THE CONQUEST OF THE SAHARA
The ring of colonies, regencies, protectorates, spheres of influence,
military districts, and mandated territories which comprise France’s
colonial empire on the continent of Africa have the Sahara for their
core. Their front windows overlook the Mediterranean and the Atlantic,
the Senegal, the Niger, and the Congo, but in every case their back doors
open upon the desert. The linking of these distant and disconnected
possessions, which have so long beckoned to each other across the
enormous gulf, is, then, the ultimate aim of the French empire-builders;
and every move which France has made on the checker-board of
Africa during the last half-century or more has had in view such a
consolidation. In other words, it has long since been realized by the
government at Paris that the Sahara must be made a means of communication
rather than of obstruction if the republic’s vast holdings in the Dark
Continent are to be an empire in anything save name.
No nation was ever confronted with a task of such titanic dimensions nor
one calling for such patience, energy, and courage; not England in India,
nor Russia in Siberia, nor the United States beyond the Mississippi.
But the reward is commensurate with the task, for if France succeeds in
subjugating the Sahara, and thereby bringing into easy communication
with each other those of her possessions which abut upon it, she will
have created a continuous and homogeneous overseas domain, approximately
equivalent in area to the continent of Europe, sweeping almost without a
break from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Guinea and the Congo, from
the Atlantic to the valley of the Nile.
Though the French had established themselves at the mouth of the
Senegal about the same time that the Dutch founded their colony of New
Netherland at the mouth of the Hudson, it was not until the middle of the
nineteenth century that they awoke to a realization of the opportunities
which awaited them across the Middle Sea. The first step on the road
to empire was the conquest of Algeria, which may be said to have been
concluded by the submission of Abd-el-Kader in 1847. But even then France
did not become alive to her imperial destiny, the colonization of the
newly acquired territory across the Mediterranean at first appearing
as little more than a means toward the extinction of pauperism in the
mother-country. Not until the tribes of the Oued Rir rose in revolt was
France introduced to the desert. Laghouat was seized by a flying column
in 1852. The tricolor was raised over Ourgla the following year. In 1854
the victory of Meggarine brought about the submission of Touggourt.
As the frontier had now been pushed nearly four hundred miles south
of the Mediterranean, the work of sinking wells to revive certain of
the decaying oases was immediately undertaken and met with conspicuous
success. France was beginning to get acquainted with the desert, which
was found to be not quite the utter void that had been supposed. In some
parts oases dotted its surface, and its surface was crisscrossed by the
routes of caravans, which in the old days had carried on a thriving trade
between the Sudan and the cities of the Barbary Coast. Frenchmen of
enterprise and vision began to see that the Sahara offered possibilities
after all, and steps were taken toward a still wider occupation.
This movement was temporarily halted by the disastrous war with Prussia
and the collapse of the Second Empire, but the echoes of the Commune
had scarcely died away before the empire-builders were again at work,
building up in Africa a new and greater France. In 1873 General Gallifet
entered El Golea. And in 1881 the proclamation of a protectorate over
Tunisia, which Italy had earmarked for her own, gave the world its first
hint of the scope of France’s African ambitions.
Meantime a similar spirit of expansion was manifesting itself along the
southern borders of the future colonial empire. Guinea and the Ivory
Coast had been annexed in 1843. The expeditions of Savargnan de Brazza in
the late seventies and early eighties won for France the vast territory
which is now known as French Equatorial Africa. In 1887 the Binger
expedition gave a decided stimulus to French enterprise in West Africa
by linking together the hinterlands of Senegambia and the Ivory Coast.
