BY THE SAME AUTHOR

OUT OF THE WORLD NORTH OF NIGERIA: EXPLORATION OF AÏR

WILD LIFE IN CANADA

THREE YEARS OF WAR IN EAST AFRICA

For details see end of book.

All Rights Reserved

THE EDGE OF THE UNKNOWN

SAHARA

BY ANGUS BUCHANAN, M.C., F.R.S.G.S.
AUTHOR OF “WILD LIFE IN CANADA,” “THREE
YEARS OF WAR IN EAST AFRICA,” “OUT OF THE
WORLD NORTH OF NIGERIA”

WITH NUMEROUS PHOTOGRAPHS, SKETCHES, AND A MAP

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1926

TO
FERI N’GASHI
ONLY A CAMEL,
BUT STEEL-TRUE
AND GREAT OF HEART

FOREWORD

By The RT. HON. LORD SALVESEN, P.C., K.C.

Late President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society

The author of this book is not merely an intrepid and successful explorer, but an accomplished biologist, who has added many new species of birds and animals to the ever-growing list of nature’s marvels. The desert of Sahara presents to the explorer many points of resemblance to the frozen wastes which surround the Poles, and to which so much attention has recently been directed. Its area is vast, its resources meagre in the extreme, the perils of travel great, and such as to test the highest qualities of the explorer. But here the resemblance ends. In the nature of the experiences and the hazards which the explorer encounters there could be no greater contrast, but oddly enough the man who can endure the one seems also fitted to withstand the other—of this Captain Buchanan is a living proof, for he, too, has been a traveller in Arctic regions.

This book is in no sense a diary of day-to-day travel. Only a single chapter is devoted to the account of the extraordinary journey which Captain Buchanan and his cinematographer, Mr. Glover, made from Kano in Nigeria to Touggourt in Algiers—a journey of over 3,500 miles through the great desert of Africa. Some idea of the hardships which they encountered may be gathered from the fact that, while they started with a caravan of thirty-six camels and fifteen natives, they finished with a single camel and only two natives, after fifteen months of travel. The reader is never wearied by monotonous logs of distances covered day by day or of the countless difficulties overcome on the long long trail. Only the last few days, when victory was in sight, are briefly sketched. But in earlier chapters we have vivid pictures of the perils that are inseparable from travel over vast sandy wastes, where a burning sun beats down with relentless fury, and where the lives of men and beasts alike depend on their finding water at least every six or seven days. One chapter describes one of the sandstorms that all but engulfed the caravan in the shelterless plain—another, the rare experience of torrential rain which may be almost as devastating, but, unlike the sandstorm, is fraught with blessing, for it brings food to the starving mammals that haunt the fringe of the great desert.

The author’s knowledge of the Sahara is not based merely on the one long journey which took him across its widest part. The book is partly based on a previous lengthy visit to the Sahara, during which he studied the fauna of the district as it has never been studied before, and the weird and impoverished races which are found in its habitable areas. The Sahara is not a mere plain of sand—it embraces more than one mountainous and picturesque area as large as Wales, but, unlike that country, arid in the extreme; besides numerous oases where a scanty subsistence is yielded by palms for small communities, and which are largely dependent on the visits of travelling caravans in quest of that most precious of all commodities—water. In these places, isolated by vast seas of desert, dwell the remnants of tribes once more numerous, who migrated thither when conditions were more favourable, for alas! Captain Buchanan’s observations lead him to the conclusion that the constantly accumulating sand-drifts are gradually destroying the already scanty resources of the still inhabited portions. Readers will find interest in his description of the two oases of Bilma and Fachi, both of which derive their subsistence from salt-mines, and whose dwellings and the forts which protect them are built entirely of blocks of salt, now blackened by age.

The perils of the desert are illustrated by the striking story of Rali, which forms one of the most vivid and entrancing chapters of the book. One of the nomad tribe of Tuaregs who lead a roving life amongst the few areas where pasturage of a kind is obtainable for their flocks, he was the victim of a dastardly raid in which his young and beautiful wife was carried off by a band of raiders. His adventures in seeking to recover her and avenge himself on her captors are told with a rare insight into the character of the natives and their mastery of their environment. Strange to say, although the vast majority of the natives are predatory and cruel, the author came across one community of religious pacifists who have never organised any defence against persistent raids. As might be expected, these unhappy creatures live in the direst poverty, for, if they should by hard work accumulate any food or other commodities, they are promptly relieved of them by rapacious bands who live largely on the spoliation of their neighbours.

Naturalists will find ample evidence in the description of Saharan birds and mammals of the remarkable adaptation of the forms there existing to their arid environment. The appendices contain complete lists of the Saharan fauna.

It was in my dual capacity of President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and of the Zoological Society of Scotland that I had the privilege of making the author’s acquaintance by presiding at the first lecture which he delivered in Scotland on the result of his travels in the Sahara. This book, which embodies them in greater detail, should have a wide circle of readers if the appeal which it made to myself is any index of popular interest.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I
PREPARATIONS

CHAPTER I
PREPARATIONS

It is strange how the maddest of dreams come true in the end; provided one has faith to hold on to them dearly.

Twenty-one months before setting out on the journey recorded in these pages, when I was on my way back from the Northern Regions of Aïr, I remember, as clearly as if it was to-day, sitting in the dim, mud dwelling-room of the fort quarters at Agades discussing with Monsieur le Capitaine, in charge of that last outpost of French military administration, the prospects of my returning again at another time and undertaking further and greater exploration of that vast and mystical land that men know by the name Sahara.

At that time I had some acquaintance with the country, and, like other explorers, once having tasted the charm of discovery, I was eager to push onward into the dimmest recesses of the land, since it held, at brilliant moments, stirring promise of new and strange secrets of unknown character—secrets that shyly withdrew behind the mist of the desert’s horizon, dancing like will-o’-the-wisps, until they disappeared, leaving behind a taste of temptation that beckoned alluringly.

Le Capitaine was a wise and experienced traveller and bushman—a man of iron; a man of understanding; and he fanned the sparks of my newly kindled ideas with such zest and earnestness that, in the late hours of our discussions, they enlarged to the magnitude of absolute ideals.

For that alone I owe Le Capitaine a debt of gratitude; but I have gratitude also for having met him and shaken his hand in friendship.

