Chapter VIII: Leaving the Bushland Behind: Aïr Entered

On 29th March my Takoukout camp was dismantled, and everything packed up in readiness to continue farther on into the interior, where Agades, in Aïr, I hoped would be my next place of halt.

My stay at Takoukout had been the least profitable of camping places. It is true it was not territory where bird life was plentiful, but results would have been better if ostrich hunting had not taken up the greater part of my time.

At this date my total collections numbered 485 birds and 121 mammals, as well as 374 butterflies and 138 moths; and, of those, 58 birds were taken at Takoukout and 8 mammals, including three complete gazelles (not merely the head and horns, but the whole animal).

At the end of my stay at Takoukout I lost the services of Sakari. He had grown less and less inclined to follow the arduous life I led him, whilst he had developed a hankering to be back amongst the companionship of his own people. Moreover, he had now a better idea of the stern conditions which the nature of the country imposed—conditions that promised to grow worse rather than better—and plainly he did not relish the prospect of what lay ahead. His three experiences of being lost in the bush, which I refer to in the preceding chapter, did not tend to help matters, and, finally, seeing that his heart was no longer in his work, I considered it advisable to pay him off and send him back, though I was very sorry to lose him, since his departure left me without any one to assist in the task of skinning specimens.

I bid good-bye, also, to the old hunter Tsofo, who had joined me for the period that I hunted at Takoukout, so that I might have the assistance of his local knowledge. He had never been to Aïr, and, therefore, could not aid me in the same way further on; a circumstance which I think we both regretted, for the old fellow was genuinely loath to go home, and I sorry to lose him. There had always been plenty of buck-meat in camp, and the old fellow had never wanted food, which was a state of affairs that greatly pleased him, for he had close acquaintance with poverty in the ordinary round of living in this poverty-stricken land.

John, therefore, was the only personal servant to go on with me to Aïr—faithful, cheerful John, who did not care two straws where he went, so long as he had his master with him.

Therefore John and the camel-men were all that composed my following on the way to Agades, while the caravan was accompanied by the escort of six native soldiers, who had been detailed by the officer at Tanout to escort me as far as Aderbissinat, where there was a small Fort midway on my journey.

I intended to leave Takoukout on the night of the 30th, for the moon was full and opportune for night travel.

The day was employed proportioning loads and securely roping them, when sufficient rope had been found, for it is astonishing how such things disappear in the careless hands of natives during a month in camp, and on this occasion, when packages came to be made up, many ropes were short and others destroyed by white ants. As there was no longer village nor market-place where such native commodities could be purchased, there was no alternative but to insist that the camel-men search the bush for suitable tree-bark which could be plaited into rude cords; and this task kept the men fully employed all afternoon.

With the aid of the light of the moon and brightly blazing camp-fires, the camels were loaded up about 11 p.m., and we filed out of the old stockade, which had been _home_ for almost a month, and made slowly off into the shadowy bush.

Night travel always holds for me an element of adventure, and it is not without livening and keenly alert senses that one advances into the unknown in the dark in the wake of some dusky leader who has none of the apprehension which the tendency to blindness produces in the stranger who is ignorant of the lie of the land ahead. Under such circumstances night travel also holds novelty, and, although one loses the opportunity to view the landscape as one passes along, there is a freshening of the senses that makes ample compensation: I am aware that it is cool, and that in consequence it is good to be out in those common hours of sleep; I observe the gaunt outline of the phantom-like camels that advance without sound of foot-fall; I see the shadows of low trees that ever change their shapes as we wend our course in and out among them over the gleaming moonlit ways of sand; I hear, sometimes, the low soft speech of the camel-man in consultation, followed, as a rule, by the caravan being halted and the discordant roar of a camel, which jars on the calm night stillness, while the men are righting a load; . . . afterwards silence is regained, and we are as a part of the brooding night, the camels padding along quite noiselessly in the sand, and there is naught that I can hear but the slight creaking of a load that rests uneasily on a pack-saddle, and the gritty scrape of the hard-skin sandals of a shuffling camel-man near me.

