216 A Long Desert Journey [1896 



emy. Certainly from the day of Said's return to his own house things 

 have altered at Constantinople, and the Sultan has gone his own way 

 without seeking any more to be on 'terms with us. 1 



" 30^/j Jan. — Anne and I start on Monday for a considerable journey 

 in the southern desert beyond Kalala. Judith goes up the Nile with 

 Lady Decies, and Sheykh Obeyd will be shut up. I feel better and in 

 better spirits, though the future is dark for me. If this next summer 

 brings me nothing of value to my life I shall not return to England 

 again. Perhaps I may find my hermitage this Spring in truth and 

 reality, but I must go to England once again first, to solve one or 'two 

 questions and complete my memoirs. 



" yrd Feb. — Our party at Sheykh Obeyd is broken up. Judith went 

 this morning to Cairo, and will stay there till she starts up the Nile. 

 Anne and I leave 'to-morrow for our long desert journey, it ought to 

 be an interesting one. I went to-day to the War Office, and saw 

 Wingate, and looked over maps with him. I find that almost nothing is 

 known of the country south of Kalala, so that we shall be exploring a 

 new region. I have taken tracings of such maps as they have in the 

 Intelligence Department, and they are not much. Floyer has also sent 

 me tracings. I had some talk with Slatin, a commonplace little Ger- 

 man, quite unworthy of ever having served the Mahdi. He talked a 

 great deal about the prospects of reconquering the Soudan. I have 

 been reading Kipling's new ' Jungle Book,' and the story of the Indian 

 Minister who became a fakir. It seems to me the only worthy ending 

 of a public, perhaps of a private life ; but it wants great physical cour- 

 age to endure." 



February 4th to 26th in my journal is taken up with 'the diary of a 

 camel journey made by Anne and me, with Suliman Howeyti and two 

 other Bedouins of the Howeytat, under the guidance of Sobeyeh Ibn 

 Zeydan of the Maaze tribe, through the Maaze country south of the 

 Kalala mountains to the granite range of Jebel Ghareb southwards to 

 Kufra, Dokhan, and Kitar, regaining the Nile at Keneh, a journey of 

 400 miles of uninhabited desert, made in twenty days, of the greatest 

 possible interest. My diary, however, is little more than an itinerary of 

 each day's march, suited rather for a paper in the Royal Geographical 

 Society 'than for the present volume, and I do not transcribe it here. 

 It was for the most part through an entirely unexplored and unmapped 

 region. We returned from Keneh by steamer to Cairo. All that I 

 will say of it here is that it was the last and perhaps the hardest of all 

 'the many desert journeys Lady Anne and I undertook alone together, 

 and as such stands out in my memory as one of the most delightful. I 

 made a rough map of our route for private use, not for the Geographical 

 Society (of which I am almost the oldest member), because I have 



1 Compare Dr. Dillon's " Eclipse of Russia." 



