CHAPTER VIA CITY OF SHADOWS

PART OF THETARALUMCAMPED AT FACHI OASIS

In the open desert theTaralummade an astonishing array. The space that the 7,000 camels occupied on the march is almost past belief. From a situation in the centre of the caravan one viewed neither the head of the cavalcade nor the tail. So far as eye could see, out in front, or back in the rear, the marching army diminished until vanishing lines met the horizon, dark specks on the light sand, looking like mere swarms of flies on the carpet of the world.

The marvellous length of the caravan set me figuring. Individual lines controlled by one wisehead and two helpers, numbering fifteen to twenty camels. I measured five camels travelling in line, including the head-ropes by which each is attached to the camel in front, and found the distance to be fifty feet. This meant that if the whole caravan travelled as one single line it would extend over thirteen miles. However, in the wide, roadless expanse of the desert, they are in the habit of forming irregularly, and often bunch together in groups of four to six lines abreast, with a gap between each massed formation, or connected by a straggling line or two. Therefore, I estimated that the grouping into four or more lines abreast about levelled up on the gaps, and arrived at the conclusionthat the whole caravan travelled about as a double line, and was thereforesix to seven miles in length.

But those are cold figures and, though it is hoped that they may convey some conception of the magnitude of theTaralum, they do not go further. To enter into the true spirit of the great onward-moving army one must grasp the atmosphere of an old-world pilgrimage, that surrounds the cavalcade. It is all as it might have been in the far-back pages of biblical history. And these nomads, who man the caravan, are descendants of peoples of historic antiquity, they retain the grace and the dress and the breeding of their forebears, they are primitively armed, they are primitively fearless, they are primitively mounted: and in their very primitiveness throughout they are a part of the past—while the forsaken world they travel is an age-old land of infinite mystery.

It may be fitting to describe here one of these war-able yet curiously religious nomads of the desert places whose military record goes back through many centuries, and who are to-day, although wholly unmodern, a select few of the finest travellers and camel-men in the world. I choose, because he is near at hand, Hamid of Timmersu. He is twenty-five years of age, tall, strong, and graceful. Like all true Tuaregs, he is coppery pale skinned,[9]not negroid black. But,as he is heavily veiled, little of his features are seen. Were they revealed, however, they would be, like his hands and feet, clearly formed and delicate; almost refined. Of his face there is only a slit uncovered, through which his dark eyes gleam and rove. The veil, protecting his face from driving sand, and shading his eyes from the sun, is of swathes of light cotton webbing wrapped in many folds around the head. It is blue and much faded by the sun. Small growths of side-whiskers protrude secretively at the angles where the upper and lower swathes join near the ears in drawing to the back of the head. A tiny tassel of shiny plaited hair protrudes below the veil at the back of the neck; a detail of vanity. His gown is loose and flowing, and carried easily. Like his veil, it is blue, and much faded by the sun. It is relieved in front by a cluster of leather wallets, containing “The Blessings of Allah,” which hang from a black cord from the neck to the waist. A homespun blanket is flung, as a plaid, over his right shoulder and passes under the left armpit. It drops to his knees, for he is girded up for the work of the road,[10]and strong bare legs show below, with soiled travel-worn sandals protecting the soles of the feet. His arms are bare from the elbows, and a bundle of small leather charms hangs from a blackstone bangle above the elbow of the left arm; which is his working arm, for Hamid is a left-handed man. And for this reason, also, his leather-sheathed sword hangson hisrightside. Everything about him is carried with an easy, unconscious grace that is inherent in all—and Hamid of Timmersu is true to the type of Tuareg lineage.

The nights on the desert with theTaralumwere memorable. Sunset, dusk, darkness; then an hour or two of patient, soft-footed plodding, one dark column following another, each trying to keep in touch with the next shadowy mass in front. These hours appeared doubly cool, after the malicious heat of day, except for occasional reminders of the heat that had passed that was borne to us in puffs of hot soft wind off sand that still simmered. With the passing of day, atmospheric lights of softest rainbow hues hung over the sands, changeful and momentary and unpossessible, briefly colouring everything in the land with a gentle Asiatic glow of arresting beauty, ere vanishing before the night. It is such moments of wonderful colouring that have given to all deserts their far-famed reputation for mystic beauty, and the more remote the region the greater the effect.

