Evening Star Newspaper, June 17, 1923, Page 75

Part 5—8 Pages MAGAZINE SECTION The Sunduy Star. WASHINGTON, D. C, SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 17, 1923. 'FEATU RES Thirst and Treachery Encountered on Way to Forbidden City Readers will enjoy this article, the ®econd of a remarkable series of four, quite independently of the one preced- Ing it. Hereln Mrs. Forbes, young Eng- lish society woman, tells of the second etage of her unique journey from the coast of Tripoli Into the Kufara group ©of oases—forbidden to any strangers. Her dally danger was genuine—not only from the menace of the waterless way, but from bandits and fanatics eager to Kill “Christian dogs.”” She bore a letter of safe conduct from the sayed—re- ligious and temporal ruler of the re. glon—but many tribesmen scorned the sayed, and her own guide wished to ker die—was eager, In fact, to reve: her Mohammedan disguise. The only member of her little caravan on whom uation had suddenly become veryi serious. The previous day Abdullah had surprised us by Insisting on a slightly southeasterly course, as he had not yet seen a small landmark on the Zieghen route. When we had | talked the matter over in Jalo he had ' assured us calmly and strongly that | he had been to Taiserbo and knew the route. We cross-questioned him se- verely, and always he had been con- | fident of being able to guide us to any of the southern oases, though he had | urged us not to go to Buseima on ac- count of the danger of being at- tacked. Now, according to our map, it Wwas 350 kilometers from Buttafal to Tais- erbo. It was generally stated by the Arabs to be a seven days' journey, sha could absolutely depend was Has- sanein Bey, educated Egyptian. By ROSITA FORBES. ARTICLE 11 HEN first the rumor spread through Jedabia, in Tripoli. that “a rich woman" was traveling into the interior and a4 guard of sorts became nece: sary, Sayed Rida, our host, instant offered some of his soldier slaves. Not till after we left the little mud vil- lage on the edge of the world did we | grasp all the threads of the situation we left behind. There had been a cunning woof of plot and counter- plot both to aid and prevent our going. from the moment when the aged ekhwan (brother), Haji Fetater, had vowed on the “Fatha" (first chapter of the Koran), to take the English- —=*Svomman safely to the holy oasis. up to the night of our desperate flight with- out other guard than Mohammed and Yusuf. From the point where we had Thaited so long in the desert to wait for our escort after our escape from Jedabia, we had searched the far orizon for so many weary hours, we t4d magnified so many grazing herds into our longed-for van that when Yusuf, standing on the rise above us. said, “There is a caravan coming.” we took no notice. We had eaten one good meal in eleven day When, however, Yusuf raced down the hill screaming. “Our caravan Hamdulfllah! Our caravan at last? lethargy departed and we all rushed up the rise with more speed than dignity. It was quite true. Twelve camels and dozen men were within a hun- dred yards of us. First came a stately figure in white burnoose, Abdullah, a renowned gulde, who knew all the Litbyan routes, of whom the Bedouins sald, “He has a great heart,” and next the neat, brisk little commandant, with his thin, humorous face and quict, dry manper, the ebony Abdul Rahim. He was followed by a ser- grant, Moraja., whose home was in Kufara, and six men. asked for V& “/ “They say in the suq that you escaped in an aeroplane sent by Allah,” said Abdullah grav. but Abdul Rahim smiled his wise little amile. “They asked me where I was going with my big caravan.” he said, “and I told them I was traveling to * o ok ok news of Jedabia. punish some Bedouins who had not|pain of his feet, yet he struggled on. | up. paid their taxes to the sayed” (actual and spiritual ruler of the region, who approved Mrs. Forbes' secret jour- ney). The ekhwan and the party which had opposed our going were | Were going to die of thirst within a | devold of faintest shadow of grass furious at our escape, which had been Quite unsuspected. So. apparently, were certain rohber | bands upon the road, for, near Bir| Rassam, the caravan, marching day | which was a daily march of eleven to | jtwelve hours at an average of four | jand a fraction kilometers an hcur. Therefore, in