CHAPTER VTHE TARALUM

A NOOK IN THE MOUNTAINLAND OF AÏR

All those influences are important, for they can never be brought out on any map, and yet they are an intrinsic part of the land. Furthermore, they are a part of the poignant forces that teach the traveller wonderment and awe of the desert when he camps in the mighty company of its gigantic spaces; particularly if he catches a gently poised breath of the Moslem’s “Allah!” which is an indelible part of the mystic sadness it holds.

If we look, now, at the map, and picture that the Sahara is, broadly speaking, a vast sheet of sand with a few island mountains, it will suffice in dealing generally with its boundaries of the past.

It is my belief that the Sahara is increasing in size, and I think there are many conditions that go to prove it. Wherefore I ask you, in the first place, to conceive that the sand in the desert has steadily risen, with consequent result that the shores have become appreciably less. The belt that has been so engulfed all around the margin, or wherever the surface was shallow, may be takento represent the regions that are to-day pre-Saharan, though, so far as I am aware, such pre-Saharan areas are seldom more than vaguely referred to, and have not been geographically defined.

I will take, as an example, the southern area of the Sahara, because I have visited it more than once and know that region best. Not vastly distant from the shore there is the mountainland of Aïr, standing high above the surrounding country. Let us suppose that, before the Sahara commenced to fill up and change, this particular mountainland was not surrounded by sand, but was a part of a fertile foreland, and that the bushland of the Western Sudan, with its tropical fauna and vegetation and rainy season, either jutted out as a wedge or stretched right across Africa about the 20th degree of latitude, or 5 degrees farther north than obtains, with any solidity, at the present time.[5]If that was the case intimate problems that I have had to contend with would be logically explained.

My primary work in the Sahara was that of a field naturalist, and the following extracts from Dr. Hartert’s paper inNovitates Zoologicæ, May 1921, regarding my first journey, have bearing on one of the problems that I wish to deal with:

“The best zoogeographical boundary, apart from the oceans, has hitherto been the Sahara, a wide belt of poorly inhabited and unexplored country.As long as we knew very little about it, this was a very simple question—north of the Sahara palæarctic, south of it Ethiopian. This contention, however, was bound to be shaken to some extent when the Sahara (as it is marked on maps) became zoologically explored. Until the second decade of this century the Great Desert had only been touched by zoological collectors on some of its borders.

“Looking at any map, a somewhat large mountainland, Aïr, or Asben, catches the eye in the middle of the Sahara, on older maps and in textbooks called an ‘Oasis,’ which is, however, a most misleading name for a mountainous country with desert tracks and valleys, towns and villages, and mountains rising up to about 2,000 m. in height.

“Zoologically Aïr remained absolutely unknown until Buchanan’s expedition. We knew already, from Barth’sTravels, that Aïr has tropical vegetation, that some valleys are fertile and contain good water, that ostriches, lions, giraffes, birds were seen by him, that near Agades he observed monkeys and butterflies. Jean, in 1909, in his book,Les Touaregs du Sud-Est, l’Aïr, mentions lions in the mountains of Timgue and Baguezan, foxes, hyenas, cats, antelopes, monkeys, but he adds that giraffes do not now exist in the country, and that the ostrich is not found north of Damergu.

“Meagre as these statements are, they proved that the fauna of Asben is chiefly, if not entirely, tropical. This is borne out by Buchanan’s collections. Of the birds nearly all—apart from migrants—may be called tropical species or subspecies. The mammals are on a whole Sudanese, and not found in Algeria proper. The Lepidoptera are essentially Saharan, many forms being similar to those found by Geyr and myself in the Saharabetween the Atlas and Tidikelt, and the Hoggar Mountains.

“The boundary between the palæarctic and tropical fauna may therefore be regarded as fairly fixed to about the 20th degree of latitude, though it is, of course, not a hard-and-fast dividing line, there being many exceptions—even among birds, which form the main basis of these notes.”

SALT-BUSH IN THE HEART OF THE SAHARA KILLED OUT BY CHOKING SANDS

DISINTEGRATING ROCK IN A REGION OF TASSILI

Again, in a further paper inNovitates Zoologicæ, March 1924, dealing with my second expedition, Dr. Hartert adds:

“More than ever it is clear that the ornis of Aïr is tropical, as a country where Sunbirds, Barbets, Glossy Starlings, etc., live has a tropical ornis, though there are a number of palæarctic species, to which now a few must be added. On the other hand, these striking tropical families like Sunbirds, Glossy Starlings, Emerald Cuckoos, Hornbills, Barbets, are absent from the Ahaggar (Hoggar) Mountains, and the almost lifeless desert between Aïr and Ahaggar forms the boundary between the palæarctic and tropical African faunas.”

