The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-05-18 00:00:00

The LAND of MIDIAN and its MINES.

An Occasioi Correspondent of Tlie Times, writing from
Alexandria, Spi.! 27th, under the above title, sends to that
Journal an account of the expedition of Captain Burton to
the Land of Midian, from which we make the following ex-
tracts :

Prit

The object of the expedition was to examine into
the mineral wealth of the country, which hitherto
has been very little visited by travellers, and is
only imperfectly known to geographers. Yet the
minerals of Midian were known both in biblical
and classical times. Everybody remembers haw
Moses, when he fled from the face of Pharaoh,
dwelt in the land of Midian and married the
priest's daughter; and how, notwithstanding this
alliance, the children of Israel, after the Exodus,
vexed by the wiles of the Midianites, made war upon
them and slew their kings, and burnt their
cities and their goodly castles and spoiled them of
" gold, silver, brass, iron, tin, and lead." and
"jewels of gold, chains and bracelets, rings, ear-
rings, and tablets ; " and how Moses ordered the
wrought jewels of gold to be brought into the
Tabernacle as a memorial. It is equally well known,
too, how the Romans long afterwards again worked
the mines whence these metals were dug, and many
are the traces of their work which Captain Burton
has recently found. Yet next to nothing is now
known of the country, its wild wastes of rock, its
barren valleys and precipitous mountains, its vast
half-worked mines, its ruined cities, and its wan-
dering and savage population. That it lies to the
east of the Red Sea, that it belongs, for some
mysterious reason to Egypt, is about all ninety-nine
out of every hundred people know about it. Captain
Burton's two expeditions will have at least one good
result—they will instruct the people. .. .
The expedition left Suez December 10, 1877, and
returned there on the 20th April, 1878. During four
months of hard travelling and voyaging upwards of
2,500 miles, they only lost one soldier, who died of
fever. They brought home some 25 tons of geological
specimens to illustrate the general geological forma-
tion of the land ; six cases of Colorado and Negro ore;
five cases of ethnological and anthropological collections
—such as Midianite coins, inscriptions in Nabathean and
Cufic, remains of worked atones, fragments of smelted
metals, glass and pottery; upwards of 200 sketches in
oil and water colours, photographs of the chief ruins,
including catacombs, and of a classical temple, appa-
rently of Greek art and, finally, maps and plans of
the whole country, including 82 ruined cities, some of
whose names can be-restored by consulting Strabo and
Ptolemy, besides sketches of many ateliers were per-
ambulating bands like the gipsies of ancient and
modern times seem to have carred on simple mining
operations. . . .