spite . of Abdullah’'s change of direction, according to the ' | mileage we had done we should have | been well within the oases that night. We had confidently expected it the| previous evening, when we noticed a | certain vagueness about our guide. “Don't talk to him, or he will lose | nis head.” suid Mohammed on the sixth day. 1t is looked upon as a definite dis- ease, like fever, this losing the head | on the part of the guides. It was ex- traordinary to see the change in the | Beduin's face that day. The whole | outline of his features seemed to have | become blurred, while his eyes were | i restless and froubled. He stooped as | he walked and kept asking if we | thought he was going straight, so [ that by the end of that day we had to direct him by the map, which we | had every reason to believe inaccu- rate. It must be remembered that while we always knew roughly where we were, we never knew where ‘Taiserbo was. We started half ra- | tions for the camels on the 31st and tried to cut down the water ration | still more, though since the girbas (water skins) had begun to leak we | had dispensed with the half-cupful for washing. New Year's Day dawned gloomily. We had two half-feeds for the camels !and barely enough water for two da. at less than a pint per day per person. We were, however, a little cheered up when, as we were load- ing the camels, Abdullah pointed out |a faint blur in the east and said it was Mazeel, some hillocks he had | hoped to see the previous day. On | | elear mornings, about an hour before dawn, when the desert is very flat, a mirage of the country about a day’s journey distant appears on the hori- | zon. For a few minutes one sees a | picture of what is some fifty kil- | | ometers farther on. The Arabs call it “the country turning upside down.” | On January 1. the seventh day of | our march, we saw this mirage for the first time—brushwood and hill- ocks quite clearly to the south, yet our guide turned deliberately west of it. | Abdullah kept on his southwesterly | | course for a few hours, and then be- | gan to wander slightly. The blacks wanted to beat him en Moham- | | med was impatient with him. We| steered almost due south. Hassan- | | ein had to ride all day and Moham- med's eyes were bloodshot with the | | | | * % x [T was a terrivle’walk. Every one | |1 knew that. humanly speaking. they | | day or two. Nearly every one had| blistered feet, and no one had had | enough to eat, yet every one laughed. | It is evidently the wiil of Allah that | we die,” said Farraj politely, “but no | Most Famous Tracker in Lybia Completzly Lost When Woman Hunts Secfets of the Sahara—Arrival of Spy Indicates Probability That Travelers Will Be Attacked on Way to Ku- fara—Sufferers Talk Lightly of Probability of Death in Desert—Native Feud Growing Out of Politics Adds to Perils of Journey for Little Party. Ui i) ) L Fwrstonr “THE ARABS WERE ALL ARMED. AND WERE GESTICULATING AND TALKING IN LOUD VOICES. 1 ALWAYS WORE MY RE- VOLVERS NDERNEATH MY HEZAAM. I MANAGED TO GET THEM OUT, AND WONDERED, WITH ODD, FIERCE PLEASURE, HOW MANY SHOTS I COULD GET IN.” | triend, Hameida Bey Zeitun, explain- | ed by saving some of the sheikhs were old-fashioned and ignorant. Then came this actual enmity of | | Buseima, with-all the rumors and | | warnings that terrified our retinue and were disregarded by us. The |oulminating point was the arrival of the spy, whose tale gave us every | death, and 1 was amazed at the way they calmly accepted its advent. Phe only thing that stimulated them was the demise of the gulde. “By Allah, Sidi.Abduliah shall go| first and show us the way!" said the | toothless Sudanese. “When T am certain of death I shall shoot him,” said Shakri firmly. “But he called you a fool yester- ay,” reminded Farraj. i This worried Shakri (his compan- fon) for a moment. Then he cheered “I will call him a fool first and then I will shoot him," he sald. Amidst this cheerful conversation the mist suddenly lifted and revealed | nothing but the same flat. pale sand us. Instead. we were amazed to look down over a few lower dunes to an entirely changed tract. On every side were uneven mounds and hillocks covered with decayed scrub, leafless and brown, but a few hundred yards in front was a cluster of huge green bushes. We could not understand the apathy of the soldlers, who were dejectedly rolling gebbles down the slope. 