From all this it is clear that Aïr maintains many tropical influences that penetrate northward, like a wedge, far into the Sahara, although its surroundings are foreign to like conditions. For instance, regarding the last remark, if we draw longitudinal lines 200 miles or so clear of either side of the Aïr Mountains, immediately those lines leave the southern shores of the Sahara, aboutlatitude 15°, they enter desert where all tropical influence ceases.

A DESERTED STONE-BUILT VILLAGE OF AÏR

If we ponder over the thought that the Sahara is increasing in sand, and size, is it not conceivable that this mountainland of Aïr is as an island that, because of its altitude, is left high and dry out in the open while the plains surrounding it have been gradually smitten as by a plague that has slowly driven back the line of fertility, while that which remains, as representative of a configuration of the past, is the rugged rock land that still offers a bold front to the advances of time and decay?

I am confident that therein lies the truth—that formerly a wide pre-Saharan region of fertility once reached much farther north than at present; and, when it became flooded over with rising sand, and lost, Aïr still remained, and, behind the shelter of its rocks, retained a good deal of its old characteristics. All around the Sahara I believe that conditions of a similar nature exist.

Wherefore the vast arid interior, made up chiefly of rock and sand, may, to-day, be likened to a pear that has rotted at the core, and that cannot be prevented from increasing the consuming advance of an unhealthy interior that grows outward, and ever larger in circle.

Stern and drastic though they are, I am prepared to accept those theories because they are in keeping with the nature of the country. Moreover, they lead to the solution of problems that ever bring me back to the source that is the cause ofevery change in the land—which I read to bedecay.

To make clear this perpetual insinuation of decay, which is everywhere in the atmosphere of the Sahara to-day, I will endeavour to cite a few instances that have bearing on the subject.

First, reverting to the topic of the tropical life in Aïr. In 1850-51 Barth stated that he saw giraffes and ostriches, yet in 1909 we find that Jean wrote that “Giraffes and ostrichesdo not existin Aïr.” Both those travellers, however, recorded lions in the region, but in 1922, though I hunted particularly for lion, because of those very records, I could find neither trace nor track of a single specimen. All that my diligent investigations revealed was that one had been killed at Aouderas in 1915, and another, the last, in 1918 by the Chief of Baguezan. I believe them to be extinct in Aïr to-day. To give an opening for the further continuance of this sequence of singular disappearance of wild life, I can state that, at the present time, wart-hog and guinea-fowl live in Aïr—and I have actual specimens to prove it—but I am tolerably sure that travellers who may follow in my footsteps will come to find that both have disappeared within the next half-century or so.

As the people are dying out also, these changes cannot be accounted for on the score of huntsmen. It is, I maintain, the natural result of increasing sand and the drying up and dying out of vegetation. Giraffes and ostriches have departed froma land that can no longer nourish them, and lions have disappeared because the gazelle which they hunted have grown scarce, and open water-holes are a rarity. Eventually the wart-hog and guinea-fowl will vanish from the land for like reasons.

Furthermore, Nature accepts no denial to her whims of devastation, wherever they rule, and, in the Sahara, the sweep of her scythe has taken, in its path, the mowing down of the very people of the land, who depart, like the creatures of the wild, when the struggle for existence becomes no longer possible. Hence, in Aïr alone, there are scores of stone-built villages deserted and in ruins, and steeped in pathos, no longer harbouring a single living soul.

In those, and in other ways, we learn that decay is sure. The elusive problem is to gauge the duration of its reign, which can only be conjectured, since the history of the Sahara is unwritten. It may have set in a very long time ago, and be moving slowly, or it may have been active but a few centuries.

