Chapter X: Servitude

The Tuareg nomads of the Sahara consider themselves the superiors of all who toil with their hands, and there is a wide distinction between nobleman and serf.

The nomads are the overlords of the land. It is they who saw to it in the past that the oases were kept supplied with labour to till the soil and reap the harvest, promote bazaars and build towns, on which they might draw heavily for dates and cereals and other rare luxuries of their table; exacted as tribute for playing the part of guardians, or bartered for in more creditable exchange. The Tuaregs were ever cavaliers and soldiers of fortune, who scorned manual labour as an indignity. Nevertheless, it was an economic convenience for their country to grow food where the land could give of it, and to this end they acquired their workmen.

Slave-raids to Hausaland, slave-caravans, slave-markets in the heart of the Sahara, were the common custom of the land up till quite recent times, and were the outcome of the need for labour in the oases, and in the camps of the overlords.

The ideal society of the Tuareg is that which is without government of any kind, to permit that they may freely execute their turbulent authority unhindered, and exact homage at the point of the sword. But the old regime is passing; though the stock of the slave class remain, either as servants to their old masters or as sedentary tribes within themselves.

The active practice of slavery has ceased, though the frame of mind still persists. Boys and girls are still sold out of families, quietly, but there is no cruelty in the transaction, for the slave class of a Tuareg family are permitted the complete freedom of the household so long as they observe the laws of their position. As a rule, the serf has not a very brilliant mentality, and the lifelong habit of toil is not easily disturbed. They are accustomed to serve, and, indeed, so long as they are fed and have a place to sleep, they appear as content as those in their natural homes in Hausaland or elsewhere. Many of these serfs who are alive to-day, were in the first instance bought and sold in the market-place, or were direct captives of nomadic raids. Under the military regime of the French they are more or less free to go their way to-day; but they make no change. They remain in the families as before, assured of protection and livelihood that might not be theirs if they cast adrift.

It is on this slave class that all the hard work falls, whether in the Tuareg camps or in the centres of cultivation or commercial enterprise; and all are accustomed to their nomad overlords.

The widely scattered places of sedentary occupation in the Sahara may take two forms: they may be oases in the midst of sandy desert, or they may be havens among the mountains.

The desert oasis has its planted belt of date palms and plentiful supply of water, usually drawn from wells, sometimes from springs in open ditches. Under the shade of the palms are the irrigated gardens, where constant labour, at the seasons of cultivation, is demanded to flood the soil and nurse the plants to maturity in surroundings that would give no life without artificial aid.

The gardens are sandy and small: a network of closely crowded allotments, each fenced with palm staves to hold in check the driving sand. By means of a regular system of irrigation channels the soil is fed with water at intervals each day; drawn to the surface by oxen, or by hand, at the expense of a good deal of patient labour. The consequent dampness and humidity breed malaria, which is, perhaps, a further reason for the importation of the negroid serf, who is, through hereditary environment, familiar with the destructive malady. Indeed, in this respect, at the time of rain it is common practice for many semi-nomadic masters to evacuate the oases altogether and roam far out into the more healthy desert, tending their flocks while leaving their serfs alone to look after the cultivation.

The palms produce dates, which ripen in the autumn, and the gardens principally wheat, millet, tomatoes, and onions in sparing quantities. All the work of cultivation is done by hand.

The dwellings of the desert oases have the character of towns, not villages. In a sense that designation may appear overdrawn, insomuch that many oases are no larger than the tiniest of villages, but against that should be set an environment that is so appallingly blank that any society of dwellings takes on the glamour of urban life. The market-places have their bazaars and their movement of people, the sandy streets are tolerably well laid out, while the clay-built buildings are compact and complete, and sometimes ornamental.

But they are few and very widely scattered, and vary greatly in standard. Some are mere hovels, others towns in the full sense of the word; and these latter are chiefly in the Algerian Sahara near to Arab civilisation, though Bilma, Fachi, and like outstanding ports in the desert should on no account be overlooked.

The sedentary havens among mountains such as Ahaggar and parts of Aïr are different from the desert oases. They are in character villages, and the life is entirely rural, as a place is rural that herds flocks about its doors and lives, for the most part, in grass-covered hutments.

In Aïr in particular, and in some cases in Ahaggar, these permanent villages are occupied by Tuaregs who, having fallen on evil days and lost their camels and means of getting about, have taken to semi-sedentary life with bitterness in their hearts. Those have their slave-people, who, besides doing all the manual work in camp, labour at cultivation, as in the oases, when water permits of cultivation. But such harvest as they gather is meagre indeed, and insufficient to serve the needs of the community, since there is little scope for cultivation in the narrow, stony valleys between the slopes of the mountains; and lack of water adds a further drawback. On that account, also, only a few date-palms are planted near such villages.

On the whole, there is poor encouragement to toil because of the adverse conditions, and prolonged spells of idleness have no doubt developed the spirit of laziness that is prevalent in all these places.

Tuaregs are the authoritative owners of the villages, and have a definite residence there; though every now and again a family or two, with their herds, wander away on the open trail for a time, giving expression to the restless spirit that hungers for the life of the untrammelled wilderness.

Whether desert oasis or mountain village, all go to make up a part of the social fabric of the Sahara, and the nomad camps the other part. Each depends on the other. The nomads rely on the sedentary people for markets for the goods transported by their caravans—foreign, or products of their camps—and for such foods as are the outcome of cultivation. On the other hand, the sedentary people look to the nomad to keep up communication with the outer world, and guard them against enemies in time of dispute or war. It would be difficult for one to subsist without the other, so that there is logically a certain intimate relation between the nomad and “The Sons of Toil,” despite the proud bearing of the former, which has behind it something of the instincts of aloofness that are disposed to be characteristics of untamed creatures of the wild.

