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One hopes she is back in it by now with Fathers Hamra and Jeheira and the rest, and we at any rate will never disturb them more. Or was Mother Ugba some mythical heroine of those great days when the armies of Egypt and of Asia moved through the desert to fight and plunder and the Beduin hung on their flanks and cut up the wounded on either side indiscriminately, just as they do now.
From this place the caravan starts on the 27th of the month Showal: it travels only by night, generally setting out at four o'clock in the afternoon, and alighting soon after sun-rise at the station where they encamp, until evening. From the Birket el Hadj 1st night To Dar el Hamra. To Adjeroud: here they halt the whole day and following night.
My riding camel was led by a white-bearded man named Muhamed Shah. Kasim came at the end of the file, and the faithful Islam Bay, who superintended the whole, was my confidential servant. We had also two dogs, Yolldash and Hamra, three sheep, ten hens, and a cock. The last did not like riding on a camel.
On the 6th of June we continued our road in barren valleys, among steep rocks, mostly of granite, till we halted, about noon, under a projecting rock that afforded us some shade. The Bedouins went to fetch water from a place up in the western mountains, called El Hamra, which proved to be of excellent quality. A poor woman with two goats lived in the valley quite alone.
The Tuwayl el-Suk is nothing but an open and windy flat, where the Hajj-caravan used to camp an adjoining ridge, the Hamra el-Tuwayl, shows spalled quartz, Wasm and memorial stones. The principal formation here is the mauve-purple conglomerate before described. After riding nine miles we came unexpectedly upon a large and curious ruin, backed by the broad Wady Damah gleaming white in the sun.
At the end of two hours, we came to a public fountain in ruins, on the road, near a well half choked up. The valley here divides; one branch turns towards the N.W.; the other, which we followed, N.N.E. Two hours and a half, we passed a hamlet called Dar el Hamra, with gardens of date-trees, and plantations, inhabited by the tribe of Howaseb, another branch of Harb.
We travelled the whole night without interruption, and on the morning of June 22nd alighted at the place called El Hamra, the Hadj station between Cairo and Adjeroud. The ladies of the Pasha had brought two carriages with them from the Hedjaz, in which they had travelled all the way from Tor to Suez, the road being every where of easy passage.
The camp of the soldiers at Kheyf was completely inundated, and the whole breadth of the wady covered with a rapid stream of water. Without stopping any where we passed Djedeyde at the end of three hours and a half, and further on Dar el Hamra, where the inhabitants had cultivated several new plantations, since I passed this way in January.
Subsequent civil wars have, however, afforded fresh opportunities of injury to its hoary walls, and to-day it stands a mere wreck of what it once was. The name by which these buildings are now known is but the adjective by which the Arabs described it, "El Hamra," meaning "The Red," because of its colour outside.
On seeing the English advancing up Islamgye, he mounted his favourite horse Hamra, and, followed by some of his chiefs, furiously galloped up and down in circles, firing off his rifle as a challenge, perhaps wishing that some kind bullet might at the moment end his career.
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