French gunboats were a-prowl up the Niger and the Senegal seeking further
opportunities to plant the tricolor. Thenceforward the occupation of
the interior was swift and uninterrupted, a long series of expeditions
pushing the French frontiers northward and eastward until they occupied
the whole bend of the Niger and flowed around the British colony of
Nigeria to join, at Lake Tchad, with the French Congo advancing from
the south. From all sides the French colonies, north, west, and south,
were pushing forward in a simultaneous advance. The foundations of this
vast colonial structure having thus been completed, the corner-stone
was officially laid in 1890, when, by the signing of the Anglo-French
Convention, England formally recognized France’s claim to all that
portion of the Sahara lying between the Algerian-Tunisian frontiers on
the north and a line drawn from Say, a town on the Niger, to Lake Tchad
on the south. When, by this treaty, France secured her claim to the
Sahara, Lord Salisbury remarked dryly that “the French cock seems to
enjoy scratching in the sand.”
[Illustration: THE SANDY SEA
In parts, but not throughout, the Sahara resembles a frozen ocean, its
tremendous billows of gray-white sand seemingly arrested in the very act
of breaking. But by far the greater part is not sandy at all; rather,
a series of undulating steppes, strewn with broken stone, dotted with
oases, and broken by numerous mountain chains, some of which are upward
of a mile in height]
Though the territory lying within the great bend of the Niger, embraced
in what is now the French Sudan, was occupied in 1893, and though two
years later the tricolor was hoisted over the mud-walled citadel of
Timbuktu, the great caravan-center and trade-mart of the south, it was
not until the very close of the nineteenth century that the central
Sahara was crossed by Europeans. This remarkable journey was made by
Fernand Foureau, the greatest of all the long line of French African
explorers, who, setting out from Algeria with a small military escort,
succeeded in reaching Zinder, an important trade center on the Nigerian
frontier, in November, 1899.
Foureau’s achievement was of immense value to France, not merely because
it demonstrated that the desert could be crossed from one edge to the
other, but because it proved the truth of the explorer’s oft-repeated
assertion that the first step in the conquest and pacification of the
Sahara was to break the power of the great Touareg confederation. These
robber tribes occupying the oases which stretch from Ghadames in the
east to Tuat in the west, formed a cordon which stretched right across
the desert south of Algeria, completely masking the southern frontiers
of that colony. The Touareg were to the central Sahara what the Sioux
and the Apaches were to our Western plains. From their inaccessible
strongholds amid the hills and oases of the mid-desert, they kept watch
upon the trade-routes, levied blackmail upon or plundered caravans,
murdered explorers and pioneers, sacked frontier towns, and preyed
on the trans-Saharan trade as the Barbary corsairs had preyed on the
Mediterranean merchantmen. Consequently the Sahara was in a constant
state of turmoil and insecurity; theft, pillage, and massacre were so
common as scarcely to evoke comment. Armed to the teeth, mounted on
their swift _méhari_, bands of these masked riders would wipe out a
whole caravan or swoop down upon some defenseless oasis-town, regaining
their distant desert strongholds long before a force could be organized
to pursue them. Fearless, arrogant, treacherous, and inhumanly cruel,
the only law they recognized was that of superior force. Until the
great robber confederation was smashed France could not hope to solve
the Saharan question. “You will never traverse the Touareg country,”
Foureau said in one of his reports, “with any kind of security except by
depending on force and by establishing all along the route well-manned
positions, the garrisons of which will police the road throughout. This
you will have to do if you wish to open up communications between the
Sudan and Algeria.”
The government at Paris accepted his advice and proceeded to the task
with the utmost energy. A battalion of the Foreign Legion, transformed
into mounted infantry by mounting the men on mules, formed one of the
flying columns. Other punitive expeditions were composed of native
troops, who were provided with _méhari_ as speedy as the racing
dromedaries ridden by the Touareg themselves, and accompanied by
batteries of light mountain-guns. For, when the French once determine to
do a thing, they usually do it well. From the outposts in Algeria, in
Senegal, in the Sudan, the columns pressed forward relentlessly into
the sandy wastes. The attacking hordes of tribesmen were mowed down by
the withering fire of rifles and machine-guns; the strongholds which the
Touareg had deemed impregnable hastily capitulated when they heard the
terrifying whine and crash of the French shells. Soon the redoubtable
Touareg confederacy was completely subjugated, its principal centers were
occupied in force, a highly efficient police force was recruited from the
tribesmen themselves—just as Porfirio Díaz recruited his famous _rurales
nacionales_ from outlaws and bandits—and travel was made possible, if not
altogether safe, from one border of the Sahara to the other.
