where the straw huts are set rather far apart; the inhabitants, by no
means numerous, consist almost exclusively of the families and servants
of the dignitaries immediately surrounding the sultan. Other villages
are scattered about the neighbourhood, usually lying at the foot of
isolated rocks of no great height, but of very characteristic
geometrical shapes, rising out of the uniform tableland like natural
landmarks destined to rejoice the hearts of a triangulation brigade.
In our camp an unpleasant surprise awaited us: hardly had we settled
down when we saw coming down from the kournas whole battalions of
caterpillars that made straight towards us and obstinately set about
climbing all over our packing-cases, chairs, clothes, and persons in
quest of a quiet and shady corner where they could comfortably instal
their cocoons and go to sleep in the hope of a happy metamorphosis. We
hunted them, killed them, but to no purpose, for still they came. And
these caterpillars, sociable to a fault, are tormentors of the worst
type: wherever they go they leave behind them invisible hairs that burn
like nettles. Next morning we were all scratching furiously, unable to
find even momentary relief except in applications of very hot water. My
trunk of books was infested, and, above all, that which contained my
linen; so also were my bedclothes. All the washing, swilling, and
beating I could do failed to rid my clothes entirely of this pest, and I
had to endure its tortures for long as best I might. It was only when I
got to Khartoum and could get fresh clothes and throw away my up-country
garments, if such they could be called, that I really found a little
peace. In the evening a thick cloud of locusts came and settled on the
region; in a few minutes the trees were covered with them, and their
green changed to the pink hue of these voracious insects’ bodies.
The sultan came repeatedly to see me. He was fond of talking and telling
me his history and that of Tama during the preceding decade; he also
told me the story of the murder of Boyd Alexander as it was related to
him not many days after the tragic event by his predecessor the Sultan
Othman and the chief Adem Rouyal, commander of the Forian force sent
from Dar Four by the Sultan Ali Dinar to drive the French out of
Wadai.[2] The sultan was above all interested in the Franco-Anglo-German
war; he asked question after question, and I had a great deal of trouble
in giving him a hazy idea of the formidable masses of war material,
supplies, cannon, rifles, and the unheard-of numbers of men brought into
action on both sides.
Thanks to his good offices, I was able to get the supplies I was in
daily need of for my detachment; and in these days of excessively dear
living it will not perhaps be without interest to give a summary list,
at this point, of the prices that were asked me:
_s._ _d._
A small yearling ox 12 0
200 lbs. of millet flour 4 0
An average-sized sheep 2 6
Chickens 0 6½
One pound of butter 0 3
„ „ onions 0 3
A quart of milk 0 1
Had we been wise enough to have rational ideas about railways in Africa,
and to have them in time, what a help the Black Continent would be to us
now! I trust the ordeal we are going through to-day may induce France
and Great Britain, the two great guardians of the Black population, to
join in intimate union in order to labour together at the great work of
opening up Africa and turning its resources to account—a work that must
be undertaken at once! But this is a vast question, and one that must be
treated separately; so I beg to be excused for this digression.
In the afternoon of the 10th, having succeeded in hiring the necessary
five camels, two of them enormous, and the other three of the tiniest, I
took leave of Sultan Hassan to go on with my journey towards Guimer.
Four days later I arrived at Koulbouss, the temporary residence of the
Sultan of Guimer.
