most interesting paper to-night. It is not only of very great interest,
but a valuable contribution to geographical knowledge. I will leave the
discussion of the lecture as regards its geographical and cartographical
aspect to others, but there is one portion of the paper to which I
should like to call your attention. As Colonel Tilho has told you,
during the war the Germans and Turks got a footing in Tripoli. He has
told you how Enver Pasha’s brother, Nuri Bey, landed on that coast, and
with him many Germans. Their object was to get into touch with the
Senussi; raise the whole country against us through the Senussi
influence, and threaten our western flank both in Egypt and the Sudan.
They very nearly succeeded; and if our brave allies, the French, had not
forestalled them in the country described to-night, they would
undoubtedly have established themselves there. It is a valuable
objective as being the first place in which water and supplies can be
got after leaving the oasis of Kufra. We will imagine for one moment
that they had established themselves there. You can at once see what a
dangerous focus of intrigue and unrest, what a source of danger it would
have been on our flank all along our western front. Having forestalled
the enemy there, no further trouble ensued, but our friend the Sultan of
Darfur, who misjudged the time of the Senussi arrival and counted too
confidently on their aid, had already started hostilities with us, and a
war ensued which in times of peace would have attracted wide public
attention but in the days when our interest was so concentrated on other
fronts it almost escaped notice. Suffice to say that by a brilliant
series of military operations, our troops, under the direction of Sir
Reginald Wingate, the Sirdar of the Sudan, drove him out of his capital
and took the whole of his country. If the Senussi had at this time been
established with their German and Turkish assistants on our flank, it
might have been a very different job indeed. I look upon this incident
as an object lesson of the good that co-operation can effect in a work
of this kind, and it is, I hope, not only an object lesson of what has
been done in the past times of war, but an augury of what we can do and
should do between us in the future times of peace. As Colonel Tilho has
explained to you, co-operation is essential for the development of this
great country of Africa, and I trust that it will be the guiding
principle of our two great nations not only in the development of that
country, but in furthering the welfare of the backward peoples placed
under our guardianship.
The PRESIDENT: The French Military Attaché is present and we should be
very pleased if he would kindly address us.
General the VISCOMTE DE LA PANOUSE: Je ne savais pas que j’aurais à
prendre la parole ce soir en sorte que je me trouve un peu pris au
dépourvu. Je vous demanderais donc la permission de m’exprimer en
Français. Il y a quelques vingt ans, il eut été impossible de discuter
ici dans une atmosphère de calme et de confiance mutuelle une question
relative au centre du Continent Africain. Heureusement depuis cette
époque, grâce aux bienfaisants accords de 1904, les malentendus entre le
Royaume Uni et la France se sont dissipés, l’Entente Cordiale est née,
elle s’est développée et elle a vu son couronnement dans une alliance
militaire étroite et loyale pendant la plus grande guerre que le monde
ait vue. Le Colonel Tilho vous a exposé pourquoi dans le développement
économique de ce Grand Centre Africain, l’action unie des deux grandes
Nations est nécessaire sous peine d’aboutir à un gaspillage inutile
d’efforts et d’argent. Mais je vois aussi une autre raison pour laquelle
nous devons travailler ensemble; l’Empire Britannique et la France ont
lutté pendant cette grande guerre pour faire triompher les principes du
droit et de la liberté contre l’oppression et la barbarie. Notre
victoire nous a créé des obligations et en particulier celle de défendre
les populations noires contre la tyrannie des marchands d’esclaves et de
l’oppression des sectes musulmanes et de leur donner le bien-être auquel
a droit tout être humain. Ce devoir ne sera utilement rempli que si nos
nations s’entendent sur les mesures à prendre et les réalisent en
commun. La belle œuvre d’humanité à accomplir sera ainsi un nouveau lien
entre les deux Grandes Puissances qui se partagent le continent
Africain.
The PRESIDENT: We have been fortunate to catch Sir Harry Johnston. He is
one of our greatest authorities upon Africa generally, both Central and
Northern. We should be very glad if he would make some remarks.
