PEOPLE OF THE VEIL

This book was originally intended to be an account of the people and mountains of Air in the Central Sahara, where I made a journey during most of 1922 with Angus Buchanan and T. A. Glover. The former had visited the area on a previous occasion and had described the people and places he had seen in his book, Out of the World—North of Nigeria. It therefore seemed more profitable to inquire into some of the problems surrounding the inhabitants of the Sahara whom we encountered, and thus deal with Air and its Tuareg population rather less objectively than had my fellow-traveller. In the course of the succeeding years, as I became more and more immersed in considering various scientific aspects of the Sahara, I came to the conclusion that neither had the Tuareg people nor had this vast area of the earth’s surface been at all adequately examined. Most studies had been objective and, as is unhappily the case with this book, confined to one area. A comprehensive account of the history and ethnology of the Sahara still requires to be written.

As a consequence of these investigations, the present work assumed a form for which one journey of nine months in the countries concerned scarcely seems enough justification. That the book was not completed sooner has been due to the impossibility of spending any time continuously either in research or on writing during the three years which have elapsed since I returned. The fact that this book has been the occupation only of such spare time as I have had available accounts for its many conscious deficiencies, which are unfortunately not the more excusable[vi] in a volume of the type which it purports to be. If I can feel that it will have served to stimulate the curiosity of students or have assisted them to find their way about the literature on the subject, I shall consider that as a reward calculated to enhance the pleasure which I have derived from writing and reading about this—to me—fascinating topic.

It will be one of my lasting regrets that I was unable to complete with Angus Buchanan his journey across the Sahara from Nigeria to Algiers. The delays which we encountered in Air obliged me to return to resume my duties in that branch of H.M.’s Service in which I was then serving. This is not the place to mention the many things which I owe to Angus Buchanan; perhaps the greatest advantage I derived was the promise we gave one another to travel again together if an occasion should come to him and leisure from another profession to me, whereby we might be enabled to renew our companionship of the road. I am grateful to him for permission to use several of his photographs in the present volume as well as certain information which he collected when we were separately engaged on our different work.

To T. A. Glover, the Cinematographer, whose services Angus Buchanan secured to accompany him, I owe many pleasant memories of days spent together and his excellent advice in taking most of the photographs which are included in this book.

The French officers whom I encountered in the course of my wanderings were as charming and as friendly as perhaps, of all foreign nations, only Frenchmen know how to be. Were the relations between our respective countries always even remotely similar to those which subsisted between us, there would be no room for the suspicion and pettiness which so often mar diplomatic and political intercourse. The mutual confidence in which we lived is illustrated by two events.

On a certain occasion in Air when news was received[vii] of a raid being about to fall on the country, I was honoured by receiving a communication from the French officer commanding the Fort at Agades, indicating the locality in his general scheme of defence whither I might lead on a reconnaissance an armed band of local Tuareg from the village in which I was then living by myself. On another occasion, after travelling for some hundreds of miles with a French Camel Corps patrol, the men were paraded and in their presence I was nominated an honorary serjeant of the “Peloton Méhariste de Guré,” a type of compliment which those associated with the French Army will best realise. It is to the officer commanding this unit, Henri Gramain of the French Colonial Army, that I owe the most perfect companionship I have ever had the fortune to experience. I know that when we meet again we shall resume conversation where we left off at Teshkar in the bushland of Elakkos, one evening in the summer of 1922. He and my other friends, Tuareg, British, French, Arab and Fulani contributed to make that year the happiest I have ever spent.

No reader of the works of that great traveller, Dr. Heinrich Barth, will need to be told how much of the data collected in the succeeding pages has been culled from the monumental account of his Travels in Central Africa. This German, who most loyally served the British Crown in those far countries, is perhaps the greatest traveller there has ever been in Africa. His exploits were never advertised, so his fame has not been suffered to compete with the more sensational and journalistic enterprises accomplished since his day down to modern times. But no student will require to have his praises sung by any disciple.

I have to thank the Royal Geographical Society for permission to use the map which was prepared for a paper I had the honour to read in 1923 before a meeting of the Fellows. More especially do I wish to thank E. A. Reeves, their Keeper of Maps, both for the instruction in surveying[viii] which he gave me before my journey and for the assistance afforded after my return in checking and working up my results. My cartographic material in the form of road traverses, sketch maps based on astronomical positions, and theodolite computations are all in the Society’s library and available to students. A small collection of ethnographic material which I brought back is at Oxford in the Pitt Rivers Museum, to whose Curator, Henry Balfour, I am indebted both for advice and for plates Nos. 24-26, 37 and 42.

H. R. Palmer, now H.M. Lieutenant-Governor of Northern Nigeria, and Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have given me permission to use a table of the Kings of Agades incorporated as Appendix VI. The list originally appeared in extenso, with the names somewhat differently spelled, in an article which he published in the Journal of the African Society in July 1910. The great learning and sympathetic help which he was good enough to put at my disposal have made me, in common with many others in Nigeria, in whose friendship my journey so richly rewarded me, hope that he may be induced to render more accessible to the public the immense fund of historical and other material which he has accumulated during his long career as a distinguished Colonial servant.

The then Governor of Nigeria, Sir H. Clifford, and the French Ministry of Colonies earned the gratitude of Angus Buchanan and myself by their assistance on the road and in facilitating our journey.

My brother-in-law, T. A. Emmet, was good enough to execute several drawings from rough sketches I had made on the spot. Two of these drawings are reproduced as plates Nos. 38 and 39.

To three persons it is difficult for me to express my gratitude at all suitably. D. G. Hogarth read my manuscript and offered his invaluable advice regarding the final form of the book as it now appears. Many years’ association with him has led others beside myself to regard him in his wisdom as our spiritual godfather in things[ix] appertaining to the world of Islam. My father devoted many days and nights to correcting the final draft and proofs of this book. My brother Peter, when his versatile mind perceived certain improvements, rewrote Chapter XII after I had become so tired of the sight of my manuscript that I was on the verge of destroying the offensive object. I owe more to both these two than I can explain.

F. R. R.

New York,
31st December, 1925.

NOTE

The general map at the end of the volume was prepared by the Royal Geographical Society from data collected by the author supplementing existing maps published in France and described in the text of the book. The two drawings (Plates 38 and 39) were executed in England by T. A. Emmet from sketches made in Air. Plates Nos. 2, 15 (lower), 34 are from photographs taken by Angus Buchanan. All the other maps, diagrams, pictures, and photographs were prepared by the author from material collected in 1922.

The name “Air” is a dissyllable word: the vowels are pronounced as in Italian according to the general system of transliteration, which follows, wherever possible, the rules laid down by the Committee of the Royal Geographical Society on the Spelling of Proper Names. In the Tuareg form of Berber, t before i or similar vowel, especially in the feminine possessive particle “tin,” very often assumes a sound varying between a hard explosive tch and a soft liquid dental, such as is found in the English word “tune.” This modification of the sound t is written t’, wherever it is by usage sufficiently pronounced to be noticeable. The pronunciation of Tuareg words follows the Air dialect, which often differs from the northern speech. Letters are only accented where it is important to avoid mispronunciation, as in Fadé and Emilía: a final e, as in Assode, which is a trisyllable, should always be pronounced even if not accented.

The nasal n occurring in such words as Añastafidet is written ñ.

The gh (or Arabic غ, ghen) sound is, as in other Berber languages, very common in the speech of the Tuareg. The letter is so strongly grasseyé as to be indistinguishable, in many cases, from r. The French with greater logic write this sound r or r’. Doubtless many names which have been spelled with r in the succeeding pages should more correctly have been spelled with gh: such mistakes are due to the difficulties both of distinguishing the sound in speech, and of transcribing French transliterations.

No attempt has been made to indicate the occurrence of the third g which exists in the Tuareg alphabet, in addition to the hard g and the soft g (written j).

The Arabic letter ع (’ain) does not exist in the speech of the Tuareg; where they use an Arabic word containing this letter, they substitute for it the sound gh.

No signs have been used to distinguish between the hard and soft varieties of the letters d, t and z. The “kef” (Iek) and “qaf” (Iaq) sounds are written k and q.

[1]PEOPLE OF THE VEIL

INTRODUCTORY

Sahara is the name given in modern geography to the whole of the interior of North Africa between the Nile Valley and the Atlantic littoral, south of the Mediterranean coastlands and north of the Equatorial belt. The word “Sahara” is derived from the Arabic, and its meaning refers to a certain type of stony desert in one particular area. There is no native name for the whole of this vast land surface: it is far too large to fall wholly within the cognisance of any one group of its diverse inhabitants. The fact that it is a Moslem area and sharply distinguished from the rest of Africa has made it desirable to find a better name than “Sahara” to include both the interior and the littoral, for even “Sahara,” unsatisfactory as it is, can only be used of the former. “Africa Minor” has been proposed, but the reception accorded to this name has not been so cordial as to warrant its use. The clumsy term “North Africa” must therefore serve in the following pages to describe all the northern part of the continent; specifically it refers to the parts west of the Nile Valley and north of the Sudan.[1] It is an area which is now no longer permanently inhabited[2] by negro races, and which is not covered by the dense vegetation of Equatoria.

To the general public the name Sahara denotes “Desert,” and the latter connotes sand and thirst and camels and picturesque men and veiled women. The Sahara in reality is very different. Its surface and races are varied. Almost every type of physical feature, except permanent glaciation, can be found. The greater part is capable of supporting animal and vegetable life in some degree. Absolute desert where no living thing can exist does not on the whole form a very large proportion of the surface. It has become usual nowadays to differentiate between the cultivated or cultivable areas, the steppe desert and the true desert. The latter alone is devoid of organic life, and is the exception rather than the rule. The mountain groups of the Sahara fall, as an intermediate category, between the cultivated and the desert lands. Generally speaking, animal and vegetable life exist in the valleys, where some tillage is often possible. The density of population, however, is never comparable with that of the cultivated districts, which, except where they fringe the coast, are usually included in the term “oases.”

The mountain groups of the Sahara are numerous and comparatively high. There are summits in the more important massifs exceeding 10,000 feet above the sea. The three most important groups in the Central Sahara are the Tibesti, Air and Ahaggar mountains. In such a generalisation, reference to the Atlas and other mountain masses in Algeria and Morocco may be omitted, since they do not properly speaking belong to the Sahara. The three Saharan massifs are probably of volcanic origin. They have only become known in recent years, and even now have not been fully explored. This is especially the case in regard to Tibesti, an area believed to be orographically connected with Air by the almost unknown plateau of the Southern Fezzan.

The Central Sahara with these three groups of mountains differs materially from the Eastern Sahara. Although our[3] data for the latter are more limited by lack of knowledge, the structure of the surface immediately west of the Nile Valley appears characteristically to be a series of closed basins. The area is covered with depressions into which insignificant channels flow, and from which there appear to be no outlets. Compared with the river systems of the west, the stream beds are small and ill-defined. One valley of some magnitude, the Bahr Bela Ma which Rohlfs tried to find on his famous journeys in the Libyan desert, has been identified either as a dry channel of the Nile running roughly parallel to it, or alternatively as a valley which starts from N.E. Tibesti and terminates near or in the Wadi Natrun depression just west of the Nile and level with the apex of the Delta. The upper part which drains Tibesti has been called the W. Fardi; elsewhere it is the W. Fareg; the shallow depression crossed by Hassanein Bey on his journey from Jalo to Kufra seems to be part of this system. Examples of closed basins separated from one another by steppe or desert are the oases of Kufra, the Jaghbub-Siwa, Jalo and Lake Chad depressions. In these areas cultivation is frequently intense; salt and fresh water are abundant; and the vegetation sometimes develops luxuriantly into veritable forests of date palms such as exist at Kufra. Between these hollows the intervening Libyan desert is probably the largest and most sterile area of its sort in the world.

The Western Sahara, on the other hand, is essentially an area of well-defined river systems with watersheds and dry beds fashioned on a vast scale. The valleys which extend from the mountains of Ahaggar and the Fezzan to the present River Niger have corresponding channels on the other side of the water-parting running through Southern Algeria or Tunisia towards the Mediterranean. There are good reasons for believing that the original course of the Niger terminated in a swamp or marsh north of Timbuctoo, probably the same collecting basin as that west of Ahaggar into which certain rivers from the Atlas also used to flow. The lower Niger from the eastern side of[4] the great bend where the river now turns south-east and south drained the Central Sahara by a great channel which had its head-waters in Ahaggar and the Fezzan, and ran west of Air.

These Saharan rivers have not contained perennial surface water for long ages. In places they have been covered by more recent sand-dune formations of great extension, but they date from the present geological period. Associated with the desiccation of these valleys is the characteristic of extreme dryness which is one of the few features more or less in accord with popular conceptions of the Sahara. The barrenness of the Sahara is less due to the inherent sterility of the ground than to climatic conditions; desiccation has been intensified in the course of centuries by the purely mechanical processes attendant upon an extremely continental climate and excessively high day temperatures. The latter combined with the extraordinary dryness of the air have contributed to the decay of vegetable, and consequently of animal, life wherever man has not been sufficiently powerful, in numbers or energy, to stay the process. Sterility and desiccation are interacting causes and effects. There is no reason to believe that any sudden change of climate has taken place in the Sahara since the neolithic period, or that it is very much drier now than two thousand years ago. Maximum and minimum temperatures, both average and absolute, have a very wide range seasonally and within the period of twenty-four hours. Temperatures of over 100° F. in the shade are common at all seasons of the year during the day: the thermometer frequently falls to freezing point at night during the winter. Ice is not unknown in the mountains of Tibesti, Air and Ahaggar. The rainfall is irregular except within the belt of summer rains which are so characteristic of Equatorial Africa. In Tibesti the cycle of good rains seems to recur once in thirteen years: in many years both here and elsewhere in the Sahara no rain falls at all. But with these adverse climatic conditions the surprising fact remains, not that the Sahara is so barren, but that it is[5] so relatively well-favoured and capable of supporting different races of people in such comparatively large numbers.[2]

The Air mountains, like the Desert steppes, are only sparsely inhabited. The hill-sides are too wind-swept and rocky to support forests or pastures of any value. Many of the valleys are capable of being cultivated, but in practice are only gardened here and there. In certain districts there are groves of date palms which have been imported from the north. Air is in reality a great Saharan oasis divided from the Equatorial belt by a zone of desert and steppe. It differs from the south in its flora and general conditions, though by its position within the belt of tropical summer rains it belongs climatically to the Sudan.

The oases of the desert, like the Sahara generally, have been the subject of much popular misconception. The[6] origin of the word “oasis,” which has reached us in its present form through the classics, may perhaps be found in ancient Egyptian. It seems to be connected with the name of the Wawat People of the West referred to in the Harris Papyrus,[3] and occurs in the names of Wau el Kebir and Wau el Seghir or el Namus, which are oases in the Eastern Fezzan.[4] The term El Wahat,[5] given to one or several of the oases west of the Nile Valley, contains the same root. An oasis is not necessarily a patch of ground with two or three palm trees and a well in the desert. It is simply an indefinite area of fertility in a barren land; it may or may not happen to have a well. There are oases in Southern Algeria and the Fezzan with hundreds of thousands of palm trees, containing many villages and a permanent population. There are others where the pasture is good but where there is neither population nor water. “Oasis” is a term with no strict denotation, it connotes attributes which render animal life possible.

In this sense Air, as a whole, is an oasis situated on a great caravan road from the Mediterranean to Central Africa. The mountains so lie in respect of the desert to the north and to the south that caravan journeys may be broken in their valleys, and camels can stay to recuperate. The mountains mark a stage on the road, the importance of which it is difficult to over-estimate. In the history of North Africa, the principal routes across the Sahara from the Mediterranean to the Sudan have seemingly not changed at all. Since the earliest times they have followed the shortest tracks from north to south whenever there was sufficient water. If the Nile Valley and the routes in the desert adjacent thereto are left out of account as being suorum generum, there are four main caravan roads across North Africa from north to south. The easternmost runs from Cyrenaica by Kufra[7] to Wadai and Tibesti; only within the last century has it been rendered practicable for caravans by the provision of wells along the southern part, which was opened to heavy traffic by the Senussiya sect. The two central routes run respectively from Tripolitania by the Fezzan, Murzuk and Kawar to Lake Chad, and by Ghadames, Ghat and Air to the Central Sudan. The western route runs from Algeria and Morocco across the desert to Timbuctoo. In addition there is the Moroccan road, which roughly follows the curve of the coast to the Western Sudan and Senegal. Of all these the best known in modern times,[6] and culturally perhaps the most important, has been the Air road. It is noteworthy that all three central routes have been or are within the control of the Tuareg race. As the Tuareg were the caravan drivers of the Central Sahara, so were they also responsible for bringing a certain degree of civilisation from the Mediterranean to Equatorial Africa. That has been their greatest rôle in history.

The object of this book is to describe a part of the Tuareg race, namely, those tribes which live in Air and in the country immediately to the south. It will not be possible to examine in any detail the theories surrounding the origin of the race, but certain definitions are necessary if the succeeding chapters are to be understood. The Berbers of North Africa, among whom are usually included the Tuareg, have very disputed origins; for many reasons it is perhaps best to follow the example of Herodotus and use the geographical term Libyans for them. Less controversy surrounds this name than “Berber,” which implies a number of wholly imaginary anthropological connections. Moreover, it is even open to doubt whether the Tuareg are Berbers at all, like the other people so called in Algeria and Morocco. In all this confusion it will be enough to grasp that the Tuareg are a Libyan people with marked individual peculiarities and that they were in North Africa long before the Arabs came. They have been there ever since the earliest times of which we[8] have any historical record, though in more northern areas than those which they now occupy. The population of the Sahara is very diverse and the affinities of the various elements afford many interesting problems for study; but in the present work we shall be concerned with the one race alone.

The Tuareg country may roughly be described as extending from the eastern edge of the Central Sahara, which is bounded by the Fezzan-Murzuk-Kawar-Lake Chad caravan road, to the far edge of the western deserts of North Africa before the Atlantic zone begins, and from Southern Algeria in the north to the Niger and the Equatorial belt between the river and Lake Chad in the south. The Tuareg are so little known even to-day that their very existence is almost legendary. It is with something of a thrill that the tourist in Tunis or Algiers learns from a mendacious guide that a poor Arab half-caste sitting muffled in a cloak is one of the fabled People of the Veil. It is long, in fact, since any of them have visited the Mediterranean coast, for they do not care for Europeans very much. Before the Italo-Turkish War, occasional Tuareg used to reach the coast at Tripoli at the end of the long caravan road from Central Africa; even then they more usually stopped at Ghadames or Murzuk. With the Italian occupation of Tripolitania in 1913 they became apprehensive of intrusion on their last unconquered area; but despite the Italian failure to occupy and administer the interior they have only lately ventured a certain way north once more on raids or for commerce.

