Bertram Thomas Tells Story of Crossing of Forbidden Arabia.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 187, 8 August 1931, Page 17 (Supplement)

Bertram Thomas Tells Story of Crossing of Forbidden Arabia.

Natives Expert at Reading Imprints in the Sand.

Footmarks Scanned for Signs of Friends or Foes.

G]~HIS is the fourth of a series of special articles by Mr Bertram Thomas, describing his crossing of the Rub’ al Khali, or Great Southern Desert, Arabia, early this year. Mr Thomas was for some years the financial adviser to the Sultan of Muscat, and was the first white man to cross the South Arabian Desert. Last month he received the Founders’ Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

By

BERTRAM THOMAS.

CWorld Copyright Reserved)

JT WAS IN the afternoon of December 22, just beyond Yadila, that I met with the phenomenon of singing sands. We were floundering along through heavy dunes, when the silence was suddenly broken by a loud droning on a musical note. I was startled for the moment, not knowing the cause. “Listen that that 4 khait ’ (ridge of sand) bellowing,” shouted a Badu, pointing to a steepish sand cliff 100 ft or so high, and perhaps 100 yards or more away on our right hand. I was too much absorbed to reply. The hour was 4.15 p.m., and a slight wind blew rom the north from the rear of the :liff. Elsewhere I had observed what appeared to be similar conditions, but without any resultant bellowing, only the spectacle of a filmy wisp of sand being carried up the gentle windward slope to spill like smoke over its top, and thus build up a shape like a centurion’s helmet on its leeward side. But here the leeward face of the cliff was a fairly steep, slanting wall, and it may be that the whole face was set sliding, thus giving rise to the noise. I looked, expecting to discover a funnel-shaped sand gorge that would more obviously account for such a volume of noise, but none was to be seen. To me the term singing sands seemed a misnomer. The “ singing ” was indistinguishable from the sound of the siren of a moderate-sized steamship. It continued for about ten minutes, and ended as abruptly as it had begun. Red Mountains of Sand. There are other varieties of sand noises. The sands of Umm Dharta, to the northward, I had been told on this and other occasions, have a springiness which caused a sort of wheeze when camels walked upon them. And I was myself to be startled a month later in the Sands of Suwahib to experience a sharp “ phut ” under my camel’s feet like the falling of a spent bullet. It was instantaneous, and I did not hear it again. A Murri riding at my side who was familiar with the phenomenon, though it was rare, could only suggest some dark activity in the uppermost of the seven underworlds. But such phenomena obviously have no connection with that loud and continuous bellowing met with, as to-day, in heavy dune country, where by report it is only to be found. We were now to bid adieu to hungry and shivering camps between sand and steppe. On Christmas Eve we turned more northwards, and struck into the body of the sands, leaving their southern edge stretching away in a west-south-westerly direction. Gone were the fair and gentle corridors. Before us rose red mountains of sand. The scene was almost Alpine in character, and glorious vistas rewarded us from high places, vistas of immense peaks to which small isolated camel thorn and their own pure colour lent an air of exaggerated size. Below them often appeared lake-like expanses of white, which on closer inspection proved to be but more examples of the gypsum patches met with in the past few days. Christmas Eve was to be a night of

