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A City Mismanaged traces the collapse of good governance in Hong
Kong, explains its causes, and exposes the damaging impact on the
community’s quality of life. Leo Goodstadt argues that the current
well-being and future survival of Hong Kong have been threatened
by disastrous policy decisions made by chief executives and their
principal officials. Individual chapters look at the most shocking
examples of mismanagement: the government’s refusal to
implement the Basic Law in full; official reluctance to halt the large-
scale dilapidation of private sector homes into accommodation unfit
for habitation; and ministerial toleration of the rise of new slums.
Mismanagement of economic relations with Mainland China is shown
to have created severe business losses. Goodstadt’s riveting
investigations include extensive scandals in the post-secondary
education sector and how lives are at risk because of the inadequate
staff levels and limited funding allocated to key government
departments. This book offers a unique and very powerful account
of Hong Kong’s struggle to survive.
Leo F. Goodstadt is an honorary fellow of the University of Hong
Kong. He was head of the Hong Kong government’s Central Policy
Unit from 1989 to 1997 and previously served on eight government
statutory and advisory boards. His academic publications are
extensive, and he has four books published by Hong Kong University
Press since 2005.
‘Goodstadt demonstrates how the neglect of social rights in
managing the SAR has brought about serious consequences through
the discussion of housing, medical services, and education. A highly
readable title with a lot of interesting arguments for those who really
care about Hong Kong.’
—Lui Tai-lok, Department of Asian and Policy Studies,
Education University of Hong Kong

‘Goodstadt gives a well-grounded and relentless rebuke of the

HKSAR government for failing to safeguard lives, quality of living and
the interests of its people in the past twenty years. It is a poignant
siren that calls for reflection and correction.’
—Christine M. S. Fang, Department of Social Work and Social
Administration, The University of Hong Kong

‘Goodstadt utilizes his long experience in public policy in Hong Kong

to interpret the city’s mismanagement. He supplies a devastating
critique of the fallacy of the approach taken by the Chief Executives
and the senior leaders.’
—David R. Meyer, Olin Business School, Washington University
in St. Louis
A City Mismanaged

Hong Kong’s Struggle for Survival

Leo F. Goodstadt
Also by Leo F. Goodstadt

China’s Search for Plenty: The Economics of Mao Tse-tung

Poverty in the Midst of Affluence: How Hong Kong Mismanaged Its

Prosperity

Profits, Politics and Panics: Hong Kong’s Banks and the Making of a
Miracle Economy, 1935–1985

Reluctant Regulators: How the West Created and How China

Survived the Global Financial Crisis

Uneasy Partners: The Conflict Between Public Interest and Private

Profit in Hong Kong
Hong Kong University Press
The University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam Road
Hong Kong
https://hkupress.hku.hk

© 2018 Leo F. Goodstadt

ISBN 978-988-8455-98-0 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-988-8528-49-3 (Paperback)

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Contents

Preface
Introduction
1. The Basic Law: Rights denied
2. From public service to ministerial mismanagement
3. Private homes under threat
4. From squatter huts to ‘invisible’ slums
5. The missing land banks
6. Students at the market’s mercy
7. Lives at risk
8. Mismanaging the Mainland
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Preface

In 2013, I wrote a book entitled Poverty in the Midst of Affluence:

How Hong Kong Mismanaged its Prosperity, which made grim
reading. Little did I realise that another crisis was overtaking Hong
Kong which would get completely out of control. A potential
catastrophe was threatening the million households in the private
property sector where buildings were deteriorating at an increasing
rate. Dilapidation of Hong Kong housing began with a lack of
maintenance and professional management. Multi-storey housing
estates with hundreds and often thousands of flats need regulation
just as much as banks, share markets, and medical services—to
quote only a few of the services essential to the community’s well-
being which are policed to protect the public. But the government
steadfastly opposed accepting a similar responsibility for private
housing, no matter how shocking the latest evidence of the dangers
to health as well as safety highlighted by the media. There was also
a financial loss involved. Many families in the private sector had
struggled with mortgages to become owner-occupiers over the
years. Increasing numbers of them had to face the prospect of
losing most of their investment because the premises become less
and less fit for human habitation with each decade and thus
unattractive to potential buyers.
This state of affairs seems incredible when compared with the
quality of the rest of Hong Kong’s performance. Despite mounting
tensions over political reform and the rise of radical protest
movements, Hong Kong ranked as one of the safest and most
successful societies in the world. Its economy had faced severe
challenges from 1997 onwards. Twenty years later, the economy had
expanded by 80 per cent in terms of real GDP. Labour productivity
was growing faster for much of this period than in Singapore, the
United States and other advanced economies. Nevertheless, in this
century, Hong Kong could not guarantee its families that they would
have access to a most basic amenity: safe and affordable homes.
Why did the looming threats to private housing not arouse the
community’s indignation? Despite Hong Kong’s extraordinary record
of success in the face of political, financial and social challenges of
every kind, survival is never taken for granted. For the average
family, what had come to matter most was political risk and Hong
Kong’s ability to survive 1997. By 2012, anxieties had intensified
about Hong Kong’s way of life and what changes 2047 might bring.
Thus, the preservation of ‘Hong Kong values’ became an
overwhelming concern. Shortfalls and scandals affecting housing and
social services were given a much lower priority
For me, watching this phenomenon was personally very painful. I
had arrived at the University of Hong Kong as a Commonwealth
Scholar in 1962 to research housing problems, and I continued this
project as a lecturer there. The overall housing scene seemed
dreadful, with large squatter colonies which the colonial
administration was making as uncomfortable as possible to deter
refugees. The existing stock of private housing was made up mostly
of decrepit slum tenements. But in that era, there was a promise of
progress. Colonial officials had been compelled by public demand to
embark on public housing schemes and to better regulate the
growing number of new, multi-storey blocks of homes.
These programmes gathered momentum in the decades that
followed so that Hong Kong’s housing crisis seemed to have been
finally overcome by 2000. In reality, the private sector was about to
be hit by a dreadful blight made inevitable principally by the refusal
of Chief Executives and their political appointees to intervene in the
private housing sector. The damage done by the owners’ defective
management and maintenance was aggravated by a growing
shortage in the relevant government departments of the personnel,
facilities and funding needed to implement existing legislation and to
develop the new legal and technical solutions required. By 2016,
government statements on these issues bordered on open despair of
being able to find workable solutions.
An additional complication has been the decline in the public’s
confidence in the government’s commitment to preserving Hong
Kong values. This trend has created a new barrier to overcoming this
century’s housing crisis. It is imperative to rapidly increase the
supply of public housing in order to provide new homes for most of
the families who should be removed from dangerously dilapidated
private buildings. It is equally urgent to increase the private supply
to a level at which it matches demand. To achieve these goals
requires creating new building sites and renovating existing estates.
The public has proved extremely reluctant to cooperate with
government proposals for projects to do so because among Hong
Kong’s values is a growing insistence on preserving the environment,
national parks and public amenities. The community has become
highly mistrustful of the government on these issues, and there are
considerable protests against government housing projects and site
creation.
Housing has become the most serious example of government
mismanagement, but tragically, almost identical problems can be
found across the whole of government. Virtually every branch of
government is having to provide services below standard and often
without regard for relevant legislation. Almost everywhere
throughout the administration, quality of performance has been
damaged by lack of staff and inadequate funding.
Thus, the housing crisis has to be set in a wider context to see
the full dimensions of maladministration. The areas of
mismanagement chosen in this book as case studies for this purpose
include the way in which post-secondary students have been denied
access to university and have been exploited by providers of paper
qualifications which were almost useless to their careers. And the
government stood idly by. Another set of case studies investigates
the direct threats to the public through poor policing of public
health, transport hazards and building safety. Included here is a
review of the reluctance of the Independent Commission Against
Corruption (ICAC) to get involved.
The book begins and ends with the Mainland, on which future
survival depends. The first chapter introduces the most striking
example of improper administrative performance: the Basic Law and
how Chief Executives and their teams have enforced it selectively
over the years. The Mainland drafters intended Hong Kong to
maintain the existing standards of social and related services after
1997 and to introduce further improvements. These provisions have
been ignored. Chief Executives did not listen to the adverse
comments made by former Premier Wen Jiabao on the extent to
which the public’s social rights were being denied. The book ends
with a review of the grossly mismanaged relationship with the
Mainland. The evidence shows that Hong Kong’s leaders persistently
misunderstood the barriers to economic cooperation erected by the
Mainland’s administrative systems at local levels, and they
overestimated the welcome to be expected by the average Hong
Kong investor and entrepreneur. Here again, advice from the Premier
was not heeded.
The book throws light on why there was a common pattern of
weak government over the last 20 twenty years. Chief Executives
lacked confidence in Hong Kong and its resilience. They were too
remote from the community to recognise its outstanding qualities.
They looked on Hong Kong’s past successes as some sort of
historical accident. They repeatedly warned the people of Hong Kong
that they were inferior to their Mainland counterparts who would
soon overtake them. Chief Executives expressed little cause for
confidence in Hong Kong’s survival except in a dependent’s role.
None of which did anything to convince the general public that their
leaders would struggle to protect Hong Kong interests.
The negative attitude of Chief Executives was in direct conflict
with the message from the nation’s leaders. In this century, all three
Premiers have emphasised Hong Kong’s indispensable contribution
to the nation’s development. It seemed highly significant that, at the
celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of reunification, President
Xi Jinping highlighted the outstanding success of Hong Kong people
and the nation’s confidence in their ability. ‘When our country does
well’, he said, ‘Hong Kong will do even better’.
This book’s focus is on incompetent leadership and what has
gone wrong. ‘Our duty is to hold ourselves responsible to the
people’, Mao Zedong declared. ‘Every word, every act and every
policy must conform to the people’s interests, and if mistakes occur,
they must be corrected’, he continued. Fortunately, despite
controversy over democratisation, increasing accountability and open
government have been features of Hong Kong in the last twenty
years. These qualities are what have maintained public cooperation
with the political leaders and trust in the civil service. Without these
features of the Hong Kong political system, this book could not have
been written.
Personally, I find it impossible to be pessimistic about Hong
Kong’s prospects. It is so well-equipped for survival because of the
political maturity and social discipline of its people. I have more than
half a century’s daily experience of Hong Kong’s resilience in the face
of the most menacing political and economic conditions. I have
never once felt that I or my family and friends were in danger in this
community, for which I am for ever grateful to the people of Hong
Kong.

Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and
Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong which has provided
me with generous use of its facilities. The Institute is the ideal
environment in which to do research, which enabled me to complete
this volume between October 2014 and June 2017. I owe a great
deal to the Director, Professor Angela Leung Ki Che. She has
provided the perfect environment for my research, and I am most
grateful to her for her unfailing encouragement and for her personal
interest and many kindnesses. I must also thank the Institute’s staff
for looking after me so patiently.
In the course of writing this book, I was fortunate enough to be
selected for a substantial award from the WYNG Foundation Ltd, for
which I am very grateful. I deeply appreciate the commitment which
the Foundation has shown to the needy and the vulnerable in Hong
Kong and to the pursuit of good governance. I am proud to have
been associated with it.
My research on the historical development of Hong Kong’s
housing programmes and its social services would have been
impossible without the assistance in past years of the Government
Records Service. The professionalism and efficiency of Mr Bernard
Hui Sung-tak and his colleagues in the Public Records Office enabled
me to create a collection of archival material which has facilitated my
work over many years.
I am, as always, indebted to Trinity College, University of Dublin.
I am especially grateful to Professor Lorna Carson, Director of the
Trinity Centre for Asian Studies, for many kindnesses and shared
enthusiasms. Colleagues at the School of Business Studies, in
particular my friend, Professor Gerard McHugh, continue to support
me with interest and encouragement, as well as access to Trinity’s
facilities, throughout my stay in Ireland.
It is a special pleasure to express my sincere thanks to Dr Susie
Han Jia, of Hong Kong University Press. She has been an excellent
editor: very efficient as well as encouraging, highly professional and
always patient and pleasant.
None of the institutions or individuals referred to in these
acknowledgements has any responsibility for any part of the
contents of this book or the views which it expresses.
Hong Kong has been made all the more pleasant for me in the
twenty-first century by the kindness and hospitality which my friends
and former colleagues at the Central Policy Unit so generously offer
me. Among those I can acknowledge here with gratitude are Barry
Cheung, Helen Cheng, T. L. Tsim, Dr Rikkie Yeung, Professor Cecilia
Chan and their families who take such good care of me.

Hong Kong
January 2018
Introduction

This book is about survival. Not the survival of the million or so

individuals officially classified as ‘poor’. Nor the 600,000 officially
estimated to suffer from disabilities.1 It does not discuss Hong
Kong’s political survival and related issues of constitutional reform,
although this source of uncertainty is of the greatest concern to the
community and dominates the political agenda. The threats to
survival which the chapters that follow will investigate are those
fundamental to the well-being of the community at large.
Why is it, for instance, that middle-class individuals who built up
the savings needed to buy a decent flat, usually with a mortgage,
cannot take it for granted that these premises will remain a safe and
comfortable home to be inherited by the next generation? Since
2009, the evidence has mounted that thousands of private sector
buildings are already unsafe and rundown, and more are likely to
become so in the future.2
How is it that parents who are willing to pay the full costs of
further education for their children who have done well enough in
their secondary school examinations to meet university entrance
requirements but are refused a place can be grossly misled by
government-sponsored alternatives? Large numbers of these
students have been encouraged to enrol in commercially-run
associate degree, diploma and other post-secondary courses. Yet,
there have been repeated warnings since 2008 about the inferior
quality of most of these qualifications, which may not lead to better
careers or higher earnings.3
Why is it that the safety of the general public could be ignored
when human lives were known to be at risk but the authorities did
not intervene to prevent serious tragedies?
A common factor in all these cases, it will be shown, was the
mistaken policies and defective administration on the part of Chief
Executives and many of their ministers. In particular, their financial
policies have led to the steady erosion of the civil service’s capacity
to deliver the quality and quantity of services essential for the proper
management of a city as advanced as Hong Kong.
There is another category of threat which affects the entire
community. The Basic Law provides the guarantee of survival for
Hong Kong, economically and socially. This legal protection has been
undermined, the book will show, because Chief Executives and their
ministers have chosen to implement the Basic Law selectively. Also
endangering Hong Kong’s future survival has been the government’s
gross mismanagement of business relations with the Mainland, Hong
Kong’s largest commercial ‘client’.
The Hong Kong ethos

In every chapter, it will quickly become clear that Hong Kong’s

current well-being and future survival have been endangered as a
result of deliberate decisions made by Chief Executives and the gross
policy mistakes which they were extremely reluctant to reverse. The
results of their flawed policies and defective leadership have been
endured by the public on a very painful scale in many key areas of
life and work.
Governing Hong Kong should not have been difficult, however. Its
people were ideal citizens who, between 1997 and 2017, took in
their stride a series of unexpected and potentially disastrous threats:
the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis and the 2007–2009 global
financial crisis; the atypical pneumonia (SARS) epidemic of 2003; the
dismantling from 2007 of the Hong Kong–financed manufacturing
complex in Guangdong province employing 10 million workers; and
the increasing public discontent over political issues and mass public
protests from 2012.
Despite these setbacks, Hong Kong’s businesses flourished,
particularly the international financial centre. Between 2000 and
2015, the Mainland received some US$700 billion in foreign direct
investment (FDI) from Hong Kong, almost half the nation’s total
inflow. At the same time, Hong Kong was playing a major role in
China’s drive to internationalise its currency. Hong Kong was ‘the
global hub for RMB trade settlement, financing and asset
management [with] the world’s largest offshore RMB liquidity pool’.
It handled 75 per cent of the nation’s offshore RMB transactions
worldwide.4
Work ethic was a crucial feature of Hong Kong’s outstanding
performance. Between 2000 and 2010, wages were stagnant,
educational and medical fees were rising and the housing situation
deteriorated. Nevertheless, the performance of the average
employee continued to improve despite the lack of monetary
incentives. During this period, labour productivity in Hong Kong rose
by 3.4 per cent a year, faster than in Singapore (2.4 per cent), the
United States (1.4 per cent) and Germany (0.8 per cent).5
Business profitability increased handsomely, as tax revenues
showed. The contribution of profits tax to total government revenue
rose from 20 per cent to 25 per cent between 1997 and 2017. Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) in real terms rose by more than 80 per
cent. The government had ample finances. Its reserves in 2017
totalled $936 billion, almost double the 1997 figure, and were
sufficient to cover total spending by the government for a full two
years.6
Those responsible for governing Hong Kong consistently failed to
match the standards of excellence taken for granted in every other
sphere of Hong Kong life. This Introduction first presents profiles of
Chief Executives and what went wrong under their leadership. It
then proceeds to outline the individual chapters which demonstrate
the damage caused by the incompetence and the misguided
convictions of those in power.
The collapse of good government

On 1 July 1997, Tung Chee Hwa began his term as Hong Kong’s first
Chief Executive full of confidence about what lay ahead. His
optimism was justified, he explained, because of Hong Kong’s
remarkable achievements.
Hong Kong is at present the freest and the most vibrant economy in the
world. Free enterprise and free trade; prudent financial management
and low taxation; the rule of law, an executive-led government and an
efficient civil service have been a part of our tradition.

There were challenges, he frankly admitted, which must not be

ignored: inflation, an ageing population, a housing shortage and
employment issues. But he conveyed a strong conviction that Hong
Kong would find the solutions.7
By the time the fourth Chief Executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-
ngor, took office in 2017, Hong Kong appeared to have changed
beyond all recognition. And very much for the worse. Gone was
Tung’s pride in Hong Kong’s achievements and the confidence that
the government would overcome the challenges it faced. In her first
public speech after her appointment, Carrie Lam highlighted serious
mismanagement: government performance was unsatisfactory and
policy-makers were out of touch with public aspirations. A ‘new style
of governance’ was needed, she declared, and ‘policies that would
respond more pertinently to the aspirations of the people’.8 This
frank admission struck the right note.
 In her election manifesto, Carrie Lam had described the reforms
she would introduce to tackle mismanagement. The ‘new style of
governance’ would include ‘objective research and hard evidence to
review existing policies’. Professionalism, it seemed, was to replace
misinformed generalisations and unwarranted assumptions at the
policymaking level. Management would surely improve.
Unfortunately, she herself was in breach of her pledge to rely on
‘hard evidence’. The manifesto claimed that Hong Kong faced a long-
term crisis.

Our strengths and advantages in many aspects have recently been

challenged as a result of both political issues here in Hong Kong and
the economic situation overseas. Hong Kong has also been
experiencing social conflict and economic slowdown during the past few
years, causing many people to become concerned and even
discouraged.9

These comments were grossly inaccurate. ‘Hard evidence’, to

stick to her own phrase, demonstrated that Hong Kong’s social
stability had improved remarkably in ‘the past few years’. The crime
rate had dropped by 29 per cent between 2007 and 2016. Labour
relations had improved, and the total number of working days lost
through industrial disputes had fallen from 8,027 in 2007 to 169 in
2016, an extraordinarily low level by international standards.10 As for
the economy, it was hard to understand why the fourth Chief
Executive believed that it was performing so badly when GDP had
increased by 46 per cent between 2007 and 2016. Apparently, she
had not bothered to listen to the 2017 Budget Speech in which the
Financial Secretary presented a very positive picture of the state of
economic affairs.
 Hong Kong is one of the most advanced economies in the world,
despite the relatively small scale of our economy. Our GDP per capita
has now reached US$44,000, overtaking Japan and many advanced
economies in Europe.11

For a person with ten years’ experience as a minister, five of

them as Chief Secretary, the flawed picture of Hong Kong’s
challenges which Carrie Lam had presented to the public was
alarming. But there was nothing unusual about this incident. Her
confusion over key indicators of Hong Kong’s continuing success was
a symptom of the inferior performance which Hong Kong has had to
put up with from all its Chief Executives and the average minister.
The chapters that follow are filled with evidence of similar
misconceptions at the very top of government.
Mismanagement began with the Chief Executives, who poured
out a flood of comments and commitments designed to direct
policymaking and to win popular credibility but were remote from
the realities of life in Hong Kong and its economic and social needs.
The first three Chief Executives suffered from a level of
incompetence which they could not conceal. In the case of Tung
Chee Hwa and Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, they eventually made public
self-criticisms summarising their own disastrous shortcomings, and
Leung Chun-ying stated he was unable to face a second term in
office. The Chief Executives’ shortcomings were aggravated by the
introduction of a ‘ministerial’ system in 2002, with political
appointees whose qualifications for high office were generally
unimpressive.
No place for a businessman