5 “Surely there is water there, exclalmed impatiently. “Wallahl! But that Abdullah does not know said Farraj. “He says ; that it is not the Zeighen coun 80 we had to share our last hoarded | bottle with them. We dared not eat our meat ration because of the salt, so we sucked malted milk tablets and cagerly drank the water from some | tinned carrots which were cool and | damp. Then we tore up the baggase saddles to give the straw stuffing to the camels, for we thought we could manage one more day's march by | riding. d. 1 * & ok % 5§ WONDER how many readers will understand the tale of these days. n Libya there is often no well for several hundred miles, and, per- ‘hance, two caravans a year or none woall! As I ran down the dune the camels literally rushed past me to the patch of green. But they did not eat. Ap- or brushwood to give hope of an and appointed another man in thelr place. Consequently the whole Baza- ma family were in search of revenge. What better opportunity could offer than the murder of the Sayed's guests, who were, morever, generally supposed to be engaged on an im- portant Senussi mission? After two hours we left pink sands and passed Into a waste of stony | saved. Do you know why?" Then followed the story of the guide who had lost his head and his reputation at the same time and T suddenly grasped Abdullah’'s neat little plot. | It one of the earavan returned to | Jedabia, or even if the two strangers, chief witnesses against him, disap- peared, he would be saved. He knew full well that no one would employ | sugar one of them got up to accom- | pany us, ousis. Curiously enough, I felt no anger against Abdullah, even when he sud- denly acknowledged he had not been and night to overtake us (it had done | one will die before Sidi Abdullah.”|to Taiserbo for twenty years. In fact, the 220 kilometers in four and a half days), was accosted by some armed | Bedouin | Roing, while two or three others who | gathered in the vicinity said, “Where | < the rich Nasrani woman who is go- | ing to travel south with large stores | of food?" “I know nothing about her.” said Abdul Rahim. “There is no woman with us, but if you want to fight us | we shall be delighted!” The - disappointed hastil We started at 9:30 a.m. on Decem- ber 19 for the six hours' ride to Jalo over a flat country of fine gravel, brownish-yellow, without a spark of wvegetation. Abdullah, the most famous tracker in Libya, who had recovered four camels which had straved the pre-| vious night, following their footprints among many thousands on the soft sand, led our caravan. I kept the compass on him for an hour and ne did not vary his direction by one point. We made an absolutely straight line between the two oases, At 11:30 am. we saw a belt of palms on the horizon—Sharruf, the northern end of the big oasis: At 2:30 In the afternoon we entered the palm belt in the middle. Here the palms were dotted over thick white sand rolling up to low dunes, The scattered palms grew rarer and we swung around a broad dune, so that we faced a rise on which stood a formidable row of walled buildings. Among the desert cities of Libya each has its own special character. There are two separate villages at Jalo—El Erg and Lebba. The former looks llke a fortress at first sight. Its long. solid mud houdes with their strong walled courts line the brow of the rise. To the left of the buildings stretched what appeared to be a long, low, white wall, solid and even, which continued indefinitely. Mohammed seeing it, rushed forward excitedly. “It is a royal reception in your hon- or,” he shouted. 1t is no easy matter loading a cara- van that has got to travel 250 miles with a seven days' waterless stretch. I looked at our eighteen camels with much anxiety. However, it was no use worrying in advance. Long ago Arabs retired I doubt if the guide heard. He| trailed along with a blank, dispirited Who asked where they were | stare, first edging west. then east. Mo- | other hammed was tottering on swollen feet. “I think that T would ramer‘, die beside my luggage” he said placidly. “Doubtless Abdullah and Yusuf would like to wander about to | the end, but I do not know this country, " Hamdulillah will quick Thereafter it every one T had realized that we should get to | Kufara only if Aliah so