To-day men of Le Capitaine’s type are rare. He was, when I knew him, and is no doubt still, a pioneer; one of that little group of exceptional men who stand head and shoulders above the rank and file of their brethren in outdoor adaptability, and who leave a deeply cut mark on the furthermost frontiers of a nation’s colonies. Men of his type have the geography of Africa at their finger-ends in infinite outlines, great though Africa is, and under many flags. The ultimate future of all things is their particular study and concern, since men have time to think and ponder deeply over intimate problems who spend their lives in desperately lonely environment. And, above all else, these rare individuals are men of deadly earnestness and unquestionable honesty.

It is a delight to induce such men, in the aftermeal hours of merciful evening coolness, to discuss their schemes for the building of colonies and empires, and hear them lay out a network of railways and enterprises from place to place, across a continent, with the clear precision and absolute accuracy that only is possible to the student who thoroughly knows his subject.

IN AGADES; WHERE DREAMS OF A SECOND EXPEDITION TO THE SAHARA FIRST DAWNED

From the date of those camp-fire talks that carried us away into the midnight hours of the brooding, sand-surrounded fort, a second expedition to the Sahara was firmly planted in my mind.

But it was not until September 1921 that I found myself again free to think of continuing travel on natural history research, and was able to give to my dreams a definite shape.

At that time I wrote to Lord Rothschild’s Museum, and the British Museum, to ascertain their views of the zoological value of an extended journey right across the Sahara, starting from the West Coast of Africa and striking northward until the sea-coast of the Mediterranean was reached.

Encouraging replies were immediately forthcoming, and both these great Natural History Institutions were anxious that I should make the effort and offered to support me so far as lay in their power.

Their support made my decision to attempt a second expedition final; whereupon Lord Rothschild at once took steps, on my behalf, to forward, through the French Embassy in London, a request for official consent to be granted to the expedition’s travelling through the French territories of the Sudan and Sahara.

But formal preliminaries of this kind move very slowly at times, and for four and a half months the matter lay unsettled and I lived in an atmosphere of uncertainty, doubtful as to the view the French authorities would take of a journey that was undoubtedly hazardous; doubtful, also, as to the date at which it might be possible to sail. If I was to make a well-timed start to catch the rains in barren areas of the Sahara in August or September, I estimated that I must set out not later than the 8th of March, on the West Coast ship sailing at that date.

Weeks slipped by. No word came from across the Channel. The 8th of March loomed nearer and nearer, and I grew restless and worried.

At last the time came when the French authorities said, “You may go.” And then there was gladness and bustle and transformation.

Everything in the way of equipment had to be secured in three weeks. My days were spent in London, flying here, there, and everywhere on seemingly endless shopping errands, until on the eve of sailing the entire equipment was tolerably complete.

I will describe one amusing incident that relates to shopping:

I drove up to a large West-End establishment and asked the taxi-driver to wait, while, in company with my wife, I entered the shop.

I had told the taxi-driver I would not be long, but was detained almost an hour.

NATIVE FOOD FOR THE LONG TRAIL

My wife became anxious about the taxi-man’s temper, and, after considerable time had passed, went to pacify him.

“My husband won’t be long now,” she said. “You must excuse him; he is in there buying food for a year.”

“Gawd! Where’s he going, Miss?” the taxi-man exclaimed, and when my wife explained, “To explore the Sahara,” he got excited and thoroughly interested, and at once started to confide the news to a fellow taxi-man on another waiting cab.

This incident brings sharply before the mind the enormous contrast between a land of plenty and a land of poverty, while it makes us appreciate how much we rely on our everyday habit of shopping.

At home we have to think of little purchases of parcels for the needs of the day, and we suffer no severe penalty if something required has been overlooked, for any such omission can usually be rectified in an hour or so by ’phone, or message, or by a second call.

How different in the Sahara!—no shops; scanty food; less water—wilderness, often without living soul. Shopping that has to foresee every emergency for so long a time as a year or more in such environment is indeed a task of consequence. Not an item must be forgotten, big or little, and it is the little things that are the hardest to keep sight of (and to purchase, for that matter).

Yet, no matter how careful, after six months on the way, something is sure to be badly missed; some provoking little thing, of increased importance the moment one is aware it is not to be had for love or money. Then, if you are kind, have pity, for the loss will be great and real. All must have some fellow feelings in such a circumstance, for has not everyone known what it is to be “put out” when some little purchase has been forgotten on the shop’s half-closing day? Half a day! For 365 days I have known what it is to do without things I believed were indispensable.

On the 8th March 1922, with equipment collected and complete according to views that were the outcome of previous experience, I sailed from Liverpool to land at Lagos; on the West Coast of Africa.

My companions were: Francis Rodd, who was to go with me as far as Aïr, on ethnological and geographical research, and the cinematographer of the expedition, T. A. Glover.

CHAPTER II
THE CARAVAN

CHAPTER II
THE CARAVAN

A drowsy, uncertain voice, casting a word or two across the darkness in search of comrade, disturbs my deep sleep of night. In a moment I am consciously awake.

“Lord!” I think, “it seems but an hour since I wearily sought repose.”

I feel dreadfully heavy and muscle-weary, and my blanket seems the snuggest place on earth. But the laws of the wilderness are pitiless. The caravan is four days out from water, and has three more days to go—if we travel continuously.

With a groan, in protest and to pick up pluck, the mind wins obedience over jaded flesh, and with sudden forced resolve I jerk into sitting position on the sand, before I have time to change my mind.

My head camel-man, the owner of the drowsy voice, is stirring uneasily. Mindful of overnight orders, he has kept a faithful eye on the starlit sky and knows it to be about two hours from dawn— the time set for wakening the camp.

“Elatu! . . . Mohammed! . . . Gumbo!” I cry. “Wake up! . . . Hurry! . . . Load the camels!”

As darkness is known to those who live in houses, it is still deep and utter night. But it is not so opaque to the wayfarer: the unroofed camp, under the great blue star-lit dome, can be made out grouped like a tiny island of dark, huddled boulders in a vast sea of sand, dimly visible for a distance. There is barely a suggestion of light. Yet it is there—that faint glow of a Saharan night, that is influenced by unobstructed skies and vast white plains of sand. The accustomed eye can almost “sense” the approach of day, but we know also by the position of the stars that the hour is 4 a.m., and that dawn will surely break at the appointed time.

