocket-knife, and tent mallet reinforced by his sword, for the second half of the journey. High Granite Walls It proved to be easier going—at first over open rolling country sweet with spring flowers, then for some days along winding wadis whose granite walls towered sometimes 1000 ft. above us. Gaining the Gulf of Aquaba at Nuweibe at last we turnfed northward along its shell-strewn shore. Here travelling was complicated by three forced excursions through the sea. where the hills of the coast-line broke forward in ragged promontories. The camels struggled -along over the fallen rocks, their saddle-bags almost awash in the breaking waves. On the twentieth day we crossed the frontier and gained El Aqaba. Neither danger nor real hardship had attended our journey, and while admitting that it had added nothing to the existing knowledge of the country, I have a feeling of satisfaction in putting it on record that a woman can cross Sinai alone easily and safely. After 30 Centuries Southern Sinai is a gloriously beautiful country; it has no roads or houses, it has almost no inhabitants, and it has no history later than the Wanderings. One returns always to thise strange chapter, the crux and focus of all that is inspiring in Sinai. Possibly it ia tho very solitude of Sinai that keeps the interest so vivid. Once and only once a great tide of people surged across this empty landscape, and the strange tale of their passing and the spiritual experiences that befell them here became the heritage of half a world; Man, the cultivator and builder, has had no hand in the shaping of this land; so as one rides through it one may theorise at will over the story, but one need not reconstruct a background. It is there—rugged mountain and serene upland —wholly unchanged after 30 centuries.

illusions, of course, but pleasant ones. Eren so I bad twice to enlist Bedouin guides; their help was essential in locating the rare springs and waterholes. Sinai is a curious country; geographically it is a giant's stepping-stone between AfH'ca and Asm. " Territorially it is Egyptian, while its inhabitants, consisting principally of a few thousand nomad Arabs, claim kinship with the Bedouin of Arabia. Route of the Exodus In southern Sinai, the Peninsula proper, is some of the most starkly magnificent mountain scenery in the world, yet not too forbidding for travel by camel. Certain areas in the west of the Peninsula are well known; archaeologists have searched out Egyptian antiquities at Serabit-el-Khadem, concessionaries are working the manganese deposits at Um Bogma, and for centuries pilgrims have followed the traditional route of the Exodus to the great and famous sixth century foundation of St. Katerina, part convent, part fortress, which stands below Mount Sinai in surroundings of extraordinary grandeur and desolation. But visitors to the eastern parts are rare except for an occasional scientist, or surveyor, or ibex-hunter. Here the Bedouin bear a reputation for hostility to travellers, but a superior rainfall in the west had lured many of the tribesmen away from the regions we had to traverse. Those we met were friendly, and the onlv gun we saw was carried by a fine old fellow of 84 who, accompanied by three shighis, took me for a day's ibex hunting. Passing Mount Horeb At the outset we followed the coastal plain for five days, then, turning inland through the mountains, crossed the pass of Nnqb-el-Budcra—where I proved that camels are grand mountaineers —and dropped down to the Oasis of Feirnn below Jebel Serbal (Mount Horeb), which is almost certainly the Eephidim of Ksixhis. Our route so far was the traditional one of the Israelites, but, Whether Jebcl Serbal was the scene of the giving of the Law, or whether this took place 30 miles farther south, at Mount Sinai, is still a highly controversial subject. We had a choice of two ways to the Convent—one long and easy, one a short-cut over the Naqb-el-Hawa, iv