With the night come the stars, timidly at first, in the unclouded canopy, then in their thousands as the hours deepen. By name the natives know the planets and constellations and principal stars, and, like sailors at sea, use them as guides to check and direct their course.

Time moves on. Men sing a snatch of song in effort to liven drooping spirits, some chew a few hard dates to allay a gnawing hunger, while, in myown line, we, like the others, covertly look ahead, anxious to catch the first lights of the leaders’ camp-fires, that will tell that at last the long, long day is done.

AMONG SAND-DUNES

THE TOLL OF THE DESERT

We mount a rise. We do not see it in the darkness, but we feel our camels ascending. We reach the crest, and, behold! the merriest, most welcome lights in all the world twinkle in the distance. Camp for the night is immediately ahead. All fatigue, for the moment, is over, every trial is forgotten in view of those beckoning lights.

Slowly the great caravan troops in; to camp as they arrive. With incredible swiftness all are busy at once, getting loads off, barracking camels, and lighting tiny fires with a few sticks from precious bundles of firewood. Hurriedly cooked, a meal of sorts is devoured ravenously.

Then the camels are attended to. They are viciously hungry. So hungry that many of them have been muzzled all day, with a net over their mouths to keep them from stealing from the loadsen route. They have now to be fed, a little fodder at a time. It is dangerous to let them gulp down the coarse baled tussock-grass over-rapidly. But they can only have a limited ration from the supply, and that disappears almost as quickly as our own repast.

Then to sleep beneath the stars, dog-tired and dreamless, and utterly regardless of the din of incoming camels as the rear of the caravan continues to arrive in the encampment long into the depth of night.

At three or four o’clock, on the morning that follows, feeling more dead than alive, and that we have hardly been asleep at all, we are forced to rise from our couches. Camels are roaring on all sides; the caravan is about to set out again. It is bitterly cold before dawn at this season, and all shiver in thin clothing. A fire is out of the question; we have only a bare supply of fuel. So we busy ourselves reloading and are off again well before daybreak.

Thus the long days, and short nights, passed, as theTaralumheld on its steady course across the seas of desert.

Each individual throughout the caravan who had not made the journey to Bilma before was known asRago(sheep); while, once the journey has been made, a man attains the distinction of the title,Sofo Aroki(Old Traveller).

Many had made the journey during previous years, yet to one man only was entrusted the right to guide, and his judgment was absolute law. No one questioned it, and, without chart or compass, or any mechanical aid whatever, he travelled unerringly to the goal. His name was Efali: a little old man, with remarkable, piercing eyes. He was famous as a traveller and as an old raider; but most famous of all as a guide in the desert. He held the life of the caravan in his hands, and his judgment of direction was uncanny in the exactitude with which he traversed the featureless wastes that each day lay before him like a vacant sea. It was only at rare intervals that anyonein doubt became aware that he was travelling true. At such times, when we were no doubt travelling an old trail, minute signs that might escape the layman were noted by sharp eyes, such as a half-buried pellet of camel-dung, or a thread of frayed and crumbled rope, or a tiny piece of clothing-end. And those sometimes led to something much more tangible—the bleached bones of camels half buried in sand.

As illustrative of the exacting nature of this redoubtable voyage over the Bilma Desert, some account regarding the strain of it may be of interest.

The men of theTaralumundoubtedly rank among the ablest travellers and camel-men in the world, yet throughout the journey much weariness was remarked in the caravan. Men and camels tired badly; tired, too, in many cases, long before the end. The excessively long days, and the heat of a merciless sun, told their tale.

Truly it is the dominion of the sun, which is the most exhausting thing of all in an utterly pitiless land. Many men suffered terribly from constant sun-glare on eyes that could not endure the strain, which not only caused aches and pains, but also induced acute fatigue. Men so affected, after a time, cannot look upon the landscape without great effort, and one sees them sitting on their loads, with gowns drawn closely over their faces, while they doze and droop to the point of falling from their seats.

