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Updated: June 5, 2025
As soon as they were gone, with the assistance of the two native boys who were left, I removed the camp to the white sand-drifts, five miles further west. Being anxious to keep as near to the grass as I could, I commenced digging at some distance away from where the natives procured their water, but at a place where there were a great many rushes.
Nazarka was nearly caught by some Nogay women, he was! 'Caught indeed, Nazarka, who had just come back, said in an injured tone. 'We rode off again, and again Girey lost his way and almost landed us among the sand-drifts. We thought we were just getting to the Terek but we were riding away from it all the time! 'You should have steered by the stars, said Daddy Eroshka.
I then left the boy in charge of the camp, and proceeded myself with the two men, and provided with spades and buckets, to where the overseer had obtained water by digging; the place was about two miles from our camp, between the sand-drifts and the sea, and immediately behind the front ridges of the coast.
The situation was at the west side of the upper extreme of Point Fowler, immediately behind the sand-drifts of the coast, which there were high, bare, and of white sand. The water was on the inland side, immediately under the sand-hills, and procured in the greatest abundance and of good quality, by sinking from one to three feet. It was found in a bed of white pipe-clay.
The scenery is wildly fantastic, for while the rocks which form the western bank are almost entirely covered by the golden sand-drifts which pour over them, smooth as satin, to the water's edge, those on the east are sun-baked and forbidding, a huge agglomeration of boulders piled one upon the other and partially covered by shingle, which crackle under foot like clinkers; between are the islands, many crowned by a hut or pigeon-cote, and with their greenery often perfectly reflected in the rapidly flowing water.
Facing the green island of Elephantine and the golden sand-drifts which cover the low range of hills across the river, Assuan stretches along the river-bank, its white buildings partly screened by the avenue of palms and lebbek-trees which shade its principal street, while to the north are dense groves of date-palms, past which the Nile sweeps in a splendid curve and is lost to sight among the hills.
Latterly even this resource has failed us; after digging a few feet we have been impeded by rock, which gradually approaching nearer the surface towards the head of the Great Bight, at last occupies its whole extent, unless where partially concealed by sand-drifts, or low sandy ridges covered with brush.
We proceeded well for two miles and a half to our encampment of the 30th November; and as there was then a well defined track, I left the man to proceed alone, whilst I myself went once more to the coast to make a last effort to procure water among some of the sand-drifts. In this I was unsuccessful. There were not the slightest indications of water existing any where.
Meanwhile the life of the river and the fields has recommenced, and the banks again become animated, and innumerable Nile boats dot the surface of the stream. At midday the landscape is enveloped in a white heat, while the bluffs and buttresses of the rocks cast deep purple shadows on the sweeping sand-drifts which lie against their base.
They were soon crossing the ditch that had been dug around the camp among the ruins, and passed through lanes of tents erected among the thick foliage that mantled the broken walls; here and there tracks of mosaic pavement; of temples to Dido or Anna peeping forth beneath either the luxuriant vegetation or the heavy sand-drifts; or columns of the new Carthage lying veiled by acanthus; or remnants of churches destroyed by Genseric all alike disregarded by the sickly drooping figures that moved feebly about among them, regarding them as little save stumbling-blocks.
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