miserably, after the manner of cave-dwellers, divided into two clans,
and possessing only a few camels, asses, and goats, and a small number
of date palms in the neighbourhood of a few barely accessible springs
dispersed here and there about the outer slopes of the volcano. Their
staple food is a wild herb, the “Mouni,” that grows among the rocks, and
yields a coarse flour that looks like coal-dust; and in the plains at
the foot of Emi Koussi they collect the seeds of a sort of bitter gourd,
the “hamdal,” which become eatable after undergoing a long preparation
intended to take away their extremely bitter taste. At times they
procure meat by hunting the “Meschi,” a kind of wild sheep which is only
to be met with in the high mountains, and of which throughout my journey
I did not see a single specimen. They are supplied with stuffs, arms,
and ammunition by the Senoussists of Koufra, to whom, profiting by the
cool season, they bring goats in exchange; but the greater part of their
scanty resources comes from the brigandage they practised until quite
recently, with more or less success, on the routes that lead from Kanem
to Borkou and Bilma. Untiring on the look-out, though not particularly
brave fighters, they succeeded in keeping up an unremitting watch on our
movements during our exploration, and in this way they were able to get
possession of one of our camels, too tired to keep up with us when we
came down again towards the pasture-land of Yono.
We got back to our bivouac on September 20, and I had to stay there
nearly a week to let the camels recuperate and to give them time to get
better of the wounds to their feet caused by the sharp edges of the
boulders they had had to walk on during that expedition.
I spent the week’s rest in making calculations drawn from my different
observations, and in exploring the hot springs of Yi-Erra, highly
esteemed in the whole region for their medicinal virtues. Their
temperature is 100·5° Fahr. (38·1° Cent.), and their flow of water by no
means abundant. They can only be approached on foot and by a difficult
path, in about an hour: their altitude is 3100 feet above the sea.
_Central Tibesti._—When our camels had had a rest and feed in the
pasture-lands of Yono, I decided to transfer my quarters to the great
valley of Miski, 100 miles further north, skirting the western foot of
Emi Koussi. This valley of Miski is one of the most important of the
Tibestian massif, not in the matter of its alimentary products, which
hardly exist, but from a military point of view, for the Tibestian
rebels use it as a convenient meeting-place from which—with no great
difficulty and without our knowledge—they can attack our southern and
western lines of communication. In the course of our march (between 25
September and 1 October 1915) our patrols had a few small engagements
with the rebels, and some prisoners were taken who supplied us with
useful information: the Toubous, informed that our expedition was on the
march, were gathering their crop of dates—though the dates were not
fully ripe—and meant to seek refuge 100 miles further north-east, in the
Tarso of Ouri.
The pasture-lands of Miski were already abandoned by the rebels, and so
we were able to march without fighting through the two long passes that
command the entrance to the valley. A number of reconnoitring patrols
showed us the exactitude of the information mentioned above, except in
respect of the palm plantation of Modra, where Lieut. Fouché’s
detachment, consisting of only fifteen men, had to put up a pretty hard
fight in order to avoid being surrounded and cut to pieces.
The scarcity of food and the jaded condition of part of my camels forced
me at this point to divide my forces and send part of them back to
Borkou, after planning a new route. I remained alone with my secretary
and thirty black soldiers to go on with my exploration of the heart of
the unknown Tibesti. My aim was to effect a junction with the troops of
Bardai in the valley of Yebbi, and to explore the gorges of Kozen and
Goumeur in the east of the massif, where several rebellious tribes had
taken refuge.
I left Miski on October 4, and on the 6th I reached the watershed
between the basins of the Chad and the Mediterranean. At sunset I
reached the Mohi pass, 5000 feet high, but the gathering darkness
prevented me making as good use (topographically speaking) of my
presence at this spot as I should have been able to do if I had arrived
there in full daylight. In that case, I might have climbed a commanding
height of apparently easy ascent situated 2 or 3 miles east of the pass,
from which position I should have been able to grasp the general
character of this orographic centre. As it was, I had to cover the few
miles that lay between us and the palm plantations of Yebbi in complete
darkness, partly in the evening, and partly on the following morning.
