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Updated: May 25, 2025
But the results did not satisfy us; and on April 10th I sent him with M. Philipin to make photographs. The latter, again, are hardly as satisfactory as they might be, because the inscriptions have not been considered the central points of interest. The mule-riders left the Wady el-Wijh, which extends some two hours eastward, and struck to the east-south-east.
Striking up the Wady el-Wijh, which now becomes narrow and gorge-like, with old and new wells and water-pits dotting the sole, we were stopped, after half an hour's walk, by a "written rock" on the right side of the bed. Moreover, he has copied the scrawls with a carelessness so prodigious, that we failed at first to recognize the original.
He reaches the ruins after ten miles from the fort, when they lie between twelve and thirteen from El-Wijh. He calls the porphyritic trap "dark granite." He descends the "caves" with ropes and lights; yet he does not perceive that they are mining shafts and tunnels, puits d'air, adits for the workmen, and pits by which the ore was "brought to grass." And the Hydrographic Chart is as bad.
Briefly, it is my conviction that, under present circumstances, "Tor" is a standing danger, not only to Egypt, but to universal Europe. The coast about El-Wijh is famed for shells; the numerous reefs and shoals favouring the development of the molluscs.
Behind the establishment lies the pilgrim-cemetery. frequented by hyenas that prowl around the lighthouse, threatening the canine guard. I found a new use for this vermin's brain: it is administered by the fair ones at El-Wijh to jealous husbands, upon whom, they tell me, it acts as a sedative. El-Wijh has been heard of in England as the prophylactic against the infected Hejaz.
Unlike Tor, nothing can be healthier or freer from fever than the pilgrims' plateau. From El-Wijh, too, escape is hopeless: the richest would not give a piastre to levant; because, if a solitary traveller left the caravan, a Bedawi bullet would soon prevail on him to stop. This, then, should be the first long halt for the "compromised" travelling northwards.
So far from the condensers being a failure, the tank still holds about twenty tons of distilled water, although it gives drink to some thirty mouths composing the establishment. Thus the expense of laying out the quarantine-ground at El-Wijh has been pitifully wasted. That, however, is a very small matter; the neglect of choosing a proper position is serious, even ominous.
Finally, guardhouses and bakehouses, already falling to ruins like the mole, and an establishment for condensing water, still kept in working order, are the principal and costly novelties of the southern shore. The site of El-Wijh is evidently old, although the ruins have been buried under modern buildings.
The result of all such ruthless ruining was simply null. The imaginative Naji declared, it is true, that a stone dog had been found; but this animal went the way of the "iron fish," which all at El-Muwaylah asserted to have been dug up at El-Wijh the latter place never having heard of it.
At 6.40 a.m. they struck to the south-east of the town, and passed the two brackish pits or wells, Bir el-Isma'il and El-Sannusi, which supply the poor of the port. Thence crossing the broad Wady el-Wijh, they reached, after a mile's ride, Wady Mellahah, or "the salina."
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