Though the Hornemann, Lyons and the Denham, Oudney and Clapperton expeditions in the first half of the last century touched the fringe of the Tuareg country, the first Europeans in modern times to come into contact with the Azger group in the Fezzan were Richardson in 1847 and Barth with Richardson in 1849 and subsequent years. Barth, more particularly mentioned in the story of the penetration of Air, is in some respects even now the most valuable authority for all the Tuareg except the Ahaggaren. The first detailed work of value dedicated to the latter was that of Duveyrier,[9] Les Touareg du Nord, published in 1864 after a journey through the Ahaggar and Azger country and the Fezzan. His systematic study of the ethnology of the Tuareg, his geographical work and his researches into the fauna, flora and ancient history of the lands he visited, were presented to the world in a form which has since been taken in France as the model of what a scientific book should be. Ill health was the tragedy of his life, for it prevented his return, and rendered him, as he remarked in later years, “an arm-chair explorer of the Sahara.” After visiting the Wad Righ and Shott countries in Southern Tunisia, he went to El Golea on the road to Tuat and thence turned towards Ghadames and Tripolitania. He eventually reached Ghat, and returned to the Mediterranean coast by Murzuk and Sokna, taking a more easterly road than Barth’s in 1850. Beurmann in 1862, and Dickson ten years previously, had reached the edge of the same Tuareg country, but what Barth had done for the Tuareg of Air and the south, Duveyrier did for the Ahaggaren and Azger.

In 1881, twenty years after the expedition of Burin to Tuat, the French determined to penetrate the countries of this fabled race. A column under Colonel Flatters, who had already gained a certain reputation in France as a Saharan explorer, marched almost due south from Wargla and Tuggurt in the eastern part of Southern Algeria up the Ighaghar basin and so reached the north-eastern corner of the Ahaggar country. This valley is the drainage system of the north central Sahara towards the Mediterranean; it virtually divides the old Azger country from that of the Ahaggaren. Near the Aghelashem Wells at the intersection of the valley with the Ghat-Insalah road, Flatters turned S.E., intending apparently to follow the Ghat-Air caravan road to the Sudan. This track he proposed joining at or near the wells of Issala, and then to proceed by much the same route as that which Barth and his companions had selected in 1850. But at Bir Gharama in the Tin Tarabin valley, a few days before it was due to reach Issala, disaster overtook[10] the column. The European officers, who assumed that their penetration of the Tuareg country was welcome to the inhabitants, had taken none of the military precautions necessary in hostile country. The vital part of the expedition, the officer commanding and his staff, left camp to reconnoitre a well and became separated from their troops, consisting of about eighty Algerian tirailleurs. The officers were attacked by the Tuareg and killed. After the death of Colonel Flatters and Captain Masson, the remainder of the column under Captain Dianous made an attempt to escape north. After an unsuccessful effort by the Tuareg to destroy the party by selling the men dates poisoned with the Alfalehle plant (Hyoscyamus Falezlez),[7] the column reached the Ighaghar once more at the wells of Amjid. But they found the wells occupied by the enemy, and in the ensuing fight Captain Dianous and nearly all his men were killed.

The circumstances of the disaster, so vividly recounted by Duveyrier to the Paris Geographical Society on 22nd April, 1881, had followed the publication of his account of a people whom he had described picturesquely, but with some exaggeration, as the “Knights of the Desert.” The massacre created a profound impression in France. The Tuareg came to be regarded as an insurmountable obstacle to the French penetration of North Africa, and expeditions into their country were discontinued. The disaster of Bir Gharama remained unavenged until 1902, when a detachment of Camel Corps under Lieut. Cottonest met the pick of the Ahaggar Tuareg in battle at Tit within their own mountains and killed 93 men out of 299 present, the French patrol losing only 4 killed and 2 wounded out of 120 native soldiers and Arab scouts. Despite the small numbers involved, the fight at Tit broke the resistance of Ahaggar, for it proved the vanity of matching a few old flintlocks and spears and swords against magazine rifles.[8] But if it demonstrated[11] the futility of overt resistance, it also established for all time the courage of the camel riders of the desert, who hurled themselves against a barrier of rifle fire, unprotected by primeval forest or sheltering jungle, in order to maintain their age-long defiance of the mastery of foreign people.

Considering the magnitude of the results they achieve, Saharan, like Arabian, battles involve surprisingly small numbers. The size of armed bodies moving over the desert is limited by the capacity of the wells; the output of water not only regulates the mass of raiding bands, but also determines their strategy, as well as the routes of trading caravans, which are compelled to move in large bodies in order to ensure even a small measure of protection. Only the realisation of this rather self-evident fact enabled the French in the course of years to deal with raiders in Southern Algeria by organising Camel Corps patrols of relatively small size and great mobility. The privations which these raiders are willing to endure made it impossible to fight them with a European establishment.

The necessity of imitating the nomad in his mode of life and warfare became obvious to Laperrine from his first sojourn in Southern Algeria, where he made his career as the greatest European desert leader in history with one solitary exception. The encounter of Tit was followed by a number of “Tournées d’Apprivoisement,” patrols to “tame” the desert folk, initiated by Laperrine, and culminating in 1904 in a protracted reconnaissance through Ahaggar, which brought about a final pacification. Charles de Foucauld, soldier, traveller and monk, had accompanied the patrol. He remained on after it was over as a hermit and student among the Ahaggaren until his death in 1916. He had been Laperrine’s brother officer at St. Cyr. Extravagant, reckless and endowed with all the good things of the world, a member of the old French aristocracy in a smart cavalry regiment, the Marquis de Foucauld is one of the most picturesque figures of modern times. After a memorable reconnaissance of Morocco in 1883-4, disguised as a Jew,[12] he became a Trappist monk, and eventually entered a retreat at Beni Abbes, in the desert that he loved too well to leave in all his life. During his years in Ahaggar as a teacher of the Word of God he made no converts to Christianity, but sought by his example alone to lead the people along the way of Truth. It is to be hoped that, in spite of a modesty which precluded it during his lifetime, the knowledge and lore of the Tuareg which he collected in the form of notes will eventually be given to the world in order to supplement his dictionary of the Ahaggar dialect, to-day the standard work on their language, which is called Temajegh.[9]

To implement the Laperrine policy of long reconnaissances, a post was built near Tamanghasset in Ahaggar called Fort Motylinski, after an officer interpreter who was one of the first practical students of Temajegh. Lately the post has been moved to Tamanghasset itself, where Father de Foucauld had built his hermitage, and it is now called Fort Laperrine, in memory of the great soldier who was killed flying across the desert to Timbuctoo in 1919.

Another post was built at Janet not far from Ghat, to watch the Azger Tuareg. Its capture during the late war by the Arabs and Tuareg of Ghat, and the killing of Father de Foucauld by a raiding party from the Fezzan, are incidents in that same series of intrigues which were instigated in North Africa by the Central Empires and carried on with such success in the Western Desert of Egypt, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Southern Algeria and as far afield as Air. If the Senussi leaders have not been responsible for as many intrigues as it has been the fashion to ascribe to this puritanical and perhaps fanatical sect, the Germans at least discovered what others are still learning, that the latent force of nationalism in North Africa among the ancient Libyan and Arab-Libyan peoples is powerful still to-day. The spirit of the Circumcelliones and of the opponents of Islam in the eighth[13] century was exploited by the Turks and Germans through the Senussiya, which provided the only organisation available during the Great War, though in fact only few Tuareg and Arabs at Ghat or in the Fezzan were members of, or even friendly to, the sect. These people used the opportunity afforded by the war to procure arms and material through the Senussiya for the consummation of their own ambitions. The new spirit which is abroad in Islam, in Africa as well as in Asia, is an interesting subject of study for the practical politician. There is no occasion to enlarge upon it here.

In consequence of these agitations, a raid came out of the east and fell upon Father de Foucauld’s hermitage on the 1st December, 1916. The hermit was killed, but the raiders were not of the Ahaggaren among whom he had lived, and to whom he had devoted his life; they came from Ghat and the Fezzan. They probably started without intent to murder, but because Charles de Foucauld was the greatest European influence in the desert at that time, they desired to remove him and perhaps to hold him as a hostage. In justice it must be admitted that no one had any illusions regarding the political views of the people of the Fezzan; they were in a state of open warfare with the French posts in Southern Algeria. De Foucauld had played a very great part against them in preventing the Ahaggaren rising en masse against the French; he was an important intelligence centre for the neighbouring Fort Motilynski; he was apparently, well provided with rifles in his hermitage. When surprised by the raid, he disdained to fight, preferring to fall a martyr to his religion and his country. My excuse, if any is needed, for touching on a subject tending to be controversial is the appearance of a number of mis-statements concerning the barbarity of his murder and the treachery of the people to whom Father de Foucauld had devoted the latter part of his life. It is well to remember, in the first place, that the circumstances of his life and his prestige made the attack a justifiable act of war, for he played a definitely political rôle; secondly, that there was[14] no treachery or betrayal; and lastly, that his aggressors were a mixed band of Arabs and of Tuareg from another part of the Sahara which had, for generations past, been on terms of raid and counter-raid with the people of Ahaggar.

When all has been said of the European penetration of the Tuareg country, it is not very much. The world outside the society of those white men who, during the last fifty years, have spent their lives in the Sahara, can know but little of this race or of their country. The modern literature on the subject is small, even in French; in English it is almost non-existent. On the Tuareg of Air there are only two works of any value: the one by a French officer is recent in date and sadly superficial;[10] the other is incorporated in H. Barth’s account of the British expedition of 1849 and subsequent years to Central Africa.[11] There are a few other works in French about the Tuareg of the north and south-west, but I am not aware that anyone has attempted a general study of the whole people, who have been rather neglected by science. The principal object of this volume will have been achieved if it in any measure fills a want in English records or if it arouses sufficient controversy to induce others to undertake a thorough investigation of the race.

The Tuareg are not a tribe but a people. The name “Tuareg” is not their own: it is a term of opprobrium applied to them by their enemies, and connotes certain peculiarities possessed by a number of tribal confederations which have no common name for themselves as a race. The men of this people, after reaching a certain age, wear a strip of thin cloth wound around their heads in such a manner as to form a hood over the eyes and a covering over the mouth and nostrils. Only a narrow slit is left open for the eyes, and no other part of the face is visible. From this practice they became known to the Arabs as the “Muleththemin”[15] or “Veiled People,”[12] while they themselves, in default of a national name, are in the habit of using the same locution in their own tongue to describe the whole society of different castes which compose their community. Whatever the social position of the men, the Veil is invariably worn by day and by night,[13] while the women go unveiled. Few races are more rigidly observant of social distinction between noble and servile tribes; none holds to a tradition of dress with more ritual conservatism.

The larger divisions of Tuareg have names by which they are known to themselves and to their neighbours: these names designate the historical or geographical groupings of tribes. In each group of tribes the existence of nobles and serfs is recognised; there are appropriate terms to describe these social distinctions. The nobles are called Imajeghan;[14] the servile people, Imghad. But no name other than Kel Tagilmus,[15] the “People of the Veil,” exists to describe the society of nobles and serfs alike, irrespective of group or caste. These details will require fuller examination in due course, but it is important to realise immediately that the name Tuareg[16] is unknown in their own language and is only used of them by Arabs and other foreigners. It has, however, been so universally adopted by everyone who has had to do with them or who has written of them that, although not strictly accurate, it would be pedantic not to continue using it. The Tuareg all speak the same language, called Temajegh, which varies only dialectically from group to group. They have a peculiar form of script, known as T’ifinagh, which also is practically identical in all the[16] divisions of the Tuareg, but is apparently not used by other peoples. Lastly, the Tuareg are nomads by instinct and, save where much intermarriage has taken place, of the same racial type. The conquest of foreign elements in war and their assimilation into servile tribes have, in the course of time, led to some modification of physique and a growth of sedentarism in certain areas. As a whole, however, the nation has survived in a fairly pure state which is readily distinguishable. There is, I think, no justification for considering the People of the Veil a large tribal group of Berbers in North Africa; they are a separate race with marked peculiarities, distinct from other sections of the latter, and, as I believe, of a different origin.

They formerly extended further west almost to the sea-board of the Atlantic; their northern and eastern extension can also be deduced from what is known of their migrations. Their neighbours to the south are the negroid Kanuri, Hausa-speaking peoples,[17] and the Fulani; to the east are the Tebu, and in the west the Arab and Moorish tribes; finally, in the north the nomadic and sedentary Arabs and sedentary Libyans of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania. The N.E. corner of Tuareg territory, the Fezzan, is ethnically of such mixed population as to admit of no summary classification; Arab, Libyan, Tebu and negroid peoples are all inextricably mingled together. The Tuareg wander as nomads over the country generally, the negroes and sedentary Libyans till the ground, and, in addition to a proportion of all those already enumerated, the towns are inhabited by yet another people of noble origin, whose connection with the ancient Garamantes of classical authors may be assumed if it cannot be proved. With the exception of the Fezzan the Tuareg are now predominant within their own country. It includes two great groups of mountains, Air and Ahaggar, together with certain smaller adjacent massifs.

[17]It is unfortunately not possible to deal with Air in history nor with the Tuareg of Air, by considering the mountains and their inhabitants alone. The migrations of the Tuareg of Air have been so intimately connected with that part of the Sudan which we now call Nigeria that the northern fringe of the area and the country intervening between it and Air must receive attention. This intervening steppe and desert, largely overrun by Tuareg, lie on the way which I followed to reach the mountains. The neglect to which these areas have been subjected justifies me in devoting a chapter to them before coming to Air itself. Again, the concluding chapters of this volume will deal as much with the Southland as they do with Air, for the history of the latter cannot be divorced from that of the former.

Since mention will be continually made of the various Tuareg groups as they exist to-day, and of the tribes which they contain, it will be as well to explain that there are to-day four principal divisions of the people, all of whom possess characteristics common and peculiar to the whole race.

The main groups are:—

The first group is held for convenience to include the Tuareg in the Ahnet mountains, the Taitoq, and those north-west of the Ahaggar mountains. The second group is comparatively compact. The third group is the one with which this volume deals in detail, and includes the Kel Geres and other Tuareg generally of the Southland, in and[18] on the fringes of Nigeria. The fourth group should more properly be divided, as it comprises the distinct aggregations of the Aulimmiden, the Ifoghas of the Mountain (Ifoghas n’Adghar),[18] and the Tuareg of Timbuctoo and the Niger.

The country of the Ahaggaren proper is confined to the Ahaggar massif, but there are certain outlying districts to the north and north-west. The confused mass of hills east of Ahaggar towards the Fezzan was, at the beginning of the century, essentially the country of the Azger. In recent years they have tended to move eastwards towards their original homes and away from the influence of the French military posts. The majority of this group now ranges over the country between Ghat and Murzuk. They are the Tuareg who have come least into contact with Europeans. Although there is considerable affinity between them and the Ahaggaren, the Tuareg generally recognise that the Azger do not belong to, or are under the rule of, the Ahaggar chieftains despite the fact that they are all collectively known in Air as Ahaggaren. Those travellers who have known them are at one in considering them to-day an independent division. From the historical point of view the Azger are the most important of all the Tuareg, since from this group, reduced in numbers as it now is, most of the migrations of the race to the Southlands seem to have taken place. They are also probably to-day the purest of the Tuareg stock in existence.

The first description of Air and its people in any detail was brought back to Europe by Barth after his memorable journey from the Mediterranean to the Sudan, on which he set out in 1849 with Richardson and Overweg, but from which he alone returned alive more than five years later. Prior to this journey there are certain references in Ibn Batutah and Leo Africanus, but they do not give us much[19] information either of the country or of the people. From Ibn Batutah’s description, the country he traversed is recognisable, but the information is meagre. The account of Leo Africanus written in the sixteenth century is little better. His principal contribution, in the English and original Italian versions, is a bad pun: “Likewise Hair (Air), albeit a desert, yet so called for the goodness and temperature of the aire. . . .”[19] It is an observation, in fact, of great truth, but hardly more useful than his other statement, which records that the “soyle aboundeth with all kinds of herbes,” in apparent contradiction with the previous remark. He adds that “a great store of manna” is found not far from Agades which the people “gather in certaine little vessels, carrying it, when it is new, into the market of the town to be mingled with water as a refreshing drink”—an allusion probably to the “pura” or “ghussub” water made of millet meal, water and milk or cheese. He states that the country is inhabited by the “Targa” people, and as he mentions Agades, it had evidently by then been founded, but beyond these facts his description is wholly inadequate. He unfortunately even forgets to mention that Air is mountainous.

Although the European penetration of the Western Sahara may date from the Middle Ages, the same cannot be said of Air. Caillé in 1828 was, in fact, not the first European to visit and describe Timbuctoo, nor was Rohlfs in 1864 the first European in Tuat. There are some very interesting earlier accounts which are gradually being unearthed[20] dealing with these countries. It is regrettable that there are apparently no similar accounts of Air.[21] The first information of any value is found only in comparatively recent times. Hornemann[22] in 1798 travelled from Egypt along[20] the Haj Road which runs from Timbuctoo to Cairo. He turned back at Murzuk, but had he continued he would have come to Ghat and eventually to Air. He nevertheless brought back the first modern account of the Tuareg of this country, or rather of a section of them, the Kel Owi, whom he calls the Kolouvey. His information about the Ahaggaren and about the divisions of the Tebu, who lived east and north-east beyond the limits of the country which they now occupy, is worth examining in connection with their ethnological history. After Hornemann’s journey Denham, Oudney and Clapperton[23] collected some further details about Air and its people in the course of an expedition to Chad and Nigeria at the beginning of the last century, and in 1845 Richardson began a systematic study of the Azger and Air Tuareg during a preliminary journey to the Fezzan. But none of these travellers had the first-hand personal experience which, five years afterwards, Barth, Richardson and Overweg obtained on their expedition.

The part played by Great Britain in the exploration of the Central Sahara, testified to by the graves of many Englishmen or foreigners in the service of the British Crown, is little known in this country. Our efforts to abolish the slave trade in Africa and our paramount position in Tripolitania early in the last century led to that initiative being taken, to which the world even to-day owes most of its knowledge of the Fezzan, and which opened the Sudan to commerce and colonisation. While Richardson was apparently the first and only Englishman to visit Air until my travelling companion, Angus Buchanan, went there from Nigeria in 1919, the graves of explorers in neighbouring lands show that we stand second to none in geographical work in the Central Sahara. It was only when, in the partition of North Africa, this vast area fell to the French, that there was any falling off in the numbers of Englishmen who in each successive decade travelled and died there. Their work deserves to be better[21] known: Henry Warrington died of dysentery at the desert well of Dibbela, south of Bilma in Kawar, on his way to Lake Chad with a German, Dr. Vogel. Dr. Oudney died on 5th January, 1824, at Murmur near Hadeija (Northern Nigeria), after accompanying Clapperton and Denham from Tripoli by way of Bilma and Chad to explore Bornu. Tyrwhit, who went out to join them, died at Kuka on Lake Chad, on 22nd October, 1824. Barth’s companion Richardson died in the early part of 1851 at N’Gurutawa in Manga, S. of Zinder, and their companion Overweg succumbed near Lake Chad. Both Barth and Overweg were Germans who had volunteered and were appointed to serve on an expedition sent by Her Majesty’s Government to explore Central Africa and to report on the abolition of the slave trade. Dr. Vogel, another German, who had been sent by Her Majesty’s Government to join Barth and complete his work, died near Lake Chad after his return, while an assistant, Corporal MacGuire, was killed on his way home at Beduaram, N. of Bilma, in the same year. Of those who had opened the way for the Clapperton expeditions, Ritchie had died of disease in 1819 at Murzuk and Lyon had been obliged to turn back before reaching Bornu. Clapperton himself on a second journey lost his life at Sokoto on 13th April, 1827. North Africa has claimed her British victims no less than the swamps and jungles of Equatoria, only they are not so well known, for they never sought to advertise their achievements.