In due course the strange, diminutive, sand-blownoasis of Fachi was reached, and a week later Bilma. And, when the harvest of salt-cones was bartered for and loaded, without delay theTaralumset out on the return journey; fearful of tarrying, even at the oases because of the poverty of food for camels or men. Indeed, the sand-surrounded oases were almost as appallingly barren as the desert around them, except for their groves of dates, which bore no fruit at that season of the year.

On the way back to Aïr, the prolonged strain told most heavily toward the end, partly from natural causes, and partly as a result of having subsisted overlong on scant nourishment. Indeed, so closely gauged were the food supplies of theTaralumthat they began to give out before the end, even under the most rigid economy.

Men and animals weakened perceptibly. Of the former, nearly everyone limped when walking on foot, most of them suffering from numerous dry cracks that had opened cruelly in toes and soles of sandalled feet, through the extreme dryness of the atmosphere and the cutting friction of hot, bone-dry sand.

Even Efali, the fine old guide, had the appearance of a broken man in the end; limping, and stooping almost double, though, at the start, he had presented a trim, nimble figure remarkable for a man of his age.

Some camels died on the outward journey, but many more were lost on the way back. Those were individual losses, a few here and there inalmost every company, and the total loss in theTaralumwas not recorded as a whole. But, on the third day before the end, it was common news that no fewer than forty camels had fallen out, unable to struggle on at the pace the caravan travelled. These were left behind in the tracks of the caravan, some at the point of death, others to take their chance of struggling through, unloaded, at their own gait.

EFALI

After twenty-seven days on the desert the caravan drew near to the friendly foot-hills of Aïr, and, when the first dim outline could be discerned, it was akin to sighting land after a long voyage at sea.

To all, these distant hills were a vastly pleasant sight because of their relief from the monotony of sand, and doubly pleasant because they represented home.

Next day we were among them, and how peaceful they seemed, and restful to the eyes! One forgot their customary barrenness in an ecstasy of delight in their tangible solidity and sheltering slopes.

I caught myself at sundown listening dreamily, as if to some rare music, and awoke to the fact that it was only a cricket chirping a homily in the grass. Yet it was a volume of sweet sound after the silence of the great empty spaces.

On the 21st of November we recamped at Tabello, and after a day’s rest speedily dispersed our diverse ways.

My last recollection is of Efali. I chanced to come upon him in camp enjoying a well-earned rest, and the luxury ofshade, beneath a tree. He was through at last, with the strain of carrying the life of theTaralumin his hands. The old man struggled to his feet to come forward to shake hands, and, though every step gave him pain, the undaunted fire of a great traveller was in his eyes, and the spirit that knows no defeat in the big places of the world. With gladness we shook hands, and went our different ways.

CHAPTER VIA CITY OF SHADOWS

CHAPTER VIA CITY OF SHADOWS(Fachi Oasis)

Ina land of overpowering solitude Fachi stands alone: a forlorn group of dwellings in a mighty wilderness of colourless sands. All around is absolute desert, vast and silent, and depressingly poverty-stricken. Not until far beyond its immediate ranges are outland borders situated, that finally interrupt the sway of the desert seas. To the east, 100 miles away, lies the Kowar Depression, and, farther on, Tibesti; to the west, 200 miles away, the mountainland of Aïr: to the south, some 300 miles, the desert merges into the bush of the French Sudan; while in the north it extends to the Fezzan.

The environment of Fachi might well terrify the stoutest. Moreover, the vast desert that surrounds it is an open highway for raiders, and others, who seek to pass across it, on secretive journeys, from one distant region to another.

Lost in a land of this kind, where few but raiders pass, without neighbours, without anyone to call to for help, one wonders, to begin with, how Fachi can exist. It shelters no more than a mere handfulof sedentary natives, about 150 to 200 human souls in all, yet this strangest of primitive dens stands unbroken, alone, as it has stood since its beginning, as a citadel of the desert.

Raiders who come and go are free to pass before Fachi at will, for, once clear of the desert’s borders, there is no living soul to stay them. And the natives of the town will tell you, with comprehensible pride, but with a hard light in their eyes, that evil-visaged men have sat down and looked upon Fachi from a distance, coveting its capture—in the end to rise and go their way, foiled by the fear of death in the traps of a wizards’ den.