The men gird travel-soiled garments about them. Instructions go forth with perfect understanding. Camels grunt and roar as they are head-roped and shifted from night-lairs to positions beside their loads.

In a little a fire flares up, bright and dim by turns, fed by the straw-leavings of overnight camel fodder.

By the fitful light stray ropes are recovered half buried in sand, or difficult loads secured; while Elatu, Mohammed, and the others work at a feverish pace so that the first animals loaded will not have to wait overlong for the last of their comrades.

It is harsh work, hard and exacting; but the men, skilled and able, go through with it. They have been with me for months. They are men of the Sahara, and I know that loads will be well balanced and unerringly roped when, out on the trail, dawn breaks to reveal the merit of their workmanship.

AN ORDINARY NIGHT CAMP IN TRAVELLING THE DESERT

The camp, deep in sleep and deadly still during the night, is now appallingly noisy in comparison with the vast quiet that lies outside its immediate circle. It is impossible to try to conceal our whereabouts. No matter if raiders, or the deadliest enemies of war, are at hand, the message of a camel-camp on the move goes out into the night unfettered—and the risk recognised.

One by one garrulous camels are released from knee-ropes that have kept them down, obedient to the task of loading, and rise from the sand to stand in dim outline, ready for the road, tall and gaunt, with jutting side-burdens.

Half an hour has passed, and still the caravan is not ready. It is foolish to be impatient. The groping work of the men in the dark seems provokingly slow; but patience, cheerfulness, and coolness are tonic for the moment—so the leader learns to wait, and make light of it—and reaps the gratitude of his henchmen in return.

“White Feather,” my faithful, travel-wise, long-tried camel, kneels beside me ready to move. I have seen to it that the riding-saddle—a slim, perched-on, Tuareg saddle of the Sahara—is comfortable on the animal, and secure and level, for it is to serve for many hours to come. On the long, hard day that lies ahead every detail is important. In their places, calculated with purpose to balance on either side of the saddle evenly, are hung an old army water-bottle, a pair of field-glasses, a revolver, and two grass saddle-satchels with dates, tobacco, ammunition, and maps; while over the flanks drop leather buckets containing a shot-gun and a rifle.

It is too dark to see the worn condition of equipment, battered and broken by months of “roughing it” in the open; nor men who are rugged and hard, and lean as the camels they saddle, from strain of relentless effort. Yet those conditions are there, uncovered till kindness of night departs and reveals the sternness of endless enduring.

At the end of an hour we start, and two long lines of camels head northward into the darkness. And thenceforth the din, that was in camp, dies out; broken only once or twice, to begin with, as a camel protests while watchful native runs alongside to straighten an uneasy load.

Soon there is scarcely a sound, and the soft-footed caravan moves ghostlike over a great empty land that is dead.

The long, exacting march has begun, and another day’s effort to conquer the vastness of Space and Sand.

At the start the camels travel well. The men are slightly urging the pace by persuasive foot-pressure on the nape of the neck. They want to make the most of this hour, but they do not press the animals inconsiderately, for long, hot hours lie in front. Always the best pace of the day is made during the cool hour before dawn and through the delightful hour succeeding it.

I ride alongside Elatu’s camel, up in front of the caravan, and enter into low conversation to gather the vital news of the morning. Elatu—a tall, lean Tuareg of some thirty years—is my head camel-man, and a ceaseless worker of exceptional ability. He is one of those very fine natives whom a white man may win and come to hold in esteem, conquered by sheer value of labour and fidelity.

Our minds are on the welfare of the caravan. “How sits the saddle on Awena this morning?” I asked. “Is the sore worse?”

“Yes,” Elatu answered. “But, before I slept last night, I made a rough cradle to try to keep the saddle from rubbing; and he carries his load to-day. But he cannot last. To be any good again he must reach a place to rest and recover strength, and heal the wound.”

“Owrak has no load to-day, nor Mizobe, and that swollen foot of Tezarif will give trouble before the sun sets.”

“Bah! This desert is no good. We know that camels must die. In my far-distant home I have seen them die since childhood. But Allah hits hard this moon[1]—and the way is yet far. We need our camels now.”

“That is bad news, Elatu,” I replied. “But we will get through—we always have—and we will again.”

“Break up Awena’s load to-night when we camp and take him along empty, if he can walk—if not, we will have to turn him loose to take his chance, or shoot him, if there is no prospect of grazing. Split up his main baggage among the fittest animals, if you can—if not, we will have to risk letting some food go.

“Gumbo tells me Sili is ill this morning. I’m afraid he won’t last much longer, poor lad. He has been sick too often lately, and looks bad.” I passed Elatu two aspirin tabloids. “Give him those and make him ride all day with his eyes covered from the sun so far as possible. Also, let him have extra water if he wants it badly before the end of the day.”

My camel went on, and Elatu halted. He would find Sili in the rear.

Camels—men—food—water—those make up one endless round of anxiety to all who travel the vast, empty world that makes up uttermost desert. Therein Nature is antagonistic to anything that lives. Wherefore, to those who venture forth, life is alert to its very foundation, and the contest for existence severe, and often bitter. Long, weary days bring few successes, and many disappointments and failures; and great lessons of life are taught and comprehended, though few words go forth in complaint of those things of tragedy and disaster that men keep hidden away in the closed book of the soul.

I muse in my saddle over the strange gamble of it all, so similar, in plan, to the gamble of life, familiar to most of us who have intimately known struggle for existence. But here the gamble is intensified, the material rude and raw, with vast wastes of barrenness immediate on all sides, and on the very threshold, ready to engulf and destroy the moment weakness is declared.

“THE LONG, EXACTING MARCH”

I am still pondering over this philosophy when I become aware that there is just a faint glow of light commencing to show in the east. It is the first indication of dawn.

Ever so slowly it increases till the distant line between earth and sky begins to form.

In a little time it is discerned that the light is coming from behind the earth, below the far eastern horizon.

Gradually the stars go out, and the earth becomes mistily unfolded.

We are alert to know the prospect of the landscape—hopeful of change to cheer our way. But, when the full expanse is revealed, the morning is as yesterday—no “land” in sight—nothing but the same old vast endless “sea” of sand that has come to be so familiar and so haunting.

