Bertram Thomas Tells Story of Crossing of Forbidden Arabia.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 193, 15 August 1931, Page 13

Bertram Thomas Tells Story of Crossing of Forbidden Arabia.

Difficulties of Securing Good Water.

Desert Natives have Rich Store of Folklore.

ZERO HOUR for the dash northward had arrived. Star sights and traverse plotting placed my position at Shanna to the northward of Eastern Hadhramaut in Lat. 19 deg., Long 50 deg.

My objective, Dohah, in the Qatar Peninsula, on the Persian Gulf, if Dohah it could be, must, I estimated, be bearing slightly to the east of north about 330 miles in a straight line across the mysterious sands. Mr party consisted of thirteen Badus, my Arab servant, and myself, plus five pack animals. Two only of my Badus, the Murra, claimed that they knew the route; the others had never been over this line of country before. I had rations left for twenty-five days. It allowed a narrow margin. Clearly no one could afford to get ill. A hold-up for ten days, or an insufficient rate of progress, might spell disaster. This must always be a problem of such a desert as this—the necessity of a decision whether and when to go forward or back. Any line of march I may have taken to the westward of the one I actually took would certainly have imposed it upon me before very long.

A water-hole or expected pasture fails; another forced march in hopeful expectation, and that proves equally disappointing. The question comes: Should the fates be further tempted ahead, or should I turn back to certain sustenance ? Given physical fitness of men, and a fresh batch of camels in perfect condition over the most advanced jumpingoff spot, the problem becomes simplified. We had not spent seven days halting at Shanna for nothing. Usage of Desert. Our Hadhramauti visitors held on like leeches in the hope of profiting when I should divide out my escort’s rations. To have then not given them a share or prevented my Badus from doing so would have been to infringe the sacred usage of the desert. Self-preservation, however, demanded circuitous measures. I postponed ration-dividing, or the mention of it, till the end of the first day’s march. Hamad, the Murra guide, held that we must move that day in any case, for it was Saturday, and Saturday was a propitious starting day. Sunday is woulc * never consent to it. Monday or Thursday good, and Friday moderately so. Most of the Rashidis, on the other hand, were indifferent to such argument, for they never knew even the days of the week. The usual first day’s trek was short and disappointing, both camels and men loudly voluble in their protests against loads. The next day was our last one in the region of Dakaka. Lying inside the great dune bulwark of the southern borderlands, these wide sweeping red sandscapes with sandhills running helter skelter (the sand a fairly hard consistency) were falling from 1100 ft in the south to 800 ft in the north, in this longitude. Their mood had grown more rugged as we moved westerly, and the water holes increased from depths of three to thirteen fathoms, water being olsntiful and relatively good in Dakaka. A Tiny Encampment. Passing the isolated dunes of Gusman that mark the north-west limit of Dakaka, we came upon a tiny encampment of Murra, kinsmen of my guide, i and the southernmost element of the tribe that ranges wider over these sands than any other. The women were veiled. A youth came up carrying a badly mauled hare, and running at his side the small dark salugi dog that was the cause of it. The Rashid tribe of the south have no dogs wqrth speaking cf, the Murra, to the noßhwards, many, and they set great store by them, for they hunt fox, wildcat and occasional rim (white gazelle), all of which they eat.