But through a mistake made by the guide it was only at half-past six
that we saw the first palm tree, at the bottom of a dark valley shut in
between almost vertical walls from 700 to 1500 feet high. The landscape
on every side was inky black and beyond all expression desolate; the
valley was covered with dark boulders, glistening in the sun; no trace
of green could be seen, except two thin lines of palms bordering a
stagnant watercourse hardly a dozen yards wide. High mountains were
visible to the east, rising (so far as I could judge) to 6000 or 7000
feet.
To get down to the bottom of the valley there was only a narrow track
littered with sharp blocks, on which our camels did not know where to
set their feet. The vanguard that covered our toilsome descent was
already exchanging shots with the Toubous, but was finally able to get
possession of the palm grove; towards 9 o’clock we could pitch our
tents, with no more fighting to do. A few goats and donkeys were our
only booty. But soon there appeared three prisoners, almost naked, whose
pitiable physical condition was strangely in keeping with the appalling
wretchedness of a landscape that one might have taken for a vision of
hell. They were miserable slaves, stolen by the Toubous during their
forays against the inhabitants of Kanem and Wadai. Their state of mind
was no better than that of their bodies, and there was little to be got
out of them about the country and its inhabitants. At any rate, they
enabled us to unearth a few hiding-places where we found some dates, a
great boon to the members of the expedition, whose rations were growing
daily shorter.
Towards 11 o’clock a Toubou envoy came, sent by the rebels to make terms
for their submission; I offered very easy ones, and treated them with
consideration. After half an hour’s interview, I sent him back to the
rebels on whose behalf he had come, but waited in vain for his return
till evening.
Towards five in the afternoon I struck camp to seek a bivouac for the
night, in a better position than the death-trap where we had spent the
afternoon, and we halted, in complete darkness and without lighting
fires, on a rocky platform that gave us 300 or 400 yards of open ground
to fire over on all sides. Thanks to these measures, we were able to
spend the rest of the night in peace.
Next day we went a little further down the valley in search of pasturage
for our camels, worn out with hunger and fatigue; their condition left
small hope of undertaking the excursion I had planned in the direction
of Kozen and Goumeur, from which we were still separated by two or three
ridges very difficult to cross, and where—so at least our prisoners
said—neither pasture nor water could be found in readily accessible
situations. When it is added that I had no news of the Bardai detachment
which I had hoped to meet there, it will be understood that I thought
best to advance in its direction two days’ march further west, into the
valley of Zoumri, where I was informed of the presence of friendly
tribes who could probably supply me with some information about its
movements.
These two marches were very hard on our animals. To cross from one
valley to the other we had to make our way up a wearisome succession of
ravines and steep slopes, one of which, on the sides of a spur of a
precipitous cliff, cost the detachment a hard piece of work in making a
flight of rough steps up which the camels, though completely unloaded,
had the utmost difficulty in climbing. On the other hand, I had the good
luck to see before me, on the east and north-east, a vast horizon of
mountains which extended and confirmed the observations made on the
summit of Emi Koussi, and made certain that the Tibestian massif, far
from being limited to the simple mountain chain hitherto marked on the
maps of Africa, stretched away for more than 100 miles into the interior
of the Lybian desert. During the two hours required for the hard climb
up this cliff I kept on taking observations of the numerous summits
visible in the limpid distances of that ocean of rocks, summits that
seemed to rise like a succession of landmarks along each of two or three
long ridges in sharp and jagged peaks, equal in bulk and perhaps in
height with those of the great western chain, of which a few outlines
appeared in the gaps between the nearer ranges. But in face of this
accumulation of lofty peaks I felt a bitter vexation, a sort of
resentment against my own littleness and powerlessness to set in order
their apparent chaos. For it would have needed many a long excursion
made with two or three fresh camel-trains, and a further provision of
supplies, to enable me to straighten out the seeming tangle of these
valleys and the confusing intersection of the hills.