I excitement. We had arrived late in camp, camels had been hobbled as usual and shooed off to the scant ! bushes, from behind some of which came the brisk noises of merry campfire parties. A sudden scream. To me it was like the hooting of an owl or whining of some wild beast. There was an immediate “ hurroosh.” “ Gom ! Gom ! ” “Raiders! Raiders!” shouted excitable Badus, leaping to their feet, their rifles at the ready, and my servant came running across to me with my Winchester and bandolier. Our rabias, of the Awamit and Karab tribes, rushed out in their several directions and began shouting: “We are alert! We are alert! I am Abu Fulan (So-and-So) of such-and-such a tribe. These are my party, and are under my protection.” The object of this was to save us from raiders of his own faction, if these they were. I gathered that the cry is never abused. I was thoroughly tired, and hence well disposed to believe that the alarm had been raised by a wild beast and not an enemy, so that my vigil fell short of that of my companions. My assumption was correct. Next morning the tracks of a wolf were traced near by; its whoop had, it seemed, been suspiciously like the Awan, the war-cry of raiders in the final act. Hard Going. This Uruq (sand dune) region has the loftiest type of sands met with in Rub’ al Khali* and I spent my Christmas Day, nine hou»s in the saddle, traversing its vast cliffs and mountains of sand with intervening gorges. Our camels, wretched beasts, climbed arduously to knife-edge summits and slithered knee-deep down precipitous slopes. Here and there we turned back for very fear, and tried a better way. Here and there there was no better way, and we all dismounted to dig away with our hands in the soft slopes to make a path for our camels to climb. No horse could possibly negotiate this country of the southern sands, even if you could bring it thus far through the waterless wastes—which you could not—and for a motor-car these sands would be quite impassable. Our toil had its compensations. There were moments when we came suddenly upon a picture of sublime grandeur, an immense and noble plastic architecture, an exquisite purity of coloiir, old rosered colour, unshadowed under a cloudless sky and the steep rays of a tropical sun. A snow scene in Switzerland affords some parallels—the feeling of the yielding substance underfoot and a glorious exhilaration in the air. With the chronometers dear to my heart precariously balanced on camels , driven to acrobatics, I confess to moments when I devoutly wished the surroundings were less Alpine. For example, when we arrived at Khor Dha» hiyah, our next water-hole, on the morrow, after a 300 ft descent, I discovered that one chronometer had lied to the unbelievable extent of two hours, and I lost faith in it and the Uruq, which we now left behind.

Dinner that night consisted of desiccated soup and baked beans; and excellent it was, arriving as one did with sharpened appetite. A luncheon halt was an indulgence I never allowed myself. It would have been quite out of the question to dismount in the middle of the day—unreasonable in the heart of an arid desert, where the rule of life demands rapid marching from one pasture spot to another. Instead I carried a thermos flask of camel’s milk and a daily ration of malted milk tablets, and momentary stops for our camels to graze or for the Badus to pray, afforded opportunities to slake one’s thirst. In the desert, halts will always and rightly be called in the interests of the camels’ condition. The poor beasts, which you start by despising and learn greatly to admire, are the means by which you move forward to success or back and out to safety. If the camel dies, its master dies with it. The consideration my Badus showed for their beasts was illuminating. Often I found myself alone among them in the saddle, as they elected to walk for long hours to spare their mounts, and ran hither and thither to collect an occasional juicy tuft of camel thorn with which to feed the hungry brutes as we passed along. Our camels were played out. Their humps, large and plump at the outset, told a story. The hv"p is the bai;ometer of the camel's condition, and ours bad all fallen miserably away. This was only to be expected after a nine days’ trek under loads through these Southern borderlands. To move onward involved raising a fresh caraThis had been foreseen. My organisation at the outset, indeed, provided for four relays of camels. Three sufficed. The second of these was to have been over the water-hole of Khor Dhahiyah that day. Problem of Rationing. The rationing of the parties was another problem to solve before starting. Success depended upon the last caravan having sufficient food to cover the last lap of the crossing. The normal food of the Badu in the sands tending hjs camel herds is camel’s milk, and that alone, and judging by his health and physique it is sufficient. But a journey requiring long and

daily marches cannot be made with camels in milk, and only two such camels were numbered in my caravans at any time. My plans therefore involved rations for my escorts, and pack animals to carry them. Rice, dates, butter and flour made up the commissariat. These were carried in bulk for all except the original party, who individually drew and carried their own rations. Requirements were based on a progressive reduction of men. as I moved north. Our store was more precious than gold, and I had at all times to guard it most jealously, as to come to the end of it meant the end of my journeyings, for the desert supplies nothing except camel’s flesh, an expensive and limited luxury. Camel’s milk was my own staple diet throughout my journey, and I carried porridge, cocoa, butter, and a few tinned stores, which had, however, from considerations of weight, to be limited and subordinated to other loads—e.g., scientific instruments and natural history collections. The relay of camels was not at the rendezvous when we arrived and I spent a sad day in consequence. Excuses were forthcoming. The water-hole was a notoriously unhealthy spot, being known by raiders and used by them; there were no pastures here and more favoured localities a little ahead. We moved on. The Badus scanned the sands for signs of friend or foe. Soon there was