When the moon went down about 3 a.m., we camped for a few hours in the bush, off-loading the camels and lying down to rest on the bare ground without troubling to unpack blankets.

At daybreak, 6 a.m., the journey was resumed, and we camped at the well known as Tchingaraguen about noon, having travelled 25 miles since we broke camp.

On the following day we again travelled a long distance, camping by the light of the moon, about 9 p.m., at the well named Tadélaka, being then only about 10 miles short of the small outpost at Aderbissinat. Throughout the day the type of bush country continued the same, in aspect and insomuch that there was no visible sign that it is inhabited, though we are aware that there are a few Tuaregs, and their herds hidden in the inscrutable land somewhere.

Next morning, 2nd April, we made the short journey to Aderbissinat and halted for the day.

What a strange place Aderbissinat is: the whole no larger than a small farm-dwelling enclosed within a square zareba, which might be the fence of a crofter’s garden, while immediately outside are the wells and one or two temporary native shelters. About the wells are grouped some lean listless cattle and goats, and some tired donkeys and camels belonging to passing caravans. How well they fit the desolate scene! Listen to the plaintive lowing of the thirsty cattle, not the common cry of a domestic beast, but a wild strange sound peculiar to the land—a deep rumbling forced-out bellow that tails away with terrible insistency to a wail of want so clear and expressive in sound that even humans can easily comprehend that the animals are in dire distress. The simple unadorned scene, which is but a tiny speck of habitation in a boundless virgin space, lies in a hollow, so that approaching it either from the south or the north one is almost upon it before it is discovered.

If any of my fellow-men should ever doubt the constancy of the old-fashioned prestige of the white race in Africa, which goes to uphold peace in the wildest corners of the continent, I should like to direct their attention to such a place as this. Aderbissinat stands alone in one of the bleakest spots that could well be imagined, and isolated to such an extent that, if it happened to be attacked, it might easily be wiped out in a night and its nearest neighbour remain in ignorance of the fact for days—Tanout lies 75½ miles south, and Agades 93½ miles north, while both flanks are open to unlimited unguarded ranges. Yet all the force within this tiny Fort is one French officer and one sergeant, and a mere handful of native troops. Is it conceivable that it is such a force as this that intimidates the unreliable natives of the immediate neighbourhood to uphold peacefulness, or that keeps away the powerful bands of robbers from the north? I think not; rather is the cause to be found in native tradition of the prowess of the white race, and their far-reaching rule. It is not of an immediate act of rashness that the usual native fanatic is afraid, but of the inevitable consequences that they know would sweep in upon them once they had raised the white man’s wrath. So that, in a broad sense, it is simply this tradition of great power that safeguards Aderbissinat, and other undermanned posts of the kind that are dreadfully remote yet not hopelessly beyond the reach of the long arm of justice; and therefore _Tradition_ represents an unseen strength that is unrecorded on any roll, yet is reliable and useful as an army of men, impotent though it be except in significant influence.

Diminutive though it is, Aderbissinat Fort serves more than one purpose: it guards a precious store of water on the edge of the desert, which furnishes half the water-supply that is necessary for caravans to carry on the journey to Agades, for the intervening desert is waterless except for one well at Abellama; it serves as a blockhouse half way between Tanout and Agades, and therefore is protection to the highway; while it is also an important relay and checking station for the transport of the large supplies, chiefly grain, that are constantly going north to Agades to feed the considerable forces that are stationed there. Native escort, on foot, invariably accompanies those caravans of supplies, and the duty, burdened with rifle and accoutrements, is a very hard one in such a climate; so much so, that it is only by a series of relays that the escort for the total journey is successfully maintained. Thus, escort from Tanout is relieved at Aderbissinat, and fresh men take on the journey to Agades. Also, on occasions, the animals of a caravan are changed at Aderbissinat and others complete the journey.