That it has altered the aspect of the land is, to my mind, undoubted. Here is an instance of the kind that sets one thinking. South of Aïr, in country that is now desert, there is a well of astonishing age, named Melen, in a basin surrounded by low hills of bare, rough, stony nature. It is sunk throughsolid rockto a depth of 70 feet, and is old beyond all calculation. One looks down its depth and speaks in a hushed voice, and the dark chamber booms back a whole volume of sound; a pebble is dropped to the bottom and the splashof it sounds like the lashing of surf on the sea-coast. The wall of the well is seared, in a remarkable way, with deep channels worn in the solid rock by the friction of bucket-ropes that have passed up and down the well—for who knows how long? It seems almost impossible that they have been worn in an era within historic times. The well offers a problem. There is no good grazing around it; no means that would, to-day, enable a band of men to camp there for a prolonged period while they laboured (with rock-drilling implements, of which there is no record) on the tremendous task of sinking the shaft through solid rock. Natives have no knowledge of how the work was accomplished. Therefore I try to set back the hands of Time and look over the land, imagining it as once covered with vegetation for herds of camels and goats, and with pools of water in the low hills. And, as a dreamer, I conjure up a picture of a past when, mayhap, a tribe of happy nomads camped in the hollow, in olden times, with everything in the neighbourhood that they required for themselves and their herds; and the old chief of the camp setting out to keep his slaves employed, at a time of plenty, in drilling this well, maybe partly as a whim, and partly to be assured of water for his people in the height of an over-long summer.

Since visiting Melen I have travelled far in the Sahara, and know many wells in like God-forsaken places, each of which suggests that it belongs to a bygone age when greater fertility made it possiblefor the nomads to camp where they willed, which—if we take such wells as significant—was sometimes in localities that they cannot camp in now.

TYPICAL TASSILI

Wherefore, in many strange ways, it comes back to one, always, that the Sahara is a decadent land. And that is a steadfast impression, that the traveller is always catching, even when least expected.

And, now, to broadly picture the aspect of the country, the Sahara is not, of course, as is often popularly believed, simply a vast track of desert sand. The “floor” of its vast area is made up, principally, of four types of country, which I describe as follows, along with the names by which they are known to the nomads:

As a whole all those regions are practically horizontal, and, except in the north, are on a level well above the sea. Between longitude 5° and 10°, from south to north, the altitudes of the Saharan plains, above sea-level, are approximately:

The widespread aspect of the Sahara is of vast desolate plains of rock and sand. But a fact which has been overlooked to an astonishing degree, by popular consent, is that the Great Desert is relieved by some very remarkable mountain groups, chief of which are Aïr, Ahaggar, and Tibesti—each in extent as large as the whole of England, and towering majestically to altitudes of 6,000 to 10,000 feet.

They are mountains that are lost to the world; full of mystical silence, like the rest of the Sahara, and bleak and wild, yet they are vast and rich in rugged grandeur; and the greys and browns oftheir slopes are a feast to the eyes of traveller weary of scanning limitless plains of sand.

A DEEP RAVINE IN THE TASSILI OF AHAGGARWITH POTHOLES OF WATER IN THE BOWELS OF THE ROCK

A DEEP RAVINE IN THE TASSILI OF AHAGGAR

WITH POTHOLES OF WATER IN THE BOWELS OF THE ROCK

Aïr and Ahaggar I know well; Tibesti I have not visited. The former are, in general, alike, particularly in rocky bareness and eerie desolation; but, of the two, Aïr is the more picturesque and fascinating. Both, accentuated by their desert surroundings, stand out in strong, clear relief, aggressively bold and dominant—majestic in every line, amid unrestricted space of earth and sky.

“They are made up of range upon range of hills, sometimes with narrow sand-flats and river-beds between; massive hills of giant grey boulders, and others—not nearly so numerous—with rounded summits and a surface of apparent overlappings and downpourings of smooth loose reddish and grey fragments, as if the peaks were of volcanic origin, though no craters are there. But it is the formation of the many hills of giant boulders that make these mountains so astonishing, so rugged, and so unique. You might be on the roughest sea-coast in the world, and not find scenes to surpass them in desolation and utter wildness. They are hills that appear, to the eye, as if a mighty energy underneath had, at some time, heaved and shouldered boulder upon boulder of colossal proportions into position, until large, wide-based, solid masses were raised into magnificent being. On the other hand, there are instances where hills appear as if the forces underneath had built their edifices badly, and in a manner not fit to withstand the ravages of Time; and those are places where part of the pile has apparently collapsed, and there remainsa bleak cliff face and the ruins of rocks at the foot.”[7]

The slopes and the bastions of the summits of those rugged, gravely picturesque mountains present a sentiment of the sadness that goes with great age; and their dark countenances are the very quintessence of patience. For all time they have stood as over-masters of the Great Desert. Proudly they overlook the far-flung wastes beneath them, where foot-hills die out among black, stony, boulder-strewn plains, and“lakes”of sand, relieved, here and there, by odd-shaped pill-box or church-like kopjes that stand as miniature guardians of the mountains behind them—beyond, right to the faint horizon, nothing but the great dead plains of the desert.