_Dar Guimer._—The welcome I received was of the chilliest. Two hundred
yards from the village a son of the Sultan Idriss came all alone to meet
me, and announced that his father had started a few days earlier for El
Fasher; and then, skirting the village, he led me down the valley to a
spot where a dilapidated hut, not far from a well and at the entrance of
what had once been a piece of enclosed land, was offered me in which to
take up my quarters. I had great difficulty in obtaining a few
provisions, and two days were spent in animated discussions before I
could get a guide and four hired camels to replace those lent me in
Tama. Even so I only got them thanks to the good offices of a Zagawa
chief who had come to greet me on my passage because he had on a former
occasion found his relations with the French authorities of Wadai turn
out greatly to his advantage. But I could not get the sort of current
information about the country and its inhabitants usually given to
travellers by the natives. However, when I showed my surprise at the
residence of the Sultan of Guimer at Koulbouss, which is in Tama
territory, the son of Sultan Idriss condescended to explain that that
installation was only temporary, having been authorized towards 1910 by
Sultan Hassan of Tama by reason of the raids the Sultan of Guimer had
had to undergo at the hands of the Forian bands of Ali Dinar. His return
to his own capital was to take place shortly, the occupation of El
Fasher by the Anglo-Egyptian troops having put an end to these
incursions.
I left Koulbouss on 22 June early in the morning, with no great
confidence in the success of my enterprise, for the guide assigned to me
did not seem any too satisfied at the idea of taking me to Kebkebia,
from which we were separated by a stretch of almost completely
uninhabited country nearly 120 miles across, and in which the water-
points were few and quite possibly dried up. Very luckily, everything
went as well as could be imagined; I saw no trace of the Senoussist
raid, so called, which local rumour credited for some time with having
caught me by surprise, taken me prisoner, and carried me off as a
hostage to Koufra. A few wells were found, very nearly dry, but we were
careful in husbanding our supply of water. We saw very few inhabitants
and met no caravan. What worried me most, and most unexpectedly, was the
grazing question, for the country, though covered with scrub, was so
dried up that our camels hardly ever got a satisfying feed and grew most
disquietingly thin.
Dar Guimer is hardly more than a gently undulating plain of somewhat
uniform appearance, 100 miles across from east to west, and 20 from
north to south. The inhabitants, few in number, if I may accept the
accounts given me, seem less inclined to tillage than to cattle-raising.
The soil is usually clayey, very marshy from the end of July to
December, but almost completely waterless from April to July. The
valleys come down fanwise from the tablelands of Tama on the west, of
Zagawa on the north, and northern Dar Four on the east. They meet on a
level with the Djebel Kichkich (Hadjer Moull) to form the Wadi Kadja,
one of the parent branches of the Bahr-Salamat, which is one of the most
important valleys on the right bank of the Shari, the main affluent of
the Chad.
During the morning of June 25 we reached the southern limit of Dar
Guimer at the wells of Taziriba; only 3 yards deep and flowing
abundantly at all seasons, they were situated in a valley where there
are no trees of any size, but an abundant growth of scrub. The wells,
usually silted up, had been dug out afresh a few days previously, on the
occasion of the Sultan Idriss’ visit to Dar Four. Having thus been able
to water our camels and renew our own supply, we left the territory of
Guimer the same evening, to go and sleep half a score of miles further
on.
_Between Guimer and Dar Four._—It is interesting to notice that the
tribes whose territories separate Wadai from Dar Four (Massalit, Tama,
and Guimer) have always left a wide belt of uninhabited country between
themselves and Dar Four. At some points its width exceeds 100 miles,
while no similar solution of continuity exists between them and Wadai.
It should not be concluded, as is sometimes done, that these territories
are desert-like in character, for they are watered every year by the
summer rains and covered with an abundant vegetation, for the most part
thorny and stunted, it is true. These lands are not incapable even of
settled habitation, for it would suffice to bore a few wells, around
each of which men could take up their quarters in permanence, with
fields of grain and cotton and pasturage for cattle. Such unpeopled
regions are common in Central Africa, and each of them constitutes a
neutral zone, a sort of “no man’s land” that separates the territories
of two hostile tribes.
