+------------------------------+
| ~_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_~ |
| |
| OUT OF THE WORLD NORTH |
| OF NIGERIA: EXPLORATION |
| OF AÏR |
| |
| WILD LIFE IN CANADA |
| |
| THREE YEARS OF WAR IN |
| EAST AFRICA |
| |
|_For details see end of book._|
+------------------------------+
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
[Illustration: THE EDGE OF THE UNKNOWN]
SAHARA
BY ANGUS BUCHANAN, M.C., F.R.S.G.S.
AUTHOR OF “WILD LIFE IN CANADA,” “THREE
YEARS OF WAR IN EAST AFRICA,” “OUT OF THE
WORLD NORTH OF NIGERIA”
WITH NUMEROUS PHOTOGRAPHS, SKETCHES, AND A MAP
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1926
TO
FERI N’GASHI
ONLY A CAMEL,
BUT STEEL-TRUE
AND GREAT OF HEART
[Illustration]
FOREWORD
By The RT. HON. LORD SALVESEN, P.C., K.C.
_Late President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society_
The author of this book is not merely an intrepid and successful
explorer, but an accomplished biologist, who has added many new
species of birds and animals to the ever-growing list of nature’s
marvels. The desert of Sahara presents to the explorer many points
of resemblance to the frozen wastes which surround the Poles, and to
which so much attention has recently been directed. Its area is vast,
its resources meagre in the extreme, the perils of travel great, and
such as to test the highest qualities of the explorer. But here the
resemblance ends. In the nature of the experiences and the hazards
which the explorer encounters there could be no greater contrast,
but oddly enough the man who can endure the one seems also fitted
to withstand the other—of this Captain Buchanan is a living proof,
for he, too, has been a traveller in Arctic regions.
This book is in no sense a diary of day-to-day travel. Only a single
chapter is devoted to the account of the extraordinary journey
which Captain Buchanan and his cinematographer, Mr. Glover, made
from Kano in Nigeria to Touggourt in Algiers—a journey of over
3,500 miles through the great desert of Africa. Some idea of the
hardships which they encountered may be gathered from the fact that,
while they started with a caravan of thirty-six camels and fifteen
natives, they finished with a single camel and only two natives,
after fifteen months of travel. The reader is never wearied by
monotonous logs of distances covered day by day or of the countless
difficulties overcome on the long long trail. Only the last few days,
when victory was in sight, are briefly sketched. But in earlier
chapters we have vivid pictures of the perils that are inseparable
from travel over vast sandy wastes, where a burning sun beats down
with relentless fury, and where the lives of men and beasts alike
depend on their finding water at least every six or seven days. One
chapter describes one of the sandstorms that all but engulfed the
caravan in the shelterless plain—another, the rare experience
of torrential rain which may be almost as devastating, but, unlike
the sandstorm, is fraught with blessing, for it brings food to the
starving mammals that haunt the fringe of the great desert.
The author’s knowledge of the Sahara is not based merely on the
one long journey which took him across its widest part. The book
is partly based on a previous lengthy visit to the Sahara, during
which he studied the fauna of the district as it has never been
studied before, and the weird and impoverished races which are
found in its habitable areas. The Sahara is not a mere plain of
sand—it embraces more than one mountainous and picturesque area
as large as Wales, but, unlike that country, arid in the extreme;
besides numerous oases where a scanty subsistence is yielded by
palms for small communities, and which are largely dependent on
the visits of travelling caravans in quest of that most precious
of all commodities—water. In these places, isolated by vast
seas of desert, dwell the remnants of tribes once more numerous,
who migrated thither when conditions were more favourable, for
alas! Captain Buchanan’s observations lead him to the conclusion
that the constantly accumulating sand-drifts are gradually destroying
the already scanty resources of the still inhabited portions. Readers
will find interest in his description of the two oases of Bilma
and Fachi, both of which derive their subsistence from salt-mines,
and whose dwellings and the forts which protect them are built
entirely of blocks of salt, now blackened by age.
The perils of the desert are illustrated by the striking story of
Rali, which forms one of the most vivid and entrancing chapters of
the book. One of the nomad tribe of Tuaregs who lead a roving life
amongst the few areas where pasturage of a kind is obtainable for
their flocks, he was the victim of a dastardly raid in which his
young and beautiful wife was carried off by a band of raiders. His
adventures in seeking to recover her and avenge himself on her
captors are told with a rare insight into the character of the
natives and their mastery of their environment. Strange to say,
although the vast majority of the natives are predatory and cruel,
the author came across one community of religious pacifists who
have never organised any defence against persistent raids. As might
be expected, these unhappy creatures live in the direst poverty,
for, if they should by hard work accumulate any food or other
commodities, they are promptly relieved of them by rapacious bands
who live largely on the spoliation of their neighbours.
Naturalists will find ample evidence in the description of Saharan
birds and mammals of the remarkable adaptation of the forms there
existing to their arid environment. The appendices contain complete
lists of the Saharan fauna.
It was in my dual capacity of President of the Royal Scottish
Geographical Society and of the Zoological Society of Scotland
that I had the privilege of making the author’s acquaintance by
presiding at the first lecture which he delivered in Scotland on
the result of his travels in the Sahara. This book, which embodies
them in greater detail, should have a wide circle of readers if
the appeal which it made to myself is any index of popular interest.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
PREPARATIONS 1