Shortly after France’s African empire had been completely reorganized
in 1902, the effective area of French control in the western Sahara was
increased to the extent of some 150,000 square miles by inducing the
Moorish emirs of the Adrar, a fertile but sparsely inhabited region lying
to the north of the Senegal, between the sand-wastes of El Juf and the
Atlantic, to place themselves under the direct supervision of French
officials. In the following year these regions were consolidated into a
single territory to which was given the historic name of Mauretania.
France set the capstone to her African empire on March 30, 1912, when
His Shereefian Majesty the Sultan Mulai Yusef, in his palace at Fez,
set his signature to the document which formally accepted a French
protectorate over Morocco. By that single stroke of the pen was added
to the overseas dominions under the tricolor a territory larger than
France itself. Be it clearly understood, that the control of Morocco
was as vital a fact in the French scheme for acquiring the hegemony of
Northwest Africa as the annexation of California was to the dominance of
the North American continent by the United States. France’s style was
cramped, to make use of a popular expression, as long as Morocco remained
independent. Had the Shereefian Empire been a strong, well-governed
country, the situation would have been different; but it was, on the
contrary, a hotbed of disorder, unrest, intrigue, and corruption. To
have attempted the pacification of the Sahara and the reëstablishment of
the old trade-routes, with the hinterland of Morocco offering a secure
refuge and recruiting-ground for all the lawless and unruly elements of
desert life, would have been to court endless difficulties if not to
invite complete disaster. For centuries Morocco had been a thorn in the
flesh of all those European nations having political interest in Africa;
this source of irritation and infection must be got rid of if France’s
elaborate and carefully worked out plans for the consolidation of her
African possessions were to succeed. That her action was justified has
been proved beyond cavil by the striking success which has marked her
administration of Morocco during the past dozen years.
The most recent additions to France’s African domain were acquired at
the close of the World War, when Germany unconditionally surrendered her
overseas possessions to the Allies. When the spoils of war came to be
apportioned, France obtained control of about two thirds of the former
German colony of Togo, and nearly the whole of Cameroon (both of which
adjoined her possessions on the Gulf of Guinea), under mandates granted
by the League of Nations.
Omitting the little enclave of French Somaliland on the East Coast and
the great island colony of Madagascar, France’s African empire to-day
consists of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, French West Africa (comprising the
colonies of Senegal, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, the French
Sudan, and the Upper Volta, and the civil territories of Mauretania and
the Niger), French Equatorial Africa (in which are embraced the colonies
of Gabun, Middle Congo, Ubanghi-Shari, and Tchad), and the mandated
territories of Togo and Cameroon.
Every step in France’s African policy during the last half-century has
been as carefully considered as the moves in a championship chess-game.
The ultimate effect on the grand plan of every military movement,
every expedition, every rectification of a frontier, every treaty, has
been meticulously weighed and pondered in advance. They have all been
parts of a sagacious and brilliantly executed scheme; nothing has been
left to chance. There has been none of the “muddling through” which
characterized the British policy in South Africa; little of the stupidity
and blundering which marked our winning of the West. The French conquest
has been marred by no petty or selfish or contradictory aims; it has
been hampered by no irresolution, no moving forward and then turning
back; energy in one quarter has not been counteracted by indifference in
another; patriotism has not been subordinated to politics.
Since the conquest of Algeria, moreover, France’s course of empire in
Africa has been obstructed by no great colonial wars and few wars of
any kind; she has had no Indian Mutinies, no Adowas, no Omdurmans, no
Modder Rivers. Wherever possible she has employed a process of pacific
penetration—winning the confidence of the tribes instead of threatening
them, granting broad measures of autonomy to the great sheikhs and
the grand caïds, flattering their vanity with salutes, rewards, and
decorations. The social gulf which separates the British officials in
Egypt, the Sudan, and India from the native chieftains is unknown in
French Africa, for the French tolerate neither racial discrimination nor
the color-line.