One fact emerges that is of more than ordinary interest in consideration of the social restlessness in civilised countries to-day. It is true, in effect, that any _solidity_ of human existence that obtains in the Sahara, frail though it be, centres round these permanent places of production. Moreover, I believe that the whole future of the Sahara lies at their door, and that the entire land will ultimately survive or go under according to the efforts they put forth. The need to labour is clearly defined before the mighty forces of unstifled Nature. There is no alternative, except starvation and death, which is, after all, a primary, if primitive, law of Nature, age-old and irrefutable, though often overlooked. The object-lessons of this need industriously to struggle for existence are about us in every country-side, down the lanes or out in the fields, wherever living thing has dwelling and the ways of Nature are closely observed. So much is barren in the Sahara that the labour of man stands forth in all its merit; and, insignificant though the Great Desert is among the peopled countries of the world, the little society it contains owes gratitude to the hands of toil that have made life to some extent possible.

In most cases the sedentary cultivators are of negroid origin, drawn largely, at one time or another, from the vast populations of the Western Sudan. Hausa and Beri-Beri blood predominate. In the Tuareg camps in the south they are known as _Belas’_ or _Buzus’_, in Kowar they hold to the race names of _Beri-Beri_ and _Tebu_, in Ahaggar they are _Imrads_, and thence, northward, _Haratin_. All have the general features of the negro, and are dark-skinned.

They toil simply and live simply, and have a happier composure than the Tuareg, aided by a somewhat dull mentality that does not possess the activity that leads to fretfulness and brooding. About their dwellings they appear to see no shame, or drawback, in living in considerable squalor; and filthy hovels are not uncommon, with unclean occupants in ragged clothing.

Between seasons of harvest many of the sedentary people know severe poverty, sometimes famine, and at such times almost anything is eaten: even the hides of camels or goats are boiled down to a chewable substance, and the questionable soup consumed.

It is not generally realised that there are large stretches of the Sahara without fuel for fires.[17] Many oases suffer great inconvenience from dearth of the commodity, and fires to cook even a single meal a day are sometimes not procurable. Pieces of palm-stems often furnish the chief material, but are poor, dense-smoking fuel. However, anything that burns will do, and I have often known a dozen women and children hover about my caravan encampment with baskets to collect the droppings of the camels.

Like all else in the Sahara, the oases suffer a perpetual onslaught of sand, which fills their gardens, their streets, and their homes; often banking up like drifts of snow against the dwellings, or forming in eddies and pools where the sweep of the wind circles a bend. Outside some oases sand is banked in huge dunes, which have to be continually fought against by the inhabitants, or they would engulf all. The predominance of sand everywhere does not add to cleanliness.

One of the most pleasant experiences that one can have in the Sahara is to come suddenly, without any forewarning from the character of the country, upon a place of human habitation after long weeks in barren wastes. The joy of the society of mankind is great, and the chatter of people about their homes contains a quality of comfort that is akin to home.

The scattered oases in the Sahara are as ports to those who roam the highways of the ocean. And in that there is one startling revelation in the fact that, like most big harbours of civilisation, the chief oases have their underworld of vice and wickedness. And this is entirely a custom of the Sahara; which, once again, points strongly to its resemblance to the sea, for I have never known like habits to prevail anywhere among the populated regions of the Sudan. Bilma, which is a notable port in the land, might be taken as an instance, since the reputation of the _Oulad Nails_, in the Northern Sahara, is already widely known.

We find there a powerful and openly recognised guild, with a chief woman at its head, known by the name _Diarabba_. It has been in existence so long as the Beri-Beri and Tebu natives of the oasis can remember. The cold-eyed, gaudily ornamented women of the Guild—and most of the women of Bilma belong to it—perform an extraordinary dance which is only crudely graceful, yet picturesque because of the peculiarly shaped, coloured plume-like palm-fans, which each dancer waves in rhythm with the tom-tom music. They dance in a line before the musicians, moving their feet in accurate time and swaying to right and to left. The dance waxes faster and faster, while the men of the caravans look on.

At last one of the musicians drops his drum and runs forward to seize one of the women, whom he lifts bodily in his arms, and carries to place on a rug on the sand, the while the others continue to dance. The “belle” that has been chosen remains still, crouched upon the ground, while, one by one, men in the crowd who court her favour go forward and place money or other gifts on her head.

One shudders and turns away; the barbarism of the East is not dead—yet neither is religion nor quaint superstition. I walked outside the north walls of the town, seeking the pure open air. A solitary tomb loomed in my path. I inquired its history and was told:

“There a great Marabout died, and our fathers say that people passing the dead man’s grave saw green lights at night, and said: _‘There lies a man who is glad even in death’_; and so they built a tomb over him.”

In the belief that the oases and the sedentary people are the mainspring of the Sahara’s system, it may be worth while to bear in mind the state of the people, in picturing any possibility of resuscitating the land, of which we hear projects from time to time. Prolonged immorality brings decadence in its wake, and extreme poverty can do likewise. I see in the oases to-day human life at a very low ebb; human life that has been allowed to go to rot, because, through the ages, the Sahara has had no strong _friends_ to reach out a hand and lift it from “the Slough of Despond.”

If the oases could be rejuvenated it is possible to believe that, despite the awe-inspiring forces of Nature, great things might yet be accomplished in reviving the Sahara; for the oases were ever the keystones of the land.

But that is a vast undertaking to attempt, and almost impossible of accomplishment. The low ebb is running fast, and the back eddies of the land are full of wreckage that slide toward oblivion in the end. Which is a clear illustration that, _when the character of the people of a country weakens, so must that country suffer_.

CHAPTER XI

STRANGE CAMP-FIRES