It was across a belt of this kind that our route now lay, a belt about
70 miles wide between Safé, the last village of Guimer, and Rémélé, the
first of Dar Four. On June 26 a long morning march brought us to the
wells of Délébé, situated at the crossing of an important route chiefly
used by native traffickers on their way to barter the grain of Massalit
for the salt of Dar Four at the market of Diellé, some 20 miles north of
Kebkebia. The site was pleasant and covered for a space of several miles
in length and 200 or 300 yards in breadth with fine harazes and kournas,
which gave us the illusion of a great shady park at home; but the lack
of water in the well and the way our store of eatables was running short
did not allow us to yield to the temptation of resting there a day.
We had to start again in the afternoon and march till dark in order to
reach, early next morning, the wells of Chibéké, whose immediate
neighbourhood, so our guide told us, was infested by lions; but we had
not the pleasure of seeing any. A further stage of a score of miles at
last permitted us to get out of the uninhabited region and reach the
Wadi Gueddara, at the point where it comes out of the mountains that
mark the watershed between the basins of the Chad and the Nile.
_Western Dar Four._—These mountains seemed to be much more important
than the maps and descriptions of former travellers had led me to
suppose. They formed a long and rather confused chain, running
approximately from north to south; and their chief summit, mount
Dourboullé, some 30 miles to the east, rose to more than 7000 feet above
sea-level.
I spent June 28 at the village of Rémélé, where I received a very kind
letter of welcome from Lieut.-Colonel Savile Pasha, governor of the
province, who put at my disposal an escort of six soldiers of the native
police. I wanted to ascertain the exact position of this village, but
rain fell at intervals throughout the evening and night and prevented me
from observing the indispensable stars. If I was vexed, the natives were
delighted, for the damp soil would enable them to sow seed for the first
time that year. Next day I had only a dozen miles to cover in order to
arrive at the advanced post of Kebkebia, the furthest west of the
military posts in Dar Four, and during that short march I enjoyed the
happy and restful feeling of the sailor who, after a long voyage, sees
shining on the horizon, across the calm of the spent waters, the
cheerful harbour lights. We advanced along the western foot of the
chain, gradually nearing it, and noticing that it seemed to connect with
the massif of Djebel Marra, of which from time to time I could see for a
moment the highest peak, more than 50 miles to the south-south-east. We
went along through a smiling and prosperous-looking country, already
covered with springing grass, dotted with green trees, and broken here
and there by rocky heights that did not rise higher than 400 feet.
The natives, scattered about their fields, watched our caravan go by
without unfriendliness or sign of misgiving, and then betook themselves
again to their work with the serene dignity of men who till the soil.
Both in the explicit picture it makes and in suggestion, their husbandry
is very different from ours. The noble gesture familiar in our western
fields, of the sower sowing his seed broadcast along the furrows, is
lacking on African plains. The man I was watching walked straight on,
holding in both hands a hoe bent into a right angle; at every second
step, without stopping or even stooping, he made with it a tiny hole,
hardly more than a scratch in the tawny sand. He was followed by a
child, a boy clad in a simple sunbeam, carrying a calabash of millet,
and parsimoniously letting fall into each hole a few grains that he
summarily covered by turning a little earth over them with his bare
toes. Happy lands, where man is satisfied with hard, coarse grain, and
where the earth, in return for but small pains, breaks forth into
abundant harvest. Which of us shall judge between them, and say whether
it is better to be exacting in one’s wants, and with great labour to
attain to one’s desire, or to be content with little and find that, with
hardly an effort, that little may be had?
I was welcomed on my arrival at Kebkebia by the commander, a native
officer of the 13th Sudanese Battalion, Sub-Lieut. Saïd Effendi Adam,
accompanied by a sergeant of Engineers, Sergeant Gasterens, R.E., in
command of the wireless telegraphy post, and by the headman of the
village. Thanks to their good offices, comfortable shelters were found
for us, and I could procure all the food required for the use of my
party. The village is of small extent, poor and dreary in appearance. It
is said that the sultan Ali Dinar had the greater part of the
inhabitants deported a few years ago after confiscating their property,
to punish them for showing too much esteem for a certain marabout named
Faki Sini, regarded in the district as a worker of miracles. The one
that made the deepest impression on the natives, I was assured,
consisted in being able to change colour and volume whenever he liked,
and even make himself entirely invisible, which did not prevent him from
letting himself be surprised and made short work of by the myrmidons of
the sultan incensed at his growing prestige.