But, with the light, comes a lifting of spirits. The men commence to chatter; and someone breaks into hopeful rhythmic song—a love-lilt of a tribe, reminiscent of home-fond memories. Others pick it up, rough-tuned and jazz-fashion, and a gay voice laughs after it has inserted a sly line or two of misquotation to point the words to a comrade’s sweetheart.

And so are rough men wooed to cheerfulness, even in time of stress, by the soft magic hand of morn, and its influence, that resembles the touch of a woman’s caress. For a space, all too short, the caravan lives at its best, careless of aught but the hour.

Meanwhile, the first flush of day creeps on. And soon, away at the sand-end “Edge of the World,” the great golden sun, till now the hidden source of day, blazes suddenly into sight, in the east, shooting coloured shaft-rays in the sky by the very glory of its brilliance.

It is the signal for Mohammedan prayer, and I order the caravan to halt in consideration of the religion of my followers.

All except the sick man, Sili, move out clear of the camels.

Facing the east, where far-off, in another world, lie Mecca and the Shrine of the Prophet, the men remove their sandals and, barefoot, reverently pray.

First they stoop to touch the ground with the palms of the hands, then pass them, dust-begrimed, over the face before they meet again, in an action that resembles washing. Then, standing, the prayer is commenced. Soon, the figures bend down to sit on the sand while continuously muttering softly modulated prayer, and dipping the forehead in the dust in moments of stress, or in gesticulations of respect.

There they sit for a little, stooping anon as before.

Again they rise upright.

Again they sit down. And then a gradual repose sets in.

Finally the prayer dies out restfully, and, by the subtle composure of the figures, the onlooker is conscious that the minds of the natives have settled in peace.

In a little they rise and rejoin the caravan; and the camels move on.

Let no man idly misunderstand or underrate the faith of these peoples of the East. It is a tremendous faith—and no single day may pass without deep worship and thought of Allah. It may be, in the Sahara, the faith of the primitive, the faith of an outdoor people, but it is complete and ever present. And who of us dare say so much of the Christianity of modern civilisation?

And this strength of religion has its political significance. Notwithstanding the French influence, and the venturings of missionaries, in parts that surround the Sahara, I am confident that, throughout the length and breadth of the desert to-day, its scattered peoples have, at heart, only the faith of Islam, and really admit true friendship and allegiance to the Caliph, and to none other. Wherever the wayfarer goes he will find the inner mind of the nomad turn ever to one magic name—“Stombole”—the Turkish centre in Constantinople, and the home of the Caliph.

Meantime, the sun has come completely into view; a great glowing orb, looking twice the size it will appear when later it is high in the sky.

The time is 6 a.m. For an hour more we travel in comparative coolness; but by 9 a.m. we are into the full heat of day—that awful, dreaded heat, that constantly torments and sets out, without pity, to subdue and conquer the stoutest. In the desert the sun is master, cruel and remorseless beyond belief, with bleaching blaze that eats up life and kills. For the rest of the day the caravan must pass under the rule of its greatest enemy.

Throughout the morning the camels travel well and the spirit of the men is fairly cheerful. Though there is not much talking among them now, as they sit huddled on their camels with their gowns thrown over their heads as covering from the sun. They know well that it is wise to conserve their strength, for long, weary hours lie ahead.

I scan the caravan as we plod monotonously along.

We have been travelling close on two hundred days, and the ranks are sadly thinned, though the journey is not yet half completed.

There were sixteen natives at the start: now there are only six—Elatu, Mohammed, Sili, Gumbo, Sakari, and Ali. Most of the others have gone through fear of the dangers of the journey, lack of heart for the hard, endless work, physical weakness, and incurable sickness. (Two of the latter, left behind in good hands, to recover, when next heard of, had died).

There had been forty-four camels at the start; now there are but twenty-one. I have long learned to know them by their native names. Those that are with us still are:

NOMAD AND CAMEL-MAN

I am conscious, as I look the caravan over, of a soft-hearted affection towards both man and beast. They have all served loyally, and have given of strength to the uttermost. Moreover, the whole caravan has come to embrace that free-and-easy, comprehending comradeship, that belongs to the wise when long on the great Open Road.

We have, therefore, as a body, lost all rawness and idle ornament. The weaknesses in our composition at the start have been found out and gone under. Battered, but hardened, we are travelling now as a band complete and experienced through grim wilderness of naked reality. The men that remain are of sterling quality, and all, except Sili, look like lasting through any amount of hardship.

But it is not so with the camels. Good as they are, they are not built to endure continuous work for ever; and the greatest struggle and sacrifice are theirs. No matter how much one may try to save them, the pitiless country claims its victims from their midst. All along the trail that lies behind I have witnessed their comrades go out, and know that, inevitably, others must follow. Indeed, too well I know that few, if any, will ever reach the goal; and that it will be left to others—that must be found among natives in remote oases—to carry us through to the North African Coast—if we are ever to reach our distant destination.

But all wayfarers in the desert become fatalistic, and the many misfortunes of the trail teach the traveller to consign all disasters to “Kismet,” or “Mektuib”; for it is learned, sooner or later, that this is a land where Destiny irrevocably takes its course, whatever man’s hopes may be. Wherefore the deep eastern sadness that is found in the hearts of the nomads of the desert, and that touches the soul of the white man in the end.

As if to bear out my thoughts, trouble rides upon us.

The caravan has halted suddenly. Something is wrong in the rear.

Gumbo calls out that Mizobe is down.

We find that he has collapsed wearily on the sand and does not want to move. He is far through, but we cannot camp and wait beside him. So in a little time he is persuaded to rise to his feet again; and the caravan moves slowly on.

But it is not very long before the poor old fellow gives up again, for his is a losing fight in the full heat of the midday sun. We try for a little to encourage him to get up, but to no avail. He is past further struggle.

I order the caravan to move onward, and remain behind with Elatu, beside the prostrate animal, for I cannot leave the poor brute to die a slow, lingering death, with the agony of pitiless surroundings holding finality immediately before his eyes.

When the caravan is distant there is a single revolver shot—and we are one less in our band.

Even although it is only an animal that has gone, Death casts a shadow that disturbs the human mind; and Elatu and I ride forward to rejoin the caravan with a pang of sadness in our hearts.

But such feelings are soon deadened of further thought. Shut out and overpowered by the throbbing, awful heat of the day, which has now reached its worst.

