THE LAST HOME OF MYSTERY
Tozeur, the ancient oasis town on the northern edge of the Grand Erg
Oriental, is the jumping-off place for the desert; from here we were to
plunge into the real Sahara. It was the end of the line, so far as Harvey
and the Cadillac were concerned, and the day after our arrival he headed
north again on the long detour, via Tunis and Constantine, to Biskra, in
southern Algeria, where he was to await our arrival.
For our journey across the trackless sand-wastes of the Grand Erg, where
travel is entirely by compass and the sun, the officials of the Transat
had placed at our disposal one of the curious twelve-wheelers designed by
Renault, the great French automobile manufacturer, to solve the problem
of transportation in the desert. The huge, cumbersome-looking vehicle,
which in general appearance is a cross between a five-ton truck, a
military reconnaissance car, and an overgrown station-wagon, deserves
a paragraph or so of description, for it gives promise of playing as
important a rôle in the conquest of the Sahara as the prairie-schooner
did in the opening up of the American West.
Surprisingly enough, it is not of excessive horse-power—only about 18
H.P., I believe, according to European rating, though more than double
that by American methods of computation. Its limited horse-power, which
appeared, however, to be amply sufficient for the purpose, is compensated
for by special gearing, the car having six forward speeds and four in
reverse. It is provided, moreover, with six pairs of twin wheels—that is,
twelve in all—all six pairs being geared to the engine on the principle
of the four-wheel drive used by certain American truck manufacturers. The
wheels are fitted with enormous balloon-tires, studded with copper rivets
as a protection against the flinty stones with which great areas of the
desert are strewn, and inflated to a pressure of less than twenty pounds,
thus obtaining a maximum of traction in the yielding sand.
The body, which is very stoutly built, resembles those of the
reconnaissance cars used by staff-officers during the World War, its four
leather-covered arm-chairs, and the broad seat which extends right across
the rear of the tonneau, providing accommodation for five passengers in
addition to the chauffeur and the native guide. Great speed could hardly
be looked for in a vehicle of this type; over a smooth, hard surface
eighteen to twenty miles an hour is the maximum, while in the dune
country, where any speed at all is out of the question, eighty miles is
considered a good day’s run.
Perhaps the most novel feature of this sand-wagon, however, is the highly
ingenious device which has been contrived for enabling it to extricate
itself from cups or pockets in the dunes, where the ascent is so steep
and the surface so soft that it is impossible to obtain traction. This
device consists of a metal hoisting-drum, about the size of a nail-keg,
which is fixed between the forward springs just in front of the axle.
Wound on this drum, which is operated by the engine, are some fifty
feet of stout steel cable. When, as not infrequently happens, the car
slides down into one of the craterlike cavities formed by the dunes and
is unable to climb out because of lack of traction, the steel cable is
unwound, carried up the slopes, and attached to a sort of steel anchor,
which is driven deep into the sand. The driver then throws in the clutch,
the drum revolves, winding up the cable, and the car lifts itself out of
trouble by its own boot-straps, as it were.
[Illustration: THE ROAD TO TIMBUKTU
It is close on two thousand miles from the Mediterranean to the
mysterious city on the Niger, and caravans spend three months upon
the way, but already the motor-car has cut the journey down to two
weeks. In a day now not far away the caravan will be as extinct as the
prairie-schooner]
The chauffeurs of these desert-going cars are carefully chosen for their
skill as drivers, their mechanical ability, and their endurance, most of
them having served as airplane pilots or mechanicians during the war.
Accompanying each car is an Arab guide who is presumed to be thoroughly
familiar with the baffling topography of the regions to be traversed,
though even the most experienced frequently encounter difficulty in
getting their bearings, so completely is the aspect of the dunes changed
by a violent sand-storm. In order to provide against emergencies, each
car carries a tightly rolled tent on the roof and a week’s supply of
emergency provisions.
The cars originally used for the conquest of the Sahara were of quite
a different type than the Renault. They were ten horse-power machines
designed by André Citroen, the Henry Ford of France, and, in addition to
the regular front wheels, were equipped with caterpillar treads, similar
to those used on tanks and farm tractors. During the winter of 1922-23
a fleet of these cars crossed from Touggourt to Timbuktu, making the
two-thousand-mile journey in twenty days. In October, 1924, a second
Citroen expedition of eight cars traversed Africa from Algeria to the
Great Lakes, where it divided, one group going on to Madagascar and
another keeping southward to the Cape. The latter journey of fifteen
thousand miles occupied nine months. Though it is generally admitted, I
believe, that the tractor type of machine is able to negotiate country
which would be quite impassable for the twelve-wheeler, it cannot attain
the speed of the latter, its accommodations for passengers are far less
commodious and comfortable, and, on account of the sharp stones which
strew vast stretches of the central Sahara, its rubber-shod treads are
quickly cut to pieces and cannot be replaced as readily as tires.