Ahaggar is not, as a whole, so rugged and picturesque as Aïr, though it has many similar summits, especially the bare, disintegrating hills of loose brown stone that are rounded and have no pronounced contour.

The highest point I reached in Ahaggar was 6,000 feet (near Tazeruk), and in Aïr 6,050 feet (Baguezan).

Ahaggar, on the whole, I consider less habitable than Aïr. At the time of my journey, in the months of March and April, the scattered acacias in wadis and mountain valleys were leafless from prolonged lack of rain, and many of them had beencompletely ruined through natives lopping off all the main branches so as to feed their goats in extremity. Pasturage had completely given out in many places, and herds had left the region to seek grazing ground where life was possible. (Whole families of theEhaggaranTuaregs had at that time trekked 500 to 600 miles, to outlying wadis west of Aïr, to keep their flocks and camels alive onAlwat, a plant common to some regions, in sandy wadis and amongErgs.)

A SANDY RIVER-BED, IN THE MOUNTAINS, SHORTLY AFTER RAIN HAS SWEPT DOWN ITNOTE HOW PASSAGE OF CURRENT HAS RIPPLED THE SAND

A SANDY RIVER-BED, IN THE MOUNTAINS, SHORTLY AFTER RAIN HAS SWEPT DOWN IT

NOTE HOW PASSAGE OF CURRENT HAS RIPPLED THE SAND

On the other hand, I noted that places of water—wells, and, particularly, oozing surface springs in river-beds, often salt and chemical bearing, were more numerous in Ahaggar than in Aïr, and where such conditions exist there is also more domestic, garden-plot cultivation, executed chiefly byZakummeranandImradtribes, and not by the haughty nomadic Tuaregs.

As a whole, these mountains of the Sahara attract more rain than the desert, on the rare occasions when the rain condescends to fall from the sky. But that advantage is almost momentary, for, owing to the naked, growthless, and soilless slopes, and the quick fall of the intricate network of mountain brooks and river-courses, so soon as rain touches the bare hills it streams down, to be swept away out into estuaries on the desert that drink in water with a thirst that knows no quenching.

Nevertheless, a frugal benefit is left behind, for the passing of mountain torrents leaves some moisture in the river-banks, and pools in the best ofdeep-gullied streams, and in a brief week green vegetation springs to life in thin lines in places, and grows quickly to maturity. And it is this that is the grazing supply of the year—whether browsed over then or in the long, dreary months that follow, when grass and plants, in scattered tussocks, lie hay-dry and uninviting, but are the best that the country has to offer.

I noted in Ahaggar that clouds were often in the sky; which I had not remarked in Aïr, or, for that matter, anywhere farther south, except at the season of rains (July-August) in the Western Sudan—rains which sometimes move northwards over parts of the Sahara. It may be that out-thrown influences of the northern hemisphere, despatched from the Mediterranean over the Atlas Mountains, reach southward to about the latitude of Ahaggar. Later on, when marching to the north of the Algerian Sahara, I noted in my diary thecoolnessof north winds, when they blew, and imagined I sensed a tang of the sea in my nostrils. (Born and reared by the sea, my senses are acutely tuned in that respect.)

In conclusion, the Sahara is, in entirety, a vast waste land in its interior; its greater area made up of broken, desolate plains; its features of relief extraordinary mountain-lands of rugged grandeur.

Throughout the whole decay appears insistent and sure, and the increase of sand incessant. It has been shown to be a land containing considerable rock surface, and wherever one goes much ofsuch country is disintegrating and crumbling away; thus forming more and more sand, which accumulates, at the whim of the prevailing wind, to bank up and choke out the plant life of the country. In places one may dig down at the roots of shrubs and plants that are dead and find that the old surface of the ground is a foot or so beneath that of to-day.

The accompanying diagram is an illustration of rock disintegration in the Sahara.