In the modern history of Fachi, caravans visiting the oasis have been attacked outside its walls, where bleached human skulls still deck the sands; but only once has the town itself been threatened with destruction. That occurred fifteen years ago, when the raiders, said to number 1,500, forced a temporary entrance and fought through the western side of the town: the houses of which part still lie in ruins eloquent of the destruction of the fateful day.

It is obvious that to stand thus alone and live, self-reliant and self-dependent, Fachi must be strong—strong with an uncanny genius. And that that is so is soon revealed.

Its outer fortifications are the walls that enclose it—a double line of ramparts, with a broad moatlike ditch between. To-day the outer barrier is incomplete, for it is battered and broken in placesthat have not been repaired, but the inner and principal wall is all that a powerful defence should be: high and grim and unscalable.

A DOORWAY IN FACHI

THE “SEVEN PALMS” OF FACHI

My feelings, when I first entered Fachi through its frowning walls, were of bewilderment and astonishment.

Through an open doorway, unpretentious from the outside, one passed down a few crumbling steps, and stood on the threshold of the town. Sense of protection from the outside world, with its blighting sun and sand-filled wind, was present at once, while an eerie gloominess already threatened; for the level of the town was almost cellar-depth below the land outside. Flung back against the thick exterior wall, rested the first grim evidence of defence: a heavy, palm-plank door riveted, primitively, and chained together, while a great beam and a stone set into the floor of the court within showed how it was closed and buttressed when need arose (I was soon to learn that every street, every dwelling entrance, every room within these dens, had doors of the same character of formidable strength). Over this portcullis type of entrance, which gave the only way of entry to the town, the white jaw-bones and skull of a camel are built into the wall, on the inside, for all the world like the crest of a gang of pirates.

But the strangest novelty, in those first moments, lay in the discovery that, on all sides, the walls were constructed withsalt, blackened with dust and age, yet, surely,salt, set as hard as the finestconcrete and rasping as broken glass. It was not long before it dawned on me that the whole of the remarkable town was built of the same material.

The court, or area, inside the entrance, is small. But, passing on through a dark, shadowy, covered porchway, I soon learned that everywhere space was given away with niggardly economy.

Leaving the entrance, one enters a maze of alleys which represent the streets of the town: alleys that twist and turn in an amazing fashion, so that it is difficult to get an unobstructed view of more than a mere twenty or thirty feet of fairway. They are the narrowest slits of lanes, man-wide in places, but twice that width on an average; closely confined by black dwelling-high walls. Such sections of them as are fortunate enough to have a narrow overhead outlet to the sky are filled with shadows. Where roofed over they are dark and grim; mouse-ridden nooks, where man might lurk at any hour of the day who wished to cut an enemy’s throat.

Bare, earthy settees are recessed in places in these alleys where a foot or two of extra space permits an addition without entirely blocking up the pathway. There a single person may repose in the cool of evening; or sit cross-legged with another, exchanging idle gossip, or hatching cunning schemes.

Twisting and turning, portalled at points of advantage with a confusion of plank doors, these alleys lead an interminable distance. I find myself in the position of believing I am lost in a large city, and will never get back unguided to the pointof setting out. I have been a score of times in Fachi. On the last visit, as on the first, I found myself at dubious turnings, enquiring of furtive den-dwellers, “Which way leads to the blue sky outside?” Can one credit this of a place no greater in area than a country village? It seems hardly possible; yet it is so, and it is chiefly the closely knit network of lane-slits that leads to this erroneous impression of great size.

THE RAMPARTS OF FACHI

Nearly empty of people, the lanes are full of shadows and a sense of a thousand mysteries. Everywhere there areshadows: and on the day that I first entered Fachi I found myself repeating, under my breath: “It is a lost city, and its name should be,The City of Shadows.

Shadows, always shadows, meet one at every turn in ever-changing phase. Weird, attractive shapes when cast from parts where unskilled, unplotted building has found a happy architectural result, or frowning nooks where lurk the sentiments of witchery or ghosts of the wicked dead.

A few natives pass. They brush against me because of the narrowness of the lane. Close to them I see that their clothes are dirt soiled, their features hard and villainous. They hurry on and vanish out of the street with a single step aside. They have turned a corner or entered a dwelling.

