ONE of the queerest clubs in the world is the Desert Touring Club, of Alexandria, Egypt.
The Desert Touring Club has just made its first big tour—a trip of a thousand miles in Ford cars across the Sahara to the site of the temple of Jupiter Ammon and the mysterious Senussi town of Siwa—and among the excursionists was Major W. T. Blake, Aviation Correspondent of the “Daily News,’ who has had many other strange adventures.
Leaving England three weeks ago,
Some text omitted by AW
“At Mersa Matruh,” said Major Blake, “we had very wisely taken on a guide—a shaggy Bedouin called Suleiman—who knew the way across the stony, limitless waste by noting the little piles of rock set up along the caravan track.
“Large white snails lay about in millions, though we could see no trace of vegetation for them to live upon. As the cars passed over them they popped continuously, making a noise that sounded at a little distance like machine-gun fire.
“Here and there a pile of stones and a clear-swept space marked the grave of a Bedouin, or a cairn stood up against the sky-line as a landmark for caravans, or the bleached bones of a camel told of another casualty by the way.
Rest of article omitted by AW
Source info: MS note by AW “Daily News April 20th 1923”.
Watkins kept only two snippets from this article. He marked the references to “little piles of rock” and “a cairn … as a landmark” and used them in The Old Straight Track, page 181.