THE ELUSIVE DUNES 289 



to the north and he was going to sleep till the guide 

 found his head again. 



The happy-go-lucky Beduin spirit had completely 

 got possession of us, so no one was particularly surprised 

 when, after an hour on the course insisted on by the 

 compass and myself, we picked up a definite trail with 

 some slabs of stones stuck upright as landmarks. As a 

 matter of fact we had struck the Jalo-Jaghabub route, 

 rather more than a day's journey west of the latter 

 place, but at the time nobody was certain as to our 

 exact position. Amar, however, announced that un- 

 doubtedly Bu Alia lay behind us, and no sooner had the 

 whole retinue agreed on that one point than the begin- 

 ning of the hatia of that name became visible a few 

 hundred yards ahead! "Hamdulillah! We shall camp 

 to-night in our own country!" exclaimed Mohammed, 

 and hurried on the caravan in spite of Yusuf 's expostula- 

 tions. Gazelle tracks were now plentiful and we tried 

 to track down four in the hope of getting a shot, but 

 Suleiman was nearly dead-beat. "The last word is in 

 your hands," he said, "but I am an old man and very 

 tired. Let us barrak here." 



The hatia was really a wadi stretching about 5 kilo- 

 metres north to south, with a breadth of 4 kilometres. 

 The whole space between the white shale and sand 

 banks was filled with mounds and shrubs of hattab, 

 mostly green, while here and there massive blocks of 

 greyish sandstone stuck up in strange shapes. As one 

 wandered slowly through the low bushes far away to 

 the north a long purplish ridge with a mound at the 

 end shaped exactly like the dome of a mosque caught 

 the first red of the sunset. "That is the gherd of the 

 qubba," exclaimed Yusuf, his round tired face lighting 

 up, "and look, in front of us is the Gara of Sidi el 

 Mahdi!" At the farthest end of the hatia was an 