Tung’s lack of political talent had been obvious from the start. He
was a wealthy businessman and had much the same social attitudes
and political views as the rest of Hong Kong’s business leaders. In
particular, he shared their conviction that the public sector is
inherently inferior in management and performance to business
enterprises. In 1998, he confessed to feeling confused. ‘As a
businessman one has to be very bottom-line oriented,’ he said, ‘So I
go into this office [of Chief Executive] very bottom-line oriented. And
I felt that if I deliver the bottom-line, never mind what happens in-
between’. It took him a year, he said, to realise that ‘in the political
life this does not work’—that ‘what happens in-between’ matters to
the community.12
By 2003, China’s leaders could tolerate his shortcomings no
longer. Tung Chee Hwa was a failure. He lacked the necessary skills.
He was just ‘an entrepreneur’ with no political experience, State
Councillor Tang Jiaxuan commented that year. Tung had done his
best in a job for which he was unsuited.13 Tang’s verdict was all the
more damaging because he was a former Foreign Minister with
ample experience of the Western-style administration which Hong
Kong followed.
Eventually, Tung’s credibility evaporated to a point at which he
felt compelled to make a last, desperate move to remain in office.
He went before the Legislative Council in 2005 and confessed that
‘shortcomings and inadequacies have undermined the credibility of
our policymaking capability and our ability to govern’.
In formulating policies, we fell short of “thinking what people think” and
“addressing people’s pressing needs”. Second, we were not sufficiently
mindful of the impact of some policies on the community’s capacity to
bear and the potentially controversial nature of these policies. We
introduced too many reform measures too hastily, putting heavy
burdens on our people. We also lacked a sense of crisis, political
sensitivity as well as the necessary experience and capability to cope
with political and economic changes. We were indecisive when dealing
with emergencies.14

This self-criticism was an accurate summary of his unfitness for

office, and within six months he was gone. He resigned on health
grounds.
His public account of his own deficiencies helped to explain the
previous seven years of cruel and unjustified austerity, falling
earnings, worsening housing conditions and rising medical and
educational charges suffered by Hong Kong’s families. This suffering
was being inflicted by his personal choice, he had openly admitted in
2000.

It would have been easier for all of us, in the short run, to ease back
into another bubble economy. Instead we have embarked on another
[way] that will perhaps take longer, involve more hard work, and
certainly more learning; one that perhaps imparts more pain in the
short term as well, but is ultimately healthier.15

But his policy did not prove ‘ultimately healthier’. Business

confidence slumped, and with it private sector investment. Its full
recovery did not begin until 2006 and remained below the 1997 level
until 2012. As for the average family, few escaped serious financial
losses. As he himself admitted in 2004, his determination to
minimise public spending had created a deflation which he described
as the worst in world history since the 1920s. ‘Almost 90 per cent of
our working families’ suffered ‘job losses and reduced income’, he
said, and ‘personal wealth’ shrank following ‘a drop in property
prices of 70 per cent’.16
But Tung’s departure did not lead to a retreat from his misguided
formulas for governing Hong Kong. On the contrary, he left a legacy
of misrule which was to survive in the form of toxic policies which
have since blighted virtually every area of public administration.

Local boy does not make good

When Tung Chee Hwa stepped down on grounds of ill health in

2005, Hong Kong felt a genuine sense of relief. It seemed
inconceivable that under his successor, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, the
quality of life for the average family could deteriorate still further
than it had done under Tung. It seemed equally improbable that
Tsang would be as remote from the ordinary men and women of
Hong Kong and as unfeeling about their well-being as Tung had
been (more from ignorance than deliberate design, to be fair to
him).
Tsang had started off low down the social ladder. He had risen to
the top of the civil service with no social advantages, no business
connections and minimal educational qualifications. But he stood
out, thanks to an ability to acquire very fast the technical expertise
to deal with serious political and economic challenges—from
management of a complex scheme to reduce political panic after the
June 4 tragedy in 1989 and then a transfer to overall responsibility
for foreign trade policies and negotiations.17 With this background,
and after a final apprenticeship as Treasury overlord, he had
excellent qualifications for appointment as Financial Secretary in
1995. And when Anson Chan Fang On-sang suddenly resigned on a
matter of principle from the post of Chief Secretary in 2001, Tsang
offered the best prospect of replacing her and maintaining civil
service morale after the Chief Executive introduced a ministerial
system which he had been contemplating for a year.18
But Tsang was not the typical civil servant who could be expected
to be politically neutral, wary of business leaders’ motives and
anxious to defend the public interest. Tsang was openly committed
to the promotion of business interests and was convinced that they
must come first, not just for the policy-makers and but for the entire
civil service. This had been made clear in 1996 when he declared in
his first Budget Speech: ‘I believe the whole of the Government has
a duty to provide a business-friendly environment’. What this would
mean in practice was set out in an Addendum to the Speech. His
goal, this document had revealed, was to increase the business
world’s priority in government policymaking: ‘Civil servants should
not see their role merely as regulators but more as supporters and
partners for business.’19 Tsang maintained this mindset throughout
the rest of his career.
Tsang’s definition of the correct relationship between the
government and the business world was to have damaging
consequences for good governance. In the years to come, the
government would face a growing tide of serious scandals in almost
every sector: from unsafe drinking water to marine disaster, from
dangerous housing to airport mismanagement. Not surprisingly,
because the civil service was being steadily deprived of the
leadership, motivation and the resources to enforce business-related
laws and regulations and contractual obligations. A particularly
shameless example was the public announcement of a policy to
minimise prosecutions of employers who defied the labour laws.20 At
the same time, government departments and agencies providing
social services and housing were denigrated by Chief Executives and
their ministers. Thus, the civil service as a whole had every reason
to believe that their first duty was to facilitate business even at the
expense of the general public.
When Tsang first became Chief Executive in 2005, he was well
aware of problems crying out for attention. He listed them:
‘employment difficulties for workers with low academic qualifications
and skills; declining real pay levels in certain jobs; the polarisation of
the middle class; a widening income gap; an ageing population’.21
But he did not set out measures to solve them. His response to
widespread public dismay about the widening gap between rich and
poor in Hong Kong, for example, was an insistence that there was
no solution. Income inequality was among the ‘inevitable
phenomena’ of a capitalist economy, he declared.22
Policy-makers no longer had to conceal their personal interests.
Tsang had explained in 2001 that in dismantling the public housing
programmes he had made sure it would take years to resurrect
them.23 His aim, he admitted frankly, was to end potential
competition from the public sector which might reduce the value of
privately owned property, including his own.24
 By 2011, the public had the impression that those in high office
could make what modifications they liked to their properties,
regardless of the law. The Ombudsman felt forced to investigate.
‘Since 2011, a number of local celebrities (including senior
Government officials and Members of the Executive Council and the
Legislative Council) had become the subjects of extensive media
coverage for suspected unauthorised building works in their
properties’, he commented. The Ombudsman’s investigation found
no clear evidence of favouritism for celebrities. Indeed, the Buildings
Department had tried to give priority to investigations of this
privileged group in order to allay public suspicions. Nevertheless, he
felt obliged to state in his report that favouritism could not be ruled
out completely. This possibility was increased by the restriction on
the Buildings Department’s ability to respond to suspected breaches
of the law because of a shortage of staff, his report pointed out.25
Lack of staff, funding and other essential resources were a universal
threat to good governance, several chapters of this book will show.
Tsang realised in 2008 that he was in serious danger. His
credibility had fallen catastrophically, as he openly admitted.
People have doubts about certain issues: Have the core values of the
[Hong Kong Special Administrative Region] Government changed? Is
the Government trustworthy? Is the Government fair and impartial? Is it
less capable than before? Does the Government still adhere to the
principle of meritocracy? Does it take into account public opinion in
formulating policies?26

In practice, he did nothing to recover the public’s trust. Instead,

he devoted increasing time and attention to business leaders, he
subsequently confessed to the Legislative Council, because he felt he
needed their insight and advice.27
 As Tsang’s credibility continued to ebb, he made yet another
public speech on political leadership, setting out the qualities
necessary for success as Chief Executive of Hong Kong. He listed the
essential criteria in the following sequence.

‘[First] you need the highest moral and ethical standards’.

‘Next comes passion . . . for the people of Hong Kong . . . to
understand their aspirations and changing moods’.
‘In the broader context, passion for our country, or patriotism, is
just as important for a leader of Hong Kong . . . The Chief
Executive must always remember that he is responsible to the
Central Government’.
‘Leadership indeed requires vision . . . that is relevant to the
people, relevant to the time, and possible to achieve’.

Not until the very the end of his presentation did he mention any
concrete problems to be solved. He then dealt with ‘important issues
that are of concern to the community’ in a mere eight words:
‘housing, bridging the wealth gap and elderly services’.28
In 2012, he followed Tung Che Hwa’s example when faced with a
total loss of credibility. Tsang made a pitiful self-criticism before the
Legislative Council. But even this humiliation won him no sympathy.
He tried to convince the public that his failings had been
unintentional. ‘My 45 years of experience in public service . . . has
created “blind spots” that make me overlook the fact that as times
change, public expectations have also changed’, he pleaded, ‘and
people have turned more demanding towards public officers’.29
In fact, these standards had not changed over the years. Zero
tolerance of questionable behaviour by senior officials had become
the norm after the 1974 revelations about corrupt senior police
officers, which had led to the establishment of the Independent
Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). Tsang failed to see that this
standard would apply to him. Just as he had failed to see that
allegations of unauthorised alterations to his own private property
would scandalise the community.30
Tsang had to pay a ruinous price for his misconceptions about
the privileges of those in power. A criminal investigation was
launched in 2012, but he was not brought to trial until 2017, a delay
which was inexcusable in a society as dedicated to the rule of law as
Hong Kong. He suffered considerable distress because of the
financial and emotional strain of this protracted waiting, together
with the total destruction of his private life by the media’s
unrelenting surveillance of his daily activities and contacts.
Nevertheless, his court trials were an important illustration of Hong
Kong’s core values. No one, not even the highest ranking and best
connected, can evade criminal investigation and prosecution.