It is a far cry from the Chamber of Deputies in Paris to the Sahara, yet
the repercussion of political feuds in the one are sometimes felt in
the other. This close relation between politics and private enterprise
in France was strikingly illustrated by a recent episode, which aroused
considerable speculation at the time, but of which, so far as I am
aware, the inside story has never been published. It will be recalled,
perhaps, that during the early months of 1925 the American and European
newspapers devoted considerable space to accounts of the automobile
service which M. Citroen was about to establish between Algeria and
Timbuktu. It was announced that preliminary expeditions sent out by the
millionaire manufacturer had surveyed a route across the desert; that
at frequent intervals along this route rest-houses, provided with all
the comforts demanded by present-day travelers, had been erected; that a
great fleet of tractors had been assembled at one of the rail-heads in
southern Algeria; and that, for the equivalent of twenty-five hundred
dollars, the tourist in search of novelty and adventure could purchase
a round-trip ticket, rooms and meals included, from the French capital
to the mysterious city on the Niger. In order to give the enterprise
the necessary éclat, it was to be inaugurated by a distinguished party,
including the King of the Belgians and Marshal Pétain. Then, only a
few days before the date set for departure, the project was suddenly
abandoned, the reason given being that the War Office had notified
the promoters that the route was unsafe and that it was impossible to
guarantee adequate military protection.
That, at least, was the ostensible reason. But the real cause for the
abandonment of this highly picturesque project was not so much military
as political. Citroen, one of the richest men in France, was allied with
the political party then in the saddle. His great rival, Renault, was a
stanch supporter of the opposition. But on the very eve of the departure
of the inaugural expedition there occurred one of those sudden political
crises so frequent in France; the government was overturned and the
opposition came into power. Citroen suddenly found himself with the outs
and Renault with the ins. A day or so later the new minister of war sent
word to M. Citroen that because of trouble among the tribes conditions
in the desert were insecure and that the government could not assume
responsibility for the safety of the expedition. M. Citroen took the
hint. He knew when he was beaten. The invitations to the distinguished
guests were canceled; the chain of rest-houses which had been erected
right across the Sahara were stripped of their furnishings and abandoned;
hundreds of employees were recalled; the tractors were ordered to Oran,
where they are now rusting in a storage warehouse; and an investment of
more than fifteen million francs was written off. Political jealousy,
the curse of France, had, for a time at least, turned back the hands of
progress in the Sahara.
Though the Citroen project was, in its inception, a publicity stunt, a
money-making scheme, its success indubitably would have proved the first
step in the realization of a great imperial dream. For, as I have sought
to point out in the preceding chapter, the consolidation into an empire
of France’s scattered possessions in North, West, and Central Africa must
hinge, when all is said and done, on the establishment of direct and
rapid communications between them. Let us take a concrete case by way of
illustration. The distance from Algiers to Timbuktu as the motor goes is,
in round figures, two thousand miles. But the distance between the same
points by the only route now open to travelers—Algiers-Marseilles-Dakar
by steamer, Dakar-Kayes-Bamaku by rail, and Bamaku-Timbuktu by river-boat
and launch—is upward of four thousand miles.
[Illustration: CROSSING THE SAND-DUNES OF THE GRAND ERG BY MOTOR
Combines the thrills of riding a roller-coaster at Coney Island,
tobogganing on the Cresta Run at St.-Moritz, and descending Pike’s Peak
in a car without brakes. The cars are specially built Renaults with
twelve wheels arranged in six sets of two wheels each. The picture at the
left shows what happens when the sand begins to slide. Between the front
wheels of the car is slung a revolving drum wound with a steel cable,
which is used to get the car out of trouble when the pitch is too steep
to afford traction]
Not until its sprawling bulk has been fettered by some regular means
of communication can the Sahara be considered as effectually subdued.