Here, a miserable low tent or two, of brown and white wool, every thread spun and woven by the women within. Lying near were the bodkins used in their fabrication, a few iron camp lire pegs, tent pegs once the horns of antelope, the long iron bar used for diggmg water holes, a large rounded stone from afar that does as a hammer, variety of leathern buckets, one a water trough, another a receptacle for skins. These sum up the few poor belongings of this nomad folk, other than the nobler possessions of camel herds and firearms. Water Problems. Beyond we came close up with four stalking bustard, the size of young turkeys, and innocently trusting unfamiliar men. Three of my advance party slid off their camels and ran up to close range under cover of sand hillocks, but the loud talk of the rest of the party coming up saw the promise of a gargantuan meal mount up and away, leaving only the handsome and characteristic Prince of Wales feathers footmarks' in the sand. Our course had been north-east, and we now found ourselves in another variety of sand region called Suwahib. Topographically named as the sand regions often are (Sahab, of which Suwahib is the plural standing for chains of white sandhills in echelon) the region here consists of lightcoloured parallel ridges averaging perhaps half a mile apart, with a general N.E. axis, the intervals between them bellying sands of red. Our course, now 30 degrees east of north, took us across them diagonally at long intervals, the ridges seldom exceeding 50ft to 80ft, though their featureless slopes looked higher. Camel scrub, sufficient at first, grew less as we proceeded, so that men and camels moved swiftly forward. Bainha, a water-hole dug originally by my guide, we made soon after the afternoon prayer, and there halted for the night, the aneroid showing a fall, to the senses imperceptible, of 200 ft since the morning. This fall from north to south of the Rub’ al Khali in this longitude was maintained throughout the days ahead. Water was at two fathoms. Its great brackishness and its beer colour were properties which I was sad to find were not disguised by desiccated soup. Living on Milk. Indeed, from this stage onward the water was such that I gave up drinking it except when becoming desperately thirsty in the saddle or occasionally as cocoa when halted. It was upsetting. In the marches that stretched down and away to the eastward—the habitat from time to time of my Rashidi companions—the water was said to be so brackish as. not to be drinkable by them, and in places even their camels will turn away. Camel’s milk, which henceforth formed my chief diet, is also much affected by salinity of water and pastures. Even so it was for me the safer and pleasanter drink, for he who designs to come this way had better not bother himself about measures for sterilising water. Indeed, to be over-fastidious is to court anxiety when things go wrong, for which reason also I never learnt to use glare glasses against the sun. The Badus observed with keen interest our arrival into the hadh belt (lat 20deg.), hadh being a small sage-colour-ed bush, saline in character, which survives longer than any other desert plant without rains or dews, whence in times of exceptional drought only the hadh regions in the sands support life. Pasture is the supremely important topic of the desert—more important even than water. Quest for Green Pastures. The quest of nomadic life is for green pastures. Reconnaissances search out the favoured place, the herds follow on,

and so to another and another is an unending cycle. Rain is the great gift of God, and lightning becomes man’s pillar of fire Buwah, the first hadh region we entered, was well blessed and the signal for an early halt to graze. We had an early start, and good going was made all the more pleasant by a light breeze from the north-east. Suwahib here became red rolling billows, gentle, but so soft as to occasion dismounting now and then for a path to be cleared by hand that the camels might pass. Hungry and desolate country succeeded, water on our right hand being everywhere reported at an arm’s depth, but so salt that water-holes here enjoy no special names except the generic one of Khiran. The Badus, who had not bothered to fill their skins in Dakaka, here took to doing so, for the water sharpens the thirst and is the cause of disordered health. The saline pastures were equally lowering to the camels. Our course be-, came northerly and thep north-west-erly, and thus we passed out of the great Suwahib, though it was reported continuing northward, a day’s march on our right hand, rather like a modified letter “ s,” as far as the 21st parallel. Avoiding Fanatics. Our course was swung almost at right angles to the earlier one, because of the need for the sweeter and deeper waters to the west (Tuwal) and to the expectation of better pastures there. It had been clear to me, too, that our original course, if persisted in, would take us out on the Persian Gulf a long way to the eastward of the mark avowedly intended by the Murra. But I must be careful not to appear too knowing. The truth transpired. Our original course had been decided upon for a very good reason. The thirteenth man of my party, guide No. 2, had recently crossed from Qatar, where he was a servant of the Shaikh, and had brought alarmist news of Ikhwan parties astride our path in the southern Jafurah and Jiban. Avoidance of these fanatics, wh are often militantly intolerant even of other Muslims, was devoutly to be desired, whence our easterning to avoid them. Now, however, sweet water and pasture, or rather our lack of them, drove us back willy-nilly, and apprehensions concerning Ikhwan elements ahead must be subordinated to the compelling needs of man and beast in the heart of the sands. Listening to my companions’ folkstories or their descriptions of raids kept me amused and interested always in the saddle and whenever I could spare time to sit around their camp fires. The Badu is a born raconteur. His relentless fight with a cruel environment endows him with a marked personal forcefulness, while his illiteracy accounts for his ready memory. I was astounded at the range of his folklore. There is a whole mythology centred round a legendary tribe of Bani Hilal and its hero Abu Zaid, and the perpetual wars with Zinaiti, King of Arisha Almost every man in my escort could ; tell me a fresh story, generally much of | it in the rhymed doggerel of his dia- j lect, from this inexhaustible folklore. But I had to guard against too close j an intimacy on getting into camp. The j long hours in the saddle each day ! were followed by star observations for position by night, writing up of traverse

notes and records of natural history, specimens and meteorological notes. The ideal of a half every three days : to write copiously was unattainable. If the traveller would have a contented party he must forgo it. The great objective in parched country is to progress out of it, and the Badu, ever mindful of his camel, was anxious to leave these drought-stricken areas of the central sands behind him with all speed.