Towards eight o’clock in the morning we resumed our westward march,
skirting on the north an isolated mountain more than 8000 feet high, the
Toh de Zoumri, which by its conical outline and the circular shape of
its top looks like an old volcano, a supposition I had not time to
verify. Our route crossed numerous tracks converging towards the
mountains, which were used as a refuge by large numbers of Têda rebels,
subjects of the former Dordeï of Bardai, whose revolt was aided by the
encouragement and the supplies of arms and ammunition furnished by the
Turco-Senoussists. Next day, October 11, we entered the valley of Zoumri
by a pass 4800 feet high, and towards ten o’clock we bivouacked near the
palm plantation of Yountiou, where I was hoping to meet with friendly
Têdas who would put me in touch with the commander of the Bardai post.
Unfortunately the village was deserted.
This fresh disappointment caused me little or no surprise; I expected my
coming to Miski and thence to Yebbi to be known by all the hillmen, and
that our skirmishes with the rebels would have been related with no
small exaggeration as mighty combats; still, I felt that I was too near
the goal to give up the attempt to reach it, so I sent out patrols to
scour the neighbourhood and especially to capture a few Têdas who could
guide me towards Bardai. Presently an old woman was brought to me,
gaunt, stooping, and half crippled, but with intelligent eyes. After
long reticence she confided to me that she was the mother of the chief
of that village, and that her son had gone over to the French a few
weeks earlier. Messengers had come during the two preceding days,
announcing the coming of an expedition from Borkou, and when that
morning the watchers saw our camels at the summit of the pass, all the
Têdas—men, women, and children—fled panic-stricken into the neighbouring
rocks; she alone had remained hidden in the palm plantation, because she
said she was too feeble to follow them and too old to be afraid of
death. I calmed her fears about my intentions as best I could, telling
her that all the Têdas who submitted to French authority could count on
my good will, and urging her to bring me her son as soon as she could,
promising her that she should be treated with friendship and
consideration; but as I had to continue my journey to Bardai as soon as
possible, she must understand that I should be obliged to procure guides
by force if I could not get them otherwise. “You shall have a guide to
take you to Bardai,” she said, “and, if it please Allah, without needing
to use your guns; I will go and tell my son.” Soon after there came up a
little man with the same intelligent eyes, young and timid looking. He
handed me the certificate of submission given him only a few days before
by the officer commanding the French forces in Tibesti. After a fairly
long talk he declared himself ready to serve me, but begged me not to
insist on trying to get any other men of his village, for they were
grimly determined to stay in their hiding-places. I trusted him, and was
rewarded for doing so, for he stayed at my disposition upwards of a
week, and thanks to his knowledge of the country I was able to go on
with my exploration as rapidly as possible, and to collect interesting
geographical information about the regions that lay off the track of my
journey. To go to Bardai we had only to follow the sandy bed of the
dried-up river, along which from time to time we passed by palm
plantations and villages, the headmen of which came to bid me welcome,
pleading their poverty as an excuse for not offering me the customary
presents. After twelve hours’ march, when I had just passed through the
village of Zoui, I met Lieut. Blaizot, commanding the troops of Tibesti,
coming on foot to meet and welcome me and to express his regret that he
had not been able, for want of camels, to come to Zoumri and Yebbi to
help me against the rebels. To see him and to listen to his voice as he
spoke were a great joy to me. In spite of all difficulties, I had just
effected the junction so long desired between the troops of Borkou and
those of Tibesti; in a few more minutes I was going at last to enter the
palm plantation of Bardai that I had been dreaming of seeing for twenty
years, ever since I had read in Nachtigal’s impressive story of his
travels about the difficulties he had to get over in order to enter it
forty-six years before, and above all to get out of it alive. On the way
I had been able to make a mass of observations, topographical, geodetic,
and hypsometric, and to fix with a very satisfactory degree of precision
the situation and height of the chief summits of the great western chain
that Nachtigal had only been able to locate by guesswork, and often
without having even seen them.
