THE SAHARA
An expanse of land as large as the main body of the United States
stretches across the northern part of Africa. From the Atlantic Ocean to
the Red Sea, and from the foot of the Atlas Mountains to the Sudan, it
is a weird panorama of rock waste--level, rugged, shingly, and
mountainous, according to locality. In places only it is penetrated by
large and permanently flowing streams. On the eastern borderland the
Nile pours a mighty flood, winding a sinuous passage along its
self-made flood-plain, the Egypt of history. In the west the Niger has
forced its way into the confines of the desert and then, as if rebuffed,
turns its course southward.
This great domain of the simoom has every diversity of surface. The
higher summits of the Tarso Mountains are eight thousand feet above sea
level; the Shott, a chain of salt lakes south of the Atlas Mountains,
are about one hundred feet below sea level. The depression in which
these lakes is situated probably was once the head of the Gulf of Sidra;
but the never-ceasing winds have partly filled the depression, cutting
off the head of the gulf in the same manner that wind-blown sands
severed what is now Imperial Valley from the Gulf of California. Around
the briny lakes are marshes of quicksands, and woe betide the luckless
traveller who strays to the one side or the other of the beaten trails.
Unless help is at hand, life will have neither joys nor troubles for him
after a few brief minutes of struggle.
The Sahara proper begins at the south slope of the Atlas Mountains.
Where there are no Atlas Mountains, it begins almost at the
Mediterranean's edge. In the valleys of the Atlas and along the
Mediterranean coast there is a strip of fertile land, wide here, narrow
there, that produces grain and fruit. The Arabs call it the
_Tell_. "Beyond the Tell is Sah-ra," or the Sahara. This is the name
which the Arabs apply to the archipelago of fertile spots, or oases.
Beyond the zone of oases is the desert. One becomes instantly and
painfully aware that it is a desert on leaving the last oasis. Go a
thousand miles southward, eastward, or westward from Tripoli, and one
encounters but a single thing--an ocean of orange-colored rock waste,
the Guebla of the Arabs.
[Illustration: On the sands of the desert]
The desert is a desert for want of water only. There is no lack of
nutrition in the soil, nor is there anything in surface or temperature
that makes a desert unproductive. Temperature and winds reach great
extremes in fierceness, however. The temperature of the air in the
noonday sun will often exceed one hundred and forty-five degrees; it may
reach one hundred and fifty-five degrees. In the shade it frequently
climbs to one hundred and thirty degrees in the vicinity of the tropics.
Unless one is at a considerable altitude there is not much relief at
night, though the thermometer may drop to ninety degrees. Farther north,
however, and at an altitude of five thousand feet or more, the
temperature of the night is even more cruel than that of the day.
Immediately after sunset a sharp chill becomes perceptible. At first it
is a welcome relief from the intolerable heat. By nine o'clock it begins
to cut like a stiletto, and at midnight the water suspended in shallow
dishes clinks into ice. The drivers burrow deep into the sand and wrap
woollen baracans about them; the camels shiver and even blubber like
whipped bullies.
The air is so dry, however, that the extreme heat of day is by no means
insupportable. Sunstroke is almost unknown, and even the tragedy of
perishing for want of water is very rare; for the caravan drivers know
just where to find water, and there are many hidden watering places that
are known to the crafty Tuaregs and Bedouins. Many of the watering
places are wells that have been sunk in various localities along the
caravan trails. The intense heat, great depth of rock waste, and dry air
are not favorable to the above-ground flow of rivers. But nearly every
river has an underground flow that is pretty likely to exist all the
year round.
One may follow a stream of considerable volume down the southern slope
of the Atlas Mountains. The volume of water grows less and less until at
last it apparently disappears. Not all is lost by evaporation, however;
possibly the greater part sinks into the porous rock waste. And the
rock waste?--perhaps it may be twenty, fifty, or one hundred and fifty
feet deep. At all events, the water sinks until it reaches bed rock or
clay through which it cannot pass. Then it flows along what may once
have been an above-ground channel until fierce winds and cloud-bursts
buried it deep.
But the half-savage dwellers of the desert know just where to tap these
underground reservoirs and streams; even the dumb animals know
instinctively where to look for water. It is merely a question of
instinct coupled with experience, and the animal's judgment is about as
good as the man's. When one finds the spot, it is necessary only to dig.