Therefore, when all things are considered, Aderbissinat is of much importance to the transport of the country, and to the existence of Agades, and I am inclined to think that it has always held something of this importance as an outlying gateway to Aïr, for all Tuaregs, whether old or young, claim it to be within the southern boundary of their territory, though it is fully 100 miles from the foot of the Aïr mountains; and no doubt it is in consequence of their claim that the French authorities recognise it as within Aïr at the present time.

There are five caravan stages between Aderbissinat and Agades, known to the natives as Timboulaga, Tessalatin, Abellama, Tegguidi, and Tilaràderas. The camping-ground known as Timboulaga is within the bush-belt, but the others are all in the open desert, which commences about 19 miles north of Aderbissinat.

I continued my journey on the following day, leaving Aderbissinat in the cool of the late afternoon, and utilising the kindly moon to light us on our way until camping-ground was chosen, about midnight, some distance beyond Timboulaga.

On the next day, which was a Sunday (4th April), we again did not move until the afternoon, while the camels, fifteen of them, were turned out in the bush to partake of a good meal, as fodder promised to be less plentiful ahead. Under suitable conditions, camels should be allowed to graze at least five or six hours each day after halt is made.

Early in the day I shot two gazelles to augment the food supplies of the natives, and put in rather an uncomfortable time thereafter, for, when the sun rose high overhead, we were left without shade, and enjoyable rest was thereby impossible. In the full midday hours the sun is so directly overhead, that on no side of the dwarf, thin-leaved bush is there shade, which is a circumstance that reminds me to recount the wisdom of my camels, for, if the tired beasts happen to be off loaded about that time of day, they all proceed to select, with perfect knowledge and precision, the north-east side of the thickest bush available, thus choosing resting-places exactly where shade will be thrown later on when the sun commences to swing into the west.

I had intended to travel again at night, but the sun became so irksome, that I grew very restless, and about 2 p.m. was glad to call the camels in and start loading up, even though it entailed unpleasant labour for the camel-men in the intense heat.

Three hours after leaving Timboulaga we ascended perceptibly to country of changed aspect, where the land was a desert of sand-dunes, and sand-pockets, and level pools of small gravel. This was the beginning of the desert, and the end of earth’s fertility; behind lay the bush that struggled for a patchy existence in an ungenerous soil, which was a circumstance sad enough, yet infinitely more blessed did that barely clad beggary seem when compared with the awful desolate deadness of desert, which was, in general, unable to support life altogether.

On this night we camped at Tessalatin, which was but a name in a drear level land of sand. The altitude there was 1,875 ft., 225 ft. above Aderbissinat, which now lay 31 miles behind.

On the following day we left camp at 3.30 p.m. and camped at Abellama about 11 p.m. Throughout the journey we travelled over level desert— desert cloudless and pale as the sky, but of a buffish or khaki tone, and in places covered with tussocks of hardy grass, which catch and hold the loose sands that are the sweepings of the wind, so that they bank up in mounds and wave-crests, and bear the appearance of sand-dunes on the sea-shore. Here and there a tiny thorn bush, alone and hardly living; at other times, a scattered group of bushes that find existence possible and a little easier, since they are banded together, and each protecting the other from exposure to the onslaught of withering sand-storms. After crossing a gradual rise to a height of land about mid-journey to-day, we began a slight descent toward Abellama (alt., 1,700 ft.), where there is a deep well which is said to be as ancient as the old caravan roads across Africa, and which is the only place where water is to be found between Aderbissinat and Agades; so that, though drear and comfortless and lacking in everything that is picturesque, Abellama is a name that is conjured with by weary men of the caravans that travel there thirsting for water and sorely in need of replenishing the precious store that for some days has been slowly diminishing in sagging goat-skins.

At Abellama, as there was no shady bush to camp beside, I resorted to rigging up the baggage tarpaulin in the open desert, and camped under a few feet of shade like the veriest gipsy Tuareg.

As the months advance, so is the temperature increasing, and now that there was less protection than ever from the sun, it seemed to me that I was experiencing greater heat than I had ever known, and heat that was terribly exhausting.