It is a heat that is tremendous; unbelievably trying, unless one has experienced it in actual fact. The full rays of the noonday sun blaze directly and intensely overhead, scorching the earth as a furnace blast; while hot-baked desert sands reflect the heat like the tray of an oven. It is small wonder that the caravan, oppressed by a pitiless force that attacks both from overhead and underfoot, wilts as a thing that is withering and sorely exhausted. In naked truth, man and beast of our little band are at the full mercy of a tyrant, and toil, yard by yard and mile by mile, slowly onward, sticking to the allotted task, because it is fated so to toil in the great ways of the desert. The shoulders of the camel-men are drooped languidly, and no one speaks; while head-coverings are drawn more and more closely about their faces in attempt to fight off the sun and protect eyes that are wearied to actual pain by the dazzling, incessant glare on the sand.

Thus is the desert at its worst, and its unspeakable heat.

But, through all, the camels keep ever on, though ever since the sun’s great heat set in their pace has slowed down—and, now, they are just crawling onward on their patient unquestioned task.

Hour after hour the monotonous ride continues. Our band, a mere handful of outgone men who for the present are victims of circumstance destined, as it were, to travel the very plains of Hell, steeped in awful heat and desolation, from which there can never be real escape until that distant “Dreamtime” when we may come to pass out and beyond to a promised land where weary limbs and weary minds may lay them down and rest.

About 4 p.m. Tezarif (the camel that has contracted an ugly swelling in one of her feet) is lagging badly, and pulling hard on the rope that secures her to the camel in front. I shook up Gumbo, dozing and listless from long, comfortless riding, and bade him dismount and get beside the ailing camel to encourage her on and to keep up with the others.

Obediently the man jumped down, and I dropped back with him so that I might talk and keep him to his irksome task. Thereafter he remained beside the camel, encouraging and driving it to keep up with the caravan. And when Gumbo tired, another took his place. So, at the expense of considerable effort, the sick animal is kept to the trail.

And in this way the long afternoon passed on, until, at last, the sun commenced to relax its grip on the earth, and gradually the caravan recovered a certain measure of wakefulness.

Yet man and beast show that they are now very tired. None of the brief, bright gayness of the morning is present, even although the merciful retreat of the sun makes the evening hour delicious and tempting. The fact is that spirits are wearied beyond caring for aught on earth—except a longing to rest and sleep.

About 6 p.m. the hot day closes over the heated earth, as the tyrant sun sets in gorgeous beauty amidst rainbow tints of every hue that mistily touch both earth and sky with magic wand, and belie the terror of that pitiless reign that has passed.

And again the men dismount and pray.

On, through the dusk we travel—and into the night. Body and soul ache for the word to halt and camp; but still we hold on. All know the need that drives us to uttermost effort—need to reach water—and the goal still a long way ahead.

The night is strangely still. The desert’s lack of living creature is more intimately apparent now than through the day, for the vast range of our daylight surroundings has narrowed to our immediate circle, which is no more than a thin line of passage cleaved through thick banks of blackness. In our path no jackal cries; no hyena laughs. Neither does ground-bird twitter, nor wings of night-flight ruffle the air. Nothing moves, nothing lives. We can almost “hear” the silence, it is so acute; and the noiseless feet of the camels move over the sand as if they were ghosts, afraid of disturbing a land of the dead.

If you have ever waited, with deep anxiety, for a precious sound—the cry that tells you that a lost comrade has been found, or, a sound-signal that fulfils a vital appointment after it has kept you, tuned to expectancy, waiting overlong in suspense—you must know one of the greatest joys that can fall on human ears, when, by a sudden whim of chance, the world gives up the message you have prayed for. It had gone 9 p.m. when I drew my camel to a halt, and shouted “Subka!” The effect of revival along the caravan was startling. It was the glad signal that everyone was aching for—the signal that meant “Camp at last” and “Rest.”

And a great sigh of gladness went up from the hearts of the weary men, as they dropped stiffly from their camels and started to unload.

There was no need to urge the camels to get down. We had no sooner halted than each sank to the sand, leg-weary beyond the telling—for sixteen long, weary hours their feet had never ceased to pass onward over the desert.

We had camped in our tracks; there was no choice of ground—nothing but endless sand, duneless and featureless.

Stiffly the men moved about; they were overtired for the work of unloading and accordingly it moved slowly. When everything was off-loaded the poor fellows sat in dazed fashion on various bundles of kit gaining a breathing spell of rest for deadened minds and aching limbs, utterly careless of further effort. Gladly would the most spent of them sleep as they are without food, without water and without a thought of the morrow; overpowered by the forces of utter fatigue. But Elatu and I are watchful, for we have been through these experiences before, and we shake them up to keep awake. The last tasks of the camp are completed—a bale or two of rough Asben hay, carried for the camels, is unroped and fed to them, a ration of water issued to the men, while, one by one, small husbanded camp-fires broke into light, speedily to cook a frugal meal, devoured by men who needed it sorely.

Half an hour from the time of halting the whole camp is wrapped deep in sleep—a dog-tired and dreamless band, at rest at last; mercifully unconscious of the toil that is past or the toil that awaits them on the morrow.

THROUGH TO WATER AND RESTING FOR A DAY

THE CAMELS ARE AT THE WELL IN THE BACKGROUND

An Explanation

The foregoing is an account of a day in the world’s greatest desert; a day in the heart of the Sahara—travel at its worst; not at its best—that is what I have endeavoured to describe.

We were then about 200 days out, and the camel-caravan travelled 405 days before the end, so it may be that I have learned a little of the desert.

Should that be so, and should pen be able and reader forgiving, I humbly try, in the contents of this book, to set down something of a little-known land; going swiftly to the subject I would reveal, and not slowly along the trail where the footprints of my camels were sometimes all that there was to record over oceans of wasting sand.

In a previous book, Out of the World, I dealt with the journey of a 1st Saharan Expedition so far as the region of Aïr: wherefore this work endeavours to touch almost entirely upon new ground (beyond Aïr) explored on my last and more comprehensive expedition across the entire Sahara.

CHAPTER III
A SHIP OF THE DESERT

CHAPTER III
A SHIP OF THE DESERT (AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL)

“I am not riveted nor screwed together, neither am I steel plate nor seasoned timber: wherefore I am not like ship of the sea in physical construction.