There is no tangible counteraction to these advances of decay, and it would seem that they are destined irrevocably to continue. But on this score the question of rainfall is intensely interesting, for should the elements ever be kind, and really good and consistent rains fall for two or three years in succession, the whole land would undoubtedlyrevive its vegetation with astonishing speed. Perhaps such revivals have occurred in the past, and may occur again. But I fear that, at best, they can be but short-lived. Indeed, conditions at the present are the opposite, and the prospect is that they will so continue. One hears from the nomads of regions having no rain for three years, four years, and even seven years; while have I myself seenhaddried out and dead, though natives declare that it never dies except when there are more than four rainless years.

The Sahara is not yet devoid of vegetation, but its poverty is advancing. To-day we find the old caravan roads across Africa unfrequented—the Cyrenaican-Kufra-Wadai road, the Tripoli-Bilma-Chad road, the Tunis-Tripoli-Ghat-Aïr-Kano road: all of great antiquity, and from time immemorial the trade routes across North Africa. These roads are still to be seen, ten to fifteen parallel paths, camel-width apart, with undiminished clearness, where they pass over stony ground, powdered down to clean-cut furrows by passage of countless feet. They are steeped in the romance and mystery of the Sahara. Over them have passed hard-won pilgrimages to Mecca, cavalcades of slaves fettered and limb-weary and fearful, and rich caravans of merchandise that reached their goal or were looted—a gamble that made or lost a fortune for the masters who sent them forth. To-day they are unused, and the commerce of the Sahara is dead. And this is comprehensible whenthe poverty of the land is reviewed and the belief held that growing dearth of vegetation has made it well-nigh impossible for large caravans to live to-day on those roads.

The same melancholy decline is to be found among the people of the Sahara. Its population is scattered and thin, and some regions are uninhabited altogether. We can only approximately estimate the numbers in the interior, which I believe, from data collected, to be about 40,000. Say 200 to 600 in oases here and there at wide intervals; 5,000 in the Aïr region; 5,000 in Ahaggar, and 10,000 Tebu in Tibesti; roughly, about one human soul to every sixty square miles.

In Aïr, and Ahaggar, and, excepting Tibesti, throughout the scattered grazing-grounds of the Sahara the masters or range-holders are chiefly Tuaregs, who are a southern race of Berbers. It is not proposed to deal with their history here, and it will suffice to say that they are a white race, descended from some of the oldest European stocks, and that the love of fighting and adventure that is born in them is an inheritance from forefathers who made their wars historic.

At an early stage in this chapter I stated that to-day Aïr contained scores of deserted villages. They are illuminating as illustrative of the drastic extent of change and decay. They have completely died out.

And what of Agades, which is still alive? Its dwellings are half in ruins. It supports about2,000 inhabitants, and to-day its surroundings are drear beyond description. Yet it was once a great desert city, on a famous route across Africa of great antiquity, and is said to have once contained 50,000 inhabitants—more than the whole population of the Sahara’s interior to-day.

Verily, ever it comes back to me; the Sahara is a land of decay. To the traveller it holds its principal charm in its strange mystic beauty and wonderful vastness, and in the fact that it is a land of Allah, steeped in inherent sadness.

CHAPTER VTHE TARALUM

TheBilma Salt Caravan, the greatTaralumof the Sahara: few have ever heard of it, or its fame. Yet in one part of Africa its journey is the event of the year, and the date of departure as important as a national fête in civilised lands.

Like a fleet of ships taking to the high seas to bring home riches, so this famous concourse of camels sets out over oceans of sand to bring south the salt supply of the year to many people dependent upon it.

The caravan’s “Port of Departure,” each year, is from harbouring foothills on the south-east side of the Aïr Mountains, and the great gathering takes place from all quarters of the land.

The harbour is well chosen, and the time of the year, for the caravan starts at the season when there is the best chance of water in the river-beds, and grazing for camels for a number of days.

Beyond the harbour, befitting a port, away to the east, lies open, stony “Reg” and, thence, the vast, empty desert.

It was into this harbour that, with the purpose of joining theTaralum, my caravan rode, on acertain day in October; the camels, unhurried, picking their way over stones with habitual caution. We had been travelling for hours in country impressively forsaken, and still, and silent. But, with a shock, the whole atmosphere was suddenly changed and all sense of solitude dispelled.

We had ridden in upon a camp of astounding proportions and unique picturesqueness. Before us stoodthousands of camels, not a hundred or two, which would have been amazing enough, but, literally,thousands; and the spectacle was one never to be forgotten.