At Bardai, where I arrived on October 13 a little before noon, I stayed
only twenty-four hours, for I was in a hurry to get back to Miski, where
the little detachment left in charge of the broken-down camels and of my
last reserves of food must have been in a situation of some insecurity
since the 10th. During the afternoon of the 13th I was able to examine
in detail with the commander of the garrison the various questions
regarding the means of combining the efforts of the troops of Borkou and
those of the Tibesti against the rebels. The night having been
favourable to my astronomical observations and the morning to
measurements of angles on the principal peaks visible from Bardai, I had
been able in that short space of time to collect all the essential
elements needed for fixing on the map with satisfactory exactitude the
position of the most important points of Central Tibesti.
The geographical interest of my journey to Bardai did not consist solely
in the discovery, to the east of the great chain traversed by Nachtigal,
of mountains whose existence had not previously been suspected; it was
greatly enhanced by the fact that my observations corrected serious
errors of position and altitude committed by the famous German explorer
on the itinerary he followed amid so many hardships. Thus, for example,
in the site of Bardai there is an error of 50 miles in latitude and 30
in longitude; it is nearer 3000 than 2500 feet above sea-level; the
height of the peaks of Toussidé and Timi is as much as 10,000 feet; the
name of Tarso, which Nachtigal restricts to the massif he traversed, is
a general term applied by the Tibestians to all mountainous regions
consisting of high plateaux difficult of access, but on which the going
is easy when once one has climbed to the top. Lastly, to the east of
Bardai, instead of the great zone of plains shown on the maps there lies
a succession of important massifs the culminating point of which rises
as high as 8000 feet above the sea.
Refusing, albeit with extreme reluctance, to listen to the urgent
insistence of my amiable host Lieut. Blaizot, I left the post of Bardai
on the evening of October 14, and by a moonlight march lasting almost
all night I was able to get back on the 15th to my bivouac at Yountiou
to make the observations, astronomical and other, requisite for checking
those of the previous days; from that point I counted on returning to
Miski, not by the already reconnoitred route passing through Yebbi, but
by the Modra route lying further west, which was to afford me the
opportunity of reconnoitring another passage. But a piece of news had
just come which very much upset my Têda guide Mohammed: there had been
fighting in the Modra valley between the Borkou troops and the hillmen,
and he had very little fancy for guiding me through that region, where
my detachment would presumably have to fight its way by main force. For
me, on the contrary, it was a further reason for insisting on going
there with all speed, in order to afford my companions, if need was, the
help of the thirty rifles of my detachment.
Mohammed allowed himself to be convinced by the promise of a suitable
reward, and by the use of certain outer and visible signs indicating
clearly that he did not guide me of his own free will: he adjusted a
cord loosely round his neck, and one of my black soldiers seized hold of
the other end. In the eyes of his own people his Têda honour was safe,
and his responsibility for the consequences of the subsequent
proceedings reduced to vanishing-point.
Mohammed guided us to perfection; the chain was crossed on the second
day by the pass of Kidomma at an altitude of more than 6000 feet, and on
the evening of the third day, after a very tiring march, we reached the
point where the track leaves the plateau to go down into the bottom of
the Modra valley. We got down a first drop of some 60 yards without very
much trouble, in spite of the quarters of sharp-edged rock that rolled
under the hesitating feet of our camels. Then, after perhaps a third of
a mile of almost level going, I suddenly came in sight of the palm
plantation of Modra lying at the bottom of a dark narrow gorge deep
sunken between two almost vertical walls more than 1500 feet high.
I was not without uneasiness at this sight, and came within a very
little of thinking that the worthy Mohammed had deliberately lured me
into some trap when he had said to me: “The descent into the Modra
valley is rather difficult, but good camels can get down.” The descent
into the valley of Yebbi, which I had found so arduous eleven days
previously, seemed to me now quite a reasonable sort of descent compared
with this one. Already the valley was echoing with the reports of
rifles; here and there I saw Toubous climbing the cliff-sides like goats
and stopping now and then to favour us from afar with noisy but harmless
shots, and vigorous volleys of bad language more harmless still.
There being no conceivable alternative to consider we had to go forward.