There has been much talk from time to time of a trans-Saharan railway
from the rail-head at Colomb-Béchar in Southern Algeria to Timbuktu,
whence one branch would continue southward to link up with the Ivory
Coast system, while another would swing sharply westward to Dakar, on
the coast of Senegal, and a third branch might be pushed eastward to
the Lake Tchad country. The chief advocates of such a scheme are the
French imperialists and military authorities, who see in such a railway
a means of rushing vast numbers of black troops from the trans-Saharan
territories to the aid of the mother-country in the event of another
war. Personally, however, I do not look for this ambitious project to
be realized until some time in the distant future. True, there are
no insurmountable obstacles from the engineering point of view, as
preliminary surveys have shown, but there are numerous objections. First
of all, of course, comes the question of cost, which would necessarily be
enormous—an expense which France, in her present impoverished condition,
is quite unable to bear. Serious difficulties would be encountered in
finding sufficient labor and in providing adequate supplies of water and
fuel. It is generally admitted that it would be extremely difficult, if
not impossible, effectively to protect a desert railway of such length
from attacks by Touareg tribes. Such a system could not hope to be
self-supporting, for the length of haul would be enormous; most of the
country through which it would run is uninhabited and unproductive; and
there would be almost nothing in the way of freight or passengers to be
picked up along the route. Moreover it is becoming a grave question among
authorities on transportation whether, even under the most favorable
circumstances, railways can successfully compete with motor routes, the
initial cost of which is far less, and which can be operated far more
economically. The truth of the matter is that the recent conquest of the
desert by the motor-car has been a serious blow to the project for a
trans-Saharan railway, and I am inclined to believe that passengers and
goods will be borne across the Great Sands on rubber instead of rails for
many years to come. I doubt not that the desert motor service projected
by M. Citroen will shortly be revived, either by himself or others, and
that, in a much nearer future than most people suppose, it will be as
simple a matter to cross the Sahara to Timbuktu by automobile as it has
become to cross the Syrian Desert to Baghdad.
When that day comes—and I repeat that it is not far distant—the merchants
of Nigeria and the Sudan will run up to Algiers, or even to Paris, to
do their buying, just as Mid-West merchants go to New York; the sons
of the great Mohammedan chieftains of Darfur and Wadai will be sent
to the Moslem universities of Fez and Tunis as the sons of Western
ranch-owners are sent to Yale and Harvard; the products of French
Equatorial Africa—the greatest untapped reservoir of raw materials on
the continent—will go rolling northward to the factories of Europe in a
steady stream, while the manufactured goods of Europe and North Africa
will find their way in ever-increasing quantities to the rich markets of
the South. Caravans of motor-buses, doing their twenty miles an hour,
will bear merchants, drummers, students, soldiers, scientists, officials,
tourists, across the great divide. The road is perhaps the most effective
agency of civilization. As Mr. Hilaire Belloc has so admirably put it:
“More than rivers and more than mountain chains, roads have moulded the
political groupings of men. The Alps with a mule-track across them are
less of a barrier than fifteen miles of forest or rough land separating
one from that track.”
* * * * *
The sun was but a slender crimson arc above the horizon when we set out
from Tozeur in the twelve-wheeler to push southward into what some one
has aptly termed “the last home of mystery.” The early morning is always
cold in the Sahara, and even our Arab guide shivered beneath the folds
of his camel’s-hair burnous. For the first few miles our route led us
across a rocky, stone-strewn plain, the big car rumbling and shaking
like a motor-truck. Then, topping a rise in the _hammada_, we beheld
the sand-dunes. Silent, mysterious, forbidding, they reared themselves
across our path, their flanks as trackless, as destitute of vegetation,
as the polar snows. I don’t know how high they were, for everything is
enormously magnified in the clear air of the desert, but they seemed
appalling as they rose abruptly from that bleak, monotonous expanse.
As for climbing them in a motor-car, I should as soon have thought of
driving up the side of the Great Pyramid. But I leaned back in my snug,
leather-cushioned seat unconcernedly, confident that the chauffeur, a
veteran at the business, knew a way to circumvent them.
But instead of making a detour, as I momentarily expected, he held his
course straight for the largest dune. It grew larger as we drew near
until it loomed above us like the Equitable Building. Still we kept on
at steadily increasing speed. The man must have gone daft, I thought.
We had at the wheel a lunatic. For anything on wheels to attempt that
towering wall of sand was as crazy a performance, it seemed to me, as
Don Quixote’s encounter with the windmill. We charged it like a tank
attacking the Hindenburg Line. The lower slopes we took with a rush and
a roar; then came a perceptible slackening of speed as we lost momentum.
With a clash of gears the chauffeur went into second speed, then third
... fourth ... fifth. The exhaust barked like a machine-gun. The big car
reared itself up until it seemed to be standing on its stern. I felt the
seat tilting under me, as one does when an airplane goes into a steep
climb. We went into sixth speed. The staccato crackle of the exhaust
changed into a sustained roar. The sandy slopes slipped by us slower and
slower—ten ... eight ... six miles an hour. Would we make it? Would the
power hold out? By way of answering my unvoiced question the chauffeur
jammed his foot hard upon the throttle, the car flung itself forward in a
final surge of power—and we were at the top.