Everywhere—north, south, and west—the advance has been gradual and
general. The black-coated cabinet ministers in Paris, the administrators
in the various colonial capitals, and the helmeted pioneers scattered
along the frontiers have worked toward a common end, the pioneers keeping
their superiors constantly informed of every fluctuation in local
conditions and native sentiment, just as the intelligence officers of an
army in the field relay the information they have gathered to the high
command. Let it be added that no nation has been more faithfully served
by its explorers and pioneers than France. Henri Duveyrier, the first
of the French explorers, whose great journey into the Sahara dates from
1859; Victor Largeau, who reached Ghadames in 1875; Savargnan de Brazza,
whose name will always be linked with the creation of the French Congo;
General Faidherbe, founder of the French Sudan; General Dodds, conqueror
of Dahomey; Montiel, who won for France the great country around Lake
Tchad; Fernand Foureau, the hero of the march to Zinder—these, and many
like them, were to French Africa what Lewis, Clarke, Boone, Crockett,
and Frémont were to our own frontier. But of the intrepid company of
French explorers who have carried the tricolor into the darkest corners
of the Dark Continent, Africa has taken a heavy toll. Joubert and
Dourneaux-Duperré were assassinated near Ghadames; Lieutenant Palet
was murdered at Gurara; Camille Douls laid down his life for France
at Tidikelt; the expedition led by Colonel Flatters was ambushed by
Touareg in the central Sahara and wiped out to the last man; Louis Say,
Lieutenant Lamy, Brière de l’Isle all died by Touareg spear; Coppolani
was killed by tribesmen in the conquest of Mauretania; Colonel Bonnier
was slain at the taking of Timbuktu. Such is the price of empire.
The most gallant and dramatic figure in all this company of courageous
men is, however, the least known to fame. I refer to Vicomte Charles de
Foucauld—“de Foucauld of the Sahara” as he was known—who left among the
wild tribes of the desert a name which has already passed into tradition.
A son of the nobility, he lost his parents when he was six and was
brought up by his uncle, an old colonel of engineers, from whom he got a
taste for the classics. When he left school, while still in his teens,
young de Foucauld was a confirmed atheist, a fact which is of special
significance in view of his end. Joining a hussar regiment, he saw active
service in Algeria, an experience which left him with a deep affection
for the common soldier, an affection which his troopers warmly returned.
Fighting against the Arabs had imbued him with a keen desire to make a
study of the race, and with this in view he obtained leave of absence
for the purpose of making a journey into the interior of Morocco, which
was then a forbidden country to Europeans. Disguise of some sort was
imperative, so, deciding to go as a Jew, he applied himself to the study
of Hebrew as well as Arabic. He went in rags and barefoot, apparently the
poorest of the poor, and was often insulted and stoned; but he always
carried in the palm of his left hand a tiny writing-tablet on which he
surreptitiously noted all the features of the country or took compass
bearings. When he returned to civilization after nearly a year spent
in the unknown he had more than doubled the length of routes known and
surveyed in the Shereefian Empire and brought back other topographical
data of immense military value.
Some years after his return from Morocco de Foucauld embraced
Christianity and became a devout Catholic, eventually resigning from
the army in order to become a Trappist monk, a member of that sternly
penitential missionary order which devotes itself to the salvation of the
heathen. As a monk he lived for a time in Asia Minor, two days’ march
from Alexandretta. After spending two years in the study of theology at
Rome, he resolved, while in Nazareth, to become a hermit priest. For the
field of his labors he chose the Moroccan Sahara, one of the most savage
regions in all Africa, as it was one of the least known. His first post
was at Beni Abbés, a desert town in the edge of the Grand Erg Occidental,
four hundred miles to the southeast of Fez. Here he purchased a few acres
of palm-sprinkled sand and built a mud-walled chapel in which he slept.