Where the ruins of the old forsaken village of Tabello squat dolefully on the banks of the river-bed of that name, the great caravan had already congregated in part, and was still in process of expansion.

As far as eye could see camps were settled on the banks and on the sand of the river-bed—camps full of pack-saddles, water-skins, bundles of coarse hay-fodder and bundles of firewood; all in readiness for the long desert journey.

About the camps, among the camels, picturesque camel-men moved gracefully, or reclined upon the sand—athletic-looking men, of the long trails, familiar with their tasks, strong and resourceful, as befits men who live constantly out-of-doors.

Some were engaged in preparing a meal, but the greater number were working on such jobs as plaiting rope from palm-leaves for binding their camel-loads, strengthening pack-saddles that requiredrepair, mending sandals, and patching rents in cotton garbing—in fact, putting all the odd touches to their gear that go to perfect and complete outfits for a strenuous ordeal.

A CORNER OF THE CAMP AT TABELLO

And, all the time, they talked with an unwonted air of excitement, passing round the latest and most sensational news of camp, and again and again going over the details and hazards of the journey ahead of them. In this keyed-up excitement there was something of the atmosphere of an army on the move that has an action impending.

They are chiefly Tuaregs from the northern regions of the Southern Sahara, and a scattering of Hausas from the territories farther south, while both have their quota ofBuzus(slaves), who are men of many mixtures of breed and are appointed the most menial work in camp and on the road.

The whole concourse has gathered from far and wide to this appointed rendezvous: from Kano, Katsina, and Sokoto, in Northern Nigeria; from Gourè and Zinder and other towns in Damagarim, and from many quarters in Damergou and Aïr.

Upon inquiry I learned that between 4,000 and 5,000 camels had already arrived; truly a magnificent array of animals. And not only were their numbers great: they werethe pick of the camels of the country, for it is recognised, by all who know the route, that only the finest are fit to live through the long, hard journey over the terrible wastes of sand, that are as a cruel expansive sea on the trackless way that lies between them and Bilma.

We had camped on the fringe of the crowd, and thenceforth became a unit of it. Salutations acclaimed us on all sides. TheTaralumis renowned for its meetings of long-lost friends who travel far afield. Hausas and Tuaregs stalked smilingly into camp whom I had met a year or two ago, or back on the trail on the present journey; while my camelmen found a whole host of friends whom they knew directly or indirectly “back home.” News of all kinds was gleaned, of the south and of the outer trails, and friendliness was in the air and everyone in high spirits.

After a night’s rest we settled down, like the others, to the immediate concerns of the journey ahead, and were kept busy knitting our gear to perfection of strength and compactness.

Like the others, also, we had to watch our camels alertly to keep them from straying and mixing with others while shifting for ourselves in the competition for the best of grazing.

To feed such an enormous caravan, even but for a brief day or two, is a tremendous consideration, and Tabello had been chosen for this very reason because it offered the best conditions to be found in a region where drear poverty of growth is the general rule.

Sharp-thorned acacias, shrubs, prickly ground plants, coarse grass tussocks—all make a camel’s meal; for they will tackle most things, and they eat heavily when the chance offers. The skill with which they strip the leaves from cruel-barbedtrees and plants is truly astonishing when one remembers that their lips and noses are soft as velvet and sensitive in the extreme.

Acacias are the chief trees at Tabello; low, insignificant, and far removed from the tall, leafy plants that one usually associates with the name. They are nowhere in forests, and grow in an irregular line along the dry river-bed banks, or in scattered, scraggy groups in hollows where they happen to have found a bare footing. There are a number of varieties, chief of which are:tashrar,tamat, andtigar—thorny, squat-branched, lean and small-leafed; yet all splendid camel food. Among them, particularly where bushes grow together, isaborer, a densely branched tree with long green thorns and sappy wood. A choice tree to the camel isagar, which seeks the solitudes and often grows alone in the open. It is a pale-coloured evergreen with thick twisting branches closely covered with tiny leaves. Then there isabisgee, which is not an acacia. It grows, willow-like, in clumps, and is very green, and has a pungent smell not unlike skunk. Camels eat it—and, as a consequence, smell foully—but only sparingly, unless no other food offers.

Underfoot, on the sand, in scanty patches, grow tussocks of coarse grass and prickly plants; among themtasmir,taruma,thelult,tatite,afazo, andalwat.[8]These plants were essential to the life ofthe camp, for they meant food and contentment to the camels, whose huge numbers roamed the country-side, rapidly eating down whatever growth could be found within reach.