My sensation of relief died half born, however, for, though we were on
the summit of the ridge, our front wheels rested upon the brink of a
sandy precipice which seemed to drop away a hundred fathoms sheer. If the
ascent of the windward slope had seemed perilous, the descent of this all
but perpendicular leeward slope would, I felt certain, inevitably end
in disaster. Yet to back down the declivity we had just ascended with
so much effort was out of the question, while the space at the top was
too narrow to permit of turning around. But our pilot showed no signs of
perturbation. Nonchalantly lighting a cigarette, he shifted into lowest
gear and gently nosed the cumbersome machine over the brink. The little
flags out front, then the hood, seemed suddenly to drop out of sight, and
I was thrown forward with great abruptness to find myself looking down
upon the top of the driver’s head. Do you know the sensation of diving
in an airplane? Well, it was like that, only more so. I would have sworn
that no wheeled vehicle ever built could have descended that declivity
and remained right side up at the bottom. But this one did. Indeed, it
seemed entirely to defy the law of gravitation. If the ascent had been
exciting, the descent was paralyzing. We went down with a rush and a
roar, choked and blinded by the whirling sand, at a speed so terrific
that it literally took the breath away. I gripped the sides of the seat
until my fingers ached. You can see their imprints sunk in the steel arms
to-day! Half-way down the driver shut off his power, and from there on we
coasted. I glanced at the speedometer. The needle showed 130 kilometers
an hour!
When we ran out upon the floor of the narrow valley which separated the
range of dunes we had just crossed from the next one, I tapped the driver
on the shoulder.
“Stop a moment,” I said.
“What is the matter?” asked my wife, as I started to clamber down. “Are
you going to take a picture?”
“No,” I told her. “I am going to take my hat off to the car.”
[Illustration: TO PROVE THAT WE WERE REALLY THERE
Our camp in the Sahara. By day it was as hot as the stoke-hole of an
oil-tanker in the Red Sea in midsummer, but with the setting of the sun
the mercury frequently fell sixty degrees and we shivered beneath our
heavy blankets]
Thenceforward, for hundreds of miles, we zigzagged, now up, now down,
through a bewilderment of dunes, a hopeless confusion of sand hills and
ridges, valleys and hollows, which stretched away on one hand to meet
the mountains of the Aurés and on the other to vanish in the vast spaces
of the mid-Sahara. It was like motoring over an unending succession
of very steeply pitched and lofty roofs, roaring up one side, pausing
for an instant on the ridge-pole, and then hurtling down the other.
Under the midday sun the dunes were as dazzling as snow, and a few
chimneys here and there were all that was needed to make me feel like an
up-to-the-minute Santa Claus. Though tremendously exhilarating, it was
also extremely fatiguing, for the constant swaying and pitching of the
car like a small boat in a heavy sea, the necessity of hanging on for
dear life, put a severe strain on every bone and muscle in the body. When
we camped that night I ached as I have ached but once before, at the end
of my first long camel-ride in Arabia.
Only once did we encounter serious trouble. We had charged an
exceptionally steep dune, and, unable to arrest the momentum of the
car when we gained the top, had hurtled down the reverse slope to find
ourselves imprisoned in a deep pocket, or hollow, in the sands. The dunes
rose so precipitously on every hand that there was no space in which to
get a flying start. It looked to me as though we were going to have an
opportunity to qualify as Shriners by a long, long march over the hot
sands, for the nearest human habitation, so our Arab guide informed us,
was a hundred kilometers away. But as soon as the chauffeur realized
the hopelessness of trying to extricate the car by ordinary methods, he
resorted to the windlass contrivance I have already described, which
hauled us out of trouble as easily and almost as quickly as a steam-winch
hoists cargo out of the hold of a steamer.
Though I indulged in a good deal of speculation as to the height of
the dunes, I was unable to estimate their altitude with any degree of
accuracy, for there was absolutely nothing with which to compare them.
We saw a few quite imposing hills, which in certain localities would be
called mountains, and which, so the guide told us, enjoyed names of their
own; but, generally speaking, I imagine that the dunes are by no means
as high as they appear in that wonderfully clear air—probably not much
over four hundred or five hundred feet as a rule, though I have since
been told that some of them are six hundred feet in height, which is
considerably higher than the Washington Monument.
Because, in our school geographies, the deserts were invariably tinted
saffron, we have become accustomed to speak of them as “yellow.” But the
Sahara, though frequently tawny in spots, runs through the whole gamut
of colors. In the early morning it is a dirty bluish gray, of much the
same tone as the refuse from a soda-ash manufactory; but as the sun rises
it becomes a dazzling white, like drifted snow, so glaring that the
eyes must be protected with tinted glasses. Under certain atmospheric
conditions, however, I have seen the outcropping rocks of the _hammada_
become as red as the walls of the Grand Cañon. But the desert assumes its
loveliest tints with the approach of nightfall, when it gradually changes
from white to vivid orange, to blue, to amethyst, to deepest purple.