I had to stay four days in the neighbourhood of Kebkebia, the first part
of the time being spent in going back to Rémélé to make arrangements for
the return of my escort and hired camels to Abéché; I also hoped to make
the astronomical observations I had been unable to make on the night of
my arrival. But I had my labour for my pains. All four days the sky
remained almost constantly overcast and the rain fell in torrents, the
clouds came in great masses from the west-south-west, and, striking the
mountain chain at the foot of which lie Rémélé and Kebkebia, they
dissolved in rain that fell at frequent intervals, while on the other
side of the chain there fell only rare and insignificant showers.
It was only the last day that I could make the planetary observations
required for fixing the positions of Kebkebia, mount Dourboullé, and the
summit of the Djebel Marra; this last is notably higher than the 6000
feet above the sea attributed to it by the maps of Africa: my first
calculations allowed me to fix its altitude somewhere between 9000 and
9800 feet.
I left Kebkebia on July 2, starting in the afternoon in an easterly
direction, skirting the foot of mount Dourboullé on its southern side.
The track, cleared of scrub for a width of a dozen yards, lay along a
ground rocky indeed, but presenting no serious difficulties. We came
across no villages, though the country is inhabited. Here and there on
the hillsides one could see stone enclosures, in groups of twenty to
thirty, which till a short time previously had been villages whose
inhabitants had withdrawn higher up the mountain in order to escape, so
at least we were told, from the former sultan’s incessant and vexatious
requisitions. They were not themselves described to us as particularly
desirable, being inclined to banditism; but I can offer no evidence on
the question, for they did not trouble the march of my little caravan.
On July 4, for the third and last time, I crossed the line that
separates the waters of the Chad basin from that of the Mediterranean,
at the Kowra Pass, which is at an altitude of about 4000 feet; then,
coming down from spur to spur across the Djebel Kowra I reached the
Djebel Om, a very broken region, chaotic in appearance and covered with
scanty scrub, stunted, prickly, and almost leafless, where our exhausted
camels found but little sustenance. From place to place we crossed
recently worked deposits of salt. The salt is very much mixed with
earth, and the richest beds are indicated by the swollen, cracked, and
friable character of the soil. As in other salt-producing regions in
Central Africa, the salt-bearing earth is washed for a longer or shorter
time in washing and filtering baskets; then, when the saline solution
has become concentrated enough, it is heated in clay jars, on the inside
of which the salt crystallizes as the water evaporates. The product thus
obtained, though impure and grey-coloured, is pleasant to the taste, and
supplies a great part of the market in Dar Four and the neighbouring
countries.
In the afternoon of the 5th, leaving behind us the last salt-beds of Om
Bakour, we got clear away from the mountainous zone and made our way for
four days across the undulating plains that stretch eastwards beyond El
Fasher. The further I went the clearer grew the panorama of the chain I
had just crossed. Spur after spur, fantastically shaped, extended in
long succession to the north, while towards the west and the south the
summits of the Dourboullé and the Djebel Marra towered above the rest of
the mountains and stood out boldly against the sky, especially at dusk,
a moment at which the light was particularly favourable for the
observations required for determining their position and altitude. In
the plain of shifting sand, dotted here and there with isolated rocks of
huge size, real natural geodetic signals, the landscape stretched away
monotonously, almost without trees or even grass. The fertilizing rains
of the first few days of July not having reached further than the
djebels I had just crossed, the sowing had not begun, and the
inhabitants of the villages that succeeded one another at regular
intervals down the valleys I traversed were feeling a little uneasy.
