In like manner, the footprints of a Sudanese, whatever their differences may be, agree in exhibiting peculiarities which it is vain to seek in the tracks of a fellah or a bedouin. The Sudanese is flat-footed, shows no instep, and has square toes.
-Trackers and Smugglers in the Deserts of Egypt, André von Dumreicher, 1931
The sand was so soft when I went on foot myself, and so exhausting if taking more than five steps, that I never could tell if another’s tracks were made by a camel or a drover. In any case, by the time our herd’s one hundred fifty head- 600 individual feet!- had passed, there was nothing left to see. That is why I think that Dumreicher, a German in the service of the Egyptian Camel Corps, couldn’t tell a fennec fox’s mincing from a dung beetle’s scuttling.