INTO THE LAND OF EGYPT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21180, 29 October 1938, Page 9

INTO THE LAND OF EGYPT

By

H. V. MORTON

CHAPTEK 17 DARING DEATH FOR SPONGES

Having arrived at Mersa Matruh in the dark, as I described in my last article, I was unpreprepared for the sight which met my eyes in the morning. No one had told me that this remote meeting place of desert and sea is one of the most beautiful sights in Egypt. The hotel stands some distance from the town on miles of golden sand. The sea is onlj a few yards away. Yet it is not properly the sea, but a huge lagoon landlocked by hills of silver sand, which glitter and sparkle like snow in the hot sunlight. Light, striking through the lagoon turns the water in its deepest parts to the colour of an emerald, and in the shallows to a delicate tint of apple green. Here and there run vivid veins of mauve and purple where beds of seaweed lie. Beyond the green waters and the white hills, a dark line of Prussian-blue is drawn across the horizon, the deeper water of the Mediterranean Sea. The town Itself, at the end of a mile of sandy road, is a surprised little treeless outpost. It reminded me of those wild west townships which were so familiar to us in the days of the silent films. Horses were tethered to posts. Wide roads were drawn here and there, with only perhaps two or three little stone bungalows as yet built along them. The most per-manent-looking structures were the shops of Greek grocers. Some of these had English advertisements written above them, a memory of the time, during the Abyssinian trouble, when British troops were stationed at Mersa Mutrah, which is less than 200 miles from the Italian frontier of .Tripoli.

- The town now the Pontiers Administration h.-adquarters of the Western Desert Province of Egypt. This wonderful department is the father, mother, nurse, doctor, detective and policeman of the desert. If your camels die. if your wife runs away, if your crops fail or if someone bewitches you, you trek perhaps for a hundred miles to tell the nearest frontiers post about it. In fact, you tell the frontiers post about everything except the name of the man who murdered someone. They must find that out for themselves. I was not surprised, knowing something of the benevolent activities of tl.v frontiers force, to find the headquarters at Mersa Matruh surrounded by hundreds of Bedouin waiting *’or a free gift of barley. They had come in from miles around. I was told a terrible story by the officer who was doling out the grain. There had

been no rain for six years. The tribes were famished. Their horses and camels had died of hunger and thirst. The people themselves were hardly more than skin and bone, as I could see for myself. And now the blessed rain had fallen, and the Bedouin had come in from every part of the desert crying for barley to sow. Soon, if the rain continued, the edge of the desert would be covered with green crops. The tribes would stay camped in the coastal areas until the barley was ripe in April or May, and then, their pitifully meagre needs satisfied, they would disappear southwards into the metallis blaze of heat. I went in to meet the Governor of the Western Desert, an Egyptian colonel, who was making arrangements for my journey to Siwa. The windows of his room opened on the green lagoon. A map of his province, an area about the size of Wales, hung on the wall. He told me that he had arranged for me to start by car at 5 a.m. on the following morning, accompanied by a desert patron waggon, for a single car is not allowed to travel to Siwa.

A Sudanese orderly appeared with little cups of Turkish coffee, and we began to talk of other things. In ancient times, said the Governor, the now remote town in which we were

sitting was a famous port, the starting place for those who travelled across the desert to consult the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon a: Siwa. -t was from Mersa Matruh —or Paraetonium as it was called —that Alexander the Great set out on this journey. Cleopatra had a marble villa at Paraetonium, built on the edge of the green lagoon, so that its halls were always full of the cool sound of the waves. "My house is built on the site of

it,” said the Governor, "and we find columns and bits of marble in the garden. There are the remains of steps down to the water. There is a legend that, after the battle of Actium, Mark Antony came here with Cleopatra to try and forget his defeat; but whether it is true or not I cannot say.”

I asked the Governor how it was possible for a large town to have existed there in ancient times if fresh water were as scarce as it is now, and water is so scarce that it is imported from Alexandria by ship and stored in huge tanks. He told me that in ancient times the water came from an intricate system of underground conduits connected with a network of wells. When British troops were in Matruh during the Abyssinian trouble they discovered and cleared out these tunnels. Slowly, the old conduits have filled with fresh water, and Matruh, now no longer dependent on supplies from Alexandria, is beginning to use the old Roman water system.

One of the most interesting sights in Matruh is the Greek spongefishing fleet, which lies in the harbour like an over-coloured illustration in "Treasure Island.” Greeks come from the Aegean every year to work up the coast as far as Solium on the

Tripolitan frontier, where the best sponges come from. The big gold honeycomb sponges, which in Englang cost as much as a guinea each, often come from this part of the world. In the afternoon I hired a rowing boat, and went out to look at the sponge ships. At close quarters they looked even more like a pirate fleet than from a distance. There were four big old-fashioned sailing ships and a number of small motor vessels. Blue-chinned, half-naked

men lounged about the decks or lay sunk in slumber. Their washing hung from every yardarm. Most of the ships came from Rhodes or Aegina. The men answered my questions with surly suspicion. I could see their Greek minds wondering why I had taken the trouble to row out to them in the heat of the afternoon. They told me that the season was over. Most of the ships had gone home. All the sponges were in Alexandria being sold by merchants.

Sponge-fishing is a dangerous occupation. The men admit that a sponge-diver does not often live to be over forty. But £lOO for a few months' fishing is real money in the Greek Islands. If a diver is not killed by a defective helmet—and both masters and men are criminally careless—he may get diver’s paralysis, caused by working under the water. The most primitive method of sponge-diving, and probably less dangerous in the long run than a bad diving suit, is to plunge naked into the clear water roped to a heavy stone. Ih the few seconds while he is on the sea bed the diver detaches a sponge or two and, letting the rope go, shoots up to the surface of the water. Some divers are able to stay below water for several minutes. Another method is to hack at the sponges with a spear or trident, but this method often damages the sponges. A third method, and obviously the best, is the use of a diving dress, but I was told some horrible stories of the badly-fitting diving helmets in use and the capricious supply of air, specially on a man’s last dive, the day before his £lOO falls due. It may seem incredible that men can exist foul enough to nip the air supply of a diver in order to avoid paying him; and I hope the story I heard about this is not true.

But the sponge-divers’ cemetery at Matruh tells the tragic story eloquently enough. Hardly a season passes but some divers leave their bones in Egypt. Some are killed by sharks, others die of parlysis or of diseases caused by underwater pressure on lungs and heart. Standing in this lonely little graveyard, one remembers the small brown boys who dive for pennies round the lovely islands of Greece. They swim beneath the water like seals and come up with a penny in their white teeth, shaking the water out of their eyes and laughing with triumph. That is how the sponge-divers begin their short and terrible lives.