THE LAKE IN THE DESERT 167 



would come to great massive dunes like small mountains, 

 from the top of which one had a view of the four black, 

 rocky chains, roughly east, south, north and west. At 

 10 A.M. we climbed to the top of the Seif el-Biram, 

 which the Arabs say is the highest on the route. It is 

 called the "Dune of Firepots," because the Zouia 

 women, flying south before the Turkish occupation of the 

 northern oasis, took their clay cooking pots with them on 

 their camels. As the beasts crawled down the precipitous 

 slopes of the mighty dune the vessels fell off and were 

 all broken! To a certain extent our caravan repeated 

 the experience, for most of the baggage collapsed and a 

 strange woman who was travelling with us — a pale girl- 

 widow, who had left her baby in Buseima because her 

 husband's family refused to give it up and had claimed 

 our protection to go to Kufara to join her own people — 

 turned a complete somersault over the head of her 

 surprised camel. Luckily the sand was soft! It became 

 distinctly pinkish as we went farther south, a pale coral 

 colour. Unfortunately, another naga took it into her 

 head to foal, after we had done only 28 kilometres and 

 we were forced to camp at 3 p.m. Luckily there was no 

 doubt about this foal's health, so we avoided the gloom 

 of the preceding evening. 



Yusuf and Abdullah sat with me while the tent was 

 being erected in a wide open space, splendidly open to 

 attack, but the fatalistic spirit of the desert had made 

 us careless. They told me stories of Sidi el Mahdi, who 

 is supposed among the Beduins to be still alive and a 

 mystic wanderer in the Sahara. Some day he will 

 return to lead the Senussi to further glory and power, 

 "Inshallah!" They say that he disappeared suddenly 

 at Garu on the way to Wadai and another was buried 

 in his place in the holy morabit in Kufara. As an instance 

 of his continued existence they quoted the experience 