merry chatter and the usual pious thanks to Allah. The footmarks of Hamad bin Hadi, my Murra guide and rabia, were identified. “Look, Sahib! That’s so-and-so,” my men said/pointing to a foot impression that looked like every other to me. “That’s his camel; he was leading her. She is gone with calf. See how deep are her tracks.” And so, following the marks in the sand, we came up with the objects of our quest. An interesting study of new faces, a hearty round of handshakes, the remark courteous and I sent the coffee cup and the dish of dates round among my new companions, who would later bear me forward into the depths of their sands. Accurate Description. I was staggered at the accurac}' of my party’s description of those that were ahead of us, light they found in the tracks we followed. It is an amazing faculty. In comparison the finger-print methods of the West seem a slow and laborious and technical process. Here every Badu reads the imprints of the sands with the readiest facility, for all creation goes unshod. The sands are a public diary and he who runs may read. Each of my Badus not only knew at a glance the footmarks of every camel and companion of my caravan, but claimed to know those of his absent tribe, and not a few of his enemies. No bird may alight, no wild beast or insect pass but needs must leave its

history in the sands, and the record lasts until a wind rising bears a fine sand along to obliterate it. To tell-tale sand marks a sand fox, snakes, hare and numerous lizards added to my collection were to owe their undoing; their hiding holes were in And whenever in future we halted for the night, generally just before sunset, Hamad the Murra, my guide, w’ould slink back over our tracks for a few miles with my telescope to ascertain whether we were being tracked by an enemy, and return just after nightfall, when tracking is no longer possible, with the glad news that our camp fires could now be safely lit. Perhaps the greatest character of the sands, this Hamad, whose father had slain eight Mansuris with his own hand and died in venerable old age beside Bir Hadi, one of the many wells in the sands that he had dug and marked with his name. Humanity Among Friends. I spent the afternoon paying off my old party and engaging the new one. Other Badus, springing from I knew not where, were hanging around to see whether my reputation for giving not a scrap of my precious food away was undeserved, and also to beg a little of the bounty the others were receiving at my hands. Nor was the begging vain, for the spirit of communism flourishes, paradoxical though it seems in this land of consummate individualism. None would eat a crust with me on trek were his companions not there to share it with him And after a thirsty daj r ’s march when we arrived at a water-hole no drop of water would pass the lips of the advance party until those in the rear had come up. To me it seemed that if this precarious condition of life produces savagery between enemies it breeds a fine humanity among friends. We broke up camp with all speed to discourage visitors and moved due west. I suspected that the main body of the Rashid tribe was grazing to the north, and it was essential that I should escape their importunities for food. I should thus also avoid the consequences of any religious views they might hold about mv arrival on the sacred soil of the faithful. The first day, as usual, was a short march—the fresh, untried camels bel-