The water may be two feet below the surface or it may be ten feet. When
the moist sand is reached the task is half over. A foot or two more and
the hole begins to fill. The water is hot, brackish, and repulsive to
the taste, but it is water--and in the desert, water is water!
The simoom is also an institution of the desert. The simoom is
unmistakably a wind, and surely no one who has not had the experience
can appreciate it. Even the West India hurricanes or the typhoons of the
China Sea are more kindly. They have plenty of destructive energy, it is
true, but the simoom has all this and much else besides. It comes not
without warning, but the warning and the wind are not far apart. The
approach of the simoom is a dense black cloud of whirling and seething
fine dust. As it strikes one, the choking, suffocating blast of hot air
and dust overcomes everything that has life. The caravan men and the
animals as well turn their backs to the wind and lie down with faces
close to the ground. In a minute or two the full strength of the blast
is on and the simoom is picking up not only the fine rock waste, but the
coarser fragments as well, and is hurling them along at Empire State
Express velocity. One might as well try to face a hail of leaden
bullets. It is a cruel blast that neither animal nor human being can
withstand. The camels crouch with their heads pointing away from the
wind and nostrils close to the ground; their drivers lie prone with
faces in little hollows scooped in the sand.
Perhaps the full blast of the simoom may last an hour--perhaps two or
even three hours. In lighter strain it may continue a whole day. When,
finally, it ceases the air is thick with fine dust; one can see scarcely
a rod away. Sun and sky are hidden, and the blackness of a tornado or of
a London fog prevails. The fine dust floating in the air may not settle
for several days. Perhaps a week afterward there may be a haze that
partly obscures the sun. The dust, finer than the finest flour, pervades
everything in the desert. One's clothing is full of it; one's hair
becomes harsh and matted; the skin becomes rough, cracks and peels; the
eyes are inflamed; mouth, lips, and nostrils are swollen. But the great
bodily discomfort resulting from the simoom does not last forever; it
gives place to bodily irritation of some other sort, which is indeed a
grateful change merely because it is a change.
The sand dunes of the Sahara are interesting to those who are not
compelled to travel among them, but to the unfortunates who traverse
them they are almost heart-breaking. Imagine oneself standing on an
elevation a few hundred feet higher than the surrounding country. There
is but one landscape--waves upon waves of the loose rock waste, for
convenience called sand, as far as the eye can reach. Sometimes the
waves are in long windrows, but oftener they are short and choppy like
the surface waves of midocean.
Unlike the ocean waves, in which only the form moves forward, while the
water composing it moves up and down only, the sand dune and the
material of which it is composed are both moving in the direction of
the wind. A breeze even of five or six miles an hour will keep the
lighter surface dust moving freely, while a twelve-mile wind will not
only sweep along much larger particles but it also carries more of them.
And just as the surface, or "skin," friction forms waves at the surface
of water, it also piles the desert sand in wave-like dunes.
The loose bits of rock waste are carried along, up the windward slope of
the dune until they roll over its crest, where, no longer impelled by
the wind, they come to rest. Thus, the crest, built forward by new
material constantly added, is advancing. Valleys are filled; old stream
channels are obliterated; and the inequalities of the surface are
levelled off until the whole landscape is one of shifting, drifting
sand.
Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the Sahara and the arid lands
southward to the Sudan are by no means destitute of life and wealth. It
is an almost universal custom to speak of the barren condition of the
desert. The contrary is the truth; there is no soil elsewhere so fertile
and productive. It is vastly superior even to the soil of the lands
reclaimed from the bottom of the North Sea.
Water is the magic wand that makes the sands of the Sahara bring forth
crops that are marvellous both in quantity and quality. No fruit grown
elsewhere in the world can compare with that grown on desert lands, and
the French engineers are planning the means whereby water may be
obtained. Surface water that is available to irrigate the wastes of the
Sahara does not exist. The level of the Nile is so far below the surface
on both sides of its own flood-plain that its waters cannot be used for
the reclamation of any part of the Libyan Desert, and the same is
practically true of the Niger, which barely more than touches the
borders of the Sahara. The few wadys, or "dry washes," are destitute of
water except when a cloud-burst may fill them; but this happens at
intervals of years only.
The engineer takes into his confidence a caravan driver--perhaps an
Arab, possibly a Berber, but quite as likely a slave. And the long
experience has taught the caravan man where to find the precious water.