He lived on coarse barley bread, a few dried dates, and “desert tea,” a
beverage made from an herb. No European willingly ate twice at his board,
and even the negroes whom he redeemed from slavery, though eager to work
for him, found his fare too slim. He made no formal conversions, but both
French soldiers and natives swarmed about him, knowing that he always
stood ready to aid them with money or advice. On one occasion his little
church was attended by General (afterward Marshal) Lyautey, who wrote: “A
plank was the altar. The decorations were a calico sheet with the picture
of Christ on it; two candlesticks on the altar. Very well. I never heard
Mass as Father de Foucauld said it. I could have believed myself in the
Thebaid. It is one of the things in my life which have moved me most.”
In the spring of 1905 de Foucauld set out on a still more extended
journey among the Touareg, eventually establishing himself at
Tamanrasset, a village of twenty hearths in the very heart of the Sahara,
midway between In Salah and Timbuktu. Here he was alone among the veiled
Touareg, “the Forgotten of God,” hundreds of miles from the nearest white
man. The place he chose for himself was perhaps the loneliest and most
dangerous ever occupied for any length of time by a European. Though the
Touareg are suspicious and savagely intolerant of others, the lone priest
so completely won their confidence and friendship that in 1913 he took
with him to Paris the son of their sheikh.
Then came 1914—“_l’année terrible_.” The outbreak of the Great War found
de Foucauld back among the veiled tribesmen, and although he burned to
go to the front as a chaplain or stretcher-bearer, his ecclesiastical
superiors urged him to stay at his post, advice which was strongly
seconded by the French military authorities, who were well aware that
German emissaries were at work stirring up discontent among the tribes
of the hinterland. In December, 1916, a Touareg war-party, whooped on by
the enemy, decided that de Foucauld would be a valuable hostage and laid
plans to attack the mission station, which had been transformed into a
rude fort. A traitor gave them the password, the gate was opened, and
the Blue-Veiled Ones poured in. The hermit was overpowered, bound hand
and foot, and propped against a wall while the place was looted of such
poor things as it contained. While the plundering was in progress two
natives whom de Foucauld had befriended approached to offer him a word
of cheer. Whereupon a blood-drunk Touareg put the muzzle of his rifle to
the priest’s head and pulled the trigger. In the words of Mr. Stephen
Gwynn, his biographer: “There was no cry or word; gradually the corpse
sank down. He had had his will; for many passages in his journals and his
letters prove that he aspired to death by violence. That he should have
been betrayed would undoubtedly to his strange nature have been welcome;
it completed that imitation of Christ which was his life’s work. Soldier
and Frenchman, he died uncertain of the war’s issue; Christian priest
among the unbelievers, he died without converts made. Yet assuredly he
was in his heart convinced that by such means he might make ready the way
for others, and he asked no more, he refused to desire more.”
He was buried beneath the shadow of the little church which he had
built, in the heart of that Sahara which he knew and loved so well. To
paraphrase the lines of Matthew Arnold:
Far hence he lies,
Near some lone desert town,
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The southern stars look down.
To those observers who may have thought that France’s policy in North
Africa is inspired solely by the hope of adding to the military power
of the republic, one of de Foucauld’s letters, as quoted by Mr. Gwynn,
cannot fail to be of extraordinary interest. It was written only six
months before his murder at Tamanrasset.
My thought is that if the Moslems of our Colonial Empire in
the North of Africa are not gradually, gently, little by
little, converted, there will be a national movement like that
in Turkey. An intellectual élite will form itself in the big
towns, trained in the French fashion, but French neither in
mind nor heart, lacking all Moslem faith, but keeping the name
of it to be able to influence the masses, who remain ignorant
of us, alienated from us by their priests and by our contact
with them, too often very unfit to create affection. In the
long run the élite will use Islam as a lever to raise the
masses against us. The population is now about thirty millions;
thanks to peace, it will double in fifty years. It will have
railways, all the plant of civilization, and will have been
trained by us to the use of our arms. If we have not made
Frenchmen of these people, they will drive us out. The only way
for them to become French is by becoming Christians.