The cause of the exceedingly fierce temperature (105° Fahr. to-day in the shade) may be accounted for in the fact that the sand is a ready medium for holding and reflecting the heat of the sun. As an example of this: if a man sit on a camel for some time, with feet dangling downwards, the sole-leather of boot or shoe or sandal, which is facing the sand and not the sun, becomes so heated that the feet are vastly uncomfortable, while if he should dismount and place weight upon them, the soles will be found to be so burning hot that he will exclaim with pain.

When evening came on this day, the caravan did not move off, as I had intended, for a change had come over me, and, for the first time, I felt too weak to go on. Dysentery and fever were upon me, illness which seemed to be the outcome of some kind of mild sunstroke, for I was quite dizzy and confused. The night’s rest helped me little, and I spent the next day also in camp, feeling very miserable in my hot, improvised shelter. It was a bad place to be caught ill in—no restful shade at hand, not even scraggy bush, indeed, hardly enough wood to make a camp-fire; nothing but wastes of dreary sun-bleached desert. One lay all day and almost panted in the heat, and thanked God with a deep sigh of relief when the sun went down.

At the end of the second day I felt I must make an effort to move on, and therefore called John and the camel-men to my couch upon the sand, and bade them prepare to start at midnight, even if it was found necessary to rope me to my camel so that I should not collapse and fall to the ground from weakness. This resolution was carried out, and about 1 a.m. the caravan was _en route_ under the blessed coolness of the night, and aided by the light of the moon, which rose about the time the men commenced to load up the camels.

Tegguidi was reached not long after daylight, which enabled the caravan to negotiate the rough descent of the Pass in the cliff that is there without serious mishap to the loads, and we camped in due course on the flat plain that lay below. By which time I felt somewhat better, though I did not completely recover until some days later, when privileged to rest and shelter in a cool mud-house at Agades.

The abrupt change in elevation which occurs at Tegguidi is very remarkable and the cliff the most unique geological occurrence that I had thus far seen. It is a striking line of sheer cliff, which is very rugged in countenance, while at the base there are bankings and columns of detached rock and huge boulders. Advancing from the south, no sign of the cliff is visible until you arrive almost at the very edge of it, and look down over the grim countenance that faces the north, and out upon the pale sand-plains that stretch away from a level 200 ft. below. One is forcibly reminded of the open sea and rugged coast that stems the tide, for the whole formation, stretching east and west as far as eye can see, is like to the cliffs of the sea-shore, and one wonders in what age and by what force of elements it was fashioned to be so complete a barrier, and if it holds some strange geological secret.

Tegguidi cliff is of interest to sportsmen, for a few Barbary sheep are to be found there, while I received reliable reports of one or two lions seen in the vicinity (probably the rare nameless beast), which is quite feasible, as there is a tiny spring of water at a point known as Irhayen further east on the same cliff.

A comfortless day was put in at Tegguidi, trying to rest as best we could lying out on the bare plain as before, while the camels foraged for thriftless pickings.

With the advent of the moon we thankfully stole away from the place in the middle of the night.

When day broke, the caravan did not camp, for, anxious on account of my health and our small water store, I kept moving on until 2.30 p.m., when we camped about 11 miles from Agades, after having been thirteen hours on the march. Desert was crossed throughout the journey, dreary country of sand-dunes and great flat stretches of sand, with occasional gravel rises, which were sometimes buff like the sand and sometimes grey, but the pebbles always as level and neat as if set in place by the hands of skilful workmen. During the journey there was practically no change in elevation, which remained about 1,600 ft.

Again we snatched brief rest in the early part of the night and then travelled on to Agades, reaching our destination on the morning of the sixth day of travel (10th April), every man and beast of the caravan dreadfully tired; not because of the distance we had come, 93 miles, but on account of the ravaging sun, and for want of adequate sleep and proper food and water.

A note in my diary at this time reads: “It is uncanny land to travel through—barren of everything—dead like the ashes of a furnace fire—in no way beautiful, in nothing inspiring. . . . I was really glad when I entered Agades.”