The caravan consisted of eight Europeans, three
Egyptian officers of the staff and two of the line, 25
soldiers and 30 miners, 10 mules, and about 100 camels.
-The northern excursion commeeced at Mowilah, the
port of arrival in Midian. They revisited the country
covered by Captain Burton's expedition last year, the
story of which will be told in his forthcoming book,
"The Gold Mines of Midian," which I must not
anticipate. After the reinspection of the ancient
workings of the precious metals, passing the tradi-
tional site of Moses' Well, they marched upon
Melilla, the port, and spent a week dig-
ging into and extracting the veins of silver
which thread the quartz, carelessly cupeled specimens
yielding 15 to 20 per cent, of silver. The hill is within
a few minutes' walk of the coast, and by means of Mr.
Haddan's cheap tramways it would be easy to ship the
ore in the harbour. Leaving Makna they rounded the
windy Gulf of Allabah, and the incorrectness of the
British hydrographic chart very nearly shipwrecked
the party on the reefs off the island Tiran. They
reached Mowilah again on February 3rd.
The second expedition followed and was directed to.
' the inland region east of Mowilah. The object was to
determine the longitudinal breadth of the metalliferous
country. A double chain of ghauts subtends the coast,
and a succession of valleys cut through these heights.
Beyond the ghauts a rough and precipitous pass, terri-
ble for loaded camels:leads to the Hisma, a plateau
some 4,000 feet high, of new red sandstone, which is in
reality the western wail of the Nejd, or great central
uplende of the Arabian peninsula, and is remarkable
lex the beauty of its brick-red precipices and castella-
tions. East of the Risme lie the dark lines of the
Marreh, the basaltic and doubtless volcanic regions
whence the miners of old brought the rough mill-stones
that served for their first grindings. But here the
expedition reckoned without its hosts, the Maezeh,
a semi-Egyptian tribe, who received them appa-
rently with friendliness, but all the while were pre-
paring for attack, murder, and plunder. The trap,
however, was badly set for an old traveller.
Captain Burton guessed the coming danger, and
was able to beat a hasty retreat without bloodehed.
The expedition, altering its plans, then turned to
the south-east. They passed through the lovely
Wady Daumah, once teeming with fertility, now
laid waste by the Bedouin, "the fathers of the
Desert," They discovered the ruins of the city
of Shewak (the Souka cf Ptolemy), which, with
its outlying suburbs, its aqueducts carefully built
with cement, its barrages across the village heads,
its broken catacombs, its furnaces and vast usines,
covers some four miles. Here and elsewhere the fur-
naces were carefully searched. The Colorado quartz-
ore and the chloritic greenstone. used as fur, showed
what ore had been treated; but so painstaking were
these old miners that not the minutest trace of metal
was left to tell its own tale. Sheewak was evidently a
city of workmen, probably of slave workmen. A few
miles to the south lay Shaghab, the ruins of which, far
superior in site and construction, suggested the residence
of the wealthy mine-owners. Here the expedition
turned west. The country was barren, roadies; and veeY
thinly inhabited, but they came upon the ruinous Graces
of mining operations at every stage. Mach 5 they
arrived at the flourishing little port of Gibe (Zibber
on the hydrographio chart), built with the remnants
of some older tawn. Near Liba was found the
southernmost of the turquoise mines. It natives
have learnt the art of peomoting the growth of pearls
by inserting a grain a sand into each oyster.
The third, or southern excursion, which Captain
Burton was enabled to undertake by the despatch
of a eeeend ship and another month's food from
Seca, proved by far the most interesting to
mineralogist and archtelogist alike. Gold mining
evidently here takes the place of silver and copper
extracting, and the vast traces of the labours of
the scientific old miners in shafting and tunnelling
teach exactly their modus operandi. The Marreh,
or volcanic district, which they inspected, extends
as far as Yembo, and possibly as far as Medina, the
Holy City. It is covered with ruins of mining works,
and the expedition found gold threading and filming
the basalt, which led them to believe this district to be
the focus of the mineralogical outcrop. Meanwhile,
M. Marie, the mining engineer, proceeded to the
southern depot of sulphnr, and discovered a third bill
distant only two miles from a navigable bay. He
secured specimens of this rock and also of chalcedony,
the material of the finely-engraved seals and amulets
worked by the natives. He found, and the whole
party afterwards visited, an outcrop of quartz, in
mounds, hillocks, and gigantic reefs, called "Abel
Marwah," and the disused works, of great extent,
were surveyed. The caravan, now guided by the
Balizy tribe, which claims some of the old mining
districts, left the port of Wedj, March 23, and
visited the ruins of Um el Karayyat (" Mother of
Villages "), where the remains of mining operations
lie scattered about in all directions. In parts the hill
of snowy quartz had been so well burrowed into that
it has fallen in. All the shafts and passages were
duly explored. The precious metal was extracted
from the rose-coloured schist veining the quartz and
specimens of free gold appeared. The next march showed
the Um el Kharele (" Mother of Desolation "), in which
an extensive vein had been worked, and pillars of
quartz left standing between roof and floor. Travelling
through a land once rich and prosperous as mining
could make it, now the very picture of. dreare,
desolation, the travellers reached the plain of 1.41.
Beda (Bedais of Ptolemy). Here the hills of red
porphyry were covered with religious inscriptions
in the Cufic and modern Arab characters; nothing
Nabathean occurred. On April 8, after traversing
another quartz country, the. expedition reached
their Ultima Thule, the Wade Hamz, the great gap
worked by water in the maritime mountain chain
which forms the highway for pilgrims returning
from Medina., and constitutes the frontier between
Egypt and the Ilecljaz, which belongs to Turkey.
Here a pleeeeant surprise awaited the party. On the
southern brink of this wild water course was the
siteof a beautiful little temple, built of white and
variegated alabaster, dug from neighbouring quarries.
The foundations alone were left, and a few years ago
the place was a tumulus into which the Arabs dug for
treasure. The Wady had washed :sway the northern
wall, and the adjacent bed was strewn with fragments
of columns, bases aud aapitals, all of alabaster and cut
in the simplest wad purest style of Greek art. Can
this be A vestige of that ill-fated expedition, in which
tplius Gallus was foiled by the traitor Nabatluesus ?
This closed the expedition. The party returned to
Suez, e.sed arrived in Cairo the 21st of April, They re-
ceived a neost courteous welcome from his Highness
the Khedive. Specemens of their area will be sent to
Paris and London; the rest will be analyzed in Cairo
by a local commission, while the curiosities of all
kinds will be exhibited first in Cairo and then sent to
the Paris Exhibition, So ends the story. After all
allowances made for the traveller's love of the scene
of his labours, it must be admitted that the Land of
Midian is LI wonderful place. As one hears of the
mines that are spread over the country, with their shafts
and their tunnels; their furnaces and their barrages,
the towns of workmen, and the cities of mine
owners, one begins to Anderstand why "all Xing

Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, none were of
silver, it was nothing accounted of in the days of
Solomon.' And when one reads of the mines that are
yet unworked, with their quartz and their Colorado
ore, one feels tempted to ask why the Khedive at
Cairo, like Solomon at Jerusalem, should not "make
silver and gold aiplenteous as stones." . . .