It would be interesting to know to what extent this strange, wonderful
son of France represented the feelings of France as a whole.
* * * * *
After perusing the long list of those who have paid the price of empire
with their lives, the thoughtful man may ask whether the reward has
justified the sacrifice. The atlas gives the answer. Glance at a map
of, say, 1880, and you will find the extent of French occupation marked
by a few wedges driven into the coast-line of Northwest Africa, while
as for the Sahara, it is merely an expanse of speckled yellow labeled
“Unexplored.” But unfold a map of to-day and we find that, barring Libya,
Liberia, and a few British and Spanish enclaves along the West Coast,
the whole of that portion of Africa lying between the Mediterranean and
the Congo, between the Atlantic and the valley of the Nile, is tinted
the same color, is overshadowed by the same flag, is ruled by the same
nation—and that nation is France. It is one of the most astounding
achievements in the history of the world, this building of a colossal
empire from savagery and sand.
* * * * *
Were a map of Africa to be superimposed on a map of North America it
would be found that in area and dimensions the Sahara Desert very closely
corresponds to the United States. Yet it is a singular fact that more
misconceptions exist in regard to this vast region, the fringes of which
are visited annually by thousands of tourists, than about almost any area
on the face of the globe. Doubtless because the makers of maps were so
long accustomed to painting the Sahara a speckled yellow, ninety-nine
persons out of every hundred visualize it as an illimitable stretch of
sun-scorched sand, flat as a floor, quite incapable of supporting life,
and utterly destitute of vegetation. Nothing could be farther from the
truth.
The impression of flatness is an optical illusion. Were a region that is
as rugged as, say, New England to be completely stripped of its cities,
villages, and farmsteads, its forests, lakes, and streams, its trees
and grass, I imagine that, despite the pronounced irregularity of its
surface, it would appear to one traveling across it to be a dead flat
plain. So it is with the Sahara. In reality it is not flat at all. It has
its mountains, its valleys, and its plains. Topographically speaking,
it is a region of the most varied surface and irregular relief, broken
by lofty table-lands and deep depressions, massive buttes and fantastic
crags, vast steppes covered with water-worn pebbles and loose stones,
cañons winding between precipitous walls, seas of shifting yellow sand
and oases green with forests of date-palms and other fruit-trees. Its
surface is still further diversified by numerous and extensive mountain
ranges, at least one of which, the Ahaggar, has an area greater than the
Alps and several peaks higher than any in the United States east of the
Rockies. Yet the children in our public schools are still taught that the
Sahara is nothing but a waste of sand, flat as a school-room floor!
From this it will be seen that the Sahara has the makings of much
picturesque and interesting scenery if it were properly upholstered. Its
deadly monotony is due to a lack of diversity in color rather than to a
lack of diversity in surface. The mountains, the plateaus, the crags,
and the cañons are all there, but there is nothing to bring them out,
to emphasize their presence. Since there is in that vast spaciousness
nothing with which to compare them, they appear insignificant, hardly
noticeable. Another thing. We of more favored lands are accustomed to
what might be described as vertical scenery—trees, crops, church-spires,
houses, fences—whereas the scenery of the desert is wholly horizontal.
This still further makes for monotony, so, instead of examining the
physical features of the country, the eye becomes wearied and is always
looking off toward the horizon.
I trust that I have now made it amply clear that the popular conception
of the Sahara as an expanse of sand—a conception which motion-pictures
and novels of desert life, as well as the illustrations in the popular
magazines, have done much to foster—is quite erroneous. There are broad
stretches of sand, it is true, the most extensive being the Igidi of
Mauretania, the Grand Erg Occidental to the south of Algeria, and the
Grand Erg Oriental to the south of Tunisia; but the actual area of pure
sand is relatively small, covering only about _one tenth_ of the Sahara’s
surface.