Then, when the stars come out, it changes to gray again, an indescribably
soft and misty gray, like smoky chiffon over silver tissue.
Far from being monotonous, the dunes present an infinite variety of form,
their sweep of line and beauty of contour being in singular harmony with
the wild, free life of the desert. I have remarked before that they can
best be likened to a sea, for the wind which blows almost incessantly
across these wastes has left the sand in waves and combers, arrested
in the very act of breaking and stricken into immobility and deathly
silence. But when the wind rises to a gale this paralyzed sea suddenly
comes to life, for the dunes begin to move, or, as the Arabs term it, to
“walk.” The word is highly descriptive, for the whispering of the sand
as it tumbles along, and the rapid changes which take place in the shape
of the drifts, their crests melting and smoking in the wind, give the
impression that the whole landscape is in motion. When the dunes walk in
good earnest, as in the case of a real sand-storm, nothing can arrest
them. Whipped by a roaring wind, the sand rises in suffocating clouds;
the sun is obscured; the hot blue sky changes to a murky red, then to an
angry purple; the landscape is completely blotted out; it is impossible
to see objects a hundred yards away; a sullen twilight descends upon the
land, enshrouding it in gloom; the dunes heave and crumple; the surface
of the earth flits past dizzily, as in a motion-picture taken from a
moving train. It is one of the most curious, and at the same time one of
the most terrifying, spectacles that Africa has to offer.
The second night out from Tozeur we experienced a sand-storm. I have
seen far more violent ones in the Sudan and in Northern Arabia, but it
was exciting enough while it lasted. During the late afternoon menacing
purple clouds had been piling up along the southern horizon. As darkness
fell the gentle breeze which had been blowing throughout the day suddenly
died down, to be succeeded by an oppressive hush, like that which in
Mexico generally precedes an earthquake. On the desert a great silence
fell, deathly and oppressive. Then, without the slightest warning, came
the wind, a veritable hurricane, driving the sand before it as chaff is
scattered by the propeller of an airplane. The flying particles cut our
faces like driven sleet. Our skins felt as though they had been rubbed
with emery-paper. The stars were obscured; the purple velvet sky deepened
to the blackness of ink. The tent-pegs had been too firmly anchored to
be torn out, but the canvas billowed like the sails of a racing-yacht;
the guy-ropes hummed like bowstrings. The air was dense with driven
sand; though we wrapped our heads in blankets, the dust filled our eyes,
our ears, our nostrils, producing a sensation not far removed from
suffocation. The palm-trees of the little oasis where we were encamped
bent before the blast until their plumed tops swept the ground. From the
darkness came eery shrieks and wails—the cries, so say the superstitious
Arabs, of the malignant _afrits_ who let loose the sand-storms. Earth
and sky seemed to mingle in a chaos of confusion, a pandemonium of
sound. Then the wind subsided as abruptly as it had arisen, leaving a
thick veneer of red-brown dust on everything. The air became fresh and
clear again. The palm-fronds stirred ever so slightly in the gentle
night breeze. One by one the stars came out, as at nightfall the lights
are turned on in a great city. Peace and utter silence descended on the
desert. The Sahara slept once more.
[Illustration: A LANDMARK FOR THOSE WHO NAVIGATE THE SEA OF SAND
In order to prevent caravans from losing their way in the sandy waste,
the French have marked the great trade-routes across the Sahara at
ten-kilometer intervals with lofty towers of stone; the curious
superstructure atop the _bassourab_, or camel-tent in which the women
travel, enables the tribe or caravan to be identified from afar]
But the morning light revealed an astounding transformation. The whole
landscape had been remade. Nothing was the same. Hills stood where
hollows had been before, and ridges had been replaced by rifts. Even
our Arab guide, who knew the desert as a housewife knows her kitchen,
seemed to have difficulty in orienting himself and stood for some minutes
alternately glancing at the sun and studying the transformed terrain.
For the first time I understood how it was possible for caravans to lose
their way when overwhelmed by a sand-storm and to perish in this dreadful
land from thirst and exhaustion.
In order to lessen the chance of such disasters, however, the French
government has undertaken the task of marking the main trade-routes
across the desert with lofty signal-towers of stone, some of them fifty
feet in height. Set on the highest eminences, about ten kilometers
apart, they rear themselves above the sandy sea like lighthouses along
a perilous coast. In places we could see them, through the glasses,
rising at intervals across the desert, marking the courses of the great
trade-tracks which run down to Tchad, to Zinder, and to Timbuktu.