“But I rock when under way, and am thin ‘keeled’ when gales blow, so that ungenerous men-people say that I am clumsy and gawky.

“However, we animal creatures think slowly but with wisdom, and we know that men-people are apt to hurry to opinions that have, sometimes, little solidity. Therefore, since appearances do not matter at all in the land I travel, I treat their gibes with silent scorn, for the great desert asks only one thing: Endurance—aye, endurance to the point of death.

“Wherefore my rivets and screws and tested ‘steel’ lie not on the surface, but in joints and sinews developed through stern adventurings that demand that a craft be strong-rigged, and stout of heart, and fearless of the uttermost seas of the desert.

“And from this you may have gathered that I am only a camel.

“Regarding my early history: I was born on the plains of Talak among the camps of the Tuaregs. I was soon taken from my mother, since her milk was wanted for food for the camp. I bellowed wildly in distress for some days, but to no purpose: I was staked beside a tent and thenceforth watched and hand-fed by women-people. I can remember that I was often very hungry, even in those days, and called lustily whenever it was anywhere near time for me to be brought my morning or evening milk. I was very young and very uninstructed then, and was not to know that hunger is that which is of greatest import in the lives of all camels.

“For a long time I stayed beside the tents of my masters. Then there came a time when I had grown big enough to be allowed to graze near camp through the day, but I was never left out overnight, because of the ill-scented animals I feared.[2]

“While I was still little I was taught to follow the caravans on short journeys, running alongside my mother without rope or hindrance of any kind.

“Then came a time when I had to bear a grass-padded saddle and a small weight on my back. But I was growing big and strong by then, and, after the first fear had passed, I did not mind the task greatly, especially as I was allowed to join the other camels more often and keep close to my nice old mother.

“One day, when I was six years old, there arose much stir in camp. The men-people commenced to gather in all camels, and I knew there was something afoot. At first, we camels, putting our heads together, hoped it was only to be a movement to new grazing ground. But we soon decided otherwise, during the few days that followed, as we watched our masters busily working with saddles and roping bundles, while strangers came in to join them from other camps. Then, one morning, at dawn, after much noise of loading, and chatter of farewell, we were all tied in line and set out from the camp of Talak; leaving behind only the women-people and their children and a few old men-people.

BRANDED

“Although as yet inexperienced in great distances, like all my kind, I required no master to instruct me in sense of direction; and I soon knew that we were heading south, which is the direction of least dread in the teachings of camel lore.

“But I soon lost interest in everything about me under the weight of terrible fatigue; for, day after day, we had to travel perpetually over hot sand and beneath wearying, fiery sun, kept sternly to the trail by our travel-wise hard-riding masters. We had little rest, and not much time to eat. All grew fretful, and plaintive lowings pleaded with the men-people for consideration, but they knew their task better than we, and kept on unflinchingly, though no less tired than ourselves.

“We camped fifty nights on that journey, and I will never forget it. For the first time I learned what desert travel really meant.

“At last, after travelling out of the desert and through country with many trees, the like of which I had never seen at Talak, we reached a strange town, and the men-people camped. There our loads were undone and we were all turned free to eat our fill and rest to our heart’s content. Men-people called the town Katsina.

“Eventually I came to stay there for many moons, for, before my master went back to the Plains of Talak, in the course of his tradings he made a bargain whereby I was exchanged for six lengths of cotton clothing that he desired for the people of his tribe. And thus I came to pass into the herds of the Emir of Katsina, one of the greatest men in the land.

“For two years, thereafter, I had an easy life, being asked to make but few journeys to Kano, Zaria, and Sokoto, in country that was not of the poverty of my old home. Wherefore I had nearly always food to eat, and accordingly grew big and strong.

“But at the season when water fell from the clouds, in that country, I was not happy. It was cold and wet to sleep at nights, and flies tormented me that were not of the desert, so that at such times I longed for my old wind-swept home at Talak. That is the season when I, and all my comrades, pine to go north into the desert, like the addax and oryx of the bush-scattered plains.

“While I remained at Katsina the men-people who guarded me called me Zaki.[3] And on festival days I was bedecked with a bright-coloured saddle and head-rein, and made to run, with others, as fast as ever my legs could go. When I was in front, when we finished running, my master was very pleased; so I learned to be in front very often, for I was given nice things to eat afterwards—grains that the men-people grow that are passing sweet to taste.

“ALL MY COMRADES CARRIED STRANGE BOXES”

“But there came a time when this life of ease and pleasure was all abruptly changed. Like most drastic changes, it was utterly unexpected. I and my comrades were browsing peacefully in the bush, as usual, one morning, when men-people of the Emir appeared suddenly among us with ropes, and a certain gravity of expression. After considerable consultation, while doubtless appraising our condition, they began to pick out those of us that were the strongest; with the ultimate result that some twenty of us, including myself, were banded together and driven off into the town.

“By eventide we were marshalled in a caravan camp of strangers, and the Emir’s men-people awaited the pleasure of the chief of the gathering. When he came forward I saw that he was not like the people of Talak or Katsina, but white as the sand or the midday sun. This stranger looked us over one by one, lifting feet, feeling joints, and prying into mouths, the while he asked questions of our guardians in their own tongue, but in an unusual voice. When he came to me he seemed highly pleased, and asked more questions than of the others. I thought, with out-bubbling pride of youth, that this was because I was of the uncommon white colour, that all chiefs prefer to any other, and clean limbed, and coming now to the years of my prime. But one of my comrades was also white-haired, and there again the stranger paused longer and asked more questions, so that I decided that my vanity had been premature.

“The upshot of the examination was that three camels were discarded and sent away with the Emir’s men-people, while all of us that stayed behind were taken over by the white stranger.

“Next day we were roped and trussed and hurt for a few moments by a stinging fire,[4] from which there was no escape; and thereby knew that we had irrevocably changed masters, for only at such times, when it is necessary to denote ownership, are we treated in this manner.

“This marked the beginning of my experience as a true traveller of the desert. My new master’s caravan left Katsina almost at once, and headed north—and I was to come to learn that we were ever to hold in that direction; even to the region of Talak, and leagues upon leagues beyond. It was, in fact, only the commencement of many, many moons of mighty travel of duration that few camels experience in a lifetime and but seldom survive.