The remaining nine tenths of the desert consist of stony, wind-swept
plateaus, known as _hammada_, vast tracts strewn with water-worn pebbles,
called _serir_, and scattered highland regions. Of the latter the most
extensive is the Ahaggar, or Hoggar Plateau, which lies in the center
of the Sahara, nine hundred miles due south from Algiers. Covering an
area considerably greater than that of the Swiss, French, Italian, and
Austrian Alps put together, this mass of mountains is dominated by two
great peaks, Hikena and Watellen, whose summits during five months of the
year are covered with snow. To the northeast of the Ahaggar is the Tasili
Plateau, and directly to the east, forming the southwestern boundary of
Italian Libya, stretch the Tummo or War Mountains. In the extreme east,
near the frontier of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, is the great table-land
of Tibesti, with an average height of nearly a mile and a half above
sea-level, the volcanic cone of Tussid rising eighty-eight hundred feet
into the African blue. On the east and south the highlands of Tibesti run
down to connect with the lower ranges of Ennedi and Borku, which merge,
in turn, into the rich plains of Darfur and Wadai. In addition to the
plateaus and ranges mentioned, there are several disconnected mountain
masses, such as the rugged region in Mauretania known as the Adrar of the
Iforas, and, to the north of the Nigerian frontier, the Hills of Air.
The country of the sand-dunes, which has provided so many fiction writers
and motion-picture directors with highly romantic settings, consists of
a broad belt which, starting on the Atlantic seaboard, in the vicinity
of Cape Blanco, sweeps in a great arc northward and eastward, completely
masking the southern frontiers of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, to
the shores of the Gulf of Gabés. That portion of this sand-belt which
stretches from the Senegal River to the Moroccan Atlas is generally
referred to as the Igidi (the Berber word for sand-dunes); then, to the
south of Algeria, comes the region known as the Grand Erg Occidental,
separated by a narrow valley at El Golea from the Grand Erg Oriental,
which sweeps right across the southern end of Tunisia. The Igidi and the
Ergs can best be described as sandy oceans—the simile has been used many
times before but I cannot think of a better—with waves of sand instead of
water. The dunes of the Eastern Erg, which range in height from sixty to
three hundred feet or more, lie in long parallel rows, with a gradual
slope to windward and an abrupt descent to leeward, so that, particularly
in the gray mists of early morning or at nightfall, they present a
striking resemblance to a stormy sea. Generally speaking, the dunes
maintain a state of comparative permanency, certain of the larger ones
having been given names of their own, though it is by no means unusual
for their contours to change almost beyond recognition in a single
night under the influence of the wind. The oft-told tales of caravans
and armies engulfed in the moving sands may be set down as imaginary,
however, save, perhaps, in some instances in the Libyan Desert, where
such tragic episodes are known to have occurred.
The investigations of French geologists have completely disproved the
theory that the Sahara represents the dried-up bed of what was once a
vast inland sea and that its dunes are composed of sand left there at
that period. It appears, on the contrary, that the sand, instead of
having been deposited by the sea, comes from the stony plateaus of the
_hammada_. The soft Cretaceous sandstone, heated by the sun until it
is as hot as the top of a stove, is suddenly chilled at night by rapid
radiation. The rock, fractured by the abrupt change from heat to cold,
disintegrates; and the sand thus produced, sifted and drifted by the
wind, takes the form of dunes. The slightest breeze is enough to make
the desert smoke with dust, while a strong wind produces a weird singing
of the sands, a peculiarly eery sound which indicates that the dunes
themselves are shifting.
The loose particles of sand which cover wide tracts of the Sahara are
a cause of acute discomfort not only to the countries lying along the
whole north coast of Africa but even to those on the opposite side of
the Mediterranean, for the sand-laden wind from the Sahara, known in
southern Europe as the sirocco and in Egypt as the _khamsin_ (because
during the spring it blows at intervals for about fifty days) frequently
affects regions a thousand miles away, covering them with fine red dust.
Though to all intents and purposes waterless so far as rivers are
concerned, the Sahara is thickly sprinkled with fertile spots, varying
in area from a few acres to hundreds of square miles, where the water
comes to the surface in the form of springs or is found in shallow wells.