All the dwellings are entered directly from the alleys. The burrowing for shelter is increased in the dwellings; their floors are farther under the ground than the dusty lanes. (They have nothingto fear from rain and consequent flooding; for it does not rain.) A low, earthy parapet guards a few steps underground, and a tiny door, of hatchway size, through which only a stooping figure can pass. When there are no occupants at home, even during the day, these palm-plank, rudely anchored doors are closed and barred with the forbidding strength already described; as if neighbour trusted not neighbour.

But the issue that is vital to Fachi’s scheme of defence is in the fact that, from within, at a moment’s notice,the whole town can be barred and buttressed and placed under lock and key.

Packed like the skep of a hive, with intent to utilise space, Fachi is a regular honeycomb of crowded dens. They are salt-built, like the rest of the town, and as dark and shadowy and mysterious as the alleys outside. Each cell in the honeycomb has its narrow slit of a door, with a spy-hole, no larger than a halfpenny, drilled through the wall near the side of the jamb, so that folks may be peered at when approaching, or when arrived and knocking for admission.

Even by day nearly all the dwellings are locked and barred. When, perchance, a door stands ajar a feeble ray of light steals into a bare-walled, smoke-blackened den that has no more furnishing than a heap of dates on a mat and a skin of water hanging from the low ceiling. Once admittance has been gained from outside, it is seen that the interior of every home is comprised of den leadingto den, each with its thick plank door and its air of suspicion and secrecy. Before entering a single dwelling I had already realised that every yard of the lanes within Fachi could be defended almost single-handed, and that, should defenders happen to be driven back or killed at any one point, a fresh rally could be made with success at every gateway in their course. In the barred doors within the dens themselves I again thought of the cunning strategy from the point of view of hand-to-hand defensive fighting.

PART OF FACHI, WHICH IS BUILT ENTIRELY OF SALT

Seeking through a honeycomb of dens with curiosity thoroughly aroused, I eventually came out into daylight in a tiny courtyard in the centre. Thence an outside stairway mounted to the roofs. Climbing it, I viewed a panorama of the flat, parapeted housetops of Fachi. Beside me were attic store-rooms, locked and barred like so many of the chambers, and a confusion of jagged parapets, well-nigh impassable to anyone who might try to scale them. Weedy dates, old bones, broken earth-jars, all the odd refuse of primitive homes, lay scattered on these roofs; and I realised that the rubbish-heaps of Fachi’s den-dwelling people lay over the roofs of their burrows, and not in the alleys or in the dwellings. It was a condition of things that revealed the animal sense of people accustomed to stick closely to their warrens. These roofs,outside, were the nearest spaces to the open air; moreover the unsightly squalor seldom waxed fetid there owing to the baking sun and extremedryness of the atmosphere: a state of affairs that did not exist when old bones, or aught else outcast, lay fly-festering in the shade below.

I came out from investigating a honeycomb of dwellings with a back that ached with stooping through hatchway doors.

I moved on. There was one more sight to see.

I had by this time, by promise of food, persuaded an ill-clad, hungry-looking individual to act as guide; one of the most villainous, indolent-looking men I have ever seen. I asked him to lead me to the fortress of the town, which I had seen from the outside, standing behind the double ramparts of the exterior, near to the remarkable “Seven Palms of Fachi,” which stand in a stately group close to the north front.

I am led through a maze of alleys. A heavy door, barring our path, is reached and unlatched, and a final lane lies before me. My guide vouchsafes the information that the fort is at the other end.

In a few moments we reach the rear courtyard of the fort, the largest open space in Fachi. It is uninteresting, for it is empty for the time being, and its high, unscalable walls seem stiffly posed like a petrified place awaiting the assembly of war-girded hordes.

We pass on inside—and I stand amazed. Before me isthe den of the Forty Thieves, or a scene equivalent; but real, and not imaginary. The fort, with high, naked walls towering around it, looks like agigantic square-cut pit, with the bottom packed, almost to overflowing, with giant earthen jars. It is those jars that make the most amazing sight of all. Gleaming whitely, they fill the entire fort, except where the roofed-in, low, gloomy corridors jut out from the base of the main wall, giving access to the pit and to the four corner towers.