Doomed from the start

The third Chief Executive, Leung Chun-ying, was to face immediate

and unrelenting criticism on taking office for his inability to win
public trust, no matter what his policy proposals might be. The
community seemed to sense that he did not share Hong Kong’s core
values. He took a very detached, almost academic approach to
issues which most of the community regarded as matters of
survival.31
 He had always been very open about his belief that a survival
culture was unnecessary. In 1994, for example, he had adopted a
rather patronising line towards Hong Kong people and their anxieties
about the future. He narrated how he had searched ‘the main text’
of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which he described as
belonging to ‘a fossilized date-sealed environment’, for specific
pledges of ‘no change’. He found only seven such guarantees in
‘twelve short paragraphs’. He also listed the community’s worries,
which concerned, he said, ‘rather mundane issues—passports,
currency (and its international convertibility), the education system’.
For most families, these involved their personal survival. Leung was
unimpressed. Although he was secretary-general of the Hong Kong
Basic Law Consultative Committee, he did not regard the Basic Law
as providing much comfort to those apprehensive about the future.
He warned that Hong Kong should not hope to rely on ‘these historic
deeds’, ‘these “no change” statements that have been written into
the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law’. They offered no such
guarantees, on his analysis.32 His message was that regardless of
the priorities of Hong Kong people and the letter of the Basic Law,
the Special Administrative Region government’s freedom to adjust to
new political and economic realities would not be limited.
When it came to economic survival, Leung’s views were to prove
similarly misinformed. He was convinced that economic integration
would give Hong Kong access to a national market on the Mainland
which was fully competitive and operating in much the same way as
any modern economy. This view was hopelessly wrong. He appeared
totally unaware of the struggle that had been waged since the 1990s
by the Central People’s Government to raise business standards and
remove the barriers to commercial and financial progress imposed by
local administrations determined to protect local businesses. The
Mainland did not offer the ideal business environment described by
Leung, and Hong Kong was not the vulnerable economy which he
depicted.33
Leung came into office in 2012 with what he regarded as a
unique advantage. He believed that he had the credentials and
connections that would ensure a much closer relationship with senior
Mainland officials than his predecessors. In the colonial era, he had
played a major public role in promoting China’s policies for Hong
Kong, and he seemed to have won considerable respect in Beijing.34
His appointment to Hong Kong’s Executive Council in 1997 and his
promotion to Convenor of that body seemed to confirm that he was
highly trusted by the nation’s leaders who have to approve all such
appointments.
Leung himself certainly thought so. He boasted in 2013 of ‘strong
government-to-government contacts’ with both the central
authorities and provincial administrations to whom he had been
given preferential access. He announced that he would jettison what
he called ‘this unspoken tradition’ that had previously prevented
Hong Kong’s Chief Executives from making more than two visits a
year to Beijing. He would be seen much more frequently in the
Chinese capital.35 Furthermore, he was confident that by adopting a
new negotiating strategy, what he called ‘internal diplomacy’, he
would win concessions from the Mainland officials who previously
had attached little importance to Hong Kong.36
Leung had badly miscalculated, however. He soon discovered
that state leaders saw no reason to give him any greater access than
his predecessors. It was made very clear that the agenda for his
visits, as well as their frequency, would be controlled by Beijing.37
He was unable to drop in for a chat with the policy-makers in Beijing
whenever he felt the need. But worse was to follow. After a meeting
with Leung, the Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office,
Wang Guangya, allowed himself to be quoted by the media as
saying that when making future duty visits to the President and
Premier, the Chief Executive should identify his shortcomings instead
of reciting his achievements. This advice was interpreted as an
indication of reservations at the top about the quality of Leung’s
performance.38
The political embarrassments continued. In 2015, Leung’s formal
ranking within the state hierarchy was ‘redefined’ during his ‘duty
visit’ to the capital. The seating for a public photo session with
President Xi Jinping was carefully arranged to demonstrate that
Leung no longer enjoyed the same status as in the past. In a
political environment as sensitive to protocol and precedence as
China, his ‘demotion’ could not have been more clearly highlighted.
Leung himself appeared to be taken by surprise, and his own
explanation of this event to the media was a cryptic claim that it
‘reflects the constitutional relationship between Hong Kong and the
Central Authorities’.39 To be fair to him, he soldiered on manfully in
an unsuccessful quest for Hong Kong to have fair access to Mainland
markets.
It was Leung’s inability to establish any credibility with the
community that made his position impossible. He paid the price for
this failure in the stubborn opposition and hostile protests that
blocked so many of his policy initiatives. Very often, his proposals
were flawed. But crucial reforms were also held up because of his
personal unpopularity with legislators, pressure groups, the media
and the general public. Unfortunately, he intensified public hostility
by openly expressing his serious mistrust of a large proportion of the
population. In a 2014 newspaper interview, he said that the political
system must insulate Chief Executives from alleged electoral
pressures to create a welfare state and must ensure that business-
friendly policies prevailed. To achieve this goal, no one should qualify
for full political rights, he said, whose monthly earnings were
$14,000 or below—a category to which half the labour force
belonged.40
Leung seemed to have forgotten the totally different image which
he had tried to project when he first began his campaign to become
the third Chief Executive. In a 2009 speech, he had declared himself
to be on the side of the most vulnerable groups in the community
and expressed outrage at increasing mismanagement within the
government. ‘Development in Hong Kong has slowed down in the
past twelve years compared with what the colonial government
achieved before the handover’, he was reported to have said, ‘The
government should care for the needs of low-income families and
speed up economic growth’. He rejected the cost-cutting imposed by
Tung and Tsang.

We are not short of funds. We are not short of ideas or capabilities, he

said, when asked how the government could improve things. What we
have been lacking in the past 10 to 15 years was speed.41

This frank critique of the record of Tung and Tsang left him
vulnerable to criticism. He had held on to his senior position of
Convenor of Executive Council under both his predecessors as Chief
Executives instead of resigning in protest, and so he could not avoid
sharing responsibility for the serious mismanagement under the rule
of Tung and Tsang. Thus, he had come into office with limited
credibility.
But it was his performance which let him down most. He claimed,
as just quoted, that lack of ‘speed’ had crippled his predecessors.
But his own ‘speed’ proved worse than theirs in solving the
community’s most urgent problems. Furthermore, before his
appointment, he had said that there was no shortage of money. But
once in office, he allowed his Financial Secretary to predict financial
catastrophe unless spending on social services was reduced
immediately. This inconsistency showed little respect for the public’s
intelligence, for which there was a heavy price to pay.
Unlike Tung Chee Hwa and Donald Tsang, Leung did not make a
self-criticism in an effort to retrieve his reputation. Instead, in the
dying days of his term in office, he issued what amounted to a self-
indictment of his own performance although it was intended as a
proud roster of his achievements. This Report on the Work of the
Fourth-Term Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region June 2017 was intended ‘to summarise the progress and
achievements of our work’, he explained, but it provided compelling
evidence of what had gone wrong for him. Leung had made
numerous policy pledges since 2012 but relatively few long-term
policy commitments in terms of staff or funding. As a result, the
document was dominated by details of ‘consultations’, ‘pilot’
programmes and ‘trial’ measures. There were also signs of a
desperate search to find as many positive items to list as possible,
even when they were of limited interest to the public. The
presentation of the work report itself was confusing, which made its
contents difficult to use. The document was not the product of well-
run government or competent political leadership.
Of special interest to this book is the work report’s section on
housing. This had been among Leung’s highest priorities on taking
office but became one of his most embarrassing failures. His work
report reveals why no other outcome should have been expected.
His Housing Minister was also in charge of the transport sector. The
work report devoted three times the wordage to transport than it
allocated to Hong Kong’s housing crisis. This imbalance accurately
reflected the superior political and financial priority given by Leung’s
administration to transport issues.
The work report paid little attention to inadequate building
management and maintenance, which were major threats to homes
in the private sector. Measures to tackle this challenge were not
listed under ‘housing’ but buried in the ‘Culture, Leisure, Municipal
Services and Administration’ section.42 Leung also included among
his achievements ‘The Handbook on Tree Management’. Published in
2016, this booklet was intended ‘to further raise the awareness of
responsibility on tree management among private property owners
and property management companies’.43 At that date, the
government was still grappling with the introduction of a modern
system of property management. To include the care of trees in
built-up Hong Kong was an additional complication which could not
be justified as a contribution to safer homes. This was not good
administration.
By the end of Leung’s first term, his remaining credibility was in
tatters. He found it impossible to continue as Chief Executive, he
stated, because of the strain inflicted on his family. He had proved
even more vulnerable to the pressures of high office than Tung Chee
Hwa.