The engineer then brings his science into play and drives an artesian
well. The well thus driven may be a "gusher," but for most of them pumps
are required to raise the water to the surface. The best well, however,
furnishes water enough to irrigate but a very small area. Indeed, all
the lands of the Sahara together irrigated by artesian wells would make
an area scarcely larger than the State of Delaware, and all the water
thus obtained would not supply New York City!
Nevertheless, the water obtained by artesian wells has proved a great
blessing to the dwellers of the desert. If the water is found along one
or another of the numerous caravan routes, an increase in caravan
commerce is apt to result, for along many routes the volume of caravan
commerce depends very largely on the number of wells. The location of
artesian wells has also led to the opening of trade along new routes as
well, for wherever water can be found there will be camels to drink it.
The date palm is essentially a plant of the desert, or, rather, of the
oasis. Nowhere else does it grow in such profusion as in northern
Africa. The number of productive trees there is estimated to be anywhere
from ten million to twenty million, though the estimate is but little
better than a guess. At its full growth the date palm is a most
beautiful object. Usually the feathered tops of the trees are the only
foliage to relieve the harsh landscape. Like the bamboo, every part of
the tree is used. The leaves may be made into fans, or shredded and
woven into mats. The wood is used in making the framework of buildings,
and the waste material is very handy as fuel. A refreshing fermented
drink and a most vile liquor are prepared from the juice. But the fruit,
when properly prepared, is the chief food of many thousands of men and
beasts. Even the stones, or "pits," of the dried fruit are useful; those
which are not sent to Italy to be used for adulterating coffee are made
into an "oil-meal" for fodder.
Esparto grass, called "alfa" or "halfa" by the Arabs, is another unique
product of the Sahara. In spite of its name, it is not a grass but a
flowering plant whose stalk has a tough fibre useful in making cordage
and paper. When the plant turns brown and has become dry to the root,
the esparto picker gets busy.
By four o'clock in the morning he is at work, his heavy woollen baracan,
or blanket, wrapped tightly about him, for the air is not only chilly
but almost freezing cold. By sunrise the chill begins to disappear, and
a few brief moments is the only interval between piercing chill and
midsummer heat. The baracan is quickly shed and the fez, if the picker
is rich enough to possess one, is discarded for an esparto hat with rim
of mammoth proportions. Esparto grass sandals protect his feet.
Almost all the animal life of the Sahara is deadly, and the esparto
grass picker is constantly facing danger. The clump of esparto, into the
bottom of which he must reach to cut the mature stalks, is quite likely
to be the lair of a poisonous viper; and if the reptile sinks its fangs
into the flesh of the unfortunate picker, long weeks of suffering and
disability--perhaps death--are in store for him. Between the bite of a
rattler and that of an esparto viper there is little to choose.
The scorpion is another peril to the esparto picker. The great
rock-scorpion of the Sahara is about as ugly as the centipede of Arizona
and Mexico; in size it is also about as large--from six to ten inches
in length. Its sting, too, is about as dangerous as the fangs of the
rattler. But the esparto picker has a method of heroic treatment for
both the bite of the viper and the sting of the scorpion. He squats
calmly upon the sand while a brother picker cuts out the flesh that has
been pierced. If he survives the twenty-four hours following, he is
pretty likely to pull through. If not--well, the vultures know when and
where to look.
The esparto grass is delivered to the nearest local market compressed in
bales of five or six hundred weight, held together by a coarse netting
of esparto weave, and shipped to Europe. Nearly all of it goes to Great
Britain. There it is shredded and made into cordage, coarse cloth, or
paper.
But the esparto has a rival so far as its use in making paper is
concerned. The wood pulp of Norway and the United States is slowly
displacing it, and in time esparto will be but little used except for
making cordage or gunny cloth. Already the French Government is having
troubles of its own in providing employment for the esparto pickers, but
it is not likely that such a useful plant will be discarded; on the
contrary, its use is likely to increase in the future.
The camel is the institution upon which the commerce of the desert
depends. A more awkward, ungainly beast can hardly be imagined--a
shambling collection of humps, bumps, knobs, protruding joints, and
sprawling legs seemingly attached to a head and neck in the near
foreground. But that shambling gait will carry a load three times as
heavy as the stoutest pack mule can bear, and it will carry it twice as
far in a day.