SHADOWS, ALWAYS SHADOWS, MEET ONE AT EVERY TURN

The fort might be compared to a vast, unused cupboard full of gigantic empty jam-pots—but jam-pots far above the most exaggerated dreams of the hungriest schoolboy. I started to count them, but gave it up. They looked, in their unevenly lined hundreds, as numerous and as disorderly as a flock of sheep.

Some were measured. The largest are 7 feet in diameter by 8 feet 4 inches high; the smallest 5 feet in diameter by 4 feet high. Though the sizes vary, they are all of one shape: giant jars tapering to a wide-mouthed neck at the top. They are constructed out of white chalky clay, knit with fibrous hairs of vegetation. Steps are moulded in the sides of all the larger jars, so that anyone may mount to gain entry at the top.

We had entered the final stronghold of Fachi; the last place of refuge in a city conceived, from end to end, with one great purpose—its strength of defence. And whoever may have been the wizard—for it is no haphazard work—he had the genius of a great man-at-arms. These giant urns, ready to be filled with dates and grain in time of siege, the deep well of water that is hidden in the centreof them, are eloquent of their purpose; like all else in the war-prepared fastness.

Reluctantly I left this strange open-air hall to climb to one of the watch-towers. The way was perpendicular; up notched palm-poles, and niches cut in the hard salt walls; then, through loopholes, into each of the three turret rooms that made up its height. On reaching any lofty outlook with country around it one usually looks outward on the vast panorama of landscape that presents itself. My first impulse here, on stepping out on the tower roof, was different. I turned at once in toward the town to peer down into the haunting pit I had just left, where glistened whitely in the sun, the urns of “The Forty Thieves,” like a picture of another age.

And from that strange scene I slowly lifted my eyes in vain endeavour to learn where one single street in Fachi began and ended. Then I was lost in unstinted wonder at it all.

Native history—imparted to me by theMalam, or learned man, of Fachi—has it that in bygone times the people of the town had no cunning in war, and were terribly harassed by raids. Arab caravans, with rich merchandise from Algeria and Tripoli to Bornu and Wadai, in those days passed through Fachi, and the uncertain safety of the place was not to their liking or benefit. Wherefore, the story goes, there came a time when Arabs arrived on the heels of an attack, when the town had been hard hit, and much reduced in strength. It happened that a great Arab from Tripoli wasthis caravan’s leader. He called the people of Fachi about him and said, in effect, according to the story, “Why is this? Enemy destroy you. You fear! You fly like the jackal into the desert to die!

“Bah! You have not sense! But Allah has sent us to your aid. We will show you how to build so that henceforth you shall fear no one.”

WOMEN OF FACHI AND THEIR CURIOUS HEAD-DRESS

Whereupon they set about building a completely new city, not imperfectly, but under the strict supervision of the great Arab. It is said that if any part was imperfect it was ordered to be taken down and rebuilt.

So that, in theMalam’swords:

“Fachi is built as it stands to-day, because a great Arab came from the north and taught our people sense.”

He could not name the great benefactor, nor could I find anyone who knew. But that he came from Tripoli all affirmed.

It is not impossible that he was one of the renowned Oulad Sliman tribe—Tripolitans who, in the past, migrated to settle near Mao, on the north of Lake Chad, to escape Turkish oppression.

I turned from contemplation of the town to look over the landscape. From the top of the tower it was not so barren as from below, for the green groves of date-palms were prominently in view. The oasis holds little more of value than a narrow belt of palms, the pits of salt, and a good supply of subterranean water. For the rest, nothing butsand; the whole environment so unprepossessing that one cannot escape its terrible poverty.

And inside the town a population that has barely food to keep body and soul together.

I caught myself thinking:

“What queer, ungodly places some people live in!”

I had just muttered:

“I suppose it is their native soil. They have lived here all their lives, like animals born in a cage, and they know no other world.”

Then I caught sight of my guide, whom I had forgotten, glued against the wall, peering, ever so cautiously, out of one of the tower loopholes, aiming with his fingers, as if he held a rifle. From head to foot, he looked a perfect brigand.

I followed the cue. Who knew the occupation of these people from one year’s end to the other? The brief halt of passing caravan told one nothing of that. Did raids go forth from those grim walls when hunger pressed, and all was quiet about them? It was more than likely. Certainly they possessed an unfettered freedom that gave outlet to that wildness of the wilderness that was in them, which ran, unknown to living soul outside their own little world, untamed and unchecked, through the shadowy alleys and dark dens within the walls, and, mayhap, found a fiercer outlet in evil-doing abroad.