Few people in this country or abroad realise how great was the influence of Great Britain in the Sahara during the lifetime and after the death of that remarkable man, Colonel Hamer Warrington, H.M. Consul at Tripoli from 1814 to 1846. Apart from the fact that he virtually governed Tripoli, our influence and interests may be gauged by the existence of Vice-Consulates and Consulates, not only along the coast at Khoms and Misurata, but far in the interior at Ghadames and Murzuk. The peregrinations of numerous travellers and efforts to suppress the African slave trade had[22] obliged Her Majesty’s Government to play a part in local tribal politics, for it had early become clear that if this abominable traffic was to be abolished the sources of supply would have to be controlled, since it proved useless only to make representations on the coast where caravans discharged their human cargo. At one moment it even seemed as if Tripolitania would be added to the British Empire, and as lately as 1870 travellers were still talking of the French and British factions among the Fezzanian tribes. But Free Trade and other political controversies in England half-way through the century brought about a pause, and the arrest was enough to withdraw public interest from North Africa and to give France her chance. The controversies were the object of much bitter criticism by the idealist Richardson, who saw political dialectics obscuring a crusade on behalf of humanity for which he was destined to give his life. He seems to have been profoundly affected and to have suffered himself to become warped, as Barth on more than one occasion discovered.[24] The inevitable consequence of a British occupation of Tripolitania would have been the active penetration of the Air and Chad roads and a junction with the explorers and merchants who were working north from the Bight of Benin. But French interest in North Africa as a consequence of their occupation of Algeria grew progressively stronger as it declined in this country, while to the same waning appetite must be ascribed the fact that for seventy years no Englishman visited Air. Regrettable as this may appear to geographers, it is even more tragic to realise how few have heard of the German, Dr. Heinrich Barth, than whom it may be said there never has been a more courageous or meticulously accurate explorer. After several notable journeys further north he accompanied Richardson as a volunteer, and on the latter’s death continued the exploration of Africa for another four years on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, which he most loyally served.[23] If in this volume he is repeatedly mentioned, it is without misgiving or apology; it may help in some little measure to rescue his name from unmerited oblivion in these days of sensational and superficial books of travel. The account of his journey and of the lore and history of the countries of Central Africa which he visited from Timbuctoo to Lake Chad is still a standard work.

Barth and his companions entered Air in August 1850, and left the country for the south in the closing days of the same year. Reaching Asiu from Ghat, they traversed the northern mountains of Air, which are known to the Tuareg as Fadé.[25] After passing by the wells in the T’iyut valley and the “agilman” (pool) of Taghazit, they camped eight days later on the northern outskirts of Air proper. During this period their caravan was subjected to constant threats of brigandage from parties of northern Tuareg, and on the day before reaching the first permanent habitations of Air in the Ighazar near Seliufet village, they again narrowly escaped aggression from the local inhabitants. An attack was eventually made on them at T’intaghoda, a little further on, and they only just escaped with their lives after losing a good deal of property. The same experience was repeated near T’intellust, where the expedition had established its head-quarters in the great valley which drains the N.E. side of the Air mountains. When, however, they had once made friends with that remarkable personality, Annur, chief of the Kel Owi tribal confederation, and paramount chief of Air, they were free from further molestation, and thanks to him eventually they reached the Sudan in safety. From T’intellust Barth made a journey alone to Agades by a road running west of the central Bagezan mountains. After his return the whole party moved to the Southland along the great Tripoli-Sudan trade route which passes east of the Central massifs. Crossing the southern part of Air known as Tegama they entered Damergu, which geographically belongs to the Sudan, about New Year’s Day, 1851. In the course of[24] his stay in Air Barth made the first sketch map of the country, catalogued the principal tribes and compiled a summary of their history which is still the most valuable contribution which we possess on the subject.

Some twenty-seven years later, another German, Erwin von Bary, reached Air from the north by much the same road as that which Barth and his companions had followed. He left Ghat in January 1897 and reached the villages of Northern Air a month later. Thence he journeyed to the village of Ajiru, a village on the eastern slopes of the central mountains, and awaited the return from a raid of Belkho, the chieftain who had succeeded Barth’s friend Annur as paramount lord of the country. The unfortunate von Bary was subjected to every form of extortion, and though Belkho, when he returned, compelled his people to restore what they had stolen, the chief himself made life unpleasant for the traveller by taking all his presents and doing nothing for him in return so long as he showed any desire to proceed on his journey southwards. Belkho pleaded such poverty that the explorer nearly died of starvation, but von Bary admittedly had laid himself open to every form of abuse. He had arrived almost penniless, did not understand the courtesies of desert travelling, and seems to have placed undue reliance on his skill as a doctor to achieve his objects. But when he eventually gave up the idea of going on to the Sudan, Belkho treated him well. Although von Bary’s opinion of the Tuareg of Air is not favourable, in reality he owed them a great debt of gratitude. No other people who dislike foreigners so much as they do would have protected him and helped him as they finally did. His quarrels with Belkho seem to have been in part due to his own tactlessness and discourtesy, and in part to his inability to realise that the chief, for political reasons, did not desire him to go to the Sudan. Von Bary returned to Ghat, meaning to try once more to reach Nigeria as soon as he had picked up his stores and some more money, but his diary ends abruptly with the remark that he would be ready to start south again[25] from there in fifteen to twenty days. He died within twenty-four hours of reaching Ghat, on 3rd October, 1877. He had spent a cheerful evening with Kaimakam,[26] and had gone to bed; at 6 a.m. he was breathing peacefully asleep; by ten o’clock he was dead. His death does not seem to have been quite natural. It remains one of the mysteries of the Sahara. Von Bary’s account of Air[27] is very incomplete and his observations are coloured by the hardships which he suffered. With the exception of certain botanical information and notes on one or two ethnological points, his descriptions contain little that had not already been made known by Barth.

Then began that competition among European Powers for African colonies which was soon to reach a critical stage. The Anglo-German Convention of 1890 had proposed to divide Africa finally, but before that date the French had seen one desirable part after the other fall to our lot. They determined before it was too late to take as much as possible of what still remained unallocated. Central Africa, east of Lake Chad, certain tracts of indifferent country on the western coast and the greater part of the Sahara were still unclaimed by any European Power. And so it was that in France the magnificent scheme was conceived of sending three columns from north, west and south to converge on Lake Chad, and formally to take possession of the lands through which they passed in accordance with the stipulations of the Congress of Berlin, where it had been laid down that territorial claims were only valid if substantiated by effective occupation. It was not till 1899, however, that the French plans reached maturity. Three expeditions duly set out from the Congo, the Western Sudan and Algeria to cross Africa and meet on Lake Chad. Their adventures constitute one of the most romantic chapters in Colonial history. The western column, at first under Captain Voulet,[26] who was accompanied by Lieut. Chanoine and others, marched from the Niger along the northern edge of the Nigerian Emirates. Mutiny and murder among the European personnel were experienced. French politics at home, where the Jewish question had become acute, were responsible for all manner of delays; the command changed hands repeatedly. But the northern column and the Congo party were equally delayed; not until a year after the date fixed for the rendezvous on the lake did the three expeditions meet. The military escorts were united under Commandant Lamy, and gave battle to the forces of Rabah, one of the Khalif’s generals, who had crossed half Africa to carve out for himself a kingdom in Bornu and Bagirmi after the débâcle of the Mahdia on the Upper Nile. Lamy defeated him and annexed French Equatorial Africa.

Of these three expeditions, the northern column, known as the Foureau-Lamy Mission, had passed through Air on its way south. The Europeans who accompanied it were in 1899 the first Frenchmen to enter the country and to carry out the plan originally contemplated by Flatters in 1881. The annexation of Air by France may be counted from this date.

The Foureau-Lamy Mission[28] entered the borders of Air from Algeria at the wells of In Azawa; their heavy losses in camels obliged them to abandon large quantities of material, but they eventually reached Iferuan in the Ighazar, not far from T’intaghoda. Here the camp of the expedition was attacked in force by the Tuareg, who were only driven off with great difficulty. The situation was critical. The whole country was hostile to the French; they were so short of camels that on the stage south of Iferuan to Agellal they had to move their baggage in small lots, marching their transport forwards and backwards. Their destiny hung in the balance when friendly overtures were made to them near Auderas by a Tuareg of considerable note, Ahodu of the Kel Tadek tribe, whose fathers and forefathers for five generations had[27] been keepers of the mosque of Tefgun near Iferuan. Ahodu’s political sense has rarely been at fault, either then or since; he saw that the only end possible for his people from protracted hostilities with the Europeans was disaster. He promised the French peace while the column remained in Air. It reached Agades in safety, and the Sultan was obliged to hoist the French flag and provide transport animals and guides. No attack was made near the town, thanks to the efficacy of Ahodu’s presence, but his powers of persuasion were insufficient when the column marched out into the barren area further south. The guide purposely misled the expedition and it nearly perished of thirst, succeeding only with great difficulty in returning to Agades. It eventually started once more and reached the south, where its story ceases to concern the exploration of Air.

Since 1899, then, the fate of Air has been settled in so far as Europe was concerned, for it was recognised as lying within the French sphere; but the country was not effectually occupied until 1904, when a camel patrol under Lieut. C. Jean established a post at Agades. The post was evacuated for a short time and then reoccupied. The exploration of the mountains has proceeded slowly since that date. Sketch maps were gradually compiled in the course of camel corps patrols, and in 1910 the Cortier geographical mission published a very creditable map of the mountains,[29] other than the northern Fadé group, based on thirty-three astronomically determined co-ordinates supplementing the five secured by the Foureau-Lamy Mission. Chudeau in 1905 made a brief geological survey and published some notes on the flora, which remain uncatalogued to this day;[30] very complete collections of the fauna have been made by Buchanan[31] and examined in England by the British Museum (South Kensington) and by Lord Rothschild’s museum at[28] Tring. The ethnology of the country is very superficially discussed in a book published by Jean; Barth’s account remains the one of value. The complete exploration of the mountains and detailed mapping still remain to be done as well as other scientific work of every description.

“Air” as a geographical term for the mountainous plateau does not signify exactly the same thing to the inhabitants of the country themselves as it does to us; properly speaking, it is applied by them only to one part of the plateau, for the whole of which the more usual name of Asben or Absen is used. The latter is probably the original name given to the area by the people of the Sudan before the advent of the Tuareg. It is now very generally used even by them: it is universal further south. Barth has speculated at some length upon the origin of the name Air or Ahir, to take its Arabic form, and concluded that the letter “h” had been deliberately added out of modesty to guard against the word acquiring a copronymous signification. But early Arabic geographers give the form as Akir and not as Ahir, so the laborious explanation of the learned traveller is probably unnecessary.

The boundaries of Air may be defined either as running along the line where the rocks of the area dip below the sands of the desert, or as following certain well-marked basins and watercourses of material size, where disintegrated rock or alluvium has covered the lower slopes of the hills. The mountainous area is some 300 miles long by 200 miles broad. It lies wholly within the tropics and is surrounded by desert or by arid steppe. Owing to the general elevation of the country the climate is quite pleasant.

In remote ages the rainfall of the Central Sahara was sufficient to create the deep and important river beds which compose the hydrographic system of this part of North Africa. Among these watercourses is one of great size, flowing from the Ahaggar massif towards Algeria, called the Ighaghar. Duveyrier has tried to prove that it was the Niger of Pliny, largely on the grounds that the root “Ig”[29] or “Igh” occurs in both words and in Temajegh means “to run.” The effect of this identification, which is hard to accept, would be to make the classical ethnology of the Sahara less easy to follow, but it has little significance in considering Air, except in so far as it would tend to show that the geographical knowledge of the Romans did not extend as far south as the plateau. Complementary to the Ighaghar[30] but flowing south from the Ahaggar massif is another equally great river,[32] which early in its course is joined by a large tributary from the Western Fezzan. At a certain point this valley is crossed by the roads from Air to Ahaggar and Ghat, branching respectively at the wells of In Azawa or Asiu. The eastern branch is the caravan road to Ghat from the Sudan, the western one finds its way to In Salah in Tuat and to Algeria. This bed runs south and south-west towards the Niger, which it must have reached at some point between Gao and Timbuctoo in the neighbourhood of the N.E. corner of the Great Bend which the French call “La Boucle du Niger.” This river of remote times must have been one of the great watercourses of Africa, extending from the head-waters in 26° N. Lat. to its mouth in the Bight of Benin on the Equator. It is not possible to say whether the interesting terrestrial changes which diverted the Upper Niger at the lagoons above Timbuctoo into the present Lower Niger, and which brought about the desiccation of the upper reaches, took place suddenly or gradually, but the latter is more probable, for a similar diversion seems to be going on in the Chad area. The lake, in reality an immense marsh and lagoon, is much smaller than when it perhaps included the depression noted by Tilho as extending most of the way to Tibesti; some of the waters of the Chad feeders are already believed to be finding their way in flood-time into the Benue, and it is possible that in the course of time a similar process to that manifested in the Niger area will take place; then Lake Chad will dry up into salt-pans like those at Taodenit. The Saharan river, which flows southward to the west of Air, bears various names. Its course has never been accurately determined, but its general direction is known. From Ahaggar to a point level with the northernmost parts of Air it is called Tafassasset. The T’in Tarabin channel from Ahaggar more probably drained into the Belly of the Desert than into this system, but the Alfalehle (Wadi[31] Falezlez) from the Western Fezzan most certainly seems to be a tributary; there are various reasons why it ought not to flow towards Kawar, as used at one time to be thought. West of Air the main bed spreads out into a vast plain-like basin under the name of T’immersoi; further south it is called Azawak. In general I prefer to use the name T’immersoi for the whole until a better one is suggested.[33]

The T’immersoi forms a collector in the west of Air for nearly all the water from this group of mountains. Nowadays only a comparatively small amount ever reaches the basin, as much is absorbed by the intervening plain land of Talak[34] and the Assawas swamp west of Agades. The latter are local basins or sumps covered with dense vegetation where some of the most nomadic tribes in Air pasture their herds. Talak is visited by Tuareg from Ahaggar and from the west for the same purpose. It plays an important part in the economy of the country, for water is always to be found in the alluvial soil however dry the season in the mountains has been. Many of the wells have now fallen into disuse, but the output of those which remain is still plentiful. The last rocks of Air on the west disappear below the alluvium of T’immersoi and in the subsidiary basins of Talak and Assawas. The T’immersoi system therefore forms the western boundary of Air.

The upper part of the T’immersoi, where it is called the Tafassasset, is also the northern boundary of Air. The wells of In Azawa[35] and Asiu in this valley may be regarded as the point where the main roads from the north enter the extreme limits of the country. Further east on another road between Air and Ghat, von Bary fixed the boundary at the Wadi Immidir, which is in the same latitude as In Azawa.[36]

[32]The eastern boundary of Air runs along the line where the last rocks of the group disappear below the sand of the steppe and desert, which extends from north to south between the mountains of the Fezzan and the fringe of Equatorial Africa, and from west to east between the mountains of Air and those of Tibesti with its adjacent massifs. This vast area is crossed by a few roads only, the most important ones being (a) the road from Murzuk along the Kawar depression to Agadem and Lake Chad, (b) and (c), the two principal tracks from Air eastwards to Bilma by Ashegur and Fashi respectively, and (d) the road from Zinder by Termit to Fashi and Kawar. Watering-points are very few, and the habitable oases can be numbered on the fingers of two hands; pasturage is everywhere scarce. This great waste is one of the most unknown parts of North Africa; its eastern portion along the Tibesti mountains as far north as the Fezzan may be said to be absolutely unknown except for two tracks to the mountains whither occasional camel patrols have passed.

Kawar and the other oases along the Chad road appear to be closed basins of the Eastern Saharan type. They seem to have no outlet towards the south either into the Chad or into the Niger systems. The desert east of Air, therefore, contains the eastern watershed of the T’immersoi basin, for the valleys of Eastern Air do not run into the desert as Chudeau has suggested,[37] but turn southwards on leaving the hills, in ill-defined depressions or folds which join the Tagedufat valley or one of the other channels flowing westwards in Tegama or Damergu. One valley to the south of Air, probably the Tagedufat itself, is stated to run all the way from Fashi across the desert.

The southern limits of Air may be placed along the Tagedufat basin, where the rocks of Air disappear below the sand dunes and downs of Tegama and Azawagh steppe[33] desert. The valley is of some size and flows roughly N.E. and S.W. towards T’immersoi, but whether it actually joins this system or the Gulbi n’Kaba, which finds its way into Sokoto Emirate under the name of the Gulbi n’Maradi and thence into the Niger, is not certain. The former hypothesis seems more probable, but I was unable to follow the Tagedufat sufficiently far west to verify it, nor could I discover any data on the French maps;[38] local reports substantiate my supposition. Both systems in any case are in the Niger basin. Air is not on the watershed between Niger and Chad. The choice of the Tagedufat valley as the southern boundary of Air is made on geographical grounds. What may be termed the political boundary is rather further north along the line of the River of Agades.

Commencing within 50 km. of the In Azawa wells, Air is a low plateau of Silurian formation with islands of Archean rock. Through the plateau-plain a number of separate formations have been extruded by, in many cases, apparently quite recent volcanic action. The northernmost massifs of Taghazit and Zelim lie in about latitude 20°. The volcanic period was of considerable duration, but all the recognisable volcanoes and derived phenomena are post-Eocene.[39] Some of the basalt flows, more especially those from Mount Dogam near Auderas in Central Air, are not old, while the Teginjir lava flow appeared to me so fresh as probably to have come into existence during the historical period. The volcanic phenomena take the form of cinder cones with steep sides as at Teginjir (Mount Gheshwa), cumulo-volcanoes, as in the T’imia and probably Bagezan massifs, domes as in the case of Mount Dogam, and basalt flows in various parts, notably in the T’imia valleys.[40] Aggata[40] appears to be another volcanic peak, but the serrated crest of Ighzan is a phenomenon of the rapid cooling of an igneous[34] extrusion rather than an example of erosion. There are numerous volcanic massifs distinct from each other all over Air, more especially in the centre and north; they are nearly all granitic and very rugged. The Auderas basin is of basalt and cinerite.[41] The plateau, which is in the main horizontal, rises in the centre to a step some few hundred feet higher than the north and south and forms a pedestal for the Bagezan and other massifs some 1500 to 3000 feet higher again. The peaks are as much as 4500 feet[42] above the plateau, which varies from 1500 feet above sea level in the south along the River of Agades, to 2000 feet in the Ighazar in North Air. Round Auderas the plateau may be taken as about 2500 feet above the sea, while to the east of the Bagezan massif the plateau is about 3000 feet, sloping gradually away to the south and east. Between Agades and Auderas there is an abrupt ascent on to the central step of the plateau of some 2000 feet; a corresponding descent of about 150 feet takes place near Assada.

The effect of these massifs rising sharply out of the plateau is curious. The Archean or Silurian plain and the volcanic mountain groups are phenomena which have not yet had time to become correlated. The result is that the broad and very gentle valleys of the plateau-plain wander in and out among the disconnected massifs and are fed by deep torrents draining the slopes of impermeable rock. Water erosion has not yet had time to widen or deepen the ravines, while the broad valleys have wide sandy bottoms, where pebbles only rarely occur; their sides are well wooded with pasture on the plains between the beds, except where masses of round basalt boulders, the product of the volcanic disturbances, cover the surface. The massifs have hardly been affected by erosion. The broad valleys between them are the corridors of communication in the country. “Cette superimposition à une vieille pénéplaine usée,” says Chudeau,[43] “de massifs éruptifs jeunes, donne a l’Air un aspect surprenant,[35] presque paradoxal.” And this is the charm of the country that has been called by travellers the Saharan Alps. There is contrast everywhere, but nothing is perhaps more striking than the black patina which the red rocks have assumed. The wind-borne sand has polished them till they shine with a dark metallic gleam, while the sheltered rifts and ravines retain their pink and red surfaces. It is a land of lurid colour, except at midday, when the African sun dominates everything in one blinding glare.