A horse or a mule must be fed twice a day, but a camel will worry along
for a week at a time with nothing more substantial than its cud. Horses
and mules cannot traverse regions where the watering places are more
than twelve hours apart, unless water be carried in storage; but the
camel is its own storage reservoir, and can carry a supply sufficient to
last for ten days.
At the end of his week of fasting the hump of the camel has shrunken to
a fraction of its former size. When the animal has a few days of feeding
the hump grows to its former proportions again. Indeed, the hump is
merely a mass of nutrition ready to be formed into flesh and blood.
[Illustration: A caravan crossing the desert on the road to Jaffa]
Within the paunch of the animal and surrounding its stomach are great
numbers of cells capable of holding seven or eight gallons of water.
When the camel drinks copiously these cells become filled and afterward
slowly give up the water as the stomach requires. It may be truly said
that the camel is a camel because of the desert and not in spite of it.
The sparse population of the Sahara--Arabs, Berbers, and negroes--are
dependent upon the camel, for until the railway shall traverse the
Sahara the camel will be practically the only means of transportation.
The camel's flesh furnishes about the only meat consumed by the dwellers
of the desert, for ordinary cattle can live only in a few localities
along the desert border lands.
The native people of the desert are mainly of the race to which the
Arabs also belong, although there are many Arabs and negroes. The
Tuaregs and Bedouin Arabs are the best known. The Tuaregs are thought to
be the descendants of the Berbers and of the same race as the
Carthaginians, whom the Romans many times defeated but never conquered.
They have whiter skins than the Arabs and in appearance are perhaps the
finest peoples of Africa. They are also the most ferocious and
blood-thirsty villains on the face of the earth. Many of them live in
the white-walled cities such as Ghadames, Kand, and Timbuktu--all large
centres of population.
Their government is well organized. Each of the larger tribes is
governed by a sultan, and in each there are several castes--a sort of
nobility of unmixed Tuareg blood being at the head and negro slaves at
the lower end of the social ladder. The families of the highest caste
are usually well-to-do, and both the men and the women are taught to
read and write. The garments usually worn by a Tuareg man consist of
white trousers, a gray tunic with white sleeves, sandals of ornamented
leather, and a white turban. When away from home the Tuareg covers the
lower half of the face by a cloth mask.
The usual occupation of the Tuaregs is twofold--to guard caravans or to
rob them. The average Tuareg is perfectly indifferent as to which he
does. A caravan from the Sudan enters, we will say, Kano. The garfla
sheik pack master, or superintendent, goes at once to the financial
agent of the sultan and pays the usual liken, or tariff charges. Then
he goes to the sultan himself and incidentally leaves in his possession
a generous money present. Then, if he desires, he may hire half a dozen
or more guards.
The hiring of these will insure the caravan against theft or robbery on
the part of the predatory bands living at Kano. The guards will also
faithfully defend the caravan in case of attack by Bedouin Arabs. On the
other hand, should the garfla sheik forget the present to the sultan, or
neglect to hire guards, those same Tuaregs would be the first to attack
and loot the caravan.
The Bedouin Arab is the chief trial of the caravans. He is always a foe
to them; and although he ostensibly herds camels and horses, his real
occupation is robbery and pillage. For days nomadic Arabs will follow a
caravan, keeping always out of sight. Most likely a band of a dozen or
more mounted on swift horses will survey the caravan from a distance at
which they are not likely to be discovered. Then they make their way
ahead of it to some point where a dune or a gully will conceal them.
Then, just as the end of the caravan drags by, there is a sudden sortie
and a rattling musket fire. And before the guards can gather to the
defence half a dozen camels are cut out of the train, a driver or two is
shot down or pierced with assegais, and both the robbers and their loot
are beyond the reach of the guards.
But perhaps the greatest value of the desert is its effect upon the
climate of Europe. Hot winds blow from the Sahara in all directions; the
northerly winds, crossing the Mediterranean, are not only tempered
thereby, but the desert blasts tempered and filled with moisture finally
reach the southern slopes of Europe, where they convert the nutrition of
the soil into bountiful crops of corn, wine, and oil.
The conquest of the great African desert is already in sight, and the
railway will be its master. The Cape to Cairo line is no longer a vision
of the future; the ends of its two parts are rapidly shortening the
interval that separates them and they are almost in sight of each other.
When the lines that are projected from the Mediterranean coast shall
have traversed the stronghold of the Tuaregs to penetrate the wealth of
the Sudan and the Kongo, the Sahara will have become merely an incident.