flowing protests against unusual burdens and their masters quarrelling among themselves about imagined in- , equitable distribution of loads. My Bikaner-pattern saddle was the subject of universal disapprobation for its size and weight and mine was the humiliation of being given a different camel to ride each day. Happily, the marches of the second stage were short ones, the going was easier and we were, in fact, doing little else than mark time while my third and last relay of camels that would bear me across the sands was being arranged ahead. This was the famous sand region of Dakaka. The sands here were in somewhat milder mood than the mountains and valleys of Uruq Dhahiyah, for which they form an exaggerated crossing of the T. The basic formation was a hard, red sand, in immense undulations, like a troubled sea many times magnified. Occasional superimposed sandhills of a paler colour were sometimes solid, sometimes horse-shoe-shaped; these latter, termed Ilugna, always faced south-west, an arresting phenomenon which appears to arise from reversible wind action. In the depression lay often a familiar white patch and not infrequently a water-hole. No Lack of Water. Here there was no lack of sweet water —sweet, that is to say, judged by the other waters of the sands. As such it attracts parties of Murrain summer, when sweet water is a necessity, although they move north again in winter to their own oases about Jabrin and Jafurah. For in summer grazing camels may not move more than two days distant from water. In winter, on the other hand, they may be watered at intervals of 15 or 20 days, and where recent rains have produced pastures they may be away from a water-hole for a couple of months, the Badu living exclusively on their milk. And so a leisurely moving through the sands of Dakaka, whose pastures—unequalled this year in all the great sands, on account of last year’s rain—were favoured with animal life, and my collecting prospered. I had sent back from Dhufar a young live antelope (probably Oryx leucoryx, as I had shot a full-size specimen last year and it was thus identified at South Kensington), but, on account of shipping objections, 1 have left it temporarily at the Karachi Zoo. I picked up fragments of ostrich eggs in a senii-petrified condition, but the ostrich appears now to be extinct, though members of my party had in their youth shot ostrich here. So also the rim, or white gazelle, whose horns I saw lying about the sands, is now a rarity. The familiar red gazelle and the large edible lizards do not penetrate the sands, but are found in the bordering steppe. An occasional wolf, said to be sand-coloured, is met with in the sands in places where it can find water at a few feet. A tiny fox is commoner, and the hare the commonest and most widely distributed of all the mammals of the

I sands. Birds are few, the black raven the most persistent. Thirteen in the Party. We came at last, after six day** march, to Shanna, in Western Dakaka, the rendezvous of my third caravan. Shaikh Salih, whom I had dispatched! to find eleven other good men and true, making a party of twelve, duly arrived. I was horrified to learn that he had brought an additional one, making thirteen. Thirteen seemed a challenge for the fates, but I was prepared to back my luck, and I was not disappointed. It was the full moon before Ramad* han; and a full moon is a mixed bles*ing. It makes star observations with an artificial horizon troublesome. It i* an ally of the raider, for tropic skies are so bright that he can see the track by night. Its advantage was that, lying near a camp fire, I could see to record my notes with no other aid. The object of escaping hungry guests, which my detour westward promised to secure, was defeated by the arrival of a party of five Karab and ManahiL They had crossed the sands, they said, from Abu Dhabi, and were bound for the Iladhramaut. Like all their kind on first acquaintance they maintained an icy reserve, and in answer to my' inquiries of their route, which I found it not politic to press, waved a general direction. They did some bartering of rifles and camels with my party. A Perfect Arrowhead. From me they wanted most of all matches. Matches seem to be' a great boon in these wilds, where flints are still universally employed. A perfect arrowhead and a spearhead were among those in use by my party. They had been picked up in the sands of Sanam to the north. These I acquired. That night camel-flesh was on th« menu. One of our camels was found to be ailing, some said unto death. There is one way with a worn-out camel in the desert, and that is to kill and eat it. The law of Leviticus applies to Islam. Flesh not lawfully slaughtered is sinful to eat; wherefore the hats went round, and fifty-six Maria Theresa dollars, plus her earnings due from me, satisfied the owner of the semiblind forty-year-old Fatira. Shaikh Salih dilated to me upon the superior excellence of the lower ribs and the marrow bone of the thigh. The beast waa slaughtered and jointed and divided into heaps, ani the Badus cast lots for the prime portions. In the steppe, where the heap of stones could have been gathered, they would have grilled it in their Stone Age manner. Here it was boiled, at least such of it as sufficed for a meal. The rest of it they carried raw in their jaddles exposed to the sun, which dried it. And this delicacy they nibbled with much relish in the marches ahead of us. The most enjoyable part of it to me, I confess, was that it brought relief to their gradually dwindling rations. We were on the last lap northward. (To be continued.)