146 THE SECRET OF SAHARA: KUFARA 



ones!" sounded more welcome. It was the cool, pale 

 hour that precedes night when we encamped in a great 

 hollow among white dunes. The stars were triumphing 

 over the last glowing rays of the sunset and the mys- 

 terious mountain that had fired my imagination for 

 so long lay, violet-hued and sombre, to the south. 



Next morning, January 5, we again started at 7.30 

 and plunged immediately into a maze of dunes, great, 

 curved, hard-backed ones, with a few soft patches in the 

 hollows into which the camels sank, protesting. They 

 walked rather better than the previous day in spite of 

 a continual series of ascents and descents. Perhaps it 

 was the sight of the strange, sinister ridge in front, coal- 

 black against the surrounding white sand. Perhaps it 

 was the very cold south wind which blistered our faces 

 as we moved into it. At any rate, at 12.30 we arrived 

 at the mysterious gebel which had first appeared as a 

 solid, even ridge with a flat top, had then added to itself 

 a sort of squarish, sugar-loaf hill at each end and now 

 turned out not to be a ridge at all but a chain of cliffs, 

 some square, some roundish, but all of sombre dull black 

 stone with faint reddish patches. To my eyes, uninitiated 

 into the by-ways of geology, it looked like a vast volcanic 

 eruption, for passing east of the main body of the hills, 

 we entered a veritable inferno of desolation. Right in 

 the middle of the white, curly sand dunes lay a tract of 

 about 8 kilometres of scattered black stones. Their 

 brittle sheets of ebony matter stood up in lines — it looked 

 as if all the old slates in the world had been flung in care- 

 less piles in this dreary region. Experts later informed 

 me that the black stone was Nubian sandstone im- 

 pregnated with iron and manganese, nothing volcanic at 

 all. The other stones were sandstones of lighter colour, 

 fossilised wood, and flints. 



For two hours we stumbled and clattered over this 



