1920-22 Draft of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom – Page 33

Chapter C XXXIV

It was unfortunately with great reluctance that we resolved to do this, but it was the only course left to me with no [illegible] to spare our animals 230 Rs, and even very full provisioned; we were following M???r???z, who broke recklessly from W. [illegible] S????re. They were moving fast northerly to Jid??, & we were actually a more direct line had we taken our old M. Saleh road.

R. left me at J??z?? C??s??r as a rendezvous while he went across the lava beds across P?????id Fe??id & Mek??, a distance of some 60 miles, to try & get the Turks started on an aer.? chase. We meant then, if all went well, to double at speed toward Yenbo, as supplies were said to have come in there by sea. For it would be far too long & arduous a journey to load up at Ez Zeid?? with all the bulky provisions foods an army requires.

However, we found after two days that R. had failed to draw the Turks across to J??z?? C??s??r by these well-worn tactics. This seemed worse news than it was, for the Turks, distrusting the whole move as probably a ruse, had not pursued at all & were sitting tight in the precious.

So with M???r???z going strong ahead, and the Turks making no move in any direction, we decided not to linger & to change our goal for Ak??da, near the G. of Ak??ba, and get water & supplies into Aub [illegible] by sea from there.

We broke from Raudha & drifted via marshes and Gh??r??rs in the Faisal land – a region full of small scattered oases, where water is abundant, & the Turab??s had been living thinly before the war.

In fact R???s return was nicely timed w?? J??z?? as we hit the trails which Musil used & we followed them down successively as they spread out from the area of J??z?? C??s??r.

So we came to the end of Musil’s trails & passed easily into the open wildernesses north of the Faisal land & traversed them somewhat warily, knowing that while we followed the ag??da road parallel it would lie open in days to come to be cut. However for the present, as none knew we were coming, we were unmolested.

The Faisal country was very dry of surface water outside the scattered gh??rs, & though Musil mentions natural cisterns, these seemed rare. Most of them were obviously very ancient. The land is very open with no cover of any sort to conceal them so they dried up as years go by.

The people were very few & lived a beggars’ life on these barren wastes. We wondered often how they contrived to exist. The land could not well be less fitted to sustain settled life than as it was.

When we came right out to the plain from the last hills the country changed completely to sandy expanse, with here & there dark outcrop buttes of basalt like islands fringed by sand-dunes. Near one of these towards sunset we encamped & that night moved on again before dawn to avoid being seen. As it was we halted only just in time before coming into the open, for Ez Zeid?? lay there on our right