THE DESERT OF SAHARA
(AFRICA)
EUGENE FROMENTIN
The Saharans adore their country,[1]and, for my part, I should come very near justifying a sentiment so impassioned, especially when it is mingled with the attachment to one’s native soil.... It is a land without grace or softness, but it is severe, which is not an evil though its first effect is to make one serious—an effect that many people confound with weariness. A great land of hills expiring in a still greater flat land bathed in eternal light; empty and desolate enough, to give the idea of that surprising thing called the desert; with a sky almost alwaysthe same, silence, and on all sides a tranquil horizon. In the centre a kind of lost city, surrounded by solitude; then a little verdure, sandy islets, and, lastly, a few reefs of whitish calcareous stone or black schists on the margin of an expanse that resembles the sea;—in all this, but little variety, few accidents, few novelties, unless it be the sun that rises over the desert and sinks behind the hills, ever calm, rayless but devouring; or perhaps the banks of sand that have changed their place and form under the last wind from the South. Brief dawns, longer noons that are heavier than elsewhere, and scarcely any twilight; sometimes a sudden expansion of light and warmth with burning winds that momentarily give the landscape a menacing physiognomy and that may then produce crushing sensations; but more usually a radiant immobility, the somewhat mournful fixity of fine weather, in short, a kind of impassibility that seems to have fallen from the sky upon lifeless things and from them to have passed into human faces.
The first impression received from this ardent and inanimate picture, composed of sun, expanse, and solitude, is acute and cannot be compared with any other. However, little by little, the eye grows accustomed to the grandeur of the lines, the emptiness of the space, and the nakedness of the earth, and if one is still astonished at anything, it is at still remaining sensible to such slightly changing effects and at being so deeply stirred by what are in reality the most simple sights.
Here the sky is clear, arid, and unchanging; it comes in contact with fawn-coloured or white ground, and maintainsa frank blue in its utmost extent; and when it puts on gold opposite the setting sun its base is violet and almost leaden-hued. I have not seen any beautiful mirages. Except during the sirocco, the horizon is always distinctly visible and detached from the sky; there is only a final streak of ash-blue which is vigorously defined in the morning, but in the middle of the day is somewhat confounded with the sky and seems to tremble in the fluidity of the atmosphere. Directly to the South, a great way off towards M’zab, an irregular line formed by groves of tamarinds is visible. A faint mirage, that is produced every day in this part of the desert, makes these groves appear nearer and larger; but the illusion is not very striking and one needs to be told in order to notice it.
Shortly after sunrise the whole country is rosy, a vivid rose, with depths of peach colour; the town is spotted with points of shadow, and some little white argils, scattered along the edge of the palms, gleam gaily enough in this mournful landscape which for a short moment of freshness seems to smile at the rising sun. In the air are vague sounds and a suggestion of singing that makes us understand that every country in the world has its joyous awakening.
Then, almost at the same moment every day, from the south we hear the approach of innumerable twitterings of birds. They are thegangascoming from the desert to drink at the springs.... It is then half-past six. One hour later and the same cries suddenly arise in the north; the same flocks pass over my head one by one, inthe same numbers and order, and regain their desert plains. One might say that the morning is ended; and the sole smiling hour of the day has passed between the going and returning of thegangas. The landscape that was rose has already become dun; the town has far fewer little shadows; it greys as the sun gets higher; in proportion as it shines brighter the desert seems to darken; the hills alone remain rosy. If there was any wind it dies away; warm exhalations begin to spread in the air as if they were from the sands. Two hours later all movement ceases at once, and noontide commences.
The sun mounts and is finally directly over my head. I have only the narrow shelter of my parasol and there I gather myself together; my feet rest in the sand or on glittering stones; my pad curls up beside me under the sun; my box of colours crackles like burning wood. Not a sound is heard now. There are four hours of incredible calm and stupor. The town sleeps below me then dumb and looking like a mass of violet with its empty terraces upon which the sun illumines a multitude of screens full of little rose apricots, exposed there to dry;—here and there a black hole marks a window, or an interior door, and fine lines of dark violet show that there are only one or two strips of shadow in the whole town. A fillet of stronger light that edges the contour of the terraces helps us to distinguish these mud edifices from one another, piled as they are rather than built upon their three hills.
On all sides of the town extends the oasis, also dumb and slumbrous under the heavy heat of the day. It looksquite small and presses close against the two flanks of the town with an air of wanting to defend it at need rather than to entice it. I can see the whole of it: it resembles two squares of leaves enveloped by a long wall like a park, roughly drawn upon the sterile plain. Although divided by compartments into a multitude of little orchards, also all enclosed within walls, seen from this height it looks like a green tablecloth; no tree is distinguishable, two stages of forest only can be remarked: the first, round-headed clumps; the second, clusters of palms. At intervals some meagre patches of barley, only the stubble of which now remains, form shorn spaces of brilliant yellow amid the foliage; elsewhere in rare glades a dry, powdery, and ash-coloured ground shows. Finally, on the south side, a few mounds of sand, heaped by the wind, have passed over the surrounding wall; it is the desert trying to invade the gardens. The trees do not move; in the forest thickets we divine certain sombre gaps in which birds may be supposed to be hidden, sleeping until their second awakening in the evening.
