THERE is, after Herodotus, little i by the Western world towards the desert for hundreds of years. From B.C. to the beginning of the tweh tury there is aing of eyes. Silehe eenth tury was an age of river seekers.
And then ihere is a sweet postscript history on this pocket of earth, made mostly by privately funded expeditions and followed by modest lectures given at the Geographical Society in London at Kensington Gore. These lectures are given by sunburned, exhausted men who, like rad』s sailors, are not too fortable with the etiquette of taxis, the quick, flat wit of bus ductors.
Wheravel by local trains from the suburbs towards Knightsbridge on their way to Society meetings, they are often lost, tickets misplaced, ging only to their old maps and carrying their lecture notes—which were sloainfully written—in their ever present knapsacks which will always be a part of their bodies. These men of all nations travel at that early evening hour, six o』clock, when there is the light of the solitary. It is an anonymous time, most of the city is going home.
The explorers arrive too early at Kensington Gore, eat at the Lyons er House and theer the Geographical Society, where they sit in the upstairs hall o the large Maori oe, going over their notes. At eight o』clock the talks begin.
Every other week there is a lecture. Someone will introduce the talk and someone will give thanks. The cluding speaker usually argues or tests the lecture for hard currency, is pertily critical but never imperti. The main speakers, everyone assumes, stay close to the facts, and even obsessive assumptions are presented modestly.
My jourhrough the Libya from Sokum on the Mediterrao El Obeid in the Sudan was made over one of the few tracks of the earth』s surface which present a number and variety of iing geographical problems....
The years of preparation and researd fund-raising are never mentioned in these oak rooms. The previous week』s lecturer recorded the loss of thirty people in i Antarctica. Similar losses ireme heat or windstorm are announced with minimal eulogy. All human and financial behaviour lies on the far side of the issue being discussed—which is the earth』s surfad its 「iing geographical problems.」 other depressions in this region, besides the much-discussed Wadi Rayan, be sidered possible of utilization in e with irrigation or drainage of the Nile Delta? Are the artesian water supplies of the oases gradually diminishing?
Where shall we look for the mysterious 「Zerzura」? Are there any other 「lost」 oases remaining to be discovered? Where are the tortoise marshes of Ptolemy?
John Bell, director of Desert Surveys i, asked these questions in
By the the papers grew even more modest. 「/ should like to add a few remarks on some of the points raised ieresting discussion on the 『Prehisteography of Kharga Oasis.』 「 By the mid- the lost oasis of Zerzura was found by Ladislaus de Almasy and his panions.
In the great decade of Libya expeditions came to an end, and this vast and silent pocket of the earth became one of the theatres of war.
In the arboured bedroom the burned patient views great distahe way that dead knight in Ravenna, whose marble body seems alive, almost liquid, has his head raised upon a stone pillow, so it gaze beyond his feet into vista. Farther than the desired rain of Africa. Towards all their lives in Cairo. Their works and days.
Hana sits by his bed, and she travels