Sir HARRY JOHNSTON: I had the honour some years ago, just after the war
had started, of showing you a somewhat similar map of Africa with
railways designed on it partly by my own fancy, and I may say to a great
extent by following French fancies too; for about that time I had been
in the north of Africa, and had been allowed to pursue for a certain
distance the tracing of the projected trans-Saharan railway, the
progress of which was only stopped by the war. I conceived then the idea
that it was of the highest importance to Western Europe that that line
should be made, though I, like most of you, did not appreciate the
influence on affairs that the submarine would have; but of course that
conviction has been strengthened by the events of the war. Had we had
the trans-Saharan railway in existence during the war we should not have
suffered as much as we did from the loss of some of the most important
materials for our industries caused by the interruptions of the sea
routes, the destruction of steamers, etc. It is a matter of absolute
necessity, I consider, that that trans-Saharan line should be made to
link up the valley of the Niger with French North Africa, and further
with Western Europe; because, as Colonel Tilho has pointed out, the
channel between Tangier and the Spanish coast could be easily patrolled
and kept free of submarines, and even crossed by train ferries. Then
another point I should like to raise is as to the further exploration of
those Tibesti highlands and the lofty plateaus that are connected with
them on the north-west and south-east. Colonel Tilho did not mention in
his discourse what he said to me privately, that he had found in some
parts of that region, possibly Borku, fossilized bones of elephants. He
has referred to the native legends and to the drawings on the rocks
which point to the existence of hippopotami in regions now entirely
devoid of surface water. He showed some of these engravings. They are
very similar to rock drawings which can be traced right across the
Sahara desert, exhibiting a fauna now completely passed away. One reason
why Tibesti should be explored is, that we might find there the fossil
and semi-fossil remains of a very extensive tropical African fauna,
because that isthmus of high land between the south of Tunis on the
north, and Darfur and the regions round Lake Chad on the south, seems to
have been the principal route by which the fauna of Miocene and Pliocene
Europe and the Mediterranean basin reached Tropical Africa. There are
more and more indications that the Sahara desert to the west and the
Libyan and Nubian deserts to the east were formerly under water, and
therefore checked the progress of beasts and man across the Sahara into
Central Africa; but this high ridge always remained well above the
limits of such lakes, marshes, or inland seas. Tibesti was a well-
watered region with at one time quite a heavy rainfall down to about
twenty thousand years ago.
Before the war suspended such enterprises, the savants of France were
exploring the wonderful sub-fossil remains of Algeria which revealed to
us the existence there of a mammalian fauna resembling that of modern
tropical Africa, of the region south of the Sahara. With that fauna were
mingled in a very interesting degree creatures which at the present time
are restricted to India. For instance, there was something so like an
Indian elephant that it might be called the Indian elephant, existing
almost down to the human period in Algeria. There was a wild camel, an
equine resembling a zebra; there were gnus, hartebeests, oryxes, and
other types of modern African antelopes; and there was a Tragelaph
allied to the Nilghai; there was a huge buffalo with almost incredible
horns—14 feet long—incredible were it not that its existence is proved
not only by its fossil remains but by the drawings of primitive man. The
Foureau-Lamy Expedition, I believe, found many of the dry torrent-beds
of the elevated Ahaggar region choked with hippopotamus bones. There is
everything to point to quite a recent and rapid change in the climate of
the Sahara, which, well within the human period, was a region abounding
in water derived from a heavy rainfall, and richly endowed with forest
areas, as we may see from the remains of petrified trees. This will
bring home to you what gains might come to science and to our knowledge
of the evolution of life on this planet if we could only thoroughly
explore the Sahara, and above all such regions as the Tibesti highlands.