willed, and the farther we moved into the desert the more I felt impelled by some ul- terior force. I began to feel a f talistic trust in the destiny that had dragged me from hunting and hunt Lalls and sent me out into the white Sahara to find the holy place which had been a secret for 3o long. * k¥ X N December 31 we started at 6:30 a.m. and walked till 7 a.m., doing lurty-siz kilometers, because the sit- an odd fatalism had absorbed us all. The Bedouins began discussing disasters on these terrible southern routes. One man had died within fifteen | vards of the water he had failed to| find in time. . . We crawled up to the top of a| expecting to see the same level, | saia Abdullah suddenly. parently the great feathery bushes were not fodder, and the only other things among the mounds were a couple of skeletons to which the hooves and chest pads still clung “This place is El Atash—the thifst." ‘There is an old well here, but its water will kill you! It is salt and bad.” There wus plenty of brushwood, =o we built enormous fires to cheer our- selves up, but we could cook nothing without water. aroni dry and the Arabs_tried flour, be | ridge, a series of wavy, curling dunes, | though we offered them our tinned meats. The soldfers had a cupful of spoke of | monotonous country that lay behind |water each, but the Bedouins had none, “THIS PLACE 1S EL ATASH—THE THIRST,” SAID ABDULLAH, SUDDENLY. “THERE IS AN OLD WELL HERE, BUT ITS WATER WILL KILL YOU. IT IS SALT AND BAD.” Ll The blacks ate mac- | For hours we stumbled and clat- tered over a blistered, black waste, and then, as we clambered up a rough bank between two of somber sheer-cut hills, the long line of Buseima palms spread before us with the thin silver strip of lake— real water, no mirage—that had seemed to be but a fable of Jedabia fmagination! ‘When presently we entered the vil | 1age of Buseima itself, apparently the tales of danger were not so absurd |us we had thought. The fargrun, the chief men of the place, had sald to Mohammed,” “Wallahi! If it had not been for Sidi el Madeni we would have killed you all.” Bidiel Madeni, adherent of the Senussi, had welcomed us as the sayed's friends. But there could be no further doubt about Buseima's dis- lke of strangers. A pale-faced wom- an had slipped out of the bushes to talk to Moraja as he went out of the mixed with his Sudanese and the figure in blurred reds and fawns was of his Kin. “Why did you bring these Egyp- tlans here?" she asked angrily. “We do not want strangers. Make them go, or they will suffer The morning of January 7, there- fore, every one had a new panic. We left Buseima at §:20 on January §. The “Fatha’ was solemnly repeat- {ed on the summit of a sharp rise; jthen, after many good wishes and blessings, we plunged sharply into the maze of dunes. The strange little scene stuck in my mind because of the treachery that we knew under- lay it. The preceding evening, after they had eaten our food, one of the Farqrun family had said to Yusuf, “Wallah! Had we but a force equal to yours, you should not now depart,” while the loyal Sheikh el Madeni had urged Mohammed to leave the oasis as soon as possible, The morning of our departure a spy larrived at Buseima from Ribiana, imylng, “the Bazama family have just returned from Jedabia, and they tell us that strangers are coming to :this country. We cannot believe it lig true that the Sayed has glven per- mission to any stranger to visit | Kufara. T have been sent to discover 'the truth.” | Ever since we had left Jedabla (there had been a strange undercur- rent that we could not understand. We met with much hospitality and friendliness, yet always and odd dis- trust dogged our footsteps, while queer, impossible rumors spread be- fore us. There was the robber band that lay in wait for us near Bir Ras- sam. There was a change of front at Aujela. Even in Jalo there was a faint uneasy shadow, which our the | camp. - The sergeant had Arab blood | MRS. ROSITA FORBES. reason to suppose that we should be attacked on the way to Kufara, for he made exhaustive inquiries as to the strength of our party and the retinue we were taking. * % kX T was Mohammed who elucidated the mystery. He told us that the Bazamas were an old and highly re- spected family, who had been ekhwan (brethren) since the ancestor, who was sent to Kufara by Sidi Ben