“I was given a load to carry during the first few days; a strange box-load, that frightened me to begin with. But the men-people of my new master, who were the same as the people of Talak, knew their work and watched me, and soon they made my burden fit comfortably, so that I learned to travel without fear. Nearly all my comrades carried similar box-loads, which was a curious thing in our eyes, because they were so different from the bales of the men-people of our land.

“MY NEW MASTER RODE ALL THAT DAY—

—AND THAT WAS THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT FRIENDSHIP”

“At that time my master was riding a brown camel, the one that had brought him to Katsina. But I had noticed that he watched me while we plodded along the trail, and, therefore, I was not altogether surprised when, before starting one morning, I was taken before him without any load. Perhaps the men-people of the Emir had told him I could run very fast and had been ridden; for, in a little, his riding-saddle was placed on my back, made to fit me, and strapped securely. I made no move in protest, for past experience had taught me that it is far better to be ridden by a master than to carry a load that is nearly twice the weight. While I was still seated on the ground he came and spoke to me in his strange voice, while, for the first time, I felt his hand caress my neck and knew, even in that momentary touch, that he was not cruel.

“My new master rode me all that day—and that was the beginning of a great friendship. He would go nowhere without me afterwards, and I cannot count the days I carried him over the unfrequented seas of the desert, either with the caravan, or on long hunting trips that he sometimes made alone.

“At first my master did not ride so easily as the camel-men of our land, being more stiff and ungiving of poise; but, as he became familiar with my gait, that alien insensibility passed and we travelled as one.

“I found I had one fault that annoyed my master. Through being badly frightened, when young, by an evil-smelling animal that pounced at me, I could not refrain from being startled whenever I saw any black object close to me on the sand. At such times I would suddenly plunge madly and retreat, while my master said quick words and bore hard on the rein. Then he would persevere until he had forced me to go nearer and nearer to the object I dreaded; until I could see that it was only a tree-stump or a rock and could not harm me. Nevertheless, it took me many months to overcome this impulse of fright, though, always, my master persevered to show me there was no actual danger.

“It was chiefly on account of this trait that I was given the name by which my master called me: Feri n’Gashi, which, I believe, meant ‘White Feather’ in native tongue, and this, in his language, was a term applied to anyone showing signs of cowardice. But the name also referred to my white coat of hair. My master often spoke in a curious tongue that was foreign to me, but, as time went on, I came to understand that he gradually lost all thought of associating my name with any insinuation of fear.

“Moon followed moon in the wilderness, and time, and close association, brought thorough understanding. And I came to love my master, as I am sure he loved me. He was often kind in the hardest hours of stress, when I was grievously hungry and leg-weary, and apt to lose heart altogether in the interior of the terrible desert. He would dismount for an hour or more, sometimes, and search in the surroundings for a few handfuls of vegetation which he would bring to me to eat, while I kept on along with the others of the caravan. And at nights, if he could manage it, he brought me tit-bits that I saw the others did not get.

“And so it came about that I always watched my master wherever he happened to be; and that was in many places, for he was ever restless, and never idle. When we were turned loose at an encampment, to find what grazing we could pick up, I would raise my head whenever I saw him afar off, returning on foot from hunting for meat, or the curious things that he gathered—all of which had different and alarming scents to my inquiring nostrils—and when he reached the encampment I would leave my comrades and go to see him, for he would surely pat me kindly, while, sometimes, when there was sufficient water, he allowed me to drink from the basin he had washed in; and that was sweet in the desert, although the portion was ever so little.

“As the long, long journey progressed, through distance of time too great to count, many of my comrades weakened and fell out, and some died; and there came a time when only a few were left. Like all my comrades, I had vastly changed by then, being lean, and tired out by constant strain of travel, lack of sufficient food, and worry through fear of the unknown country we traversed. And, at nights, in my anxiety, I sometimes sought my master when he slept, and, after sniffing him to be assured of his presence, would lie down to rest near at hand, gaining thereby confidence and some comfort.

“It was during this period of ever-increasing strain that my master met with a distressing accident. To carry the loads of my dead or exhausted comrades, some fresh camels were collected from men-people of a rocky land of name I did not comprehend. They were animals of a wild region, and had been long free on the ranges, so that they greatly feared the hand of men-people. When they first felt the weight of my master’s boxes on their backs they plunged wildly in all directions, and everything was scattered to the ground. Yet patiently the men-people worked with them, coaxing and replacing the fallen loads; until, finally, we were all led into line ready to start. But just at that moment there was further disaster and a wild stampede, and my master, holding hard to the head of the maddest brute of all, was suddenly kicked to the ground as the animal plunged free. And there he lay, while others rushed blindly over him in their consternation, trampling him underfoot, until a quick-witted camel-man rushed in and dragged him clear; which, mayhap, saved his life. Then it was seen that he was bleeding profusely, and could no longer walk.

“HE STROKED ME OFTEN WHILE THE LOADS WERE BEING TAKEN AWAY”

“For some days afterwards he lay and could not move, and I wondered what would become of my master.

“When next I saw him he had long sticks below his arms and walked strangely and slowly. On recommencing travel he could no longer ride in the saddle, because of a helpless leg, and was placed, with soft clothing, on the top of the boxes carried by one of my old comrades. For the first time since the start I was without my master. But he did not give me a load to carry, nor let another take his place, and I was allowed to walk behind him with the empty saddle.

“So soon as he could manage, he came to ride me again, and I was glad. I knew he was not strong then, for I could feel a strangeness in his seat, and was therefore gentle on the trail, so that I might not jar or hurt him.

“But he jumped from the saddle no more, not even to hunt, as had been his constant custom up till then. Yet, so far as lay in his power, he was restless as always, and still tried to search in strange nooks and corners, when they chanced by the trail. He accomplished his purpose, to some extent, by riding me where he wanted to go, and making his noise-piece go off when he sighted that which he sought. I know I was clumsy on such occasions, and that my master was not altogether happy in this makeshift way of hunting, but he made the best of it.

“It was about two months after this time that the desert ended, and the remnants of my master’s caravan crawled into a strange town where the people were foreign to me, as was the scent in the air. I was alone, except for my master, for none of my comrades of Katsina were left; and I had a heavy heart. I could see my master was happy, yet strangely sad. He stroked me often while the loads were being taken away and stacked in a pile, and I felt he would have liked to break down the barriers of dumbness and articulated words in my own language. And I understood, and rubbed my soft nose against him.