The hard-featured natives of the town are Beri-Beri. They are strangely animal-like, in general,perhaps because of their terrible environment, and their life is an underworld of vice.

“THE DEN OF THE FORTY THIEVES”

I ceased pondering, and called the guide from his look-out.

I asked him one question before we began the descent from the tower:

“How many men have you killed?”

He smiled at once, as if I had hit on a subject he knew something of, and that was much more pleasant than guiding a stranger through his town. Then he extended his left hand, and, with the other, slowly bent over each finger until they were all counted out. Whereupon he answered:

“Five men I have killed.”

At the outset I called FachiA City of Shadows, impelled by the original beauty and magic of its wealth of shadowy scenes. That title has grown fourfold. Beside aught that there is of beauty, and threatening it, there are never-ending shadows in its openness to danger from outside, sharp shadows in its periods of hunger, and uncanny shadows in the threat of evil that lies behind barred doors and in the visages of cold-eyed men.

CHAPTER VIISALT OF THE EARTH

Throughoutthe commercial history of civilised countries the digging out of riches from the bowels of the earth has for ever played an important part; and from among the minerals so obtained the currency of our world has always been minted. It is my purpose to suggest that in this there is clearly a resemblance between the civilised State and the primitive. But that which is mined by the one is sometimes vastly different from the wealth that is sought by the other. The gold of the Yukon, or the diamonds of Kimberley, are the highest ideals of civilised States; but possessions much more humble often suffice the primitive, and in the Sahara that which is sought by the indigenous tribes, and prized, as a necessity and as a currency, is humble salt of the earth.

It is possible that salt has been a medium of currency in the Sahara for all time. It was the Arabs, in the past, who brought the cowrie from the north coast of Africa to introduce it into the Sahara, and the rich countries farther south, as “money” to assist them in their trade; but the silver of the white man has displaced the cowrienow, while salt, because of its tangible value, continues to be a ready medium of purchase. Therefore salt has outlived the cowrie, which, after all, had little more than an ornamental value.

In a few places, renowned to-day, and doubly renowned in the legendary history of the Sahara, there exist, in the remote interior, age-old salt-pits of inexhaustible supply. They are worked to-day as of old, and the methods of centuries are unchanged. But the trade is diminishing. The tide of the white man’s advance in Africa is having an influence on distant markets; and that influence is reflected at the remote source of supply. No longer do the great native populations of the Western Sudan depend chiefly on the Sahara for their salt, for to-day whole shiploads of the commercial commodity are imported by way of the west coast to vie with the supply of the renowned salt deposits of the Sahara, that were wont to supply half a continent.

But, despite the strength of the foreign invasion, there has always been a native prejudice against the imported salt and a liking for the natural salt of the Sahara—a prejudice that the importer has been fighting down ever since he entered the field—and it is no doubt that favourable prejudice, along with the existing value of salt as currency, has much to do with the continuance of a curious and primitive trade in the interior of the Sahara.

Like gold in other lands, the famed deposits ofsalt in the Sahara are not numerous. I know of only three that are of great reputation: Bilma, Tigguida n’Tisem, and Taudeni. There are possibly others, in the great desert, of renown that has not reached me. The two former I have visited, and will endeavour to describe, while Taudeni, about 400 miles in the desert north of the Niger bend, contains the famous mines of rock-salt that, in being transported south through Timbuktu, gives to that world-famous town its chief trade.

I will deal first with Bilma. The oasis of that name lies in a basin in the midst of a great region of loose sand-dunes which offer extraordinary natural protection. No stranger may find his way into Bilma through those dunes unguided, and its position is so secretive, a tiny place in a hollow in one boundless sea of dunes, that its presence is absolutely unsuspected until one comes suddenly, with astonishment, right on top of it.

A long, lake-like stretch of bare sun-cracked flats of soda and salt, glaring fiercely white in the stifling sun, lie before the small town, which is at the south end, while at the other end, a mile or so distant, are the piled-up, uneven hills of the workings of the famous salt-pits. The town, and the French fort that is there, are sheltered to some extent by small groves of date-palms.