All, was one of the original four who were. to instruct the Zouias in the faith of Islam. There had been an ancient dispute about the possession of some land between the Sayeds and a member of his family, but Sayed Ahmed had settled matters amicably by making them sheikhs Riblana. Unfortunately, they had lately evaded the payment of “onshur” (the tenth part) ‘to the government, on the grounds that they had not enough rvants to till the lands, Sidl Idris had just removed them - from office ridges and small hills on the out-| | skirts of the mountains. Somewhere |bim as a guide after the story of his beyond those peaks and cliffs lay the | %iaiserbo mistake became known. His mysterious, elusive oasfs that was so | future depended on our lips being near and yet always just beyond our | fealed. His best chance lay amongst reach. I his suspicious Zouia kinsmen, always Hassanein suggested our wander- |distrustful to strangers, fanatieal ing down to the other end of the 2nd warlike, yct the caravan would oasis where there is another small not be attacked while he was withit village. Hawairi. | Therefore he suggested going to pre- At that moment there were half a’pare the way for us at Taj. When dozen Zoulas seated round our zariba, | we agreed, It was easy to arouse the but none of them moved. I began, to amour propre and suspicions of the understand the sufferings of the ex- Zouias. He had never the slightest plorer Rohlfs when I looked at the intention of dispatching any one to cruel, anaemic faces of thess Arabs.|rescue us from the ever-growing Brave they may be, but they had not | hostility, and he calculated that in 2 | the keen, fierce looks of the warrior |day or two we should make an at- Beduln. They had small, cunning eyes | tempt 1o escape and be promptly that shifted restlessly, long, mean|fired upon. The blacks would be faces with thin lips and generally a|obliged to defend us and, after the fretful scowl between the brows. The | general carnage, the story of his Zoulas are known as a bad tribe and | failure would be buried with the these people certainly looked untrust- | slain, worthy to the last degree. | * Wk X When we offered a bribe of tea and | \7USUF told me afterward that Ab- dullah had insisted that the cara- but none of our soldiers van was to follow him to Jof the would come. Moraja and Abdul | next day without waiting for any Rahim hid in their tent and Yusuf | news from Kufara. To make things sald he was lame. We were just|quite certain he had told the men starting off alone when Mohammed |that we were looking for gold in the sprang up and slung on his gun.| mountains and we would return with “They are a pair of eagles!” he ex-|an army to conquer the land and {claimed. “T will not be less brave take the treasure it contained! than they.” After we had gone a few I saw the dream of so many hundred yards there was a soft thud- | scorching days and weary nights fad- thudding in the sand behind, and the ' ing like the mirage of noon. The big Farraj, who had become our sort|object I had striven for, labored for, of personal slave, together with the| for which I had studied Arabic dur- corporal, silently joined us. ing gay London summers, for which S Dm‘":s_ e el almost | 1 Nad plotted in Cyrenaica, for which Instantls stopped by & band of |1 12d Pored over route maps and ‘f‘:“hx e ":‘nd b)vy: rushing | CHaTts from Khartoum to Tripolt, for ) - s | which I had waded through ponder- wildly after us. “Do not walk, Do ous tomes from Ptolemy to Behm and iy 'l‘:”‘e thieye ’:“fs;t‘“‘: d"';\i““:,'j Duveyrier, balanced trembling in the o @ large group of white-clad Arabs| . .gje of this man's mind. Every marching rapidly towards us. We |, .ive and sinew, still aching from tenmeito, mest them, | our almost intolerable journey, spoke “l";:r All:h s f;:e do ,“°‘b5d'>’" “‘: | of the strenuous effort made. Surely Ao penne s ere is bad WOrk| i pis must weigh heavier than Ad- here. Ido not understand it. Let us| gupiopi guile e gia He followed gamely, however. The ; Arabs were all armed and they 100 ed very angry. for they were gesticu- | Concerning Titanium. lating and talking in loud volces. | y I always wore my revolvers under- | "TITANIUM. which for a time was neath my hezaam (sash). I managed | ~ regarded as a rclatively unimpor- to get them out under the folds of my | !aNt