“After a time the men-people gathered us all together and led us away down the street of the strange town. We had gone but half-way when my master’s servant came running after us, and I was taken back to him.

“He stood beside me and stroked me ever so gently, and I knew, then, that his heart was heavy as mine. And then I was led away down the strange, unfriendly street again.

“I was terribly tired: I knew, somehow, that I would never see my master again—and that is all I remembered.”

Feri n’Gashi died, without the slightest sign of illness or pain, about one hour after our parting, marking one of the saddest experiences in my life and the passing of one of the noblest animals that ever lived.

CHAPTER IV
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD

[(Large-size)]

CHAPTER IV
THE GREAT SOUTH ROAD

Twice, in the course of my travels, I have found myself in great wildernesses that gave me no field of comparison until I turned to thought of the boundless sea—and then I had a simile that was almost complete. These wildernesses were: Arctic Canada and the Great Sahara.

With desire to describe the Sahara, and its ocean-like vastness, I have sketched a map that lies before me (see opposite page)—and I am disappointed. It is only some inches square. My Sahara that, for the sake of lucid explanation, I want to represent as the ocean, could be covered with a dinner plate; and might be a duck-pond, or a trout lake with an island or two, if, for a single moment, I forget the niceties of proportion and scale. That, precisely, is an influence on the senses that it is well to guard against because of the possibility of it turning the mind from reality, for, no matter how willing and piercing the scrutiny, this insignificant little sheet of paper can never be the actual Sahara.

And, after all, it is only the Real that matters; particularly to the frontiersman who lives close to the earth and beyond the ken of the subtleties of Civilisation, for he sees, with the eye of the untrammelled, the dominion of the world’s outer ranges and the bigness of things as they are. Wherefore, with pen directed by hand accustomed to rope a load, coax a rein, fondle a rifle, heal a wound, or kindle a camp-fire, I set out, as an awkward man of the outdoor places, without geographical technicalities, to describe the Great Sahara as I have come to read its character in the wake of many a trail over leagues of intimate sands.

Let us first endeavour to picture something of the vastness of the Sahara. In approximate area—excepting the Libyan Desert—it is about eighteen times larger than Britain and Ireland and about half the area of the United States. Large as that may seem, it must be taken into count that there is a sentimental vastness far beyond that—the sentiment of environment. To illustrate this. Suppose that one sets out to travel for a day, or a week, or a month, through rich, inhabited country with good roads, and with the good things of life always closely about one. Is it not the case that the plenitude of the countryside pleases to such a comforting extent that Distance is prone to be unesteemed, and unthought of as a cause for anxiety? Consequently, under such circumstances, all fear of distance, and the significance of overpowering immensity, do not enter into calculation. But it so happens that that is a tremendously important factor, which must always be reckoned with, in any considered treatment of the Sahara, where conditions are entirely opposite. No one would hesitate to cross America to-day, but could anyone contemplate a journey in the Great Desert without, at once, being confronted with lively dread of its vastness and desolation? Indeed, so strong is this influence that the eventual result, once one enters that mystical land, is that the mind becomes almost disqualified to reckon in terms of numerals. All that one is constantly aware of is, that limitless leagues of drear desolate sand lie ahead, and that, no matter what effort is made, no matter how well the caravan travels, the twenty or thirty odd miles that are the record of a day’s endeavour leave one apparently in the same position as before, with horizon, and sand, and sky no nearer to the vision than from camps that lie on the trail behind.

In that prospect there is, surely, a sentiment of the temperament of the sea, in likeness of boundless, unchanging, unconquerable leagues. But the sea swings and curls and breaks in foam, and is alive; whereas the sands of the desert lie ever expressionless and dead. So that, if we accept that in majestic space the sea and the desert are the same, we still have to admit that the lassitude of the desert multiplies the seeds of desolation to such an extent that, almost tangibly, certainly sentiently, it enlarges its empty vastness.

Wherefore I am confident that it is in all such intriguing influences that we find the very essence of the desert’s desolation and magnitude of space.

That it has a very real vastness that intimidates is borne out, in our everyday life, by the accounts of tourists who have travelled in Algeria, or elsewhere, and who have been a few days south of, say, Biskra by camel, and who return to recount how they have seen the Sahara. How many such tourists have stood on this mere threshold of a mighty sandscape, beneath the Aurès Mountains, and conjectured on the immensity of the Great South Road that points the way to the heart and the mystery of another world, unyieldingly remote, and not as theirs.

And what happens then? Why is it that we do not have record that some of those tourists have got down from this doorstep of Biskra and set out into the Great Desert? If it was a fair land that lay before them most surely they would flock upon the way. But it is not so, and no foot makes the move. They have viewed an awe-inspiring immensity that casts a deadly spell of dread. And, one by one, year by year, they are repelled and go their way; back through the friendly mountains. After all, this is far from astonishing of strangers, for they but express something of the deep-rooted, superstitious dread of the desert which is found in the soul of every native who lives anywhere within reach of its borders, or in its interior.

Furthermore, it may be well to remember that the Sahara is a land of great antiquity, that takes one to realms of Biblical times. Steeped in the religion of Islam, it knows little perceptible change to-day, and is not on a plane with the modern world. Wherefore, even if we only set our minds back in keeping with a not very distant period of the past, it is not difficult thus to find another simile to the sea in picturing that it was only a little more than four centuries ago that the Atlantic Ocean probably held a similar dread of immensity before Columbus discovered America.

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 taken to 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 in Novitates 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’s Travels, 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 Sahara between 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 in Novitates 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, about latitude 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 of every change in the land—which I read to be decay.

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 ostriches do not exist in 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 from a 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 through solid rock to 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 splash of 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 possible for 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 of their slopes are a feast to the eyes of traveller weary of scanning limitless plains of sand.

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 remains a 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 been completely 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 the Ehaggaran Tuaregs had at that time trekked 500 to 600 miles, to outlying wadis west of Aïr, to keep their flocks and camels alive on Alwat, a plant common to some regions, in sandy wadis and among Ergs.)

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

NOTE HOW PASSAGE OF CURRENT HAS RIPPLED THE SAND