A Hong Kong success story

Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s rise to power as Hong Kong’s fourth

Chief Executive was a typical Hong Kong success story and very
different to her three predecessors. Her career before her
appointment as Chief Executive had been remarkable. Yet she had
retained the special qualities of women of her age group who had
made the best of their educational opportunities. They balanced
work and family and took service to the community seriously on a
voluntary basis or, in her case, as a profession. And their careers
flourished. Thus, her special political advantage was that she came
into office with more personal credibility with the public than the first
three Chief Executives.
She herself described her background as under-privileged. The
first sentence in her election manifesto declared: ‘I come from a
grassroot family and did my homework on a bunk bed when I was a
student’.44 But in that era, a bright young woman would not be
deprived of a decent education because of unaffordable fees. That
barrier was only erected in the current century. She went to an
excellent school for her primary and secondary education and won a
place in Hong Kong’s premier university. There she started out as a
social work student but switched to a less confining syllabus after
one year. She also enjoyed considerable personal freedom at
university. She said that as an undergraduate, she became ‘an
activist fighting for social compassion and justice’ after undertaking
‘social service voluntary work in her secondary school days’.45
Carrie Lam entered the Civil Service as a member of the élite
Administrative Service and was selected to attend a course at world-
renowned Cambridge University in England. She returned to Hong
Kong and became a government high-flyer. She was helped in
discarding her youthful enthusiasm for public protests in defence of
‘social compassion and justice’ by a long but very successful spell
with the Treasury. Here, she reached the conclusion that the costs of
social services to government were potentially toxic. Hong Kong’s
public finances were always insecure, she came to believe, so that
cost-cutting must be an absolute priority. She also became convinced
that fiscal stability would only be assured if government departments
adopted the private sector model.46
When she was transferred to the Social Welfare Department as
its Director in 2000, she set about reforming its management and
funding. ‘Every dollar spent on welfare is at the expense of other
policy areas’, she declared, creating the impression that her
Department’s services merited only a low priority in Hong Kong’s
annual budget. Her remedy for a shortfall in funding for the
Department’s programmes was to seek partners in the business
world. ‘Private sector participation’, she claimed, ‘through its
enterprise and efficiency, can come up with more economical
solutions to deliver a public service’. Ignored was the very different
motivation of the caring professions and the profit-driven business
executive.47 When she was made the senior official at the Housing,
Planning and Lands Bureau, she left behind in the field of social
services a powerful legacy which shaped their policies for years to
come. But at a serious cost to those in need in terms of quality and
availability of these services.
Carrie Lam continued to emulate the business sector after she
accepted a political appointment as one of Donald Tsang’s ministers
in 2007. Among her most important duties was to tackle a mounting
crisis in the private housing sector. Here, lack of maintenance and
inadequate management were causing increasing numbers of flats to
become threats to both public health and safety. She proved
successful in minimising the government’s role in tackling the crisis
by linking emergency maintenance measures to job creation.48
Her firm belief in the importance of minimal intervention by the
government remained unshaken even after the collapse in 2010 of a
dilapidated building causing deaths. This accident could have been
prevented if sufficient government staff had been available and
safety regulations enforced. Nevertheless, as the minister in charge
of building safety, Carrie Lam commented ‘that, at the end of the
day, the responsibility to maintain buildings rests with the owners’.49
That disclaimer of government responsibility left the public at risk in
a dangerous environment over which they had no control.

Rights denied

An extraordinary feature of Hong Kong is the way that its

constitution, the Basic Law, and its application have become more a
matter of financial considerations than legal principles. The
government has come to take it for granted that it can refuse the
rights of Hong Kong people clearly defined by the Basic Law on no
stronger grounds than the advice of economists. Chapter 1 traces
the origins of this paradoxical situation, which is in direct conflict
with the rule of law, normally regarded as essential to Hong Kong’s
survival.
The analysis reveals how the Basic Law drafters had intended to
safeguard the individual’s social as well as civic rights. Yet, as soon
as the Law came into force in 1997, business leaders, politicians and
academics began a highly successful campaign which made Financial
Secretaries’ budget forecasts the crucial criterion as to which Articles
of the Basic Law should be applied and which ignored. The
assumption that its financial Articles must be paramount went hand
in hand with a doctrinaire belief that the private sector would always
outperform public services in efficiency, ensuring lower costs for the
benefit of the taxpayer. Thus, a parallel campaign was mounted to
discredit government spending on social services, with a sustained
effort to convince the community that these programmes were both
unaffordable and a waste of resources—‘just like pouring sand into
the sea to reclaim land’, to quote Donald Tsang.50
As a result, the general public was led to believe that social
rights, such as those set out in the Basic Law, were irrelevant to the
quality of life of the community at large. This was not the case, and
the disregard by successive Chief Executives of these rights meant
that the community as a whole was no longer assured of access to
decent housing and the good standards of health services and
education which the Basic Law had envisaged and which was also
required under Hong Kong’s own legislation. Chapter 1 makes clear
that the Law’s drafters did not intend to exempt the government
from a duty to provide high-quality administration and to maintain
and, where necessary, to improve existing social and related
services.
Most astonishing of all, there seemed to be a genuine
unawareness among government and business leaders that their
policy priorities were in direct violation of the Basic Law. Throughout
this book, failure to comply with the Basic Law will be shown to be a
major cause of the rise of mismanagement.

From public service to ministerial

mismanagement

By 2002, Tung had taken into his owns hands total control over
government. The Chief Executive’s decisions were to be
implemented by political appointees: ‘ministers’ and their deputies.
Chapter 2 investigates how the introduction of this ‘Principal Officials
Accountability System’ (POAS) was warmly welcomed by senior civil
servant and applauded by most commentators and why its results
have proved very disappointing.
From the start, there was a powerful reason to doubt POAS’ likely
contribution to good government. It was always obvious that novice
political appointees would find it extremely difficult to provide a
higher quality of administration than civil servants had in the past.
This discouraging prospect had been made clear in the most explicit
terms.
Despite the popular game of bashing the civil service, practiced daily by
our media and politicians, our top civil servants still maintain a
comfortable lead in opinion polls over most politicians in the legislature.
 And despite the poor rating for the Government as a whole since the
Asian financial crisis and the ensuing recession, a neat 32 per cent of
the public still perceived this administration as being responsive to the
will of the people, compared to the worldwide average of 10 per cent
and a corresponding rating of 14 per cent in the UK and just 5 per cent
in the US, according to the results of the same Gallup poll.51

This stark statement was made by Lam Woon-kwong, an official

who had broken ranks with the contrary views of his more optimistic
civil service colleagues in 2000. He was Secretary for the Civil
Service, which might suggest special pleading and even nostalgia for
the colonial past. Lam, however, was above suspicion. He had a long
record of total commitment to the Central People’s Government and
enjoyed a close personal rapport with Tung. His warning was well-
founded but ignored.
The ministerial system was crippled from the outset and never
recovered. The pool of political and administrative talent outside the
civil service was extremely small. Inexperienced and inexpert
ministers were appointed. Over time, fewer and fewer persons of
any standing were willing to accept ministerial appointments, which
brought little public prestige and considerable personal frustration.
Political appointees’ credentials were often poorly presented to the
public. In 2017, for example, a senior member of Carrie Lam’s
ministerial team was asked by the media what the two new political
appointees in his bureau would contribute. He had ‘a very good
team of civil servants’ helping him, he said. But as for the political
team, he was unable to cite its specific functions. He voiced the
vague hope that it ‘can enrich our strength and we can take things
forward in a more effective manner’, whatever that might mean in
practice.52
 Standards of public services deteriorated. Laws and regulations
were no longer vigorously enforced. The quality of life declined for
the population as a whole, contrary to the intentions of the Basic
Law. The slide into mismanagement was aggravated by an earlier
decision by Tung Chee Hwa to impose an immediate cut in the
funding for all government departments and agencies, to drastically
reduce their manpower and to make government bureaux and
departments adopt business practices. This Enhanced Productivity
Programme (EPP) was launched in 1998 and implemented ruthlessly.
The Programme has exerted a destructive influence on public
administration ever since. For the next two decades, the civil service
was expected to provide new and improved services regardless of
the inadequate resources made available. Time after time, this book
will show, a continuing shortage of funds and staff meant that the
government’s basic duties were neglected, including enforcement of
the law.
There seemed little hope that this situation would change in the
next decade. On assuming office as the fourth Chief Executive,
Carrie Lam acknowledged that a continually increasing workload was
severely straining all ranks of the civil service. However, her solution
ignored reality: to ‘ask the Heads of Departments to reduce the
demand for manpower’. She also saw a remedy in ‘leveraging
technologies’. Unfortunately, the overall standard of IT and related
equipment in government departments was grossly inadequate, both
in quality and supply, as several chapters will report. She promised a
future 3 per cent increase in the overall civil service. But the
additional staff were to be hired solely ‘to ease the work pressure on
civil servants’ who were carrying out her ‘new policies and
initiatives’.53 This measure would do nothing to relieve the existing
strain on the civil service.
Chapter 2 includes a case study of how financial stringency led to
the dismantling of the Social Welfare Department’s programmes.
This hindered the major provider of basic services needed by the
community as a whole even though they were specifically
guaranteed by the Basic Law. The case study also provides a review
of how government standards of administration deteriorated. Before
the Enhanced Productivity Programme was introduced, the
Department had developed a highly efficient partnership with the
welfare charities—the voluntary agencies now known as ‘non-
governmental organisations’ (NGOs). This relationship had grown up
in the colonial era to counter government hostility to ‘welfare’.
Medical, educational and social professionals had developed an
informal alliance with the social workers in the Department to
establish facilities, train staff and organise the funding for a modern
system of social services. This chapter will show how this
partnership was dismantled and how care for clients disappeared
from the government’s welfare agenda.