THE SOUTHLANDS

Until about twenty years ago it was easier to reach the Western Sudan and Central Africa around Lake Chad from the north than from the Gulf of Guinea, notwithstanding a journey of many months across the Sahara, involving all the considerable hardships and dangers of desert travelling. The objectives which Barth, Foureau, Lamy and their predecessors all had in view were not the exploration of the Sahara, but the penetration of the Sudan. By following the trade routes along which slave caravans used to reach the Mediterranean coast, the explorers of the nineteenth century reached the wealthy Niger lands more easily than they would have done had they attempted to pass through the tropical forests of the West Coast. On the sea-board European penetration at that time was confined to the neighbourhood of a few factories on the shore or the estuaries of certain rivers. Only at the end of the nineteenth century did this country, first among the nations of Europe, realise that the potential markets and supplies of raw material which the Sudan afforded were on a scale far surpassing those which had been dreamt of by the early pioneers on the coast. It was about thirty years ago that communication was eventually opened up between the coast and the Moslem interior, but there is no doubt that the accounts of the Sudan in 1850 brought back by Barth after his memorable journey were directly responsible for the British penetration from the coast of those countries which are now called Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria. The movement reached its culmination in the opening years of the twentieth century, when the[37] northern provinces of Nigeria were occupied under the guidance of Sir F. Lugard, while at about the same time the three French columns had met near Lake Chad. With these years the expansionist period closed and a phase of development, which still continues, commenced. British expansion into Northern Nigeria, coming as it did during the South African war, passed comparatively unnoticed in this country except in official circles, where the campaigns of Sir F. Lugard’s small columns aroused considerable anxiety. But because the policy was successful the public heard little of the operations which formally annexed the outlying Emirates of Kano, Katsina and Sokoto. The new countries which we then acquired were of colossal wealth, and contained a population of many millions of people living as thickly in certain parts as the Egyptians in the Nile Delta. The closing years of last and the first few years of this century involved the addition to the British Empire of some of the greatest of the Sudanese cities, which are the terminal points and therefore the raisons d’être of the two central Saharan trade roads which come from the Mediterranean by way of Kawar and Air.

The Sudan, though geographically in Central Africa, belongs to the Mediterranean civilisation. The great empires of the Niger, Melle and Songhai, the Fulani Empire of Sokoto, the Emirates of Kano and Katsina, and the Empire of Bornu, were all products of contact with the north. Commercially and culturally, the Sudan faced north with its back against an impenetrable belt of tropical forest inhabited by savage negro tribes, through whose dripping and steaming jungles there was little or no access to the sea. This orientation explains the high degree of civilisation which Barth found already past its “floruit” in 1850. It is obviously also the reason why the early explorers came from the north rather than from the nearer coast of the Atlantic between Sierra Leone and the mouths of the Niger.

With the arrival of the Europeans, ways down to the coast were gradually opened up, until finally in Nigeria[38] seven hundred miles of railway were built from Lagos to Kano. As a consequence trade has left the trans-Saharan roads where the Tuareg were masters. It is now carried to Europe and even to the Mediterranean by steamers sailing from Lagos and Liverpool. In more ways than one the advent of the white man in Central Africa has been disastrous for the Tuareg. Camel-borne trade on a large scale is doomed; caravan broking and long-distance desert transport are gone, never to return; even a trans-Saharan railway, whose commercial value must be as unreal as the dream of its advocates among French Colonial authorities, can never hope to compete with sea-borne traffic. Aircraft alone may one day revive the old camel roads, for they provide lines of watering-points along the shortest north and south routes.

If one may judge by the numbers and size of the market cities, which are the termini of the trans-Saharan routes in the Sudan, the Air road was by far the most important of the two in the centre. In Kano and in Katsina and in Sokoto the commercial genius of the Hausa people developed centres for the exchange of the European goods with the products, and more especially the raw materials, of Central Africa. To these cities also came the negro people of the south, to buy and sell or be sold as slaves. In a thickly populated and extremely fertile country the cities grew to immense size. Though in no sense properly a Tuareg country, Northern Nigeria and the neighbouring lands are visited and lived in by the People of the Veil. Every year it is the habit of many of this people to come from Air to Nigeria during the dry season. They earn a prosperous livelihood on transport work between the cities of Hausaland. They feed their camels on the richer pastures of the south when those in the north grow dry. But before the rains begin they move north again to the steppe and desert, for flooded rivers and excessive damp are conditions which the camels of the Veiled People do not relish. Quite large colonies of Tuareg have settled in some of these cities and have adopted a semi-sedentary life, maintaining their[39] characteristics in inverse measure as intermarriage with the negroid peoples has become more frequent. The influx of Tuareg into Nigeria after the 1917 revolution in Air added considerably to the numbers living permanently under British rule. This migration was not as strange a phenomenon or so entirely the product of the Great War as at first sight it appears to be. The various waves of Tuareg which in succession entered Air have each in turn had the effect of driving the earlier populations further south. The trend of migration in North Africa from the earliest days, when the zone of permanent habitation of the negroid races extended as far as the Mediterranean, has always been southward. It has continued in modern times. The temptation of richer lands in Central Africa has always proved irresistible when local political or economic conditions altered in consequence of growing ethnic pressure to the extent of providing just that impetus necessary to overcome the human disinclination to leave homes which have been occupied for generations. The Kel Geres Tuareg left Air to settle in the country north of Sokoto when the mountains became over-populated; masses of Air Tuareg generally took up their habitation in Katsina and Kano after the unsuccessful revolution against the French during the late war. The motives were not strictly similar, but the effects were identical, and have been observable throughout the ages.

To-day at Kano, a village of some size named Faji, almost entirely Tuareg in population, has sprung up a few hundred yards from the walls of the city. Here the People of the Veil live like the Hausa in mud houses. They are engaged in retail trade or act as agents and brokers for their relations in Air when the latter come down in the dry season. In Katsina a quarter of the town and the country immediately north are thickly populated with Tuareg, for whom the Emir has a marked partiality, largely on account of his commercial propensities, which are powerfully stimulated by the ownership of several fine herds of camels. The Tuareg of Katsina, drawn from almost every tribe in Air,[40] have formed a new tribal unit known as the Kel Katchena,[44] and are rapidly forgetting their older tribal allegiances. The results of these movements have always been much the same. Progressive mixing with the negroid people of the Sudan, the gradual acquisition of sedentary habits, and the cultivation of fat lands where life is easy, are combining to make these People of the Veil lose their characteristics as a northern race; their language cannot compete with Hausa, which is[41] the lingua franca of the Sudan, as Arabic is that of North Africa. The retention of the Veil is the only exception: in fact many southerners associated with them have adopted it, although the rigorous proscription against revealing the mouth and face is being less strictly observed.

North of the country surrounding the great walled cities of red earth, and more or less coterminous with the northern frontiers of the Emirates of Katsina, Daura, Kano and Hadeija, there is a deep belt of country which marks the beginning of the transition between the Saharan and the Equatorial zones.[45] North of the open country around Kano, with its large trees that for a height of some feet from the ground, like those in English parks, have been stripped of leaves by the grazing flocks and herds, the rock outcrops become less frequent and eventually disappear entirely. They give place to scrub, bush and clearings through which the Anglo-French boundary runs. The frontier from Lake Chad to the Niger was delimited in 1907 and 1908 by an international expedition whose work has been described by Colonel Tilho with a wealth of detail which makes one regret that his labours did not extend a little further north, as far as the edge of the desert where the Saharan zone proper commences. The area mapped by Colonel Tilho hardly extends beyond the northern limit of the Hausa-speaking people. Along the roads leading to Air, or in other words along the great trade route, no work was done beyond the southern fringe of the area called Damergu, and there is consequently to the south of Air a considerable depth of unsurveyed country for which no maps are available.

The area between the international boundary and the somewhat arbitrary limits of Algeria and Tripolitania constitutes the French colony known as the “Territoires du Niger,”[46] the southern part of which is divided into provinces or “cercles,” roughly corresponding to the old native[42] Emirates. French colonial policy in this part of Africa, in contrast with the system so successfully instituted by Sir F. Lugard in Nigeria, has been directed towards the removal of the more important native rulers. They have been replaced by a form of direct administration which is only now in process of being organised under French civilian officials. North of Katsina the Emirates of Maradi and Tessawa[47] have been combined into one province, and here almost the last Sultan of the “Territoires” survives, exercising authority only in the immediate vicinity of Tessawa itself. West of this is the province of Tahua; to the east is the old Emirate of Damagarim with its capital at Zinder, and east again is Gure, the northern part of which is known as Elakkos and Kuttus.

Once the belt of thick bush near the frontier is crossed the country resembles Northern Nigeria again, with park bush and broad open spaces, both cultivated and grass-grown. The villages are of the usual Central African type; the groups of conical huts are surrounded by millet stores, raised on legs like gigantic bee-hives, to contain the grain cultivated in the clearings around the settlements. The inhabitants are Hausa and Kanuri, though of late years a number of lower-caste Tuareg from Air have settled there as well. There is a considerable amount of rock outcrop in the form, round Zinder, of low peaks with great boulders, or, near Gure, of hills which terminate abruptly in a cliff of red rock, north of which is the district called Elakkos.

Through this belt of park bush runs east and west the road recently levelled and rendered passable for light cars in the dry season between Lake Chad and the Niger. The nomadic cattle-breeding Fulani come into this zone from the bush to the north and south; Maradi is a Fulani centre of some importance. A certain number of this people also come to Tessawa, but the Hausa population here have been at feud with them for many generations, and only the advent[43] of European control has put an end to continual wars between the two Emirates.

Tessawa lies in a shallow depression which, like others further north on the way to Damergu, drain into the Gulbi n’Kaba, an affluent of the Niger containing running water only in its lower reaches in the neighbourhood of Sokoto. North of Tessawa and Damagarim the land becomes more sparsely populated and the bush thickens, except in the immediate vicinity of the villages, which now begin to be tenanted in increasing numbers by Kanuri. The bush contains herds of Fulani cattle and a certain amount of game; there are two or three varieties of gazelle, some bustard, guinea-fowl, ostriches and occasionally giraffes. The vegetation becomes more stunted as progress is made northward and large trees are rarer; the soil is sandy; rock outcrop is almost completely absent. The configuration of the ground is difficult to follow in the thick bush; the gentle slopes and valleys appear generally to drain westwards, but shallow closed basins are numerous. Plenty of water is obtainable in any of these depressions a few feet below the ground; the larger groups of wells, usually near the two or three hamlets of straw huts which form a village, are the resort of the Fulani with their cattle during the dry season. The vegetation and the general aspect of the country, however, are still those of the Sudan.

Damagarim differs but little from the Tessawa landscape except that the bush is thicker and there are fewer open spaces. East of the boulder-strewn hills of Zinder the more ambitious elevations of Gure are visible. Zinder itself consists of two contiguous towns; like Tessawa and the Hausa cities further south, they are built of red mud. Zinder is smaller than the analogous Nigerian cities. Since 1921 it has had no Sultan. The French headquarters of the Niger Territories till recently were situated here. In the past Zinder was of some importance; although the main caravan track from the north appears in the early days to have run direct to Katsina, a branch from Damergu went by[44] way of Zinder as soon as Kano grew in importance. But in spite of the number and influence of the Tuareg who used to make Zinder their headquarters, neither Damagarim nor Gure has changed its essentially Sudanese character.

Within a few days’ march of Tessawa on the road north to Gangara in Damergu, several interesting features were observable. At Urufan village the Magazawa Hausa and Kanuri women were wearing the ornament known as the “Agades Cross,” peculiar to the Air Tuareg, in a simple as well as in a conventionalised form. Many of the women exhibited almost Mongolian traits in their eyes and cheek-bones. Their hair was done in what I believe to be a Kanuri fashion, that is to say, in a low crest along the top of the head, tightly matted and well greased, with a parting, or very often a shaved strip on each side, running the length of the skull; over the ears the hair was again tightly plaited and greased. Their dancing was different from the practice in Nigeria: the women dance with bent knees and a crouching body, so that the back is nearly horizontal. They shuffle up to the drum band one behind the other, the woman at the head of the line turning away at the end of each movement to take her place behind. The absence of sedentary Fulani influence is obvious as soon as music starts; the rattles and cymbals made of segments of calabash on a stick, peculiar to the Fulani in Nigeria, are not used.

Ethnically it is a very mixed area. In most cases each hamlet in a village group is inhabited by a different people. Magazawa Hausa, Kanuri from Damergu, and more recent Kanuri from Bornu predominate, but there are also nomadic Fulani and semi-nomadic Tuareg.

This is the edge of the country called Damergu, which, on the direct road from Tessawa, may be said to begin at the village group of Garari in a small valley, tributary of the Gulbi n’Kaba. Just before reaching the southern edge of the valley the thorn bush suddenly ceases. In the hollow are two or three hamlets of Kanuri, Bornuwi, sedentary Tuareg and Hausa with common wells in the valley bottom.[45] Instead of interminable thorn scrub just so high that nothing can be seen above it, an open wind-swept plain of rolling downland covered with yellow-gold grass appears in front. On the sharp African horizon to the N. and N.E. are the blue peaks of Damergu, quite small and humble, but clear cut against the sky-line with all the dignity of isolation in a sea of waving sun-washed prairie.

Damergu begins and ends abruptly: as soon as the belt of bush which surrounds it on all sides is crossed, the ground lies open to the sky and visibility becomes good. There is no more suffocating feeling in the world than marching through Central African bush. The discomforts and disabilities of travelling are not compensated for by any advantage except a ready supply of firewood. The bushland around Damergu is particularly unpleasant. It is never so tall that one may not hope to see over the top of the ugly stunted trees at the next low rise, and never in reality low enough to allow one to satisfy one’s passionate longing. Visibility is limited to a few yards and one’s sense of direction is confounded. It is infernally hot, because the undergrowth effectively shelters one from any breeze. The country is uniformly rolling and unbeautiful. A high proportion of the trees are of the virulently thorny variety which arch over the rare paths and make life on camel or horseback intolerable. Walking is equally distasteful, as the ground is strewn with burr grass which enters every fold of clothing and mortifies the flesh like hot needles. Camels get lost pasturing, game appears in vast quantities and disappears before a shot can be fired. There are scorpions, snakes, centipedes and tarantulas, not to speak of bush folk who have an uncanny sense of their own whereabouts, and of yours as well. They are armed with poisoned arrows, and though I did not suffer from their unkind attentions, the bush through which I passed north of Daura has a bad reputation. There are vast areas with no accessible water in the dry season, but when it rains the trees drip their moisture down your neck. I know the particular and private hell which is[46] in store for me one day for the many misdemeanours I have committed. It will be to wander eternally through Sudan bush in search of the desert, where one may see what will bring happiness or oblivion at a distance and where one may at least face Destiny in the open.

On each separate occasion when I entered Damergu, in the east returning from Termit, in the west going north from Tessawa, and in the north returning home by way of Nigeria, I experienced such a sense of relief and pleasure at emerging from the bush as to dull my perception of the really somewhat monotonous nature of the country. The winding hollows flow more or less aimlessly east or west, except in the Gangara area, where the drainage is definitely westwards into the Gulbi n’Kaba basin. The general level of the country is about 1700 feet above the sea. Except in the hollows around the rain pools the country is devoid of trees or scrub. Every here and there small groups of hills rise 300-400 feet above the surrounding country. They are so far apart that the next system only appears on the horizon. The black ferruginous outcrop forms conical peaks or stretches of pebbly surface, which break the round contours of the prairie. These little hills, set on a rolling golden prairie of very wide prospect, are the great characteristics of Damergu. The land is vast and generous in its proportions.

The hills of Gangara in the west mark the site of a group of four villages called Zungu and Gangara close under the principal peak, Malam Chidam to the east and Karawa to the south. The hills are a series of cones rising a few hundred feet from the plain and are connected at their bases; a series of gullies or ravines clothed with little bushes descends from them; there are no cliffs or great masses of bare rock; the slopes are covered with low scrub. The Gangara hills divide the Gulbi n’Kaba basin from a wide depression on the east which sweeps south towards the cone of Zawzawa near the large village of Kallilua, with Dambida and Mazia not far to the north. North and east of Gangara are the low hills of Dambansa, Birjintoro and Ollelua, while further[47] east again in a confused medley of aimless valleys are Mount Ginea and the triple peaks of Akri. The Akritan[48] hills are a landmark for the towns of Jajiduna, Tanut and Gamram. These various groups are the signposts of Damergu; even a raw traveller can learn them in a short time. Between the more important villages and towns the scattered hamlets are of such frequent occurrence that, once the general lie of the land has been observed, travelling is easy.

It is a country of considerable potential wealth. It was known in the past as the granary of Air; even now great quantities of grain are exported to the north and to the more densely populated Hausa countries of the south. The long, broad downs, usually well fed by the summer rains, are admirably suited for growing millet and guinea corn. The surrounding margin of bush, especially on the northern side within reasonable distances of the plentiful water holes in open places, is full of the cattle of nomad Fulani and the camels of the Damergu Tuareg. The cultivable area to-day is limited only by the scarcity of population and some lack of enthusiasm for work. A periodic cycle of dry years with the inevitable sequels of drought and famine can only be guarded against by administrative measures, which have not been enforced since the fall of the Central African Empires. One after another they dominated this part of the world, but whether Melle, Songhai, Bornu or Sokoto was pre-eminent in the Central Sudan, Damergu remained an appanage of Air, whose destinies it followed and of which it is economically a part. After the first arrival of the Tuareg from the east, a progressive descent of other tribes from the north led to the establishment of a reigning class in the country, recruited among the People of Air. To them the sedentary Kanuri people, who then and since have constituted the majority of the population, were subjected. The Tuareg Sultans of Damergu in the early period of modern history ruled in Jajiduna, Gamram, Tademari and Demmili. Even when they fell under the political influence of Tessawa or of[48] Damagarim or were conquered by Melle, Songhai or Sokoto in turn, they remained in close touch with their relations in the north. The economic necessity of keeping open the great caravan road to Tripoli, which was a source of wealth to the Tuareg and to the south alike, was realised by everyone.

The more intense cultivation and thicker population of earlier days are proved by the profusion of deserted sites all over the country, where the passing of the villages has left no more tangible, if unmistakable, evidence than acres of cleared and levelled ground strewn with potsherds and heaps of stones. The greater population of those days and the administrative ability of the empires of the Sudan combined to counteract the effects of dry years by creating proportionately larger reserves of grain, which were so conspicuously absent just before the late war that a severe drought brought about wholesale emigration to the Southland.