* * * * *
Nefta, reputed to be the most beautiful oasis in all of Saharan Africa,
lies almost athwart the Tunisian-Algerian frontier, and our driver
insisted that it would be a thousand pities if we did not make the short
detour necessary to visit it and to view its famous sunken gardens. The
oasis occupies the bed of what was presumably once a small lake, and from
the summit of the arid sand-hills with which it is ringed about we looked
down into a circular vale so dense with verdure, so thickly set with palm
and fruit trees, that it well deserves the name which the French have
given it of _la corbeille_. The floor of the oasis is so much lower than
the level of the encircling desert that, standing as we were on the rim
of the depression, we were above the tops of the tallest palms. Here,
in this sheltered spot, the _deglat-nour_ date, the most delicious in
the world, grows in supreme luxuriance, “its feet in the water and its
head in the fires of heaven.” For the date-palm has this singular and
apparently contradictory characteristic: it demands moisture but cannot
stand rain. Those unfortunates who know the date only when it has been
dried and pressed into a sugary viscous mass, covered with flies in a
grocer’s window, can hardly imagine how luscious is the semi-transparent
amber-colored fruit when eaten, fresh from the tree, beside one of the
purling streams which meander through the green gardens of Nefta. It is
an enchanting.spot, is Nefta, and I should have liked to dally there for
several days, but the desert was calling and I had to go.
A quarter of a mile outside the wretched, mud-walled little town of El
Oued, the Transat, we found, had established a semi-permanent camp in
a sort of amphitheater formed by the sand-dunes. There was a spacious
dining-tent before which had been laid out a sort of flowerless garden
composed, appropriately enough, of hundreds of empty wine-bottles,
up-ended and planted in geometric designs in the sand. Hard by was
another tent, for lounging purposes, provided with comfortable cane
chairs and lined with bright-colored native hangings; while at the back,
ranged in a semicircle, were a dozen or more small sleeping-tents for
the use of travelers and their servants. The encampment was in charge
of a genial old Kabyle from the mountains of Algeria, whose astonishing
proficiency in numerous European tongues had been acquired, so he
explained, during a lengthy engagement with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
Show and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. Though he was well on
in years and held a responsible position, I think that the old warrior
secretly hankered for the blare of brass bands, the roar of cheering
crowds, and life under the “big top.”
After quite an excellent dinner, considering the remoteness of the place
and the limitations imposed on culinary efforts, we ranged our chairs
around the camp-fire—a mighty roarer fed with palm-logs the length of a
man—and the ex-rough rider put on a very creditable variety show with
local talent for our entertainment. The program opened with a plaintive
Bedouin love-song by the camp cook, an Arab from the Tunisian Sahel. His
two assistants, one of them a really remarkable ventriloquist, gave an
extemporized skit which must have been highly amusing, judging from the
roars of laughter with which it was greeted by the native onlookers. Four
Arabs, armed with sword and spear, then gave a kind of war-dance, during
the course of which they became so excited that I feared they would turn
the farce into reality and do each other bodily harm. The program was
concluded by a quartet of local prostitutes, unveiled, tattooed, and
festooned with jewelry, who performed the strange and sensuous dances
of the desert folk to the wail of flutes and the boom of tom-toms. The
brooding desert, gray white beneath the stars; the purple velvet sky; the
ghostly sand-hills; the little circle of natives, so closely cloaked and
hooded that only their eyes were visible, squatting on the ground; and
the slim, supple bodies of the dancing-girls twisting and swaying in the
light of the leaping flames—all these combined to form a scene which is
etched deeply on the tablets of my memory.
Because of the rapid radiation which takes place at nightfall, the
temperature in the desert is subject to almost unbelievably sudden and
extreme variations. This characteristic of the Saharan climate was
particularly noticeable at El Oued, the thermometer registering a drop
of nearly sixty degrees in not much over an hour. During the day the
heat in the little hollow where our tents were pitched was so intense
that we fairly gasped for breath; the stray currents of air which
occasionally reached us, far from affording relief, were like blasts
from the open door of a furnace; before the sun was an hour high the
mercury climbed to 120 and stayed there; to stay within one’s tent was
to invite suffocation, to stay without, where a thermometer probably
would have registered 150, was to be broiled alive. Yet the sun had
scarcely disappeared below the horizon ere we were shivering beneath
our greatcoats, and that night I slept under three heavy blankets—and
suffered acutely from the cold! That is why the climate of the Sahara
must be treated with profound respect by Europeans, for exposure to the
sudden chill which comes at sunset is frequently as deadly as exposure to
the sun itself.