Thanks to the enterprise of the French government and the ability of
French engineers, these oases have been greatly expanded during recent
years, for experiments have proved that an unlimited supply of aërated
water is obtainable from the great reservoirs which underlie the Sahara
by the sinking of artesian wells, water generally being found at a
maximum depth of two hundred feet. When one is in the midst of the
desert, surrounded by blinding white sand-dunes which support no living
thing, the very idea of water seems absurd and its existence impossibly
remote, yet it is often only a few yards beneath one’s feet. In this
fact of a secret water-supply lies the hope of the regeneration of parts
at least of the Sahara, for, once it has been introduced to water, this
seemingly hopeless region will blossom like the rose.
With the desert we are accustomed to associate the date-palm, of which
there are upward of four million in the Algerian oases alone, and
without which life in the Sahara would be virtually impossible; for they
provide the natives not only with food, but with shelter, fuel, timber,
building-materials, and even clothing. But do not get the idea that the
soil of the oases is capable of supporting palms alone, for apples,
peaches, oranges, lemons, figs, pomegranates, grapes, wheat, barley, and
rice are all commonly and successfully grown. So comparatively limited
are these areas of great richness and fertility, however, so precious is
the land, that it is cultivated with almost pathetic care, the natives
grudging even the narrow foot-paths which separate their holdings from
those of their neighbors. Yet dates are, and always have been, so much
the staple of food and commerce in the Sahara that, instead of computing
the size of a village by the number of its inhabitants, it is always
spoken of as having so many date-palms.
[Illustration: BASKING IN THE BLINDING SUNLIGHT OF THE TUNISIAN SAHARA
Is Tozeur, a picturesque and very ancient town, long the starting-point
of the caravans bound for Libya and Lake Tchad, and now the stepping-off
place of travelers across the Grand Erg; it is noted for its arcaded
houses, whose arches and highly decorative brick-work façades are
supported by columns looted from Roman ruins]
The eventual conquest of the desert depends not on the success of
military expeditions, the establishment of trade-routes, and the building
of railways, but rather on the expansion of the present oases and the
creation of new ones. Pacification depends on fertilization. The Touareg
and Arab nomads will be a source of trouble as long as they can find
refuge in the desert, but, like the Indians of our own West, whom they
so greatly resemble, they must eventually give way before the steadily
advancing line of cultivation, either betaking themselves to remoter
regions of the continent or becoming agriculturists themselves. What
it comes to, as Mr. L. March Phillips has so aptly put it,[2] is this:
the tribes can only be subdued by subduing the desert; the desert can
only be subdued by planting oases; and oases can only be planted by
sinking wells. When all is said and done, it is not the soldiers but the
well-drillers who are the real conquerors of the Sahara.
The French conquest of North Africa has shifted the southern frontier
of Europe from the shores of the Mediterranean to the fringes of the
Sahara. No longer is the sea a barrier between the continents; it has
become a link. It may lash itself into a rage, but its rage is jeered
at by the cable, the radio, the airplane, and the great steamers. The
desert is now the true divide. And deeper and deeper into the desert
the French outposts are being pushed, for the indomitable spirit of
adventure—the spirit which led King Louis and his Crusaders to the Holy
Land, Champlain to Canada and La Salle down the Mississippi, the armies
of Napoleon to the Pyramids, which took Foureau down to Zinder, and de
Brazza up the Congo, and Marchand to Fashoda—still runs hot and strong in
the blood of France. Everywhere the Touareg raiders are being halted by
the harsh “_Qui vive?_” of the French videttes. French well-drillers and
agricultural experts are at work all the way from Libya to the Atlantic.
The tribes of the far interior are becoming accustomed to the drone of
the airplane and the panting of the motor-car. Twin lines of steel and
festoons of copper wire have been flung far into the central wastes. The
radio operators of Algeria gossip with their fellows at Lake Tchad and
Timbuktu. France is striding southward in seven-league boots, carrying
the frontier of civilization with her as she goes. In a much nearer
future than most people dream of, her southern boundary will not be the
Mediterranean, nor yet the Sahara, but the Equator.