The menace of Hadhramauti raider: was being left behind, and we all slep more comfortably in that faith. Sa’ari: had been known to penetrate the sand: in hot pursuit of Rashidis, but none hac come so far north as this and returnee with booty, or-indeed at all. In the deeps of the sands the raide: has only his quarry’s footprints to leac him to water and his own to returr him to safety.' Wind becomes his haunting dread

for it brings a sweeping curtain of sand which quickly obliterates all tracks, and he not improbably perishes. The sand Badu raiding the steppe thus enjoys advantages. But Shaikh Salih fain would tell me that since making the pilgrimage to Mecca three years before he had not once raided his enemies. Yet, as though to apologise for this pious mood, he pointed out that there could be no special virtue in it, for (he called God to witness) those hated Sa’ar neither prayed nor fasted, and none of them had ever made the pilgrimage. Could the shedding of blood have more to justify it? My old friend Wubbur, the Mahri of a previous expedition, had also just returned from Mecca and was in similar case, though Wubbur, a notorious slayer of men with his own hands, could scarce expect immunity from bloodthirsty enemies. For the desert law in such cases is that there can be neither forgetting nor forgiving. Blood Feuds. But the great sands to the north were enjoying an unprecedented era of tranquillity. This they owed to the peace-compelling influence of Ibn Sa’ud and the relentless sword of God wielded by his able Viceroy Bin Jaluwi, Governor of the Hasa. The few scattered Badus in the remoter depths of the sands for the first time in history, perhaps, paid a nominal Zakat, the holy dues that must be rendered unto Caesar, and had ceased from acts of rapine and lust which from time immemorial had been their dominant characteristics. All this from fear (for peace is distasteful to them)—the fear of a reckoning which is made possible by a repercussing vengeance directed from the seats of Najdian authority. To this peace, probably only a temporary phase, I owed the possibility of making further headway. I had come thus far under the aegis of Kathir Badawin (a Rashid section) ; henceforward I needed the protection and guidance of the Murra, for it was their habitat. Now Rashid and Murra had been hereditary enemies. Blood feuds divide them. Only the fear of Hasa and Riyadh had made them brothers. My party necessarily consisted of members of each, who ten years ago would have killed one another at sight, and may do so again if and when the compelling sword of peace is raised. To be sure, I embarked on my enterprise only in this certain knowledge. Strained Atmosphere. But even now the two Murra, who alone of my party knew a route northwards in this longitude, were jealous of their waterholes, and occasionally I detected a strained atmosphere when Rashidi made too many or close inquiries concerning the flat white sands we were traversing. Thus onward my little party moved through these great hungry, silent wastes—they always with a pious expression upon their lips— The day is cold! “ It is from Allah,” is the reply. Say not that you would wish for other, it would be blasphemous. From God always, and everything. Never was there a firmer faith in the inevitability of events—murder! raids! disease! all are part of the Divine plan. The hour for each is written. On setting out in the morning the