Unfit for human habitation

The most damning evidence of mismanagement is the long-standing

failure to provide safe and affordable homes for the people of a city
as prosperous and sophisticated as Hong Kong. Chapter 3 traces
how this crisis seriously threatened the well-being of the million
families living in private sector housing. Many of those who had
Another random document with
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with the Tuarek, were considered wholly exempt from any tribute,
while the inhabitants of Tunis, who seem to have exhibited the
jealousy or hostility of the great lords of the desert, were subjected to
the highest personal exaction, viz. ten dollars a head. Now Gagliuffi’s
partner was a native of Sfákes; but having long resided in Masráta,
he insisted upon being free from tribute, like the inhabitants of the
latter place; but our friends were not to be cheated out of their right,
and made him pay as a Tunisian.
Having settled this little business, they came to us. There were
Hatíta Inek (the son of) Khóden of the Manghásatangh, Utaeti (the
eldest son of Sháfo), a younger son of the latter, and several more.
The first, who had enjoyed the friendship of Captain Lyon, behaved
throughout like a man well acquainted with Europeans; but Utaeti
conducted himself like a strict Tarki, neither showing his face nor
speaking a single word. Hatíta expressed the wish that we should
not proceed until he returned from Múrzuk, where he assured us he
would remain but a very short time; and we engaged to do our best
to keep back the camel-drivers, who were but little inclined to stay
here long. In consequence of this state of things, I determined to
return to the town, in order to ascertain the terms entered into
between the parties; and accordingly, starting at five in the evening,
and resting a few hours after midnight in Zerghán, I reached Múrzuk
on Friday morning at seven o’clock. I found that Mr. Gagliuffi had
been very ill during the hot weather of the last few days; but to-day
he was fortunately a little better.
Having waited in vain for the chiefs the whole of Saturday, we
received a visit from them on Sunday, when they appeared in the
finery with which they had been dressed by Mustapha Bey, but
would not come to any terms; and it was not till Monday, when they
took up their residence in the house belonging formerly to Mukni, but
now to the Wakíl of Borno, that they concluded an arrangement. The
sum which they then received would have been moderate, had they
undertaken to see us safe under the protection of Annur, the chief of
the Kél-owí. I urged, with Mr. Gagliuffi, the necessity of having a
written copy of the agreement; but to this the chief would not listen,
and thus confessed that there was really no distinct contract, as we
had been given to understand, to the effect that Utaeti should not
leave us till he had committed us to the care of the chief, Annur.
This business being concluded, I was in great haste to return to
Tasáwa, and starting immediately afterwards, at one o’clock in the
afternoon, arrived at our tent a little before midnight. Our tent,
indeed, was still there; but all the Tinýlkum (Músa alone excepted),
and all our things, were gone on, and Overweg and I were obliged to
follow the next day without waiting for Mr. Richardson.
Accordingly, on the 25th of June we left Tasáwa, and after having
crossed some sand-hills, entered upon harder soil, with ethel-bushes
crowning the little hills,—the whole scene making the impression that
a considerable current of water had at one period flowed along here
and carried away the soil, which had once extended to the top of the
hills. The whole district, which is a narrow and very long strip of land,
affording a little herbage for cattle and sheep, bears the name of
Wady Aberjúsh, or Berjúsh, and soon exhibits a more pleasant
character; the encircling borders increase a little in height, while the
sand ceases and a great deal of herbage begins to cover the soil.
But after about another hour’s march, we entered upon pebbly
ground like that of the Hammáda, and continued descending through
a bare country till we reached the well Sháraba, where we
encamped a little to the north, near a talha-bush. It is an open well,
only three feet below the surface of the ground, which here forms a
very remarkable hollow, almost six hundred feet below the level of
Múrzuk, but nevertheless contains water only for two or three
months in the year. It is, however, evident that in case of heavy rains
a large pond or lake must be temporarily formed here by the torrent,
which, sweeping along Wady Berjúsh, finds no outlet.
Towards evening the locality was enlivened for a short time by a
small slave-caravan, led by Mohammed Trumba, or ʿAkerút, an
active, energetic man, whom I met several times in the course of my
travels, and incurred some obligation towards him, as it was he who,
on my setting out from Zinder to Timbúktu in the beginning of 1853,
brought me a supply of one thousand dollars, without which I could
scarcely have succeeded in my undertaking. He had come in only
sixty-five days from Zinder, and thirty-three from Asben, having been
obliged to pursue his journey as fast as possible, because, owing to
the expedition of the Kél-owí against the Welád Slimán, provisions
were very scarce in Asben. He estimated the number of fighting men
who had gone on that expedition at seven thousand, and stated that
the Tuarek were acting in concert with the Dáza, a tribe of Tébu,
whose real name is Búlgudá. He stated that eʾ Núr (or Annur, as the
name is pronounced), the chief of the Kél-owí, was at present in
Tasáwa (that is to say, the town of that name on the borders of
Negroland), but would soon return to Asben. He confirmed the report
of plenty of rain having fallen in the desert, in consequence of which
the wells were full; but he begged me to beware of the cold during
the nights, which he represented as very intense. He had twenty-
three female slaves with him and only five camels, and hastened on
to Tasáwa, in order to obtain dates for his famished people.
June 26.—Owing to the camels having strayed, it was very late
when we left our encampment, and entered a sort of flat valley, from
which we ascended to a higher level. From this we obtained a distant
glance, towards the west-south-west, of the ruins of a fortress called
Kasr Sháraba, the history of which, as it is connected with the
struggles of yore between the Tébu and the inhabitants of Fezzán,
would be full of interest, if it could be made out distinctly. Towards
noon the country wore a more genial aspect, being adorned with
several groups of palm-trees. We had to go round a rather steep hill,
about three hundred and fifty feet high, from the summit of which I
obtained an interesting view over the desert. The whole country
presented a very irregular structure, and scarcely allowed the
continuous line of the Wady Berjúsh to be traced by the eye, hills of
considerable height and black pebbly tracts succeeding each other.
Over such a desert we continued our march until, late in the
afternoon, we reached a spot where the sight of a true wady, full of
herbage and bordered by a strip of talha-trees, gladdened our
hearts, and we encamped. It was a pleasant open ground; and the
night being cool and refreshing, we felt very much invigorated when
we rose the next morning to continue our march.
The talha-trees continued; but the herbage was principally limited
to resú, an herb which has a very strong taste, and is not relished by
camels for any length of time. The green strip took an irregular,
winding course, sometimes approaching the sand-hills which we had
always on our left at a certain distance, sometimes keeping more to
our right; and Músa, our grave but cheerful camel-driver, dwelt in
terms of the highest praise on the great superiority of this wady,
which he said is joined by as many as a hundred smaller branches. It
evidently forms the natural high road between Fezzán and the
western desert, and about a month ago must have exhibited a more
varied aspect, enlivened as it then was by a considerable torrent
sweeping along it. In the afternoon we saw several spots where the
eddying stream had formed itself a bed about five feet deep, and had
turned up the ground all around; the crust of mire which covered the
bed of the torrent had not yet dried. We encamped on a pleasant
spot called Hamáwa, without pitching our tent, so delighted were we
to enjoy the fresh air of the desert. Here we were joined by a man
from Tasáwa, who wanted to seize a debtor who had attached
himself to Bóro’s party in order to make his escape into Sudán—a
practice very common with the people of Fezzán. By repeated
measuring with our chain, we had found that, on tolerably even
ground, our ordinary rate as the Tawárek travel was half an English
geographical mile in thirteen minutes. It is the general custom of
these people, who do not allow their camels to feed on the march, to
leave them the whole night on the pasture, and not to fetch them till
morning, for which reason they never start very early, and often at a
rather late hour.
June 28.—About an hour after we had begun our march along the
line of green herbage, we came to a temporary well called Ahitsa,
containing very fine rain-water, but only for a period of about two
months in the year. Having filled two of our water-skins, we
continued our march, and soon, to our great joy, got sight of two
white tents, belonging the one to Mohammed Bóro, the other to
Mohammed eʾ Sfaksi, and pointing out to us the encampment of the
caravan. It had been pitched on open ground, in the midst of the strip
of green herbage, and surrounded with a rich border of talha-trees.
The place offered good pasture for the camels; and a small
encampment of other Tinýlkum not belonging to our caravan, but
merely pasturing their camels and goats here, had been formed near
the trees. The whole presented an animated picture. Our camel-
drivers are said to possess, in the sand-hills bordering this valley on
the south side, considerable stores of dates and corn, and to have
taken from thence their supplies for the road. The whole character of
this landscape appeared to me so peculiar that, the following
morning before we started, I made a sketch of it from the elevated
stony ground to the north of the channel, which here exhibited
evident traces of a small waterfall formed by the heavy rains. Stones
had been laid here in the form of a circle, as a place of prayer. The
whole valley was about four miles broad; the locality is called
Tesémmak.

When we started next morning, we formed a tolerably large party,

with sixty-two camels, which were arranged in four strings, one of
which consisted of thirty-three animals, each fastened to the tail of
the preceding one. The valley was enlivened by a small herd of
gazelles, which Overweg and I tried for a moment to pursue. Having
passed a well called Tafiyúk, at a place where the sand-hills jut out
into the valley, we encamped about half an hour beyond, near
another well containing rain-water for a short time of the year, and
called Em-éneza. Two branches of the wady unite here, and distinct
traces of the great force of the last torrent remained in the broken
condition of the ground.
Here we remained encamped for the two following days, in order
to allow Mr. Richardson and the Azkár chiefs to come up. I spent the
time sometimes writing and studying, at others roving about or
musing while seated on some elevated rocks at the border of the
rising ground. Músa was our constant visitor, and gave us all the
information required, though he was not very intelligent. There had
been some small differences between us and our camel-drivers,
who, though in other respects not uncouth or uncivil, had, from
religious principles, sometimes assumed a rather hostile position
towards us. We now effected a general reconciliation, and there was
every reason to believe that we should go on well with them.
July 2.—Being informed that our companions were near, we
moved on a little, and at length got out of the eternal Wady Aberjúsh,
with all its little side-branches, which are divided from the main wady
by a gently rising ground covered with black pebbles. Then after a
little we reached the Wady Eláwen, forming a broad depression
running from the north, where it is joined by several branch channels
descending from the plateau towards the sand-hills on the south,
and encamped on its western side, between tall sebót shooting up
from the sandy ground, and near some fine talha-trees. We soon
discovered, to our great delight, that only two hundred paces above
our encampment the floods, descending from the higher ground in
two large branches, and carrying down with them bushes and
brushwood in abundance, had formed a pond at present about 100
ft. long and 50 ft. broad, which contributed greatly to enliven the
district. All the world was bathing and playing about the water; and
flights of thirsty birds, of the kinds Numida and Pterocles, were
hovering about, watching a favourable moment to come in for their
share. Everywhere in the bottom of the valley there was water at a
little depth; and we obtained excellent potations from a well dug by
our people close below our tents.
About five o’clock in the afternoon we were at length joined by Mr.
Richardson and the chiefs of the Azkár; but the unsatisfactory way in
which the business had been concluded with these chiefs in Múrzuk
led to a break-up sooner even than I had suspected. The next
evening Hatíta summoned us to a divan, and declared distinctly that
he required a month’s time to make the necessary preparations for
the journey to Aïr. Hence it would be necessary for us to separate
from the caravan, and, taking our luggage with us to Ghát, to hire or
buy other camels there. In reply to this unjust and absurd demand,
we declared that we had no other choice but to follow the direct
Sudán road in the company of the caravan, and that it was our firm
intention at any rate not to lose more than seven days in Ghát. Hatíta
having left us rather dissatisfied at our decision, our servants, who
would gladly have idled away one or two months in Ghát as they had
done in Múrzuk, insolently told us that we were very much mistaken
in thinking that the road to Aïr was in any degree open to us, for it
would first be necessary to send a courier to ask the permission of
the chiefs of that country to enter it, and we must wait for the answer.
While remaining firm in our resolution, we of course consented to
go to Ghát, and tried at the same time to come to some final
arrangement with our camel-drivers, promising them a small
allowance for every day they should wait for us. They at length
promised to spend ten days on the way to Arikím, a well three days’
march south from Ghát, where they would wait six days, and then go
on directly to Aïr. Attacking the old chief, therefore, on his weakest
side, we sent him word the next morning that, as we had but little
money with us, he would not succeed in getting anything of value
from us, if he should try to keep us in Ghát for any length of time;
and I insisted, with Yusuf Mukni, upon the dishonesty of the chief’s
conduct, in trying to make an entirely new bargain after he had got
all he demanded. His answer was satisfactory; and with the fervent
hope that we should not be baffled in our attempt to discover new
regions and new tribes of men, we left the further development of the
affair to time.
While these disputes were going on, I employed my leisure hours
in roving about our encampment, in different directions, up and down
the valley. The eastern of the two branches, which by their junction
form the valley, was peculiarly rich in herbage, and commanded by a
hill starting up from the plateau, which afforded a very interesting
view around, though this was almost surpassed by the prospect from
a mound a little to the west-south-west of our tent. The lower part of
the valley was more diversified by numerous branches, which joined
it on the south-east side. One of these, which was bordered by high
ridges of sandstone, was evidently a favourite playground of the
gazelles, the fresh footmarks of which chequered its sandy bottom
like a net. Pursuing this direction, I approached the sand-hills which
form the southern border of this whole district. Fatigued by my long
walk, I was the more able in the evening to do full justice to our
supper, which was diversified by a variety of birds that had been shot
in the course of the day near the pond.
 CHAPTER IX.
SINGULAR SCULPTURES IN THE DESERT.—THE
MOUNTAIN-PASS.