The present-day villages in Damergu are all of the grass hut variety of the usual African type. In the past a few towns appear to have been built of mud. The ruins of old Dambiri show a walled mud-built town, although Demmili, once the seat of a Sultan who probably moved to Gangara when his village fell into decay, must have been wholly built of grass, for it has entirely disappeared. A lonely tree on a barren patch of ground marks its passing. The Gangara villages are all straw built, as are, among the larger settlements which have survived, Mazia and Kallilua. There are mud buildings, I believe, at Tademari and Jajiduna, and certainly at Tanut. The latter is the French centre of the country. It has an important grain market and a fort containing a small garrison of Senegalese troops. The principal native place was Jajiduna, where the first French post was established; but the town has rather declined since the move of the official capital to Tanut, where the water supply for caravans is better. At Jajiduna there is a Senussi “zawia,” one of the few points where the influence of this sect has taken root in Tuareg countries. The principal Senussi[49] “zawia” in the Southland is at Kano, with another smaller one reported at Zinder.

North of Jajiduna and north-east of Tanut is Gamram,[49] a town of some importance in the past for the Tuareg, and the seat of one of their rulers of Damergu. Now a small collection of straw huts is surrounded by the ruins of mud walls like any of the towns of Hausaland. Gamram was the Warden of the South on the marches of the desert. As the most northerly permanent settlement of the Sudan on the Tripoli road it became a point of vital strategic importance for the caravan traffic. The town has occupied many sites on the edge of a basin that becomes a lake in the rainy season. The present site is on the north side, but the most important settlement was probably to the south-west. The beauty of Gamram struck Barth very forcibly. It was the first definitely Sudanese settlement to which he had come after the inhospitable deserts and the mountains of the Sahara. He had suffered intense discomfort in the waste called Azawagh, intervening between Damergu and the Sudan, but when he came to Gamram, the rains had filled the lake which laps the feet of some immense acacias that are perpetually green. Their roots live in water, and when the pool dries up, wells only a few feet deep are dug under their shade. The trees are filled with the song of many birds and the sound of running lizards. The gardens around the edge of the basin produce vegetables and luxuries rarely encountered in the Sahara. There are eggs and chickens and milk and cheese in the market. All these things are found at Gamram, not in plenty but in just sufficient quantities to delight the traveller in barren lands. I came to Gamram a day after leaving the impenetrable bush of Elakkos and found it as good as Barth had described.

The town has lost its Tuareg character. It is now a small settlement of a few hundred Kanuri and mixed inhabitants. The Tuareg element in the immediate neighbourhood is accounted for by some sedentary serfs or slaves living in[50] other hamlets near by. The noble Tuareg of the Isherifan tribe who used to possess Gamram wander in the district between this place and the bush of Guliski. They have not counted for very much since they were decimated in a raid by Belkho, the great leader of the Air Tuareg during the latter years of last century. Belkho had complained that the Isherifan at Gamram were interfering with the caravans which crossed Damergu, and as his people were especially interested in the traffic, he demanded an assurance that the annoyance should cease, failing which he would have to take measures. The Isherifan returned an insolent reply and Belkho warned them again. He offered to accept a fine in camels for their misbehaviour, but when this was refused, collected a body of some two hundred to three hundred men and came swiftly down the road from Tergulawen with hostile intent. He reached the town at nightfall. Next morning he fell on the Isherifan, who had prepared for the attack, defeated them, and carried off so many camels that each of the victorious participants, as one explained to me, secured five female beasts for his share. Since then, my informant remarked, “the Isherifan are not.”

Damergu has been the scene of many bloody raids in recent times. At Farak, one day from Gamram, a great assemblage of men and camels from the Southland, bound for Ghat, was caught by the Imuzurak under Danda. Merchandise and camels were looted and the personnel was massacred.

During the four years which elapsed after the journey of the Foureau-Lamy Mission took place in 1900, a series of important events occurred in Damergu which ultimately led to the occupation of Air. In July 1900 the French military territory of Zinder-Chad had come into official existence, with a base of operations under Colonel Peroz at Say, and subsequently at Sorbo Hausa, on the Niger.[50] In February 1901 Colonel Peroz set out towards Lake Chad. Sergeant Bouthel, left in command at Zinder by Lieut. Joalland of the[51] Voulet Mission, entered Damergu, defeated the Imuzuraq tribe of Tuareg at Tademari or Tanamari and killed their chief, Musa. His place was taken by his brother, Danda, who became ruler of the country, while a third brother, afterwards killed at Bir Alali (Fort Pradie) east of Lake Chad, in January 1902, with the assistance of the Senussi organised Kanem against the French. Of all the Air Tuareg, the Kel Owi confederation of tribes alone, on account of their commercial relations with the Hausa countries and with the north, adopted a pacific attitude. The rest of the Air and the local Tuareg in Damergu set about fortifying Tademari, Jajiduna and Gamram and raided as far afield as Zinder. Their defeat by Sergeant Bouthel had so little effect that they soon plundered a Kel Owi caravan at Fall near Mount Ginea. The French in consequence were forced to occupy Gidjigawa near Kallilua in southern Damergu, and finally, when the Farak massacre occurred, Jajiduna itself, where a fort was built and a nucleus of camel corps established. The latter, however, was restricted in its action to a small area north of the post; operations did not even extend to Farak, only thirty odd miles away. The effect of this French expansion was nevertheless to make many of the prouder Tuareg, who would not submit but foresaw the inevitable, move eastwards. Some of them migrated as far afield as Kanem and Wadai, others only to Elakkos. It was the continuation of a movement which had begun after the advent of the Foureau-Lamy Mission. But even east of Chad the ubiquitous white men arrived; the migrants fought the French with conspicuous success at Bir Alali on two occasions, though they were finally defeated. Of these Tuareg of the Exodus, some returned to Air, but the rest moved yet further east to the strange land of Darfur, where they still live in voluntary exile near El Fasher.

The repeated attacks on the north- and south-bound caravans in Damergu induced the French to escort the larger convoys of 1902 and 1903 as far as Turayet on the borders of the Air mountains. The departure of the irreconcilables[52] towards the east, whence only a part was to return after the third encounter of Bir Alali, and the gradual penetration of the Southland, with the consequent pacification of the population, left the Imuzurak alone in Damergu in open defiance of the French. But in the meanwhile a second pillage had taken place at Farak, and, moreover, in Air itself the situation from every point of view was most unsatisfactory. The Sultan of the Air Tuareg was tossed about between the important Kel Owi confederation and their pacific policy on the one hand, and the irreconcilables of Damergu and Air on the other. In Gall in the south-east of Air had become a head-quarters of the raiders, and the Sultan began to find his position intolerable. He concluded by inviting the French to enter and take over. The occupation of Agades took place in the autumn of 1904 by a camel patrol under Lieut. Jean, when the modern history of Air and Damergu commenced.

Osman Mikitan, the Sultan of this critical period, lies buried in a square tomb of mud bricks in the Zungu hamlet of Gangara. He had changed places three times with Brahim as Sultan of the Air people, and died unregretted because he had sold his country to the foreigner.

The Tuareg of Damergu number among their tribes factions of many of the most famous Air clans. The Ikazkazan are represented by the section known generically as the Kel Ulli, the People of the Goats; these tribes include the Isherifan of Gamram and the Kel Tamat, in addition, of course, to many others in Air. The Imuzurak round Tanamari, with the Imaqoaran, Ibandeghan, Izagaran and Imarsutan are tribes which seem to represent the earliest Tuareg stock in the neighbourhood; some of them certainly belong to groups which, when the first migration into the plateau from the east occurred, never reached Air at all. The omnipresent Ifoghas reappear in Damergu near Tanut and roam northward; they are apparently cousins of the great division of the Ifoghas n’Adrar (Ifoghas of the Mountains), whose centre is around Kidal, north-east of Gao on the Niger. These Ifoghas of Damergu also I believe[53] to have been left here in the course of the westward migration of the first wave of Tuareg, though some of them may have returned east after the initial movement. The Tamizgidda of Air apparently also had a section in Damergu in Barth’s day:[51] their name connects them with “the mosque,” and they are said by this explorer to have been regarded by the Arabs in his day[52] as “greatly Arabicised, having apparently been settled somewhere near a town.” A tribe of the same name occurs in the west; they also may be remnants, powerful as they were in Barth’s days, of a westward migration from the Chad area, or possibly of a returning wave which is known to have reached Air. The Tegama in Damergu, says Barth,[53] “form at present a very small tribe able to muster, at the utmost, three hundred spears; but most of them are mounted on horseback. Formerly, however, they were far more numerous, till Ibram, the father of the present chief, undertook, with the assistance of the Kel Geres, the unfortunate expedition against Sokoto. . . .” But this fighting certainly occurred at a more recent date than 1759, when, according to the Agades Chronicle, they were at war with the Kel Geres. Barth adds that they were said originally to have come from Janet, near Ghat, that they were already settled in the south long before the Kel Owi came to Air, and that they are found on the borders of Negroland in very ancient times. Ptolemy speaks of a Tegama people beyond Air towards Timbuctoo and the middle Sudan. Hornemann, from what he heard of them, “believed them to be Christians,” says Barth; though the only reference I can find in this authority is to the fact that they were probably idolatrous. I think Barth’s reference is to a generic group, now called the Kel Tegama, a collective name for the people living in the southern part of the area known as Tegama, which is on the west side of the northern borders of Damergu. Among the Kel Tegama[54] to-day would be classed the Damergu Ifoghas and other tribes already mentioned. I fancy Barth has used a generic local and geographical name as a tribal name.

The belief that they were Christians is, however, particularly interesting. It is possible that these Tegama were not Tuareg at all, and that Barth’s informants may have been referring to the nomadic Fulani who pasture their cattle in the area where he met them, round In Asamed and Farak, though his description of the time spent in their company certainly points to their having in reality been Tuareg. Their “customs showed that they had fallen off much from ancient usages,” for not only did the women make advances to the eminent explorer, but even the men urged him to make free with their wives. He adds that the women had very regular features and fair skins and that the men were both taller and fairer than the Kel Owi, many of them dressing their hair in long tresses as a token of their being Inisilman or holy men (“despite their dissolute manners”), a peculiarity which connects them with the Ifoghas of Azger, who also are a tribe of “marabouts.”[54] His general description of the Tegama, taken in conjunction with their hunting and cattle-herding habits, corresponds so closely with the appearance of the Ifoghas of Damergu to-day that there is little doubt that Barth is referring to them, and that he should consequently more accurately have written, not “the Tegama” but the “Kel Tegama.” He distinctly states that they acknowledged the supremacy of the Sultan of Agades rather than that of the Kel Owi leaders, which will be seen to point to their early origin in the country. Normally resident in Northern Damergu, they move to Tegama and Azawagh after the rains to feed their cattle, goats and camels. The conquests of the later Tuareg immigrants reduced them to a low stage of poverty and degradation, though they have retained their nobility of caste, race and feature to a remarkable degree.

The history of Damergu shows clearly the predominant[55] rôle which the Tuareg played among the lower-caste Kanuri sedentaries and the nomadic Fulani. The prepotency of a noble race among people of inferior class is one of the most interesting phenomena of history. The Kanuri in Damergu are, and probably have always been, numerically the stronger; they are armed with bows and arrows, the weapon par excellence for bush fighting. The Tuareg was less numerous at all times, but everywhere, except in the west, where he has been so long associated with the Sudan as to lose his nobility, disdained any weapon but the sword, knife or spear. Like the knight in medieval Europe, the Tuareg has always held that the armes blanches were the only weapons of a gentleman, yet with all these disadvantages his prestige was sufficient to ensure an ascendancy which would have continued but for the advent of the gun and gunpowder. In Damergu this prestige ensured the maintenance of the Tuareg Sultanates until the advent of the French. In the Southland all legends continue to magnify his prowess.

In Hausaland, at Dan Kaba in Katsina Emirate, a strolling player came one day to give a Punch and Judy show for the delectation of the village people, who were in part Hausa, in part sedentary Fulani, and in part nomadic cattle-owning Fulani. The old traditional play had been modernised, and although it was full of topical allusions to the Nigeria of 1922, enough of the past remained to show the reputation and moral ascendancy which the Tuareg enjoyed in the Southland. The showman’s apparatus was simple: divesting himself of his indigo robe, he arranged it on the ground over three sticks and crouched hidden beneath its folds. He had four dolls in all and worked them like those in our Punch and Judy shows in England. In the place of the squeaky voice of the Anglo-Saxon artist he used a bird whistle to conceal his words; the modulations of tone and inflexion in the dialogues and conversations between the puppets were remarkable. The Tuareg doll is the villain of the piece: his body is of blue rags, most unorthodoxly crowned with a white turban and armed with a huge sword and shield.[56] Divested of the latter and crowned with a red turban, the same doll in the course of the play becomes the “dogari,” or native policeman of the Hausaland Emirs. The King of the Bush is a Fulani man, impersonated by a puppet made largely of orange cretonne with huge hair crest and bow and arrow. He suspects his wife, made of the same material but ornamented with cowries before and behind, of having relations with the Tuareg. She soothes and pets and sings to her suspicious husband, playing music on drums and calabash cymbals. Her mellifluous tones finally persuade him to go out a-hunting in the bush. Needless to say, in Act II she flirts outrageously with the attractive Man of the Open Lands, but is surprised by her husband in flagrante delicto, most realistically performed, whereupon, in the next act, a tremendous fight ensues. The King of the Bush, discarding his bow and arrow, fights with an axe, the Tuareg with his sword. The latter is victorious and kills the King of the Bush. The wife calls in the “dogari” to avenge her husband and to please her Southland audience. In Act V the Tuareg is haled off before the British Political Officer, presented in khaki cloth with a black basin-shaped hat like a Chinese coolie and the face of a complete idiot. In the ensuing dialogue the fettered Tuareg scores off the unfortunate white man continuously, but, as all plays must end happily, he is condemned to death. The execution of the plot is good, the technique admirable, although the performance was unduly protracted for our tastes. The one I witnessed lasted nearly four hours. The predominant rôle is that of the envied and handsome villain, the noble Tuareg. He is glorious in life and fearless in death.

It is unfortunately impossible for lack of space to discuss the Kanuri or Fulani of Damergu. The latter affect the political life of the country but little. They shift continually to fresh tracts of bush or better water for the sake of their great black cattle, which used to be sold in the far north as well as in Hausaland. They do not mix with the Tuareg, though they are recognised by them, as anyone must[57] recognise them, to be of a noble race. Slender, fine-featured, but dark-skinned, with the profiles of Assyrian statues, the Damergu Fulani are of the Bororoji section of this interesting people which, in the course of its sojourn and gradual movement along the fringe of the Sudan from west to east, has provided the ruling class in most of the Hausa States. The recent history of Sokoto, of Katsina and of Kano is their history. Their conquest of power in Hausaland is but another instance of the ascendancy of nobility and a glaring contradiction of the Socialist theory of equal birth. When they came to power they were illiterate and pagan and had no political virtues; their success was due to breeding and caste.

The Bororoji are a darker section of the Fulani than many of the purer divisions in the south. In Northern Damergu they can be seen stalking through the bush with their herds of black kine, naked except for a loin skin and a peaked cap of liberty of embroidered cloth, but patently conscious of their birth. They come and go as they please, and no one interferes with them. Some may settle in towns or villages, living for a time on the produce of sales of cattle, in which they are rich. Most of them have no permanent habitation. A few can be seen in villages like Gangara, where they come to sell an occasional bull and buy a few ornaments or some such luxury as grain. Their women are slender, tall and straight, with fine oval faces and straight, jet-black hair. The triangular form of face from the cheek-bones to the chin is noticeable among the Bororoji as among the Rahazawa Fulani of the Katsina area, but the face is somewhat longer in proportion to the breadth than further south. Their appearance is Semitic, though the nose is never heavy but straight, and this is the case even more among the women than the men. Both sexes wear bead necklaces; the peaked cloth cap is the ornament of the men. The women have anklets and bracelets of copper and as many as six large copper curtain rings in their ears, the only disfigurement of their handsome faces. Of the customs, religion and[58] organisation of the Bororoji little is known. Like their cousins in the south, they anoint the wide-branching horns of their cattle, and when they drink milk, though none must be spilled, a little is left in the bottom of the calabash as an offering to the Eternal Spirit. The Fulani believe that one day they will return to the East, whence their tradition says that they came, but how or why or when they left this unknown home has not been explained. Obedient to tradition, numbers of them are settling year by year in the Nilotic Sudan.

The last belt of bush between the Sahara and Sudan is reached a day’s march from Tanut. The Elakkos bush further east ceases completely in about Lat. 15° 20′ N.; on the road to Termit the vegetation becomes very scanty some way south of a belt of white sand dunes in Lat. 15° 30′ N.: north of them the country is pure steppe desert. The Damergu bush, however, extends as far north as Lat. 15° 50′ to the Taberghit valley on the eastern road to Air, and to Tembellaga on the western road. Damergu forms a salient in the line of the Sudan vegetation.

The belt of sand dunes on the way to Termit is said to run eastward even beyond the Bilma-Chad road south of Agadem well, and gradually to broaden all the way; in the west it hardly reaches the edge of Damergu. Some fifty miles north of Talras in Elakkos the same zone of acacia trees, which occur in the hollows of the dunes on the Termit road, follows a depression called the Tegama valley.[55] The surface, like that of the steppe desert, is of heavy buff-coloured sand in long whale-back dunes.

The Northern Damergu bush is different to the belt which runs along the southern side of the country. The trees and shrubs are principally of the acacia variety. The larger vegetation which is typical of the Sudan has disappeared, but the grasses and ground plants are still characteristic of the south. The burr grass which makes life burdensome to the traveller reigns supreme. The “Karengia” (Pennisetum[59] distichium) grows in clumps or small tufts some fifteen inches in height. In Northern Damergu the ground is densely carpeted with this grass. As soon as the summer rains are over it sheds a little seed with a crown of small sharp spikes. Leather and the bare human skin alone afford the burrs no hold; any other material seems to attract them irresistibly. In the presence of this pest the bush natives have found the only solution, which is to go almost naked; the clothed but unhappy European blasphemes until he is too weary to speak. Water is the only remedy; it softens the little burr and makes it possible to remove it without disintegrating entirely the mesh of one’s apparel, but water in this belt of land is scarce.

The next watering-points after leaving Gamram are Farak, and Hannekar on the Menzaffer valley. The latter is now on the most direct road to Air, since the slightly more eastern track from the former point by In Asamed well to Tergulawen became impossible when the latter well was filled in during the late war. At Hannekar there is a large depression covered with thick undergrowth and small trees standing in a pool of water which lasts for some months after the rains. As the pool dries up, shallow wells are dug in the bed. The water supply at Farak is all contained in shallow wells, but as watering from them is a much slower process than sending cattle and camels to drink at a pool, it is customary for the local Tuareg and Fulani to stay in the Hannekar area as long as they can. After the rains and until the wells are re-dug at Farak there is consequently a period when there is practically no water there at all, as Barth found early in 1851. Nevertheless, since the permanent supply at Farak below the ground is greater than anywhere else in Northern Damergu, it has come to be considered the real starting-point of the eastern road to Air. Its importance as a rendezvous for pasturing tribes as well as for north-bound caravans explains the numerous disasters which have occurred there at the hands of Tuareg and Tebu raiders.

[60]North of Farak is a long hill falling away steeply on the side towards the wells. It gave Barth[56] the impression of forming a sharply defined southern border to the desert plateau between Damergu and Air. The existence of so marked an edge is, however, not borne out in fact, for no similar escarpment exists west of it on the road north of Hannekar, nor yet, as Foureau[57] points out, on the western road to Air, by Abellama. The hill of Farak, like another smaller one at Kidigi north of Hannekar, is an isolated elevation.