The French occupation of Bilma is unique in the territory. It is a far-flung outpost, and the fort stands alone like a Dreadnought in an unknown sea, far from recognised frontiers. That such afort has been established, and held, is eloquent acknowledgment of the value of the salt-pits and the strategic position that Bilma holds in checking the wanderings of the cut-throat raiders that seek to pass between Tibesti and Aïr, or from the Fezzan to the northern fringes of Hausaland.

Bilma was first occupied by the French in 1906, and the founding of a post so remote, and in the heart of enemies’ country, was filled with dangers and difficulties. To-day, over the door of the sturdy, earth-built post in Bilma, are the wordsFort Dromard, and by reason of the name the fort has been made a lasting monument to Lieutenant Amédée Dromard, a soldier-pioneer who, single-handed with native soldiers, fought for the French flag’s erection in Bilma, defended its brave upstanding, and won—to die in completing his noble task.

The record of his career hangs on the walls, worthy of the best traditions of his country; indeed, a record of which any country might well be proud. In the concluding paragraphs one reads:

“He fought conspicuously at Agadem (south of Bilma) on 7th January 1908.”

And finally:

“He was wounded in fighting at Achegur (north-west of Bilma) on 1st July 1909, and died at Bilma on 5th September of the same year, after being carried for two weeks on the shoulders of his faithful native followers.”

AT WORK IN THE SALT-PITS OF BILMA

The whole depression of Kowar, stretching north and south from Jado to the Chad basin, in which the oasis of Bilma is situated, has a population of about 3,000 natives. About 700 of those are in Bilma; chiefly Beri-Beri, and a certain number of Tebu. But absolute purity of race is dying out owing to much intermingling of the two races. Like the den-dwellers of Fachi, these natives are hard-featured, cold-eyed, and barbarous.

Of other small oases along the line of the Kowar depression, Dirku has a few families of Beri-Beri and the remainder are occupied by Tebu. But here, as elsewhere in the Sahara, the natives are declining in numbers and most of the outlying places are almost deserted; among them the once important centre of Jado, which is completely abandoned.

The following quaint traditions and history of Kowar were collected at Bilma:

“The first people of Kowar wereSos(giants) from the Fezzan. Legend declares they were a very big race, while it is still claimed by the natives that the skeletons of these giants, and the great houses where they lived, are even yet to be seen in the Fezzan near Tedjerri. These giants weretall as twenty elbows.

“In due course the Sultan of the Beri-Beri came to Bilma and asked the Sultan of theSosfor permission to settle there with his people. Where upon the giant King, answering nothing, took a wand and, extending it, turned slowly round so that he formed a mighty circle, the edge of whichextended to Yeggeba, in northern Kowar, and to Dibbela in the south (a diameter of 100 miles or more); and within that area the Beri-Beri were permitted to live.

“TheSoswere at that time settled in the oasis in the valley of Bilma,the rainfall of which was coming from Jado, and going to Fachi and Termitt.”[11]

After this legendary time it is said that:

“In 800A.D.there was a great invasion of Beri-Beri, who were Moslems. They came from Yemen in Arabia by way of the Fezzan and Kowar, and continued to the country of Mao (Lake Chad territory) leaving in their passage some people who thought the country of Bilma attractive and suitable to settle in.

“In this way the foundation was laid of Jado, Seggudim, Dirku, and Bilma.

“Furthermoreall oases[12]between Bilma and Chadwere colonised by Beri-Beri. Some of them were already occupied, but the inhabitants were ejected by the Beri-Beri. The original people were a tribe named Koiam and representatives of the race are still to be found in Bornu.

“When the Tebu came to the region they found the Beri-Beri had already been in occupation of Kowar for a long time. The first Tebu came from Termitt, and it is claimed that the tribe originated from lawless people who had committed murderin their own countries to the south, and were obliged to flee and become outlaws. Later in their history, when the Tebu were an established race in Tibesti, the first of the tribe to discover Kowar chanced across it by accident when in pursuit of strayed camels. This adventurer found the country promising to live in, and returned to Tibesti with the news. As a consequence of this discovery a number of Tebu crossed to Kowar with their families to settle.

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