As to the food of the future: no camel had trekked into camp without a big load of dry, harsh tussock-grass on either side, gathered from the most favourable placesen route: and those bales, which every animal will carry at the start, are the camel-food that must serve throughout the journey on the desert.

The departure for Bilma was delayed. On the day appointed to start news reached camp that a lot ofKel-FerouanTuaregs, on the way back from Hausaland, were not yet in. It was also known that there were some stragglers on the way. So that during the few days of camp-life that followed our arrival at Tabello others trekked in, as we had done, with their lines of fodder-loaded camels swelling the numbers, until 7,000 animals were the total on the eve of departure—a mighty cavalcade, and one of the largest caravans of modern times.

It represented, massed into one narrow area, the greater part of the wealth of a land that has no wealth if reckoned to the square mile of its vastness and general desolation. At a fair valuation each animal is worth £15 per head, making the total value of theTaralum£105,000.

Owing to this value, which, besides being monetary, represents the cream of the transport stock of the whole region, whose loss would be irreparable,precautions to protect the caravan are taken, each year, by the French Administration of the Territoire du Niger.

Wherefore a force ofMeharistshad been sent from the south to join theTaralumat Tabello and act as an escort while crossing the desert. In addition, every native with the caravan is armed with weapons of war of some sort—rifle, sword, or lance; while some even carried the remarkable oryx-hide battle-shield that is peculiar to the Tuaregs. All are familiar with the danger of raids in the Sahara, and many have experienced them and fought before.

The date of departure of theTaralumis an event in the Sahara as notable as Christmas Day in civilised countries. It is fixed by tribes who know nothing of printed calendars, and the appointed date is: “Two days after the new moonGanni Wazuwirin(the October-November moon). On this occasion, because of the delay already referred to, the great caravan started two days late.

On the 25th of October, at the first streak of dawn, the dark, gaunt forms of lines of camels, bulkily loaded with fodder, and food and water for a severe journey, could be just discerned at the mouth of a hill track, leading east out of Tabello river-bed.

In the dark comrade called to comrade in endeavour to find one another. There is a good deal of confusion; the Awe of Silence is absent.

The great cavalcade is saddled and ready tomarch, and, but for the sound of voices, might well be taken for a stealthy army setting out on great enterprise. The huge massed groups of men and animals have all the significance of a powerful force on the move. And, like an army, it is unwieldy at the commencement.

There is a period of loitering. Some camps are late and their animals troublesome to load. Some men inquire the plan of march, and that is explained to them. While yet others say good-bye to friends they are leaving behind.

Eventually a low exchange of queries and orders set the foremost camels off on the track, with others following as close behind as possible; like a mere trickle, at the beginning, running out from the black mass of a mighty flood along a tiny newly discovered channel of escape.

We were off. The great journey had begun.

That first day, to each possessor of a line of camels, was a tale of fractious animals and broken loads. All first days out are the same, even if the animals have only been idle in camp for a brief spell. Trouble can only be prevented to some extent. And the secret, there, is to take care that the same saddle, and the same load, if possible, is never changed from the animal to which it is originally allocated, for until the same load has been carried regularly there is bound to be trouble from individuals. They are timid of anything new, and eye any odd-shaped or odd-coloured part of a load with uneasy suspicion. But the commonestcause of trouble is from new loads that have been put up so that they fit uneasily and rub or jab the bearer; until the worried animal decides to get rid of it—which, with a buck and a plunge or two, is only a matter of a few moments. That ungodly act is disastrous enough, but it is doubled or trebled when the pranks of one involve the upset of the whole line in the neighbourhood.

FOOD FOR CAMELS ON A DESERT JOURNEYEACH BALE WEIGHS ABOUT 80 LBS.

FOOD FOR CAMELS ON A DESERT JOURNEY

EACH BALE WEIGHS ABOUT 80 LBS.

The day moved slowly and halts were constant in one line of camels or another, while in the wake of the caravan lay a trail of rope-ends and saddle leavings. The type of country did not help matters, for it wasregof stone and rocks; rough on the camels’ feet, and uneven in contour.

Nevertheless, theTaralumtravelled painstakingly for fourteen hours, and, after dark, reached the end of the roughregcountry to camp on the edge of a vast ocean of sand, that held, somewhere in its bosom, the salt-giving oases of Fachi and Bilma—the latter the goal of the caravan.