Permanent habitation used to extend about one day’s march north of Farak, to the neighbourhood of In Asamed well, but after the latter was filled in, which I understand occurred during the 1917 revolt, when Tamatut well, further east, and Tergulawen on the borders of Air were also destroyed, Farak became the last village of the Sudan. Neither in recent years nor of old, however, did it ever possess the same permanency or importance as Gamram. Farak was always liable to be deserted at a moment’s notice in times of danger. To-day the skin and straw huts of the Ifadeyen and Kel Tamat tribes are scattered about in the dense bush all over the district. The camps change from year to year. When I passed this way there were Isherifan near Guliski and Ighelaf south-east of Gamram, Ifadeyen at Farak, and Ifadeyen and Kel Tamat at Hannekar.

Since the more direct road from Farak by In Asamed to Tergulawen has been abandoned, there is now no water for caravans between that place or Hannekar and the Air plateau except at Milen,[58] which is one day south of the mountains. The present track from Farak, after crossing the Tekursat valley at a point near the site of In Asamed well, inclines slightly west and joins the direct track from Hannekar to Milen, running almost due north and south. The apparent angle made by the Farak-Milen track at In Asamed puzzled[61] me when I came to plot it on paper from a compass traverse, for the extraordinary straightness of these old roads between important points, even in the rough hill country of Air, is very remarkable. I eventually realised that a line from Farak produced through In Asamed was on the direct bearing of the old well of Tergulawen. This disused track is the original southern end of what is called the “Tarei tan Kel Owi,” or Kel Owi road, in other words, of the main caravan track from Tripoli to Nigeria. The road in Air and in the south is usually called among the Tuareg after the confederation of tribes in control of the way. Down this eastern track came Barth and his companions in 1850-1.

In Asamed, meaning in Temajegh “(The Well) of Cold Water,” was just over 100 feet deep; its existence shows that Damergu has been left behind and Azawagh has begun, for the former is a land of rain pools and shallow and seasonal wells, while the latter, north of the last Sudan bush, is a desert country with occasional very deep wells and no surface water. It is called Azawagh, a Temajegh name applied to several semi- or totally desert areas in the Sahara. The fact that it is not confined to the country south of Air must be borne in mind in seeking to identify the various areas referred to under this name by the Arab geographers. There is, for instance, an Azawad, a name corrupted in Arabic for Azawagh, north of Timbuctoo.

North of the broad Tekursat valley, with scarcely any marked channel and sparsely covered slopes, is a low plateau with three small valleys, rejoicing in the uncouth name of Teworshekaken. Beyond is the Inafagak valley, and finally the smaller and probably tributary valley of Keta. From here to the Taberghit valley the bush thins out more and more; patches of bare sand become frequent, and the trees are considerably smaller. In none of these valleys has the rain-water left a definite bed of flow, though dry pool bottoms and short sections of channel may be seen here and there. The valleys are sometimes several miles from side to side; they were probably in the first instance longitudinal depressions[62] between heavy sand dunes formed along the direction of the prevalent wind; the sides are even now of too recent formation and too permeable to spill the rain-water into definite beds along the bottoms.

At the southern edge of the immense Taberghit valley the character of the country changes quite definitely. The surface becomes dotted with little hummocks where the sand has been washed against a small bush or piece of scrub; otherwise the ground is bare. The few trees are grouped in scattered clumps. The ground vegetation is no longer predominantly “Karengia,” but one of several kinds of less offensive and more useful desert grasses impregnated with salt. The best camel fodder, curiously enough, is the true desert vegetation. The animals eat it avidly on account of the salt it contains, and even long periods of drought do not conquer its obstinate greenness. Its nutritive power is greater and it is more wholesome than the luxuriant Southland fodder.

At Taberghit a track runs direct to Agades by way of Ihrayen spring. When both the eastern roads were in use, the Hannekar track was used by people going to Agades, while the more eastern Farak-In Asamed route by way of Tergulawen was frequented by caravans bound for Northern Air.

A day before reaching Milen well you feel very strongly that the Sudan lies behind. The last bush has been left near Taberghit. In front is an open depression perhaps five miles wide and not more than fifty feet deep: it contains no stream bed, but here and there patches of dry cracked mud indicate the formation of short-lived rain pools. East and west the same stark valley runs as far as eye can see. Its course is clearly defined and it is without intersecting basins or tributaries or curves. On the far crest are loose buff-coloured sand dunes and then a few small acacias. The levels gradually rise in a series of folds, one of which contains the closed basin and disused Anu n’Banka[59]; another forms a[63] valley called Kaffardá, which is like Taberghit but on a smaller scale. The folds lie parallel to one another along the line of the prevalent E.N.E. wind which always blows in Azawagh. This wind is one of the peculiarities for which the country is notorious. Both times I crossed this region it was blowing with great violence. In June it was suffocatingly hot; I camped one noonday to rest out of sheer exhaustion in a group of trees on the northern side of Taberghit. There was practically no shade: the leaves of the stunted trees were too thin to shelter even three persons. The temperature was over 110° F. in the shade, and visibility did not exceed a quarter of a mile, owing to the blowing sand and dust. Six months later I returned the same way. The same wind was blowing, but it was so cold at midday that I was unable to keep warm, even walking, with two woollen shirts, a drill coat, a leather jerkin and a blanket over my shoulders. Where a bush or sand dune offered shelter from the wind the sun was quite hot, but that night the thermometer fell to 31° F., after having registered 92° F. at 3 p.m. in a sheltered spot in the shade. It was very unpleasant. Barth’s experience of the wind and cold of Azawagh was much the same as mine. He writes: “The wind which came down with a cold blast from the N.N.E. was so strong that we had difficulty in pitching our tent;”[60] it was responsible for the most “miserable Christmas” he had ever spent. I was there a few days before Christmas in 1922 and can vouch for the accuracy of his verdict. Even the blinding glare and heat of June were preferable to the bleak cold of the winter nights.

One effect of the constant wind is that the longitudinal dunes in Azawagh have retained their characteristic form more generally than further south. Their gentle rounded contours, which the wind tends to restore whenever the rain happens to have modified them, are characteristic. There is, of course, less precipitation here than further south, though it has been sufficient in Tagedufat to produce a[64] considerable growth of desert vegetation along the bottom of the valley, where there are a number of small trees and an abundance of every conceivable type of salt bush and grass. It is said at certain seasons of the year to produce the finest camel fodder in this part of Africa.

All over Azawagh are numerous deserted sites where millet used to be grown on the sandy slopes. The people who cultivated this arid country lived in temporary tents and huts except further north between Tagedufat and Milen, and consequently no trace of their dwellings remains. The evidence, however, of cleared and levelled patches and of broken earthenware is as unmistakable here as in Damergu. Between Keta and Tagedufat there is a succession of such clearings. It is borne in upon one that this heavy buff-coloured sand country where only desert vegetation now appears to thrive is in reality quite fertile so long as it receives any rain at all. The climate has probably not altered enough in recent times to account for the desertion of Azawagh; it seems rather to have been due to a decrease of the population. The Kel Azawagh, according to tradition, were numerous at a time when Damergu was thickly peopled, and there was not enough land available there or in Air to satisfy the needs of a people squeezed between the south and the north, whence the population was constantly being driven into the Sudan. It is clear that the Kel Azawagh who made these millet cultivations in a zone of desert steppe must have been of a fairly sedentary disposition, for a nomad people would have contented itself, as the modern Tuareg inhabitants of Azawagh do, with grazing herds and flocks on the excellent pastures.

In referring to the Kel Tegama a plea was advanced that the name was primarily a geographical one, and one not properly appertaining to a single tribe. The name Kel Azawagh, to which the same considerations certainly apply, is found to some extent interchangeable with Kel Tegama. Now it will be shown later that the Tuareg of Air and Damergu only reached these lands comparatively[65] late in history; consequently an allusion in Ptolemy to a Tegama people appears to refer to a non-Tuareg folk in this or some other area of the same name. I see no reason to doubt that it was these Tegama and Azawagh areas which were meant by Ptolemy, and therefore conclude that before the Tuareg arrived they were possessed by a people to whom the millet clearings and village sites are probably due. The later Tuareg Tegama, or Kel Tegama, as we should more properly say, as well as the Kel Azawagh, were merely a section of People of the Veil who later lived in the areas, and in the course of time were named after them, though it is possible that the name Azawagh was one given by the Tuareg to an area previously called Tegama by its former inhabitants.

We shall see[61] that among the ancient divisions of the People of the Veil in the Hawara group is a Kel Azawagh. The peculiarities of the Hawara clans would not connote any sedentary instinct in this tribe, whether it lived in this or in another area called Azawagh; but when we find in the Tetmokarak tribe of the Kel Geres group now living near Sokoto (whither they migrated from Air through this Azawagh area) a subsection called Tegama, and when we have learnt[62] that the Kel Geres are almost certainly a Hawara people, we can be even more inclined to the view just suggested regarding the use of the names Azawagh and Tegama and the origin of the people at various times living there. As a tribal name Kel Azawagh has now disappeared. The French 1/2,000,000 map displays it in the valley between Agades and the Tiggedi cliff, but out of place, for when still in use it was applicable to an area rather further east. Although it is no longer a proper name, it serves the Ifadeyen who now live in Azawagh for a descriptive term of themselves in accordance with the usual practice regarding local tribal nomenclature.

In the periods between the rains the village sites in the[66] Taberghit or Tagedufat valleys watered at the deep wells of Tagedufat, Anu n’Banka, Aghmat, Taberghit and presumably Tateus, though I know nothing of the last named. All these wells have now become silted up by wind-borne sand, but could easily be cleared if the population returned, as the water has not disappeared.

The whole area between Taberghit and Tagedufat is covered with small mobile dunes; the two valleys themselves are, however, free of them. There is no loose sand at all in the Tagedufat valley, a curious phenomenon probably connected with the eddies formed by the prevalent wind in the channel of a depression between the higher banks. If this were true, the existence of dunes at Kaffarda would conversely point to its being an isolated basin, and this indeed is probably the case. Anu n’Banka is in a little hollow, the sides of which are also covered with small dunes. The bottom itself is clayey and free from blown sand, showing traces of having been a rain-pool at certain seasons. Surrounding the depression are millet clearings and a little rock outcrop. It is the most southerly point in Azawagh where stone occurs, and the outpost of the more conspicuous rock formations of the Tagedufat valley.

Although the first part of the descent into Tagedufat is imperceptible, the appearance of the ground has changed considerably on account of the small crescentic dunes of very fine white sand which overlie the heavier buff-coloured sand of the surface. The crescentic type is characteristic of young dunes in process of formation,[63] their last stage being the long whale-back down of heavy particles which tend to settle or become cemented and eventually to support some vegetation. The Azawagh valleys present a series of interesting examples of the youngest type of dunes, which are still moving rapidly, superimposed upon the oldest fixed dune formations oriented along the line of the prevalent wind. It is curious that at no point has the[67] fine and very mobile sand which is continually being carried in from the great Eastern Desert collected in large masses: the small crescentic bodies, the horns of which, of course, lie down wind, or, in other words, point west to south-west, are neither continuous nor contiguous. The underlying buff-coloured surface is covered with a number of small trees and scattered scrub or grass in isolated clumps. This vegetation becomes covered by the crescent dunes and in time uncovered as the white sand moves westward. Where this vegetation can be seen emerging from the crescentic formations on the windward side it is still alive, pointing to a fairly rapid motion of the body of sand. It is true that some of this desert scrub is sufficiently hardy to withstand a period of, it is said, as much as four years without any rain, and even then it only requires very little moisture in the air or some dew; the numerous small acacias, however, if wholly engulfed for any length of time, would die. Yet at no point is there either a wake of dead vegetation behind the larger crescentic dunes or even an unduly large proportion of dead trees. The progress of the small dunes is therefore undoubtedly rapid, and is due to the constant wind, which should, however, have tended to create larger masses. The crescentic dunes are rarely more than twelve feet high at the most; their individual area is, of course, relatively large owing to the very flat slipping angle of the fine grains. Barth records dunes as far as Tergulawen; but there is no evidence regarding the country east of this point,[64] which is probably too far north of the dune belt on the Termit road to be connected with that zone.

The Tagedufat valley bottom, unlike the Milen and Taberghit valleys, is marked by a more continuous stream bed along which water flows every year for a short time during the rains. The most remarkable feature of the valley is a series of flat bare patches formed by the pools of rain-water; they are of no great size, but the surface is[68] stained bluish-white by chemical incrustation. The Milen and Taberghit valleys, while possessing a few similar rain-pools, none of which survives for more than the briefest period, do not exhibit this complexion. The point is of particular interest in connection with a report given to me by my guide, Sidi, who was with me on the way south. He is a widely travelled and knowledgable man. He stated that the Tagedufat depression extended eastwards across the desert all the way to Fashi, and was marked along the whole of its course by such patches of chemical incrustation. My travelling companion, Buchanan, observed that the ground shortly before reaching Fashi was stained in the manner described. In the open desert, where in the immensity of space it is difficult to determine the direction of a very slightly accentuated valley, such noticeable features are valuable evidence.

Considering the size of the Tagedufat basin south of Milen, the valley shown as extending towards Termit on the French 1/2,000,000 map and called Tegemi (Téguémi), is perhaps a confluent, or even an inaccurate representation, of the main valley itself. A recent Camel Corps[65] reconnaissance from Talras to Eghalgawen possibly followed up one such affluent in the east bank of the main channel of Tagedufat. The importance of the Tagedufat valley from the hydrographic point of view cannot be over-stated.

Directly the Tagedufat valley is crossed the rock outcrop on the north bank becomes a striking feature. Increasing in size towards the west, it falls away below the surface to the east. Crescentic dunes reappear between the outcrops and continue almost all the way to Milen. On the north side of Tagedufat, near the track, for which it serves as a landmark, is a prominent mass of black rock called the Kashwar (Stone) n’Tawa or Tawar. Far away to the N.N.E. the relief becomes bolder, rising to a group of small summits clothed with loose sand, called the Rocks of Oghum. The remains of some stone houses, at one time the southernmost[69] permanent settlement of Air, appear in the loose sand near the hills. North of Oghum in a little depression filled with acacias is Gharus n’Zurru.[66] After a further stretch of dunes a small valley running northwards diversifies the general lie of the ground. It is called Maisumo, and contains another deep well which is still in use. This valley after a short distance runs into the Milen depression, with the conical hill of Tergulawen visible to the east and the little massif of Teskokrit to the west. The northern part of the latter group extends eastwards from the main summits as a steep ridge forming the northern bank of the Milen valley itself.

East of Tergulawen again is a small and almost unknown group of hills called Masalet, where in recent years Kaossen, afterwards leader of the Air revolt in 1917, dug a well. It only yielded brackish water, which, though good enough for camels, proved too medicinal for the Tuareg, who filled it in again. It had been dug for political purposes largely in order to facilitate parties from and for the Southland participating in the yearly caravans which fetch salt from Bilma. Masalet was designed to obviate these parties making a detour along the River of Agades or via Eghalgawen: it provided an easterly watering-point in Azawagh corresponding with Tazizilet further north in Air itself. The unsatisfactory nature of the supply, especially for caravans engaged in crossing the eastern desert, did not, however, justify the risk of leaving so remote a watering-point available for Tebu raiding parties. The fact that Masalet was constructed in recent years is interesting, as showing that the Tuareg have not lost the art of locating deep water.

The western road from Tanut to Agades via Aderbissinat and Abellama runs over much the same sort of country as that which I have just described between Farak and Milen. Aderbissinat well, seventy-five miles from Tanut and ninety-three miles from Agades, is a point of such[70] strategic importance that the French from Zinder built a fort there during the war in order to secure their communications with Air. It has not been garrisoned of late, but proved of paramount importance during the operations of the column which marched from the south to relieve Agades during the rebellion of 1917. With the exception of the deep but copious well of Abellama, there is no useful permanent watering-place between western Damergu and Agades, as the spring of Ihrayen in the Tiggedi cliffs has too small an output to provide for many animals. Nineteen miles north of Aderbissinat the bush ceases. As at Taberghit further east, the country rises some 200 feet to an average level of 1700-1800 feet above the sea. Beyond Timbulaga sand dunes appear on the level buff-coloured steppe, which is covered with the usual scanty vegetation of desert grass in tussocks.[67] The ground then slopes gradually down to the deep well of Abellama in Lat. 16° 16′ 30″ N. and Long. 7° 47′ 20″ E. G. Abellama as a stage corresponds with Milen on the other road.

On the easternmost or Tergulawen road Barth[68] shows that the country is again substantially the same. South of the “spacious” well, which is in a depression “ranging east and west,” with sand-hills on the south side bearing a sprinkling of desert herbage, the country is covered with small dunes on a “flat expanse of sand, mostly bare and clothed with trees only in favoured spots.” To the north is a great sandy plain running as far as the Ridge of Abadarjan, where the level descends to the upper basin of the River of Agades. The area is covered with “hád,” the most nutritious of desert plants and the most characteristic of the desert steppe of Africa. In all parts of the Sahara the distribution of the plant marks the division between the Desert and the Sown. This “hád” of the border line advances or recedes, sometimes from year to year, according to the rainfall. It is the tidal mark of the desert.

[71]The northern part of Azawagh is geographically important, as it contains the transverse valleys which collect the southern rainfall of Air and carry it westwards into the Niger basin. The course of the Beughqot (Beurkot) and Azelik[69] valleys is wrongly shown on the French maps. They do not unite until they have reached a far more southerly point than where they are shown to do so on the Cortier map. Furthermore, when they have joined, they turn S.W. and not S.E. A recent reconnaissance as far as Masalet proved that after these two valleys meet they turn west into a large depression which is probably the same one as that in which the well of Milen is situated, though it might, on the other hand, be the Tagedufat basin; this is a point which must for the moment remain undecided. On a solution of this problem depends the answer to the question as to whether Milen or Tagedufat is the principal basin into which the Air valleys east of Beughqot as far as Tazizilet drain. All that is clear is that they turn southwards and then westwards to join one of the two systems in question, and do not peter out in the desert as Cortier’s map suggests.

West of Milen well the valley in which it is situated eventually joins the lower Tagedufat, which runs on S.W. or W. towards the Gulbi n’Kaba or the Tafassasset-T’immersoi basin. That the Tagedufat system does not enter the River of Agades over the Tiggedi cliff at some point near Ihrayen is probable owing to the fact that all this country has been subjected to a slight southerly tilt. The Tiggedi cliff, the Eghalgawen-T’in Wana massif, the cliff east of Akaraq and its continuation along the great valley, finally represented by the ridge of Abadarjan, as Barth rightly judged, are the northern boundary of this area, which slopes gently from north to south. The River of Agades receives hardly any left-bank tributaries.

[72]Milen well could never be found without a guide. The wide valley, with sand dunes on the south side and a steep north bank where the now omnipresent rock of Air appears, is bare, dry and stony. It shimmers in the heat. Teskokrit appears as a black mass in the west on a bank of milk-white mirage set round a group of trees. The bottom of the valley is a gravel plain with a small patch of bare rock in it which an unwitting traveller would most probably pass unheeding. In this patch of rock is a small hole with a large circular stone near by. The hole, barely three feet across, is the mouth of a well driven through hard sandstone all the way down to the water-bearing stratum, seventy feet below the ground. The mouth can scarcely be seen fifty yards away. The rounded stone is several inches thick and was said to have been used to cover up the mouth of the well to prevent its becoming silted up with driving sand.