_Oued_ is the Arabic word for river, and, when applied to a village or
locality, presupposes the presence of a stream. I saw nothing about El
Oued which even remotely suggested the proximity of water, however,
until, climbing one morning to the summit of the range of sand-dunes
which encircled the camp, I looked down upon a dozen acres or so of as
prosperous looking a fruit-orchard as I have ever seen. I rubbed my eyes
incredulously, so astonishing was it to see this patch of brilliant green
set down in the heart of that arid, sun-scorched, apparently hopeless
waste. Yet there it was, with its ordered rows of fruit-trees—pears,
apples, peaches, apricots, figs, pomegranates—in full blossom; its long
trellises of grapes, the stems of the vines as large as a man’s wrist;
its ranks of towering date-palms with their huge clusters of rapidly
ripening fruit; and, in the heart of it all, a really charming little
bungalow embowered in flowers and vines. The place was, I learned, the
property of a prosperous and progressive Arab, who had obtained an
unlimited supply of pure water by sinking a number of artesian wells
to a depth of not much over a hundred feet. El Oued was appropriately
named after all, it seemed, for the river was there, even though it was
below the surface. But the anxieties of a Saharan husbandman are not
ended once he has obtained an adequate and assured supply of water, for
he must still guard his hard-won area of fertility against the stealthy
encroachments of the shifting sands, which can be held at bay only by
maintaining along the edge of the oasis a sand-break composed of certain
trees, shrubs, and grasses. And, if prosperity is to be maintained, that
barrier must be guarded as vigilantly as a Hollander guards his dikes.
For the desert, like the sea, never becomes discouraged, never gives in;
you can never say that you have conquered it. It can be held in check
only by unceasing vigilance.
[Illustration: THE SHRINE IN THE SANDS
Si Sayah Laroussi, Grand Marabout of the Tidjania, welcomes us to his
palace in Guemar
Caïds of the Tidjania in the courtyard of the mosque at Guemar]
Some hours after leaving El Oued we sighted across the dunes the
walls of a small desert town called Guemar, the site of an important
_zaouia_ of one of the numerous sects of Islam and the seat of a
powerful marabout. The term “marabout,” it should be explained, is of
the widest application, and takes in every man who in any way devotes
himself to religion, from dignified officials of the church to the
demented creatures, clad in filthy rags, who frequent the bazaars and
the courtyards of the mosques, eking out an existence on the alms they
solicit from the charitable. Throughout North Africa the marabouts enjoy
extraordinary influence, political as well as religious, being venerated
as living saints and harkened to as prophets, soothsayers, and mediators.
They are generously supported by alms, are listened to with awe by
the ignorant and with respect by the enlightened, and are invariably
consulted in family disputes, intertribal quarrels, and other matters of
consequence or inconsequence. On the death of a marabout his sanctity
is transferred to his tomb (also called a marabout), which frequently
becomes a place of pilgrimage for the pious. The marabouts whom one
sees shuffling about the streets of North African cities are generally
mere charlatans, who have adopted a life of piety as the easiest means
of gaining a living; but these should not be confounded with the great
marabouts, some of whom, such as the Senussi, the head of the powerful
secret fraternity whose headquarters are at Jarabub in Tripolitania,
are extremely able men and exercise enormous influence in the Moslem
world. The French, whose whole policy in Africa is based on winning the
confidence and friendship of the natives, have never made the mistake of
underestimating the power of the great marabouts, but, on the contrary,
treat them with marked respect and frequently bestow on them honors and
decorations.
When our driver learned that we contemplated passing through Guemar
without stopping, he ventured to express polite but unmistakable
disapproval. To do so, it seemed, would be to commit an unpardonable
breach of etiquette.
“All strangers passing through the town must visit the grand marabout,”
he informed us. “It is the custom.”
I still demurred, but the chauffeur was insistent.
“He has given orders that all visitors must see him; he expects it.”
Realizing that the man was evidently under orders to do nothing which
might offend so powerful a chieftain, I consented to pay my respects.
Si Sayah Laroussi, who, according to the legend on his visiting-card, is
grand marabout of the Tidjania, chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and
commander of the Order of Nichan Iftikhar, is a very important person
indeed in the northeastern Sahara, exercising political as well as
religious authority. His residence, which fronts on a spacious square
in the center of the town, is a substantial whitewashed building in the
Moorish style, the entrance, with its horseshoe arches and bands of
vividly colored tiles, being faintly suggestive of some of the palaces
in Fez and Marrákesh. Si Sayah, an impressive and colorful figure in
his vivid green turban, his caftan of pale pink silk, and his snowy
burnous, on the breast of which gleamed the cross of the Legion of Honor,
received us with some show of ceremony, surrounded by the officials of
his miniature court, in the audience-chamber, a finely proportioned room
whose decorations combined Oriental taste with European tawdriness.