Badu utters a pious invocation—a constant reminder of the great uncertainty and insecurity which shadows him, and his consciousness of the need for supernatural aid. With the first foot forward on the morning march, he would burst out—- “ In the name of God the merciful and the Compassionate Reliance is upon Thee Oh God There is none other and none equal to Thee In the name of God the merciful Deliverance from the slinking devil God’s security and His guidance And on Him we rely.” Guessing the Footprints. The morning routine was that we led our camels on foot for the first three or four miles, but I was usually first into the saddle, except for Bin Ham, a Bait Imani shaikh, and a doughty warrior among them still, in spite of a leg crippled by a bullet wound received on a raid. He delighted in making me read the sands, my guesses being usually wide of the mark and the cause of much mirth to my companions. Of serious import for the Badu, this golden face of the sands had for me another appeal. There is a simple story or a beauti-" ful picture in its every rippling feature. The swaying of bright green gusais plants in the wind makes a perfect semi-circle like the prayer ring the Badu makes with a sweep of his cane toward the setting sun; the neat little rosette pattern of a sand-rat leads to a thicket where you will find its hole under a tiny heap of excavated sand about the entrance; the beautiful intricacies of a lizard’s crooked course, like a well-invented arabesque, that leads to a breakfast sprig of zahar where the small creature has played maypole and finally rolled over in joyous repletion; a straight path of a bird, each clawmark immediately in front of another and clear-cut in contrast w’ith the more confused tracks of quadrupeds; the futuristic riot of marks of fallen twigs tumbled over and over bv the whims of the wind. Glimpse of the Sea. From the summit of the towering sandhill of Nakhala, I got a distant glimpse of the sea. It was a sunny balmy day, and a glorious panorama lay about Nakhala, a sea of low sands stretching westward to the habitations of Jafurah, to the eastward ridges of bare sandhills rising towards the sea. The vast, almost uninhabited wastes of Rub’ al Khali lay weeks behind us, before us was but a four days’ march to comparative civilisation. We descended. The correct aneroid read over 100 feet below sea level. Below sea level readings had been met the day before, and we carried them throughout the next day. Sabkhat al Manasir, a salt-field several square miles in extent, was thicldy strewn with sea shells in an early state of fossilisation. Carrying the sea a day’s march on our right hand, we proceeded on a northerly course through quarry-like country of extreme desolation. A wolf was heard near the bluff of Farhud, where I collected more shells in a more advanced state of petrifaction. Trials of Strength. Cheerful were *my companions, and liable always under stimulating effects of a strong sun and an unexpectedly juicy piece of herbage suddenly discovered to break forth into merry songs. Their chanting I was always curious to record, so far as their songs could be recored in European notation. At other times they engaged each other in trials of strength, usually to unseat one another while on the march, the loser faced with a 10ft drop on to the sands. Ilaman the Murra, their strong man, and I provided a merry spectacle to our companions before starting out one cold

morning by having a wrestling match, and although I was a head-and-shoul* der taller than he and could push him about scrum fashion I found I could not floor him, and the honours were declared even. Sea Shell Fossils. On the morrow our course of 20 deg east or north took us through more of this quarry-like wilderness, when, after a six-mile march I beheld before me a large silver lake. I had learnt from my Badus that we should pass on our right hand a certain Sabkha, Amra, and had naturally supposed that this Sabkha was of the nature of a dry salt plain, like the Sabkhas of the recent marches. A lake some seven miles in length, and perhaps a mile and a half wide came therefore as a pleasant shock. Here as we approached its southern end I picked up two large sea shell fossils. Our course lay in a low flinty plain that edged its north side, its south shore appearing to be low sand hills. While I photographed it, which I must needs do straight into the sun under a yellow cloudy sky, my Badus walked to the edge to bring away large chunks of rock salt. A 20ft border of this had a snowlike appearance, and at a distance it was impossible to see where the salt ended and the water began. A line of dead white locusts ran within some 6ft of the water edge—probably desiccated specimens of the large red variety that is an Arab delicacy. Wretched creatures, they swarm from the desert in the spring and take a suicidal plunge into the first water that they meet. Evidences of Sea Bods. The position suggested that the edge of the lake had receded during the year, but no explanation was vouchsafed by the two Murras, who alone of my party had been here before. Rains may suggest expansion, evaporation, shrinkage. Salt and fossil evidences of sea beds in this Qatar hinterland suggest that the land has been rapidly encroaching on the sea, wherefore I suggest that Gerrha, the ancient gulf port of Ptolemy, if it is not to be identified with Bahrain, may be looked for, not under the sea, as has popularly been supposed, but some miles inland. After leaving the lake, our course of 30deg.-40deg. east of north took us across stony country sown with jagged splintered stones, thence another Sabhka plain of Amra, and so on into the Qatar peninsula. Fresh marks of camels, identified with the Manasir tribe, which Hamad, my guide, was in no mood to meet, induced us to press on. A few distant grazing camels against the sky caused alarmist exchanges between my party. Talib, guide No. 2 and persona grata with local Manasir. rode ahead to spy out the land anrl conceal the constitution of our party if necessary. Nearing the End. He came back with the information of a few tents of Manasir, which we thereupon made a detour to avoid. And so through the dreary stony steepe with low and isolated sandhills on either hand for two days. Came fires there were none, from absence of firewood, but only cold and occasionally drizzling rain. We were approaching the end. The Badus moved forward at a sharp pace, chanting the water chants at which our thirsty camels pricked up their ears with eager knowingness. The last sandhill was left behind. And topping the next undulation we saw in the dip of the stony plain before us Na’aija, where we had planned a final watering, and beyond it the towers of Dohah silhouetted against the silver sea. Thither we went. The Rub’ al Khali had been crossed. (To be Concluded next Saturday.)

cj~HIS is the fifth 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. (World Copyright Reserved)