I came there in June, after more than forty hours’ march from Hannekar with four tired camels and two men, an Ifadeyen guide and an Arab of Ghat in the Fezzan. We had very little water left, so little, in fact, that it was all used in one pot to cook some rice for us three. The place was deserted and very lonely. The wind was driving the sand so hard that it stung the naked calves of my legs as I stood at the well with Ishnegga the guide, drawing water for the thirsty camels. Camels in hot weather drink a great deal, and hauling water in a two-gallon leather bucket from a seventy-foot well is hard work in a temperature of over 150° F. in the sun. The camels drank interminably. The last and best camel was still thirsty and remained to be watered. The beast was rather weak. It had a bad saddle sore, a hole about the size of a large man’s hand, in its back, and it was festering and full of maggots. We had all just done a journey of over 500 miles from Tanut to Termit and back, in thirty-five days, including nine days of halts, averaging, in other words, nearly twenty miles per marching day for twenty-six days. The camel had[73] begun to drink. Then as we were drawing a full bucket the well rope broke six feet from my hand and fell to the bottom of the well with a splash. A vain hour was spent, while the rice cooked and got more and more full of sand, trying to fish up the rope and bucket with an iron hook made of the nose-piece of a camel bridle fastened to a knotted baggage rope. This too was lost after hooking the tangle, which it joined at the bottom of the well. Prospects looked gloomy as our thirst increased. I have distinct recollections of the sky and valley getting whiter and more metallic and the heat more intolerable. Finally, just enough rope was found by untying all the baggage to ladle up water a half-gallon at a time in a small canvas bucket. But the poor camel had to wait a long time to finish its drink, for the first of the supply to reach the top was used to refill the tanks.

As I was leaving the well two men with three camels came in from the south. They had started to return to their own country in the hills, after an enforced sojourn in the neighbourhood of the fort at Tanut on account of their rebellious propensities in 1917 and 1918. They had no possessions but three young camels, and had started with only enough water in one small skin for half their journey. The two men reached Milen, having drunk nothing for twenty-four hours. They were rather exhausted, but had fully expected to have to do another ten or twelve hours’ march the same night to the nearest water at T’in Wana, as they had only a calabash bottle and no rope with which to draw any more water. They had risked death sooner than stay a moment longer than was necessary in the south, even to collect enough well rope or equipment for a journey which most Europeans would consider difficult. It was very pleasant to give these two men, an old noble and his serf, some especially good cold water from a small canvas cooler which I had prepared. When the serf carried away a pan of icy water, he first offered it to his master, who drank it.

The second time I came to Milen was in December.[74] There was such a crowd of people and of flocks belonging to the Ifadeyen watering that the supply was practically exhausted, and it took me five hours to get enough water for the return journey to Hannekar. But in June the camping grounds were deserted, for there was hardly any pasture during those last few days before the rains.

The deep wells of Azawagh fall into two categories. The narrow wells, like Milen, Aouror, higher up the Milen valley, and Maisumo, are intended primarily for watering flocks. Their output is copious but slow, and not unlimited. Not more than two buckets can draw water comfortably at the same time: for watering flocks where time is not important and the animals can be brought in from pasture in small batches, these wells are adequate. Tagedufat, like Tergulawen, on the other hand, was a caravan well; it was broad and capable of watering a whole caravan rapidly. It became silted up with drifting sand, like the pasture wells, Anu n’Banka and Gharus n’Zurru. Of Aghmat, Tateus and Taberghit I have no details, but when Barth passed this way no stop was made at either of the first two, which were on his road. The supposition is that unless these wells were dug since his day, which is not likely, as the population of Azawagh had by then already decreased, they also were intended for pastoral purposes. They are now all silted up.

The theory that the wells of Azawagh were made by the Ifadeyen, who have only recently come into this area for winter pasturage, was advanced to me, but my informant, who joined my caravan as an unbidden but welcome guest at Milen on my way south, was himself a member of this tribe, so the information is prejudiced. The wells are certainly very old and are probably the handiwork of the denser population which cultivated millet and had its permanent villages in the Taberghit and Tagedufat valleys. The pasture wells were regarded as the property of the tribe in the area, and now, therefore, of the Ifadeyen. The big caravan wells were under the tutelage of the keepers of the great highway to the south, the Kel Owi confederation,[75] and before them, therefore, of their predecessors in Eastern Air. These big wells were always considered to be free for passing caravans to use without let or hindrance at any time, except in the event of a feud being in progress between the Kel Owi and the owners of the caravan. Caravans, on the other hand, using pasture wells, could only do so with the permission of the tribe pasturing in the area. The latter, conversely, had no rights over the great wells. The maintenance of these rights is the origin of confederations like the Kel Owi, for the freedom of the great wells is a vital necessity to a society of caravaneers, and has to be retained by force if necessary. It accounts for such raids as those conducted by Belkho on Gamram, where the Isherifan had interfered with passing caravans just once too often.

One of the Azawagh wells, Aouror, has been the object of much dispute among the Tuareg: there are inscriptions on a neighbouring rock recording the ownership and, to some extent, the history of the well. It would be attractive to think that “Aouror” meant the “Well of the Dawn.” It is not impossible, since Arorá or Aghorá[70] means “dawn” in Temajegh, and Aouror is almost the easternmost well of Azawagh. Like Milen, it is driven through the rock, but is only some four fathoms deep. Like Milen, too, its sides are scored by rope-marks which in places have cut deep into the hard sandstone. Wet ropes covered with sand of course cut into rock quite rapidly, but even so the antiquity of these wells must be considerable. The rock cutting, which no Tuareg to-day is capable of executing, is perfect; the walls are perpendicular and smooth; the plan is a perfect circle.

Abellama and Aderbissinat in the west of Azawagh are deep caravan wells with good water; the former is in friable soil, and has a tendency to fall in.[71] These two, with Aouror,[76] Maisumo and Milen, are the only live wells in Azawagh to-day.

After a short gentle slope up, the ground descends from the ridge on the north side of the Milen valley in a series of long terraces to a basin, the lower part of which is known as the Eghalgawen valley. It joins either the River of Agades at the south-west corner of the T’in Wana massif, or turns south-west towards the Milen and Tagedufat basin; my own impression, based on native sources which are not wholly reliable, inclines to the first view. East of the watering-point of Eghalgawen, the valley runs in a fold, into which flows one of the Southern Air valleys. The actual stream bed is wide and well marked by the heavy annual flood which it carries away from the hills of Eghalgawen and T’in Wana. In character the lower part of the valley along the foot of the hills, with its short tributaries from this little massif, belongs to the Air plateau, and not to Azawagh. The vegetation in the bed is dense and heavy. Dûm palms (Cucifera thebaica) and large trees appear. Geographically and geologically the Air plateau has already commenced at the rocks of Tagedufat: actually, however, it is not reached till the River of Agades is crossed, for Eghalgawen is still held to be in Azawagh.

The cliff of Tiggedi, with its continuation eastward for some way beyond the Eghalgawen hills, is the southern shore of a wide valley which serves as a catchment for all the waters of Southern Air that do not escape by the south-east corner of the plateau into the Azawagh valleys previously described. The cliff is a geological phenomenon of great interest. At the point where the Abellama road descends into the valley some forty miles south of Agades the cliff is sheer for a height of over 200 feet. The path down from the general level of the desert to the dry alluvial plain, which forms the bottom of the River of Agades, is steep and rough. Standing at the top and looking east and west, it seems like a cliff on the sea-shore broken by capes and small inlets; the illusion of maritime action is remarkable. Westwards[77] at Marandet, though still a definite feature of the area, it is less abrupt; erosion has broken down the precipice, while the Marandet torrent has eaten away a ravine leading even more gradually up to the level of the desert. Eastwards, on the other hand, the cliff continues unbroken as far as the Eghalgawen and T’in Wana massif, where higher hills above the desert level take the place of the cliff itself. Though they form a salient in the line, their abrupt northern slopes continue the eastward trend until they come to an end near Akaraq, where the cliff reappears. Here again it is absolutely sheer, if somewhat less elevated; it is broken by a narrow inlet where the Akaraq valley, the only tributary[72] of any size on the south bank of the River of Agades, enters the main basin. At this point the cliff assumes the most fantastic form. The sandstone has been shaped by erosion into pinnacles and blocks of the strangest shapes. The Akaraq valley itself runs back like a cove in a cliffbound sea-coast; both banks are nearly vertical, decreasing in height as the level of the bottom gradually rises to the desert, where the bare rock has been deeply cut into by the water, lying in a semi-permanent pool in a very narrow gully. The bottom of the inlet is covered with luxuriant pasture and some fair-sized trees, while at the mouth, in the main valley, stands an island of rock with vertical sides to complete the illusion of a sea-coast.[73] From the top of the cliff you may look across the great broad valley toward the mountains of Air that are scarcely visible in the north. No defined bank appears to limit the far slope of the basin. There is deep green Alwat pasture[74] in the nearer distance, merging imperceptibly into yellow grass and bare sand further away.[78] The blazing glare and shimmering heat wash the feet of the cliff where a shelving beach of loose white sand has been thrown up against the rocks. The plateau at the top of the cliff is quite flat, and covered with a layer of small hard gravel over the rock. It is without any vegetation.

The great valley bears several names. At the Akaraq inlet it is called Tezorigi. Opposite the Eghalgawen massif it is the T’in Dawin, and further west the Araten valley. West again it has no name, but where it finally leaves the mountains of Air for the Assawas swamp on the way to the T’immersoi basin, the natives call it the Ighazar n’Agades, or River of Agades, from the city which stands on its northern shore, and this is the name I have adopted for the whole. How far the cliffs extend eastward I do not know. A great fork in the valley is visible from Akaraq, the channel is divided by a bluff promontory, but the cliff continues along the southern bank of the southern branch until it is lost from sight. The ridge of Abadarjan which Barth crossed north of Tergulawen, I expect, is part of the same formation.

Maritime action is highly improbable as the origin of the cliff. No traces of shells or beaches at different levels, to be accounted for by a receding sea, have been noticed. The supposition that all the Sahara was once a sea-bed is untenable, and in any case maritime action would hardly be limited to a few small areas such as this one. It seems easier to look for another explanation. The cliff and the Eghalgawen massif are a sandstone formation, but the Taruaji mountains of Air opposite the little Eghalgawen-T’in Wana massif are granitic. The cliff represents, I hazard, a fault north of which the igneous formation of the Air plateau has been extruded. The ground to the south slopes gradually away from the edge of the cliff, accounting for the virtual absence of any tributaries on the left bank of the River of Agades. There is apparently no igneous rock south of the basin, there is very little else to the north of it, with the exception of some Archean and very early rock. The[79] fault, occasioned by the volcanic action which formed the massif of Central Air, erected a barrier to the southward drainage of the mountains, and the waters of Southern Air were diverted westward. A larger rainfall than now caused the gradual silting up of the area between the bottom of the fault and the southern part of the mountains. As the ground level rose and became an alluvial plain from which practically only Mount Gadé and the island off Akaraq emerge, the rain floods began to wash along the cliff and eroded the sandstone into the fantastic forms which are now seen. Wind-borne sand from the eastern desert completed the process of shaping the rocks. The accretion of alluvium diminished with a decreasing rainfall in Air, and the surface deposit of wind-borne sand formed what is now in dry weather a hard gravel-covered plain which, in the rainy season, turns into mud-flats and becomes almost impassable. The water flows aimlessly in the alluvium along deep-cut gullies with vertical sides that constantly change their course. The alluvial origin of the plain of the River of Agades is unmistakable.

THE CITY OF AGADES

The Eghalgawen massif contains a number of watering-points. The pool of Eghalgawen is near the junction of a valley sloping down from the hills, the main valley here assuming the name of the watering-point. Abundant water exists all the year round under the sand in the bed near a low rock on the left bank. It has rather taken the place of Tergulawen well as a point de passage for caravans on the Great South Road, and used in the past to be a favourite resort for caravan raiders. The neighbouring hill, like the one at Tergulawen, is a well-known watch-tower in times of trouble, since both of them command the approaches to a strategic point.[75] T’in Wana, Tarrajerat, Tebehic and some pools in the Isagelmas valley on the southern periphery of the Eghalgawen massif, are watering-points for the camels and flocks of the tribes which range over Azawagh, to-day the Ifadeyen. Their winter camping grounds can be seen all the way from Tagedufat to the River of Agades; they are readily distinguishable from the older permanent settlements of the original Kel Azawagh who grew millet in this area. Besides the Ifadeyen, the Kel Giga section of the Kel Tadek use the Eghalgawen hills and Azawagh pastures very considerably after the rains. The Ifoghas of Damergu rarely come so far north, since, having few camels, they lack incentive to seek these superlative desert pastures. Those members of this tribe whom I saw in Azawagh were typical in possessing only donkeys and goats, which of course will eat almost anything.

[81]After a 560-mile excursion to Termit and Elakkos, I rejoined my travelling companions, whom I had forsaken at Tanut, in the little massif on the south side of the River of Agades. They were camped a short day’s march from Milen, at the famous permanent pool in the T’in Wana valley. Of all pools in Africa it is of T’in Wana that I shall keep the pleasantest recollections. I was greeted by a fusillade of welcome and immediately went for a swim in the deep pool that had recently been filled by the rains. The channel cut by the water in the rock was in places fifteen feet deep. The pool had a sandy bottom, with a rock four feet high at one end for a diving platform. A length of twenty yards was clear to swim in, and then came a succession of smaller pools beneath the arches and overhanging sides of red and black rock. The erosion of the sandstone was most remarkable. There were witches’ cauldrons and buttresses and enchanted caves, with deep crannies in the tall vertical sides. In the wide valley above, masses of green bushes and branching palms seemed to make the place a heaven-sent garden of rest in a hot land. We were all very happy, and the camels were improving fast. Our men were delighted to see the mountains of Air again. My guide from the south, Ishnegga, who was of the Ifadeyen, found relations in a neighbouring valley. There were acquaintances on the road to gossip with and discuss. Poor Ishnegga shot himself accidentally some months later, as I heard from his beautiful old mother, whom I had met at Hannekar and saw for a second time on my way home.

The sides of the T’in Wana ravine were covered with T’ifinagh inscriptions relating to the tribes that had pastured here in their time; they recorded the names of people, messages to and from their friends, and the professions of love of their men and women. The low hills behind were rough and without vegetation or soil; but some mountain sheep, gazelle and sand-grouse subsisted on the coarse grass in the ravines. The sandstone of the massif seemed to have been subjected to volcanic heat. A deposit of fossil[82] trees among the rocks and boulders was found: a specimen piece picked up near Akaraq a few miles north-east had probably been brought from this deposit near T’in Wana. It was identified on my return as a Tertiary conifer, but the siliceous replacement had been too complete to permit of more detailed examination, except by microscope.

A very pleasant camp was eventually broken, and Tebehic, on the north-west side of the hills, with two watering-places, was reached after crossing the Isagelmas valley, a collector for several small rivulets draining the western side of the hills. In spite of an attack of malaria, which overcame me, Tebehic proved most interesting, for I made friends with a family of Ifadeyen who were camping there during the rains. The man had some cows and supplied me with fresh milk, a great luxury after camel’s milk and the condensed sort out of a tin. He was a widower with several children, and quite charming. One of the children was suffering from a severe abscess in the right ear. It had been “treated” by blocking the orifice with a paste made of fresh camel dung and wood ash mixed with pounded leaf of the pungent Abisgi (Capparis sodata) bush. I suppose the mixture was intended to act like a mustard poultice, but the discharge from the abscess being unable to escape had been causing the child acute pain, which it was easy to relieve by clearing out the mess and washing the ear. The abscess having previously opened of its own accord, the pain ceased almost as soon as the “remedy” had been removed. It was the first of my “cures” as a doctor among the Tuareg, and laid the foundations of a great reputation!

After a few days at Tebehic we proceeded to cross the broad plain of the River of Agades, whither one of my companions had preceded me. Memories of that plain are unpleasant. A day’s march from the shelter of the Tebehic valley we were overtaken by a violent thunderstorm right out in the open just south of T’in Taboraq. As a convalescent cure for malaria, designed to make any reputable European doctor shudder, I recommend getting[83] up after three days in bed, marching six hours on a camel in the sun, and then spending two more holding up a tent in company with four other men in an eighty-mile-an-hour storm with a rainfall of three-quarters of an inch in about half an hour. The exertions of five of us were successful in keeping the tent up and the baggage dry, but proved tiring. As soon as the wind was over the five human tentpoles were turned on to canalisation, which soon became necessary to drain away the deluge. When this passed, a search over the countryside had to be instituted for articles of equipment carried away by the storm. The camp stove, an unwieldy cube of sheet-iron some fifteen inches each way, and weighing nine pounds, was found 3000 yards from the camp. But the storm had been magnificent. It had commenced at about 3 p.m. as a black cloud hanging over the Air mountains in the north. The wind, before it acquired full force, bore along a cloud of orange sand gleaming in the sun, which was still uncovered by the blue-black storm above. Suddenly everything seemed to be going on at once, sunshine, sand-storm, wind, purple squalls and a white uniformity of tearing, sweeping rain. By six o’clock it was all over. The sun set in a pale yellow sky behind the T’in Wana range. The northern hills grew slate-coloured and then black, and the storm went rolling on into Damergu, illuminating the night with lightning. Hitherto my worst experience of rain had been at Guliski in Damergu, when myself, three natives and our baggage lay in a hut nine feet in diameter; it rained all night, and slowly flooded us out. One felt the water rising among the blankets in an atmosphere of damp clamminess and native humanity. Then had come a hopeless dawn, but the air soon dried everything. Yet I had still to learn what storms in the mountains could be like.

The north side of the River of Agades opposite Tebehic has no definite bank. The mountains of Air slope gradually down to the valley; they are intersected by larger and smaller valleys, forming a series of roughly parallel right[84] bank tributaries all in close proximity to one another. The widest of them are the Azanzara, Tureyet, Amidera, Teghazar and Telwa, most of which start north of the Taruaji mountains—the Tureyet and Telwa, in fact, have their head-waters in the Bagezan and Todra groups in Central Air. Some small villages lie among the foothills by these valleys, but it is dull country. A few small ill-grown trees and a little grass are all the vegetation on the succession of gravel patches which constitute the plain. The sight of the mountains of Air in front makes one want to hurry on.