After serving us with Arab coffee, some native cakes made from sickly
sweet almond paste, and cigarettes, and displaying with much pride a
series of photographs of Mecca, to which he had made the _haj_, Si Sayah
conducted us through the gardens, which contained several gazelles and
a flock of pink-legged flamingos, to the really impressive mosque which
was being erected over the tomb of the late grand marabout, who, if I
mistake not, was our host’s father. I was particularly interested in the
architecture of the marabout (I am referring now to the building, not
to the man), for its doorways, instead of having the Moorish horseshoe
arches which are characteristic of religious edifices in French North
Africa, were high and rectangular, with a curious serrated border,
suggesting, without actually resembling, the doorways of the Temple at
Karnak, in Upper Egypt. Upon my expressing surprise that a town as small
as Guemar could afford so large and beautiful a place of worship, Si
Sayah explained that the funds for its erection had been subscribed by
the pious throughout North Africa, adding that generous contributions had
been made even by unbelievers. Taking the hint, I begged the privilege
of making a modest donation to the building-fund, which was promptly
accepted in the name of Allah.
As we were saying our farewells I asked Si Sayah’s permission to take
his picture, explaining that I wished to use it in my next book. This
so gratified him that he urged us to remain in Guemar as his guests for
a few days and join him on a hunting expedition, adding that he had
the finest falcons and Salukis in North Africa. The Saluki, or gazelle
hound (the French erroneously call them _sloughi_), is, I should perhaps
explain, peculiar to the Sahara and Arabia, where the type has been
carefully bred for sport by the great sheikhs for generations, some of
these dogs having pedigrees which run back for a thousand years. Though
of sturdier build, the Saluki bears a strong resemblance to the Russian
borzoi. They locate their quarry not by smell but by sight, amazing tales
being related of their sagacity, speed, and endurance. Falconry, like
coursing, has been practised in Barbary for ages, the nomad tribes of the
Sahara having developed a very large type of falcon—possibly a species of
eagle—which is flown at partridges, wild fowl, cranes, bustards, and even
gazelles. To gallop across the desert as the guest of the grand marabout
of the Tidjania “astride a steed of the Prophet’s breed,” with a hooded
falcon on my wrist, and a pack of lean gazelle hounds racing on before,
would have provided me with material for many a dinner-table story, but
time pressed, and I felt compelled reluctantly to decline the tempting
invitation.
* * * * *
The mud-brown walls of Guemar lay far behind when we saw approaching us
across the desert a rolling cloud of yellow dust.
“_Une caravane?_” I asked our Arab guide.
With his hand he shaded his keen eyes against the intolerable sun-glare,
then shook his head.
“_Non, m’sieu’_,” he answered. “_Les méharistes._”
A moment later there emerged from the enveloping dust-cloud a long line
of grim fantastic figures, mounted not upon the lumbering dromedaries of
commerce but astride the lean gray racing-camels called _méhari_ by the
desert folk. At the head of the column rode a slim, sun-bronzed young
Frenchman in the uniform of a captain of _chasseurs d’Afrique_. As the
cavalcade swept by us at a brisk trot, saddles creaking, accoutrements
clanking, carbines thudding in their buckets, I noted that the riders
were veiled like women, their faces muffled to the eyes with dark blue
scarfs. By these I knew them for masked Touareg; raiders and robbers no
longer, however, but camel cavalry, _méharistes_, in the service of the
republic. Unlike the ordinary Arab, who invariably wears white, their
_gandourahs_ were somber in color—dark blue or black—and girt about with
broad belts of camel’s-hair. The black _lithams_, or face-cloths—which,
by the way, are worn not for purposes of disguise but in order to
protect the throat and nose from the sand—permitted nothing save the
fierce smoldering eyes of their wearers to be seen. Perhaps it was their
reputation for cruelty, perhaps it was their black masks and somber
apparel, but there was something awesome and impressive about these
veiled riders and the stealthy, quiet tread of the great beasts they
bestrode, as they sped southward into the infinite spaces of the desert.
Possessed of a skill in desert-craft and tracking equaled only by the
American Indian, mounted on their wonderful running-camels, capable of
covering enormous distances in a day, these “People of the Veil,” some of
them at least, have accepted the pay of France and are bringing security
to the caravan-routes and the desert towns which they terrorized so long.
They have not yet beaten their long, two-edged swords into plowshares,
it is true, but they have turned them into policemen’s batons; and a
policeman is a sure indication that civilization is not far away.