July 5.—We had to separate from the Tinýlkum, and from our
luggage, without having any certainty as to where and when we
might overtake them. The chiefs of Ghát, too, had started in
advance. The country had been rising all the way from Wady
Sháraba, which seems to form the lowest point in this whole region,
and we ascended to-day very considerably. Pushing on in advance
of our little troop, and passing a small caravan, which was laden with
provisions and merchandise belonging to the pilgrim-caravan of the
Tawáti, I soon came up with Hatíta and his companions. They were
civil and kind, but the old friend of the English, who had an eye to a
new marriage with some pretty Amóshagh girl some forty or fifty
years younger than himself, gave me sundry expressive hints that I
should spare him something of my outfit,—either a pair of pistols, or
a carpet, or a bernús, or any other little article. My refusal in no wise
rendered him uncivil. While he was riding by my side, I took the
opportunity of making a slight sketch of him,—his English gun, the
gift of some previous traveller, forming a striking contrast to his large
shield of antelope-hide, ornamented with a cross. Having crossed
another valley of some extent, we descended into Wady Elghom-udé
(the Valley of the Camel), which, richly clothed with herbage, forms
an inlet in the stony plateau from north to south, and has a very
cheerful aspect. The encampment, spread over a great extent of
ground, formed quite an ethnographical museum, comprising as it
did six distinct small caravan-troops from different parts of Africa,
and even of Europe.
July 6.—A splendid morning, cool and fresh. We were happy to
meet a small caravan coming from Sudán, which brought us some
important pieces of news: first, that they had come to Ghát in the
company of five men belonging to the family of Ánnur (the chief of
the Kél-owí), who, after a short stay, would return to their country;
and secondly, that the expedition of the Kél-owí had returned from
Kánem, after having totally annihilated the Welád Slimán. They
brought with them seventeen slaves, among whom were fifteen
females, one with a very engaging countenance. After less than
three miles’ march, our companions looked about in the Wady
Telísaghé for a camping-ground. The valley proved of more than
ordinary interest. It was hemmed in by steep cliffs of rock, and
adorned with some fine talha-trees. With no great reluctance we
followed the Tuarek chiefs, who kept along its steep western border,
and at length chose the camping-ground at a spot where a western
branch joins the principal wady. Scarcely had we pitched our tents,
when we became aware that the valley contained some remarkable
sculptures deserving our particular attention.

The spot where we had pitched our tents afforded a very

favourable locality for commemorating any interesting events, and
the sandstone blocks which studded it were covered with drawings
representing various subjects, more or less in a state of
preservation. With no pretensions to be regarded as finished
sculptures, they are made with a firm and steady hand, well
accustomed to such work, and, being cut to a great depth, bore a
totally different character from what is generally met with in these
tracts. The most interesting sculpture represented the following
subject, the description of which I am unfortunately able at present to
accompany with only an imperfect woodcut.
The sculpture represents a group of three individuals of the
following character and arrangement:—

To the left is seen a tall human figure, with the head of a peculiar
kind of bull, with long horns turned forward and broken at the point;
instead of the right arm, he has a peculiar organ terminating like an
oar, while in the left hand he carries an arrow and a bow—at least
such is the appearance, though it might be mistaken for a shield;
between his legs a long tail is seen hanging down from his slender
body. The posture of this figure is bent forward, and all its
movements are well represented. Opposite to this curious individual
is another one of not less remarkable character, but of smaller
proportions, entirely human as far up as the shoulders, while the
head is that of an animal which reminds us of the Egyptian ibis,
without being identical with it. The small pointed head is furnished
with three ears, or with a pair of ears and some other excrescence,
and beyond with a sort of hood (which, more than any other
particular, recalls the idea of Egyptian art), but it is not furrowed; over
the fore part of the head is a round line representing some ornament,
or perhaps the basilisk. This figure likewise has a bow in its right
hand, but, as it would seem, no arrow, while the left hand is turned
away from the body.
Between these two half-human figures, which are in a hostile
attitude, is a bullock, small in proportion to the adjacent lineaments
of the human figure, but chiselled with the same care and the same
skilful hand, with the only exception that the feet are omitted, the
legs terminating in points, a defect which I shall have occasion to
notice also in another sculpture. There is another peculiarity about
this figure, the upper part of the bull, by some accident, having been
hollowed out, while in general all the inner part between the deeply
chiselled outlines of these sculptures is left in high relief. The animal
is turned with its back towards the figure on the right, whose bow it
seems about to break. The block on which it was sculptured was
about four feet in breadth, and three in height. It was lying loose on
the top of the cliff.

No barbarian could have graven the lines with such astonishing

firmness, and given to all the figures the light, natural shape which
they exhibit. The Romans, who had firmly established their dominion
as far as Garama, or Jerma, might easily have sent emissaries to
this point, and even further; but the sculptures have nothing in them
of a Roman character. Some few particulars call to mind the
Egyptian sculptures. But on the whole it seems to be a
representation of a subject taken from the native mythology,
executed by some one who had been in intimate relation with the
more advanced people on the coast, perhaps with the Carthaginians.
Be this as it may, it is scarcely doubtful that the subject represents
two divinities disputing over a sacrifice, and that the figure at the left
is intended for the victor.
On the cliff itself there is another sculpture on a large block which,
now that the western end is broken off, is about twelve feet long and
five feet high. The surface of the block is quite smooth, protected as
it has been, in some degree, by the block above, which projects
considerably; nevertheless the sculpture has suffered a good deal. It
bears testimony to a state of life very different from that which we are
accustomed to see now in these regions, and illustrates and
confirms St. Augustine’s statement that the ancient kings of this
country made use of bulls for their conveyance. It represents a
dense group of oxen in a great variety of positions, but all moving
towards the right, where probably, on the end of the stone which is
now broken off, the pond or well was represented from which the
beasts were to be watered. Some of these bulls are admirably
executed, and with a fidelity which can scarcely be accounted for,
unless we suppose that the artist had before his eyes the animals
which he chiselled. My sketch gives only a faint idea of the design,
which is really beautiful. The only defect, as I have already remarked
above, is in the feet, which, from some reason or other, have been
negligently treated.
If we consider that the sculpture described is close to a watering-
place on the high road to Central Africa, we are reduced to the
conjecture that at that time cattle were not only common in this
region, but even that they were the common beasts of burden
instead of the camel, which we here look for in vain. Not only has the
camel no place among these sculptures, but even among the rude
outlines which at a much later period have been made on the blocks
around, representing buffaloes, ostriches, and another kind of birds,
there are no camels; and it is a well-known fact that the camel was
introduced into the western part of Northern Africa at a much later
period.