This is also the hour when the desert is transformed into an obscure plain. The sun, suspended over its centre, inscribes upon it a circle of light the equal rays of which fall full upon it in all ways and everywhere at the same time. There is no longer any clearness or shadow; the perspective indicated by the fleeting colours almost ceases to measure distances; everything is covered with a brown tone, continuous without streaks or mixture; there are fifteen or twenty leagues of country as uniform and flat as a flooring.It seems that the most minute salient object should be visible upon it, and yet the eye discerns nothing there; one could not even say now where there is sand, earth, or stony places, and the immobility of this solid sea then becomes more striking than ever. On seeing it start at our feet and then stretch away and sink towards the South, the East, and the West without any traced route or inflexion, we ask ourselves what may be this silent land clothed in a doubtful tone that seems the colour of the void; whence no one comes, whither no one goes, and which ends in so straight and clear a strip against the sky;—we do not know; we feel that it does not end there and that it is, so to speak, only the entrance to the high sea.
Then add to all these reveries the fame of the names we have seen upon the map, of places that we know to be there, in such or such direction, at five, ten, twenty, fifty days’ march, some known, others only indicated and yet others more and more obscure.... Then the negro country, the edge of which we only know; two or three names of towns with a capital for a kingdom; lakes, forests, a great sea on the left, perhaps great rivers, extraordinary inclemencies under the equator, strange products, monstrous animals, hairy sheep, elephants, and what then? Nothing more distinct; unknown distances, an uncertainty, an enigma. Before me I have the beginning of this enigma and the spectacle is strange beneath this clear noonday sun. Here is where I should like to see the Egyptian Sphinx.
THE DESERT OF SAHARA.
THE DESERT OF SAHARA.
THE DESERT OF SAHARA.
It is vain to gaze around, far or near; no moving thing can be distinguished. Sometimes by chance, a little convoyof laden camels appears, like a row of blackish points, slowly mounting the sandy slopes; we only perceive them when they reach the foot of the hills. They are travellers; who are they? whence come they? Without our perceiving them, they have crossed the whole horizon beneath our eyes. Or perhaps it is a spout of sand which suddenly detaches itself from the surface like a fine smoke, rises into a spiral, traverses a certain space bending under the wind and then evaporates after a few seconds.
The day passes slowly; it ends as it began with half rednesses, an amber sky, depths assuming colour, long oblique flames which will empurple the mountains, the sands and the eastern rocks in their turn; shadows take possession of that side of the land that has been fatigued by the heat during the first half of the day; everything seems to be somewhat comforted. The sparrows and turtle-doves begin to sing among the palms; there is a movement as of resurrection in the town; people show themselves on the terraces and come to shake the sieves; the voices of animals are heard in the squares, horses neighing as they are taken to water and camels bellowing; the desert looks like a plate of gold; the sun sinks over the violet mountains and the night makes ready to fall.
Un Été dans le Sahara(Paris, 1857).
Un Été dans le Sahara(Paris, 1857).
FOOTNOTE:[1]The word Sahara does not necessarily convey the idea of a desert immensity. Inhabited at certain points, it is calledFiafi; habitable at certain others, it takes the name ofKifar, a word whose signification is the same as that of the common wordKhela,abandoned; habitable and inhabited at yet other points, it is calledFalat.These three words represent each of the characteristics of the Sahara.Fiafiis the oasis where life retires, about the fountains and wells, under the palms and fruit trees, sheltered from the sun andchoub(simoon).Kifaris the sandy and void plain, which, however, when fertilized for a moment by the winter rains, is covered with grass (a’ cheb) in the spring; and the nomadic tribes that ordinarily camp around the oases go thither to pasture their flocks.Falat, finally, is the sterile and bare immensity, the sea of sand, whose eternal billows, to-day agitated by thechoub, to-morrow will lie in motionless heaps;—the sea that is slowly ploughed by those fleets called caravans.—General Daumas,Le Sahara Algérien.
[1]The word Sahara does not necessarily convey the idea of a desert immensity. Inhabited at certain points, it is calledFiafi; habitable at certain others, it takes the name ofKifar, a word whose signification is the same as that of the common wordKhela,abandoned; habitable and inhabited at yet other points, it is calledFalat.These three words represent each of the characteristics of the Sahara.Fiafiis the oasis where life retires, about the fountains and wells, under the palms and fruit trees, sheltered from the sun andchoub(simoon).Kifaris the sandy and void plain, which, however, when fertilized for a moment by the winter rains, is covered with grass (a’ cheb) in the spring; and the nomadic tribes that ordinarily camp around the oases go thither to pasture their flocks.Falat, finally, is the sterile and bare immensity, the sea of sand, whose eternal billows, to-day agitated by thechoub, to-morrow will lie in motionless heaps;—the sea that is slowly ploughed by those fleets called caravans.—General Daumas,Le Sahara Algérien.
[1]The word Sahara does not necessarily convey the idea of a desert immensity. Inhabited at certain points, it is calledFiafi; habitable at certain others, it takes the name ofKifar, a word whose signification is the same as that of the common wordKhela,abandoned; habitable and inhabited at yet other points, it is calledFalat.
These three words represent each of the characteristics of the Sahara.
Fiafiis the oasis where life retires, about the fountains and wells, under the palms and fruit trees, sheltered from the sun andchoub(simoon).
Kifaris the sandy and void plain, which, however, when fertilized for a moment by the winter rains, is covered with grass (a’ cheb) in the spring; and the nomadic tribes that ordinarily camp around the oases go thither to pasture their flocks.
Falat, finally, is the sterile and bare immensity, the sea of sand, whose eternal billows, to-day agitated by thechoub, to-morrow will lie in motionless heaps;—the sea that is slowly ploughed by those fleets called caravans.—General Daumas,Le Sahara Algérien.