AN AWFUL JOURNEY 307 



Words can scarcely describe the awful journey, 

 especially in the dark, from this tree to Ein Aga, 

 I might say to within sixty miles of Delgo. Riding 

 was almost out of the question, walking over the 

 ground thickly strewn with flat stones some eight 

 inches in diameter almost as bad. A striking feature 

 was the solitary sand-drift. Numbers of them, a mile 

 or so apart, covered the plain. In among the stones 

 were beautiful pebbles and polished pieces of petrified 

 wood. One trunk over twenty feet long was passed. 

 We also passed many patches of brilliant purple 

 pebbles. Nature, as if to draw attention to her handi- 

 work, placed one or two pieces of chrome-coloured 

 ones among the purple. The more beautiful the 

 pebbles, the uglier brown is the desert. 



We had now struck the Darb el Arbain (" Road of 

 Forty Days "). Centuries of caravans have worn more 

 or less possible tracks deep among the stones. We 

 passed a tundub tree into which, as seen by its posi- 

 tion, a dying camel, gaining that much strength in its 

 agony of thirst, had dragged itself. In the distance 

 we saw J. Ein el Legia ("Spring of Legia"), a small, 

 dark-coloured, flat-topped hill, which would pass un- 

 noticed and certainly unnamed elsewhere, but here 

 holds the position of the one-eyed man in the country 

 of the blind. Coming out of the unknown, we hailed 

 it with delight, and the possibility of missing the oasis 

 and having to make a dash to the Nile for water, that 

 had haunted us, vanished. 



As we approached Ein Aga I saw my escort sur- 

 reptitiously loosening and loading their rifles. This 