There was a similar group on another block of this interesting cliff,

but too much effaced to allow the particulars to be distinguished; but
the figure of an ass among the oxen was quite clear, as well as that
of a horse, which was, however, ill-drawn. Not far off, Overweg found
another sculptured stone, representing, as the annexed sketch
shows, an ox jumping through or falling into a ring or hoop, which I
should suppose to have an allegorical meaning, or to represent a
sacrifice, rather than, as Mr. Richardson thought, to represent any
games of the circus. There was a circle regularly laid with large
blocks of rock, at the south-western slope of the cliff; these, I should
suspect, belong to the same, period as the sculptures before
mentioned.
 To a later period belong innumerable inscriptions in Tefínagh, with
which the cliffs on the other side of the valley and overhanging the
waterpond are covered. These are mere scribblings, and are
interesting merely as they serve to render evident, by contrast, the
superior merit and age of the adjacent sculptures. It appeared to me
remarkable that on this side, where the water now principally
collects, not a single drawing should be seen; and I formed the
conclusion that in more ancient times the water collected on the
other side.
The valley is formed by the junction of two branches coming from
the north, of which the western is the more considerable, being
joined by some smaller wadys. Just at the place of our encampment
it changed its direction, and extended from west to east, having run
in its upper course from north-west to south-east. After the junction,
the valley runs from north to south, and loses for a moment almost
the character of a wady, while running over pebbly ground; but it
soon becomes once more well-bordered and adorned with fine
groups of talha-trees, and in some places exhibits a river-bed eight
feet deep, and still wet. Near a shepherd’s cave there was a very
luxuriant tree, under whose shade I lay down. Towards evening the
pilgrim-caravan of Haj ʿAbd el Káder, which had delayed so long in
the wady, arrived. The whole valley resounded with the cries of the
men and their camels, who were all eagerly pressing towards the
pond at the foot of the steep cliffs. Fortunately we had already laid in
a supply of water, else we should not have been able to obtain any fit
to drink.
July 7.—Owing to the camels having strayed to a great distance,
we started at a late hour, still leaving the Tuarek chiefs behind, who
wanted to settle some business with the Tawáti, and for this purpose
had changed their dirty travelling-dress for showy caftans and
bernúses. We ascended the higher level, and continued along it,
crossing some small beds of watercourses overgrown with herbage,
till, after a little more than four miles, we had to descend into a deep
and wild ravine which led us to a vale. Having again ascended, we
then came to the wide and regular valley called Erazar-n-Hágarné,
bordered by steep cliffs from 150 to 200 feet high, and richly clothed
with herbage. Following the windings of this large wady, which
evidently has received its name from the circumstance that the
Hogár or Hágara pasture their camels chiefly hereabouts, we
reached the point where it is joined by the valley called Áman
sémmedné, and encamped near a fine talha-tree in order to allow
Hatíta to come up. This valley has its name from the cold water
which at times descends from the plateau in floods, of which the
deeply worn channel bears evident traces; it is joined at this place by
an important branch valley and several smaller ravines.
When the heat of the sun began to decline, I took a walk through
the valley, and being attracted by a circle laid out very regularly with
large slabs like the opening of a well, I began to ascend the steep
cliffs opposite the mouth of the valley of Áman sémmedné, rising to a
height of about 500 feet, and which, as I clearly saw, had been
repeatedly ascended. The cliffs are here, as is usual in this
formation, broken into regular strata, and steep flat blocks standing
upright give them an imposing appearance. My search here,
however, led only to the discovery of the well-chiselled form of a
single bullock, in exactly the same style as that in Wady Telísaghé,
though it had suffered a little from its exposed situation; but the
whole appearance of the locality shows that in former times it
contained more of this kind. On the plain above the cliffs is another
circle regularly laid out, and, like the many circles seen in Cyrenaica
and in other parts of Northern Africa, evidently connected with the
religious rites of the ancient inhabitants of these regions. Quartz
pebbles were scattered about this part of the valley.
Our people meanwhile had been busy laying in provision of dry
herbage for the next marches, during which we were told our camels
would scarcely find anything to feed upon; and our Tuarek friends,
when they at length arrived for their supper, did the same.
The caravan of the Tawáti having passed by our encampment at
an early hour, we followed betimes, having an interesting day’s
march before us. For the first three miles we still kept along the large
valley, into which masses of sand had been driven down from the
plateau by the strong east winds; further on it became dry and bare.
To this succeeded an irregular knot of hollows and plains between
the sides of the plateau, which in some places formed imposing
promontories and detached buttresses, all on one and the same
level. We then began to ascend along a sort of broad valley, which
gradually assumed a regular shape, and bore the name of Tísi. The
slope of the plateau was shaped into regular strata, the uppermost of
which form steep precipices like the wall of a castle; the lower ones
slope, down more gradually. Here we discovered ahead of us, at the
foot of the southern slope, the encampment of the pilgrim-caravan,
who were resting during the heat of the day. We continued our
march, always ascending, till a little after noon we reached the edge
of the pass, a perfect watershed, of more than 2,000 feet elevation,
descending more gradually towards the east as far as the well of
Sháraba, while towards the west is formed a steep precipice,
passable only along a most interesting gully cut into it by the water
towards the Valley of Ghát. The higher level, which rises above the
pass about 300 feet, seems to be considerably depressed in this
place, where it collects large floods of water, such as could alone cut
the remarkably wild passage through the sandstone cliffs which we
were about to descend: it is called Rálle.
The first part of it was more rough than wild, and the cliffs of the
sandstone rather rugged and split than precipitous and grand; but
after half an hour’s descent it bore evident traces of the waters that
descend from the heights, and which being here collected into one
mighty stream, with enormous power, force their way down through a
narrow channel. The defile was here encompassed by rocky walls
about a hundred feet high, half of which consisted of sandstone,
while the other half was formed by a thick deposit of marl; and a little
further down it was not more than six feet wide, and the floor and the
walls were as smooth as if they had been cut by the hand of man;
but the course of the defile was rather winding and not at all in a
straight line, forming altogether a pass easily to be defended by a
very small power, and affording the Tuarek a stronghold against any
designs of conquest on the side of the Turks, although it does not
form the frontier, but is regarded as entirely belonging to Fezzán. At
the narrowest point Tuarek as well as Arab travellers had recorded
their names.
 Where the channel began to widen there were some curious
narrow gaps or crevices on both sides, the one to the right, with its
smooth rounded surface, bearing a great similarity to the famous Ear
of Dionysius in Syracuse. The walls contained strata of chalk and
ironstone, and Overweg found here some interesting petrifactions.
The crevice to the left was less deep, and rather resembled a cell or
chamber.
Having here waited some time for the boat to come up, we started
together, but had still to get through two more narrow passes of the
wady, and at four o’clock in the afternoon entered another very
narrow defile, the steep cliffs forming it being covered with
inscriptions. At length, after a descent of altogether four hours, we
emerged into the open plain some 600 feet below, and had a wide
view of the high precipitous cliffs of the plateau, stretching out in
several buttresses into the plain, which is interrupted only by
detached hills. Amongst these was a rather remarkable one upon a
terrace-like base, and opening with three caverns towards the
roadside. Ascending the terrace, I found the westernmost of the
caverns vaulted, as if by art, in the shape of a large niche, but it was
a little filled with sand; I found, however, no inscriptions nor anything
but four round holes, about nine inches in diameter, hollowed out in a
slab on the terrace in front of the cavern. Beyond this hill, where
Hatíta told us that he had once passed the heat of the day with ʿAbd
Allah (Clapperton) and the tabíb (Oudney), the country is quite open
towards the north. About sunset we encamped in the deep Erazar-n-
Tese; there were a few talha-trees and some herbage.
The following day our route lay over the dreary plain, where
nothing but the varied form of the rocky buttresses projecting from
the plateau into the plain interrupted the monotony of the prospect.
Near the slope the country seems a little less desolate, and the
valley Támelelt, which extends between two of the promontories, has
even a great reputation among the natives. In the afternoon we
entered a sandy region, when we began to ascend gradually till we
reached the summit of the sand-hills. We then continued on the
higher level, where chalk protruded to the surface. After a long
march we encamped on stony ground, covered only with a scanty
growth of sebót.
On the 10th we descended a good deal from this higher ground. At
first the descent was gradual; but beyond the valley In-kássewa,
which, running through high rocky ground, is not so poor in herbage,
we descended about two hundred feet by steep terraces, having
before us the peculiarly serrated crest of the Akakús, and in front of it
some lower offshoots covered with sand. The bottom of the plain
was a broad and entirely naked level, with hard calcareous soil,
surrounded by irregular half-decayed hilly ridges. It forms the
boundary between Fezzán and the country of the Hogár. The
character of the country underwent no change till we reached the
valley Telíga, where, at an early hour in the afternoon, we encamped
near a group of talha-trees, not far from the well, and remained for
the next two days at an elevation of 1,435 feet.
The valley is very shallow, now and then interrupted by some
sand-hills and adorned with some fine specimens of the ethel-tree,
while broad strips of herbage cover the more favoured spots. It runs
north-west, nearly parallel with the range of the Akakús, which
remained at a distance of three miles. It joins the valley Ilághlaghén,
which again unites with the Titábtarén; and this valley runs towards a
favoured spot called Sérdales, which we were unfortunately
prevented from visiting, as Hatíta thought we should be annoyed by
the begging propensities of the people. Copious springs, from which
the whole locality takes the name of el Awenát, irrigate and fertilize
the soil, and support a village of about the same size as Tigger-odé,
inhabited by about a hundred families, while in the gardens corn,
melons, and ghédeb are produced in tolerable quantity. The water of
the springs is said to be warm. We saw a party of Hágara from that
place, who called on our friends; they were fine men and neatly
dressed.
The water of our well was not very good; from being at first
discoloured, it gradually acquired a taste like that of ink, and when
boiled with tea became entirely black. Late in the evening our best
and most steady servant, Mohammed from Gatrón, was wounded,
but whether stung by a scorpion or bitten by a snake he knew not,
and was much alarmed. We applied spirits of hartshorn to the
wound; but he was very ill for the next twenty-four hours, and totally
disabled, so that we were obliged to bind him on the camel during
the next day’s march.
July 13.—There had been much talk for some days to the effect
that we travellers, together with Hatíta, should take the nearer but
more difficult road to Ghát across the range, while our luggage
should go by the longer but smoother road round the mountains; but
it was at length decided that we should all go by the longer road, and
none but the Sfaksi, who was anxious to overtake the caravan as
soon as possible, took the more difficult path, which, for geological
observations, might have proved the more interesting. Going
sometimes on pebbly, at others on sandy ground, after five miles we
reached the shallow valley, Ilághlaghén, running from east to west,
and handsomely overgrown with bushes; and after another stretch of
about the same length, we entered the range of mountains,
consisting of remarkably cragged and scarred rocks, with many
narrow defiles. Altogether it presented a very curious spectacle.
When the rocks assumed a smoother appearance, we suddenly
descended into a deep ravine, which, at the first glance, appeared to
be of a volcanic nature; but, on closer inspection, all the black rocks
composing these dismal-looking cliffs, proved to consist of
sandstone, blackened by the influence of the atmosphere; further on
it was disposed in regular strata very much like slate. The western
and highest part of the range seems to consist of clay-slate. The
valley changed its character in some degree after its junction with a
side-valley called Tipérkum, which bears distinct marks of great
floods occasionally descending along its channel from the
mountains. Here we collected some firewood, as we were told that
further on we should find none, and then entered a defile or glen with
an ascent of about a hundred feet above the bottom of the valley.
Beyond this the scene grew more open, and irregular plains,
interrupted by steep buttresses, succeeded each other.
At half-past four o’clock in the afternoon we had gradually begun
to change our direction from north-west by west to south. The valley
was bordered by a deep chasm and craggy mountain to the right,