Major HANNS VISCHER: Just after I had crossed the Sahara, some years
ago, I had the great pleasure to meet Colonel Tilho in Nigeria; and last
time we met—I think in 1909—to celebrate our homecoming in Paris, we
spoke of the work in Africa of our two respective countries. During my
journey, and whenever I met the French in those regions, I was
particularly impressed by the difficulties and privations these officers
suffered so cheerfully. In Nigeria we had our railway, and we got
frequent leave. As I remembered those isolated posts in the heart of the
Sahara, while looking at the pictures we saw to-night, separated by
hundreds of miles, rarely getting a mail or any provisions from the
coast during those long years of war, when few boats went to the West
Coast of Africa, I was filled with admiration for the work done by
Colonel Tilho and his comrades. In the course of his lecture the Colonel
showed clearly how necessary it is for us to co-operate in Africa, not
only for the welfare of the native people but also for the very
existence of our respective colonies. He has shown to us to-night how
well we can complement each other. When that German-Turkish column
advanced south across the desert, at a moment when we had sent most of
our troops from Nigeria to East Africa, it would have been a hard thing
for the people in our colony if the officers under Colonel Tilho’s
orders, assisted by some native troops sent north from Nigeria, had not
been able to arrest the enemy’s progress.
The PRESIDENT: I know you will all want me to congratulate Colonel Tilho
on your behalf on the lucid, graceful, and humorous lecture he has given
us this evening. There has been great talk about the co-operation
between us and the French, and I think we might go a little deeper even
than that. When we can get a French officer like Colonel Tilho over here
in the flesh, and can hear from his own lips what he has done, when he
shows us pictures of the kind of country he has had to make his way
through, the kind of people he has had to make friends with: when we see
all that, certainly we who have had to do similar work in other parts of
the world—and probably you at home, even though you have not had that
great pleasure and honour, must have a very deep fellow-feeling with him
and his compatriots—we feel that there is something deep and common
between us when we realize so vividly the work that they are doing, the
difficulties that they have had to encounter, and the great work of
civilization and humanization which they are carrying on in these far
remote recesses of Central Africa. We have had to do the same things
ourselves in other parts of the world. We see the results of our own
efforts, and Colonel Tilho this evening has shown us what the French
have done in opening out the great arid wastes of the Sahara desert and
the French Sudan. What they have done and what we have done is good for
the world as a whole. It has all been opened out gradually in the course
of years, not only for the French and not only for the British, but for
all nations. Therefore we here in England, we in this Society, will send
forth a very hearty word of congratulation to the French, and especially
to Colonel Tilho, for the great work which they are doing in Central
Africa. He has made very important geographical discoveries, and has
referred to new methods of geographical observation. Wireless telegraphy
for the purpose of determining longitude is a comparatively new method,
but one which is vastly valuable, because, as we who have tried to
determine longitudes in far-away places know, in old days it was
impossible to get the longitude at all exactly. We could get the
latitude fairly accurately, within a few hundred yards, but longitude we
could never get to within a few miles. Now by means of wireless
telegraphy we are able to get longitude with almost complete exactitude,
even in the heart of the French Sudan. Colonel Tilho has also made a
slight allusion to another modern invention which I think in future will
prove of great service, and that is the aeroplane. We shall hear more of
that at our next meeting; but when you see those vast waterless regions,
when you hear from Colonel Tilho of the enormous difficulty in getting
across them with camels, then we see of what use the aeroplane might
have been made for preliminary geographical reconnaissance. Those two
inventions, I am certain, will be of enormous service to geography. I
now wish on your behalf to tender to Colonel Tilho a most hearty vote of
thanks for his lecture this evening, and also for his great kindness, at
considerable personal inconvenience, in coming across from Paris to give
us this paper.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: A sort of camp-followers whose business in life is warfare
in all its branches except that of fighting: experts in all manner of
desert craft, scouts, flank-guards, finders of strayed camels or sorely
needed wells. Swift to detect the incompetence or bad faith of local
guides, they form the necessary complement to the fighting strength of
any expedition in Central Africa.]
[Footnote 2: This account will be published in the next number of the
_Journal._—ED. _G.J._]