Covered by an advanced guard that returned the Toubous’ fire with a
fusillade of doubtful efficacy, and by a rear-guard that watched the
points from which the rebels could have rolled down tons of rock on our
heads, we crawled downwards in a circumspect advance along a path that
was no path—that clung to the face of a steep cliff, now plunging
sharply downwards in short zigzags, now hanging, a narrow ledge, above
the abyss towards which great stones dislodged by our camels rolled
rumbling or leapt clattering down from tier to tier. The camels were
frightened; they had to be led forward one by one, and could only be got
round corners with many stripes and voluble cursing. A little group of
men went ahead of them, thrusting aside the most awkward blocks, and,
where the natural steps in the rock were too steep, laying flat stones
at the foot so as to break them in two. The descent was so toilsome and
so slow that at sunset we were only halfway down. I had to call a halt,
profiting by a little rocky spur that afforded us a narrow rugged
platform where we found just room enough to make our camels kneel and to
install our bivouac. The firing had almost ceased: our advanced guard
came in soon afterwards after forcing the rebels to abandon their
villages, the conical roofs of which could be seen shining in the
moonlight more that 400 feet below. Still further down, below the palms,
ran an invisible stream, forming a monotonous waterfall that we heard
murmur in the neighbouring rocks.
[Illustration: A WATER-HOLE IN TIBESTI]
[Illustration: FIRST BUTTRESSES OF THE MASSIF OF TIBESTI]
Above our heads little patrols, relieved from hour to hour, kept watch
on the upper slopes from which the Toubous might have sent undesirable
avalanches rolling into our camp. The narrow band of sky that we could
see was filled with shining stars, by which I could make the
observations needed for calculating the point where we had stopped. The
night passed, calm and silent, and next morning, after an hour and a
half of fresh efforts, we were able to take up our quarters quietly on
the banks of the stream.
After which the excellent Mohammed, having received the promised reward,
took leave of us to return to his palm grove at Yountiou. But his
prudence led him to take quite another route, accessible only to men and
goats. All the luggage he carried was a little skin bottle half full of
water hanging from his right shoulder, together with a tiny bag
containing a few handfuls of dates and about a pound of millet flour. On
his left shoulder, swinging triumphantly from the two ends of his staff,
were two fine large-sized biscuit tins that glittered in the sun and
resounded like beaten gongs whenever they knocked against the corner of
a rock.
Toubous in small numbers still showed themselves on the cliff-sides, but
did not wait for the patrols I sent to parley with them. After a few
hours spent in watering the camels and in filling our barrels and skin
bottles, we resumed our route towards Miski. The little river of Modra
ran hardly more than a mile further down the valley, and the dry bed of
the torrent, at first littered with boulders, soon turned into a fine
winding road of sand from 200 to 300 yards wide. Twenty miles further on
we had to leave the river-bed and plunge into a chaos of little ridges
of schist, intersected by narrow valley-ways leading into valleys that
came down from neighbouring high mountains of an altitude exceeding 9000
feet: our camels had much trouble in making headway among sharp edges of
slaty rock upturned almost vertically. They zigzagged from pass to pass,
climbing steep slopes, dropping into rocky ravines, beyond which fresh
ridges separated by fresh ravines rose in endless succession. At last on
the 21st, very early in the morning, we came out into the wide flat
valley of Miski, where we made a brief halt to allow the stragglers to
come in. All our camels were there except one, and I may say that I felt
much satisfaction at having succeeded in bringing them back to the
starting-point after this toilsome flying expedition of more than 300
miles, carried out in seventeen days in the unknown and exceptionally
difficult mountain region of which I have tried to give you as closely
exact a description as I can.
For another 15 miles we pursued our way in the great valley of Miski, of
an average width of 4 to 5 miles, finding it pleasant to look once more
on the well-known landscape of peaks, domes, and cliffs of the Tarso
Koussi. The clearness of the air was such that all these mountains
seemed to be within walking distance, and that in this vast bare basin
where not a breath of air stirred and where the sun blazed his hottest,
we had the impression of marching without making any progress, so
unchanging did the perspective remain.