At sunrise on July 9, after passing by the hamlet of Zaïdia, I came in
sight of the capital of Dar Four; it seemed to be a place of
considerable extent, and to consist of thatched huts grouped by distinct
quarters along the east side of a bare valley. In the uniform grey of
the city I hardly noticed more than one remarkable building, white, and
shaped like a tiara, and dominating the northern part of the town; and
towards the centre a clump of green trees, from which emerged a
construction of European style. The former was the Koubba of Zakaria
Zata, the tomb of the sultan Ali Dinar’s father; the latter was the
sultan’s old palace turned into the residence of the Governor of the
Province.
Beyond the town I could see low lines of hills, on the north the Djebel
Wana, and on the east the Djebel Fasher, at the foot of which a year
before the Forian army had been routed by the Anglo-Sudanese troops of
Colonel Kelly. To the south a sandy plain of a fine tawny colour
stretched away to the horizon, intersected by the long, dark green
ribbon of the Wadi El Ko, a sub-tributary through the Bahr el Ghazal of
the Nile. Westwards various djebels of greater or less importance stood
out in broken lines against the distant curtain of the great chain of
western Dar Four. A few moments later I was joined by a group of
horsemen: it was His Excellency the Governor of Dar Four, Lieut.-Colonel
R. V. Savile Pasha, who bade me welcome and took me to the Residency,
where the most cordial hospitality awaited me.
_El Fasher._—On the evening of my arrival I installed as usual the
prismatic astrolabe and the box of chronometers for my daily
astronomical observation, and when it was finished I was filled with a
deep and intimate joy: after eighteen years of persistent effort I had
at last reached the geographical goal that I had set myself to attain in
Central Africa. That last observation, made in the palace yard of El
Fasher, set the seal, once for all, on the liaison of the geodetic
systems of the basins of the Niger, the Chad, and the Nile, for the
longitude of El Fasher had just been determined by the officers of the
Sudan Survey Department by the aid of the telegraph line recently
established between Khartoum and El Fasher. I had to stay twelve days in
this town in order to carry out, in conference with the Governor of Dar
Four, a mission with which I had been entrusted by the Governor of the
Territory of the Chad. This mission concerned the policing of the
borderland of the two Governments, and the settlement of the claims
arising out of depredations committed by the rebel tribes of Ennedi.
After we had come to a complete understanding I drew up, in
collaboration with Mr. A. C. Pilkington, a provisional map, on a scale
of 1/1,000,000, of the part of the Franco-Anglo-Egyptian borders
affected by our agreement. During all this time, need I say that I was
the object of the utmost kindness and attention on the part of the
Governor and the British officers who surrounded him. Their friendly
reception of me remains one of my most treasured recollections of this
journey.
El Fasher seemed to be a town of from fifteen to twenty thousand
inhabitants, and one of the finest-looking native cities I have seen in
Central Africa; it is built on sand-dunes surrounding a temporary lake
that dries up a few weeks after the end of the rainy season, and in
which in the dry season the natives dig hundreds of wells, the water of
which is then sold at an average price varying between a halfpenny and a
penny a gallon. The town stands on two sides of the lake, somewhat in
the shape of a circumflex accent, open to the southward, and whose apex
is marked, roughly speaking, by the Koubba of Zakaria; the eastern side
of this angle is more particularly occupied by traders and natives,
while the governor’s palace and the greater part of the official
buildings are on the western side. Between the business town and the
administrative town lies a great square, a sort of Champ de Mars where
festivals, parades, and reviews take place, and where once a week the
band of the battalion gives a concert.
What struck me most in this town is its well-kept and green appearance;
the streets are wide, the houses in good repair and surrounded with
trees (mostly serrahs). There are none of the hovels, the broken-down
walls, the heaps of refuse so often found in Sudanese cities, except
perhaps on the south side, where, at the time of my passing through the
town, a group of Fellatas had set up a camp of dirty little straw huts
in which men, women, children, and cattle sprawled in an indiscriminate
heap.