constituent of the earth's crust. barracan and wondered with an odd, |8 the ninth in abundance of all the flerce pleasure how many shots I|Chemical elements. The titanium in Suia vt Tn | the earth’s surface is estimated to be The corporal about four-tenths of 1 per cent. i Among the most successful prepa- ratlons of pure titanium is that of Nilson and Peterson, who reduce a | titanium chloride with sodium. The metal thus obtained resembles pol- | ished steel in appearance. It is brit- tle when cold. Heated to a low, red | Feat, it can be forged like irom, but | if the temperature be carried too | Bigh the metal oxidizes superficiall in contact with air. It can be pol ished on a grindstone, but it is too kard to be cut by a hack-saw. It may, however, be shaped with a file | Rods of pure titanium six inches long { have been made. Analysis shows that the metal contains no impurities. Fowler, the British investigator, has described his comparison of the | spectrum of the variable star Mira with that of titanium oxide. He finds | that the two spectra are, for the . greater part, identical. The curlous bands seen in the gpectrum of Mira |are shown to be due to titanium oxide. Fowler also finds evidence of he presance of vanadium in the same star. The lines of titanium and v nadium have likewise been discov- ered in the light of sun-spots, leading | the astronomer, Father Cortie, to re- | mark that sun-spots and the star | Mira are evidently very closely con | nected in their physical condition pretended to bu Ashes as an Asset. | T appears from competent authority 1™ that smokers are annudlly throw- |ble material, the same being the {ashes of the tobacco that they con- sume. The ash left on buraing to- | bacco is considerable and, ns a mat- | ter of fact, the mineral matter of the : |tobacco leaf frequently amounts 1> ]‘as much as a fifth part of fts weight. {Thus a ton of tobacco ieaf -vould vield four hundredweights of ash, which represents valuable mineral constituents withdrawn from the sofl which have to be replaced by abun- dant manuring. It has been calculated that a ton of tobacco withdraws than a hundredweight of mineral consti uents per acre of land. This would appear to be an astounding waste of material which must be of enormous value to the soil, considering thst 15 per cent consists of calcium and po- tassium salts and 15 per cent of mag- mesium and sodium salts, including Inearly 5 per cent of the essential . [constituent to all plants—phosphosic acid. 2 On the face of it there would secm himself with the donkey, but our}to be a fortune in store for that in- Farraj came on, his rifle ready. “You |dividual who could devise a success- shall not move from here till orders |ful means for the collection o come from Jof!" they shouted. “We |bacco ash. have been warned about you. We know. No strangers shall come to our country. They die quickly here!" Hassanein suddenly had one of his inspirations. “You wish to show that you are brave and will defend your country to the last; but you should behave thus to strangers, not to the guests of the Sazed!” he sald angrily. They were puzzled. They expect- ed us to be frightened and impeessed. Instead, we were angrier than they. If you can make an Arab talk he gen- erally forgets to fire. “Of course, no messenger has come,” more Giant of the Deep. THE Amerlcan Museum of Natural History some time ago came into possession of what is belleved to be the largest whale ever exhibited on land. Tt is a female finback, 68% feet in length. Its body, in life, was 30 feet in circumference. It is estimated that at least fifty men could be inclosed within the interior of this gigantic animal. The full-grown right whale, which is the species usually hunted for its blubber and whalebone, av- sald Hassaneln triumphantly. ‘.\'one)ersgefl from 45 to 50 feet in length will. You have been fooled and so)The whale whose skeleton adorns have we. Tomorrow you would have | the museum was washed ashars dead, prevented our going. There would |near Forked river, New Jersey. Sui- have been a fight. You are brave!entific theory avers that the ances- but so are the slaves of -the Sayed.|tors of the whales were terrestrial or Perhaps his guests would have bgen |l1and mammals, which gradually be- killed and Abdullah would have been | canie aquatic In_their way of llving.