OUENAT IS SIGHTED
At 6 o'clock on the morning after our first
all-night trek, we came to the northwest corner of the Ouenat Mountains
and an hour later had made camp under their rocky walls.
The range in that vicinity rose in a sheer cliff
from the desert floor. Heaped against it were masses of boulders (see
illustration, page 258), which through the ages had been worn smooth by
the grinding, polishing action of wind and sand. It was as if here were
piled the arsenals of Stone-Age giants whose weapons had been Gargantuan
slings.
We found ample supplies of water in the deep-shaded
recesses of the cliffs. Both Arkenu and Ouenat differ from all the other
oases of this part of Egypt, in that they are not depressions in the
desert with underground reservoirs but mountain areas, where rain water
collects in natural basins in the rocks. There are said to be seven such
basins at
(p275) Ouenat. I visited
four and found the water of each cool and of good quality.
EL FASHER,
CAPITAL OF DARFUR PROVINCE
(For an account of Darfur, see
"Adventures in Eastern Darfur," by Major Edward Keith-Roach, in
The Geographic for January,
1924) [photo page 276]
 
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