Like everyone else, I was tired, yet the sounds and scenes of that first camping of theTaralumwere so astonishing that I almost forgot my fatigue.

Camels being off-loaded are noisy at any time, but tired camels seem to believe in letting everyone within hearing know that they have a cause for complaint. The twenty to thirty of one’s own line can make noise enough. But add to that the clamourings and complaints ofthousands, and then try to imagine something of the astonishing uproarthat resounded through the encampment of theTaralum.

Nor was the commotion all over in a little. It kept on almost until midnight, while, like a great cable being drawn slowly in, the huge caravan rolled slowly forward to arrive length by length and find resting-place, band beside band, on the “floor” of the sheltered basin that had been chosen for the night.

The shallow valley, drear and dead when we arrived, was soon a vast arena of twinkling camp-fires, in area ever increasing as fresh arrivals came in. There were no trees or other hindrance to the vision, and the whole massed encampment lay open to view. It made an impressive scene; impressive because of its size and singular wilderness character, and because of its romantic mission. It comprised an army of nomads and animals on their first step of invasion, halted in an alcove below the dark rocks of the outland of Aïr, while beyond lay the ocean of sand, which on the morrow, and thereafter, held their adventure.

In my own band our camp was about as usual, for we were seasoned travellers long ere this. But we were all tired, since the day had been irksome and long. Wherefore we were soon in our blankets, resting but awake, because of the noise around us.

Our camels had been offered some of the coarse hay we carried, only to sniff at it disdainfully and refuse it. Whereupon my head camelman smiled and rebaled it, remarking in his own tongue:

“Wait till this time to-morrow. They won’t be so particular when real hunger seizes them.”

GLIMPSES OF THETARALUM

The voyage of theTaralum, on the days that followed, was, in essentials, one long test ofpatience,perseverance, andendurance, in travelling a desert of terrifying desolation.

The Bilma Desert is desert at its worst; an absolute sea of sand, destitute of the minutest object. Nothing relieves the eye, not even a morsel of the insignificance of a branch-end to hint of vegetation; and there is no living creature whatever.

Day after day, endless leagues of level, wind-rippled sand are passed and lie ahead. The desolation holds monotonous intensity; barely relieved, even by the banks of dunes which are encountered in places, softly rounded like the swing of great waves rolling to the land on a calming ocean, and petrified in the act. When it is calm the sand rests. But that is seldom, for there are two forces that are constant in the desert: wind and sun. And when the wind blows the sands of the surface are never still, and legions of particles fly before its bidding.

But to the traveller the wind is his salvation, unless it rises to a gale and brings that terror of the desert—a sandstorm. Even though hot, with the breath of the glowing sand, the wind is a measure of counteraction to the oppression of the tremendous blazing heat of the overhead sun.

Beyond all else, the desert is the Kingdom ofthe Sun. Of all lands where it rules, none know it in greater strength nor more pitiless mood than here. It subdues and kills; it has conquered the earth. It is antagonistic to everything that lives. It even glares on the caravans of the desert as a tyrant on foolish intruders that are prey to be destroyed. Day after day, almost without a break throughout the year, it rises, a globe of gold set in a halo, to rule through long monotonous hours, white in intensity, and ungilded when high in the sky, until the hour arrives for it to sink to rest: when it passes to another sphere followed by mutterings of relief from the tired lips of men who thank Allah that it has gone.

It was 200 miles from Tabello to Fachi, another 100 miles to Bilma; and the same distance on the return journey—600 miles in all. Fresh water for man and beast was to be obtained in the region only at these oases. By forced marches, Fachi, first in our path, was to be reached on the sixth day. All water-skins, the very life of the people of the caravan, would be empty by then, and the camels in sore need of slaking their thirst. It was no land to dally in. All sensed the danger of thirst and starvation, which was in the very sand of the desert about them. Wherefore the whole caravan pushed ever on with anxious earnestness, and with an invisible discipline peculiar to tribal traditions.

TheTaralumtravelled 38 to 40 miles per day: 14 to 18 hours of patient, steady plodding. Therewas no halt to rest animals. They carried their burdens throughout the livelong day, with the men of the caravan riding on the top of the loads. The proportion of men was one to every 5 or 7 animals; in all, about 1,100 human lives.

Back to Index Next