South of one of these villages the opening tragedy of the 1917 revolution took place. A platoon of French Camel Corps, after completing their duties as escort to the Bilma salt caravan, had supervised the dispersal of the camels in their various tribal groups at Tabello, east of Bagezan, and were returning to Agades for a rest. They had been away perhaps a month and now were within a day’s march of the city. They knew nought of what had happened in Air, suspected absolutely nothing of the unfriendly disposition of the Tuareg. Near T’in Taboraq a large force of Tuareg, which had been lying in ambush behind a little hill on the northern edge of the plain, fell on the column as it was beginning its last day’s march into Agades post. A running fight ensued, in the course of which nearly the whole platoon of Camel Corps were destroyed. One officer, who was returning to France on leave, escaped southward, and a few wounded Senegalese “tirailleurs” found their way with difficulty into the fort at Agades, which had been attacked early one morning a day or two before while the garrison was out on parade. The revolution had been prepared for some time, with the connivance of the Sultan of Agades, by a Tuareg noble named Kaossen, an inveterate enemy of the French since 1900. The outbreak had been proposed by Kaossen and aided by the Senussiya and hostile elements in the Fezzan and Tripolitania as part of the anti-French and -British activities which continued in North Africa throughout the European war. The development in Air, however,[85] came as a surprise to the French. All the Tuareg in the plateau rose, and although the garrison at Agades held out for over three months in doubt and in complete isolation, the revolt spread into Damergu and fears were even entertained for the safety of Northern Nigeria. The defence of Agades and the arrival of a column from Zinder, acting in conjunction with another column from the Niger, eventually saved the situation. The heroic resistance of the garrison at Agades and the magnificent work of the military organisation of French West Africa, over these huge expanses of country at the end of 1917 and early in 1918, have probably never even been heard of, still less recognised, in England, where events nearer home at a most critical period of the war obscured the issue of “another minor incident in the Sahara.” The column from Zinder, in spite of a severe check on the way, was the largest single body of men ever successfully sent over a desert against a nomadic people. It is my privilege to record in England, I think for the first time, the courage of those gallant French soldiers who indirectly defended Nigeria. Their efforts in Air saved a British colony from facing a situation which might have become serious owing to the general depletion of forces there, as elsewhere during those tragic months of the Great War. I am happy to make this acknowledgment, both as tribute to the French soldiers whom I had the pleasure of meeting during the Great War and in 1922, and particularly because even in Nigeria the gravity of the 1917 revolution has never been sufficiently recognised.

My route over the plain of the River of Agades lay in sight of Mount Gadé, a flat-topped hill standing alone to the south. The track used by parties from Sokoto passes this conspicuous landmark after crossing the Azawagh on the way to the rendezvous of the annual salt caravan at Tabello, under the eastern slopes of Bagezan in Central Air. After cutting this track we joined the Agades-Tabello road somewhat west of T’in Taboraq. East of this village the road passes through the other settlements which lie on the southern[86] spurs of the Taruaji massif before it turns north to Tabello.

The track now entered and wound along a valley called the Teghazar.[76] The small torrent bed was very sodden after the rain of the previous day. On either side were low hills of bare gravel with some rock outcrop beginning to appear here and there. On the low scarps or patches of loose stones a few ragged acacias had secured an existence, marking the foot of the Air hills along the River of Agades. Eventually the track rose up to the level of the highest undulations and we came in sight of Agades. Almost simultaneously two Tuareg on camels appeared on the road. They had been sent out from Agades with an accumulation of letters, months overdue, and a message to say that we were the guests of the French officers in the fort, about a mile north of the city. As the last fold of ground was crossed, by a steep bluff where Kaossen had constructed a military work during the siege of the French garrison in 1917, the whole length of the city came in sight on a low ridge to the south-west. The far end was marked by the stately tower of the Great Mosque, unchanged since Barth saw it more than seventy years ago. Straight ahead lay the French post, surrounded by a defensive wall flanked by blockhouses and containing the tall masts of a wireless station, near the wells of T’in Shaman in a diminutive plain where the Foureau-Lamy Expedition had camped over twenty years earlier. In 1917 there was no W/T station and scarcely any fort; the buildings were all disconnected and scarcely defensible.

The city of Agades used to be surrounded by mud walls, intended to baffle raiders rather than to withstand a siege. The distance along the line of their elliptical circumference, so far as it can still be traced, is a matter of three and a half to four miles. The wall has been much broken down and in some places is hard to find; its perimeter and plan seem to have varied from time to time according to the number of[87] inhabitants. The best preserved parts are to the north-west beyond the Great Mosque, and to the north, where gates may be seen; there has evidently been considerable decay even since 1850.[77] At a distance the whole ridge on which the city stands appears covered with low, earth-coloured houses, for the most part without an upper storey. The regular sky-line is scarcely broken save by a few dûm palms and tenuous trees rising above the uniform level of the roofs. Only the tower of the mosque, like a finger pointing up to heaven, soars over the drab habitations. Their dull uniformity seems to enhance its dignity.

Agades is not a Tuareg city. Its foreign aspect is at once apparent. Although it also struck Barth immediately, he was, curiously enough, not so much concerned with what is really the most obvious feature of the alien atmosphere as he was with the foreign language and origin of most of the people he met there. His wanderings perhaps brought him less into contact with the permanent settlements of the Tuareg in Air than my good fortune did me; he could not otherwise have failed to remark that the houses in Agades are those of a Sudanese town and not those of the People of the Veil.

The most striking characteristic of the towns of the Sudan, of the immense walled cities of Kano and Zaria, as well as of the smaller places, is the mode of construction of the dwellings. There are two types of houses and in neither of them is stone used. The first type is the circular hut with a low vertical wall carrying a conical roof; the fashion extends throughout Central Africa. This abode is constructed of straw, or grass, or boughs, or of whatever material is readiest to hand. The ground plan is circular unless specific conditions have exerted a contrary influence, which occurs rather seldom. In the more advanced settlements of this sort in Northern Nigeria a development of the primitive form has taken place: it is a much larger structure with vertical mud walls which support the conical thatched roof,[88] sometimes as much as twenty feet in diameter, standing within a compound. In many North Nigerian villages the dwellings consist exclusively of groups of such huts surrounded by low walls or enclosures.

The second type of house in the large towns of the Sudan is many-roomed and formless. The whole building, including the roof, is made of mud and often has one or more stories. The flat roof of mud and laths is carried on rafters of dûm palm wood which is one of the only available trees that resists the invasion of the white ant. Houses of this type often cover a considerable area, rambling aimlessly hither and thither in rooms, courts and alley-ways, according to the requirements and fancy of the owner or his descendants. The mud construction at times displays architectural features of real distinction. The thick tapering walls are wide and smooth. The doorways have a pylon-like appearance reminiscent of Egypt. The heavy squat façades are by no means unimposing: deep cold shadows cast by angles and buttresses break up the surface of the red walls. The broad panels around the doors are sometimes elaborated with decorative mouldings or with free arabesque designs in relief. The larger rooms which cannot be spanned by one length of rafter are vaulted inside with a false arch of mud, concealing cantilever timbering; the effect is that of a series of massive Gothic arches, plain but often of noble proportions. Technically, mud construction is easy, inexpensive and adequate in a climate where the rainy season is short and well defined. Balls of mud are dried in the sun and cemented together with wet mud. The outer and inner walls are faced with a plaster of earth and chopped straw. In the hot tropical sun the walls dry as hard as stone. The houses survive for an unlimited period of time if the outside surfaces are refaced every year after the torrential rains have washed away the stucco skin. Roofs, of course, have to be carefully levelled and drained to prevent the water accumulating in puddles and, in time, soaking through the ceilings. Gutters are provided[89] with spouts projecting through the parapets of the roofs to prevent the water running down the sides.

The rambling mud house and the circular mud or straw and thatch huts, grouped in compounds, together make up the towns and villages of Northern Nigeria. The two types may be seen side by side, for instance in the country between Kano and Katsina, where the Fulani and Hausa population is mixed. It would be interesting to establish, as prima facie seems to be the case, whether the circular houses were those of the sedentary Fulani, who are nearer the semi-nomadic state, and the more ambitious mud dwellings those of the Hausa. In neither of these two types of house is stone used, either as ashlar or as rough masonry. Nor do dry stone walls occur, for mud is more convenient even when stone is available.[78]

When the Tuareg, on the other hand, builds permanent or semi-permanent dwellings, he displays characteristics which at once differentiate him from the people of the south. His straw and matting huts are not of the Central African type; they have no vertical wall of reeds or grass and a separate conical roof; they are built in one piece as a parabolic dome. Another, movable, type of hut or tent consists of a leather roof arched over four vertical uprights surrounded by matting walls on a square plan. The appearance of these tents is that of a cube with a slightly domed top. The permanent houses in Air are regular, carefully built constructions of stone and cement. In them mud is not employed except where the fashion of the south has been directly copied in comparatively recent times. The rambling house plan of the south is almost unknown. The Tuareg dwelling has a definitely formal and rectangular character. It rarely consists of more than two rooms. Even the exceptions to this rule[79] display considerable differences from the southern type of house.

[90]Both the temporary huts and the permanent dwellings of the People of the Veil, therefore, are intensely individual. They differentiate the Tuareg sharply from the southern peoples. But even a casual glance at the houses of Agades makes it obvious that they belong to a city of the south. There is plenty of stone all round the city which might have been used for building, yet nearly all the houses are rambling mud constructions like those of Kano or of any of the towns of Nigeria. The number of houses at Agades which reflect the formal Tuareg fashion of planning is small. The characteristics which one learns to associate with the truly Tuareg houses of Air are conspicuously difficult to find. When I was in Agades at the commencement of the rains before the annual refacing of the walls had been carried out, it was possible to observe the absence of stone building. An inspection of the broken walls of the many ruined houses confirmed this observation of the past. The number of pools in the town alone was evidence of the prevalence and antiquity of mud construction; Barth mentions the names of several of them. The borrow pits in the Sudanese towns, where water accumulates in the rainy season and rubbish is shot in the dry, are features which no one can escape, were it only on account of the smells which they exhale; for in the Sudan, even when stone is available as at Kano, it is not used. I have vivid recollections of Agades at this season and was particularly impressed by the efficiency of the spouts designed to carry the water off the roofs. Progress was necessarily circuitous in order to avoid drowning in the flooded holes and borrow pits, while distraction was afforded by a determined but usually unsuccessful effort to escape a series of shower-baths in the narrow streets.

The ridge on which the city stands is surrounded by several depressions where are the wells that supply the needs of the population. In addition to those outside the town there were formerly nine other wells within the walls, but, like the pools, they were nearly all adulterated by the saline impregnation of the ground.

[91]I cannot here refrain from quoting Barth, whose capacity for meticulous observation depended on never missing an opportunity, however strange, of acquiring information. “The houses of Agades do not possess all the convenience which one would expect to find in houses in the north of Europe; but here, as in many Italian towns, the principle of da per tutto, which astonished Goethe so much at Rivoli on the Lago di Garda, is in full force, being greatly assisted by the many ruined houses which are to be found in every quarter of the town. But the free nomadic inhabitant of the wilderness does not like this custom, and rather chooses to retreat into the open spots outside the town. The insecurity of the country and the feuds generally raging oblige them still to congregate, even on such occasions. When they reach some conspicuous tree the spears are all stuck into the ground, and the party separates behind the bushes; after which they again meet under the tree, and return in solemn procession to the town. By making such little excursions I became acquainted with the shallow depressions which surround Agades. . . .” He then proceeds to enumerate them.[80] The plain where the French fort lies is called Tagurast, that to the S.W., Mermeru; to the S.E. is Ameluli, with Tisak n’Talle somewhat further away to the S.S.E.; Tara Bere lies to the west.

The city is divided into several quarters, the names of which are recorded on Barth’s plan. The only two I heard mentioned were Terjeman and Katanga, the former so called from the interpreters who used to live in the neighbourhood, the latter from the market where what Americans would term “dry goods” of the Air fashion are sold. Little seems to have changed in seventy-five years; necklaces, stone arm-rings, wooden spoons and cotton cloth can be bought, now as then. In the larger market near by, called by the Hausa name of Kaswa n’Rakumi (the Camel Market), live-stock of all sorts is sold. The vegetable market seems to be as ill furnished now as it was in 1850.

[92]I visited two or three private houses. They were not imposing, lacking the architectural features of the better-class houses in the Sudan. The use of white and colour washes in the interiors and on the outside walls was interesting. This practice is the only feature in which the houses of Agades differed from those of the Sudan; it appears to be peculiar in this part of Africa to the Tuareg, the habit having, no doubt, been copied from the north. The pigment is made of a chalky substance found near Agades, or of ochreous earths occurring in various places in Air. One of the houses which I saw was that of the Añastafidet, the administrative head of the Kel Owi tribes. The rooms were small and ill-planned; there was no attempt at decoration. The technique of the south had evidently not flourished in the atmosphere of the Sahara. The two plans of private houses reproduced by Barth give an idea of the rambling and haphazard designing.

The most elaborate and well-kept house is the one which belongs to the Kadhi, near the Great Mosque. It must have been here that Barth attended several sittings of the Kadhi’s Court, adjudicating on inter-tribal matters which could not be settled by the tribal chiefs. It did not seem at all remarkable after the great houses of the Sudan, but was perhaps rather better kept than most of the other buildings in Agades. The people call it the House of Kaossen, and his family still live there. He carried on his intrigues from this place, and plotted with apparent impunity through 1917, until the time was ripe for open rebellion. He had returned from the Fezzan full of ambition to free his country from the white men whom he fought all his life. He had taken part in the operations against the French in Equatorial Africa, largely directed by the Senussiya from their “zawias” in Tibesti and Ennedi. When this period of hostility came to an end, but not before the French had sustained several severe reverses, notably during the fighting at Bir Alali (Fort Pradie), north-east of Lake Chad, Kaossen took refuge with the Azger Tuareg in the Eastern Fezzan,[93] raiding and fighting with these lawless folk against their neighbours. Of his own initiative, but aided by the Senussiya and their Turkish and German advisers, Kaossen returned to his native country in 1917 with a small band of supporters to drive out the French, an effort in which he very nearly succeeded.

By far the most considerable monument of the city is the Great Mosque. I was unable to visit the interior, but from the general appearance of the building I am sure that I should have agreed with the description of Barth, who wrote: “The lowness of the structure had surprised me from without, but I was still more astonished when I entered the interior and saw that it consisted of low narrow naves divided by pillars of immense thickness, the reason of which it is not possible at present to understand, as they have nothing to support but a roof of dûm-tree boards, mats and a layer of clay.” He goes on to speculate on the superstructure which these “vaults or cellars” may have been designed to carry but which was never completed. I do not think such speculation is necessary. The description fits accurately every one of the seven or eight other mosques in Air which I saw within and without. In none of them were the walls ever meant to carry an upper storey. In all of them the ceiling was low and the roof flat, with rows of massive pillars and the naves running transversely from north to south across the buildings, which were usually far broader than they were deep.

The Great Mosque of Agades as it stands to-day was built in 1844.[81] It would hardly be remarkable were it not for the minaret, which was rebuilt by the Sultan Abd el Qader in 1847 to replace the one which had fallen. From a base thirty feet square resting on four massive pilasters in the interior of the mosque, this four-sided tower of mud and dûm-palm rafters rises to a height of between eighty and[94] ninety feet, tapering from about one-third of its height to a narrow platform less than eight feet square at the top. Access is obtained by a spiral way between the solid core and the outer wall, which is pierced with small windows. From a little distance the foreshortening produced by the tapering faces gives the impression of immense height without accentuating the pyramidical form. The four-square, flat sides are bound together by transverse rafters projecting some three or four feet. These ends serve the purpose of scaffolding when refacing is necessary after the rains, an operation without which the tower would not have stood any length of time. Near the mosque is a heap of mud, the remains of an older tower called “Sofo,” presumably of the same type.[82]

The structure is properly speaking a minaret, but was used as a watch-tower in time of war. It is not now used for either purpose. The muezzin stands on the roof of the mosque below to call upon the Faithful at the prescribed hours to forsake their pursuits and turn to the only God. The Tower of Agades stands like a beacon, showing far over the monotonous plains. I remember this solitary pillar towering above a confused mass of low and ruinous buildings against the blood-red setting sun, which appeared and disappeared in the black clouds of an evening in the rains. The blue hills and sharp peaks of Air were distant in the north; to the south lay a drab plain, unbroken as far as eye could see in the gathering twilight. The Tower seemed like the lonely monument of a decaying civilisation.

There are said to have been as many as seventy mosques in and near the city, but only two, I think, are still used. Outside the walls to the S.W. there is a shrine known as Sidi Hamada, “My Lord of the Desert,” appropriately named considering the barren nature of the ground all round. It is an open place of prayer of much sanctity, and[95] reputed to be the oldest Moslem place of worship in the neighbourhood. The Qibla is in a low bank, faced with a dry stone wall, which slopes down to the level of the surrounding ground a few feet on each side of the niche. On certain occasions prayers are said at Sidi Hamada, notably on the Feast of the Sheep, known to the Tuareg as Salla Laja, which I was fortunate enough to witness at Agades in June 1922.

It was made the occasion of much festivity. Every available camel in the vicinity was ridden by a Tuareg in the gayest saddle and bridle from the city to the shrine. These people do not feel that they are making the best of themselves unless they are mounted on a camel. A man and his camel are complementary and reciprocal to one another. When there is an occasion to celebrate they wear their best clothes and borrow any ornaments they can find to adorn their sombre garments. They are vain of their personal appearance and covetous of those pretty things which are considered in good taste, but their unselfishness is nevertheless remarkable. I have seen men forgo the real pleasure of wearing a silver ornament or a new face veil in order to lend them to a less fortunate companion whose general appearance was more ragged, or whose means and opportunities did not allow him to secure anything to smarten his turn-out. I had bought of the local jeweller-blacksmith in Agades a number of small silver ornaments of the sort which are affected by the Tuareg. All these, and even certain articles of clothing from our own scanty wardrobes, were borrowed for the day. It was curious to see that their sombre apparel was never lightened by any of the coloured materials so much in evidence in the Sudan. The best-dressed man is considered to be the one with the newest indigo-cotton robe and veil of the traditional plain design. At the most a red cloth is tied round the head over the face veil, or, in the case of the guides employed by the French, around the waist and shoulders: the robe must, however, always be plain white or dark indigo. The Tuareg of our[96] own retinue picked out the best of our camels to ride. They turned out a very smart patrol, the camel men Elattu, Alwali and Mokhammed of noble caste, with two or three buzus or outdoor slaves, and Ali the son of Tama, the Arab from Ghat.

At an early hour the poorer people on foot began to stream over the tufted plain which lies between the place of prayer and the city. They were followed by little parties of men on camels, black figures on great dun-coloured or white riding beasts, girt about with their cross-hilted swords, and some also carrying a spear and oryx-hide shield. Finally, a larger group of men, preceded by three or four horsemen, was seen approaching. They were the Sultan of Agades, Omar, the Slave King of the Tuareg of Air, with his attendants, and the Añastafidet, a noble of the Kel Owi tribes, who, from the purely administrative point of view, is the most important man in the country. They were accompanied by the chief minister of the Sultan, the notables of the place, and other dignitaries. Among them was El Haj Saleh, the father of our camel man Elattu; he had performed the pilgrimage three times, in the course of which he had acquired the Arab fashion of dress used in the north. He wore the white woollen robe that is supposed to be descended from the Roman toga, with his head covered only by a fold of the cloth. El Haj Saleh has lived so long in foreign parts that he no longer veils his face and prefers speaking Arabic, but he is much respected as a learned and holy man; he is now employed by the French at the fort as Oriental Secretary and interpreter. With him were the Kadhi and the Imam, a solitary exception among the veiled Tuareg in the matter of display, for he had obtained from the south a buff-coloured silk robe embroidered with green. The Sariki n’Turawa, or chief minister of the Sultan, came next; near him gathered a number of Arab merchants from Ghat and Tuat in white robes; with one or two from the extreme west, there were a dozen or fifteen in all, who have the trade of Agades in their hands. Among them I perceived one Arab from[97] Mauretania, a little man with delicate, sensitive features and a brown beard. He came straight up to where I was standing to repay me a debt of five silver francs which he had incurred some months before at Gangara in Damergu.

When the crowd had collected, the men ranged themselves in rows facing east before the Qibla; the women stood together on one side. The Sultan and his party were immediately opposite the niche with the Imam facing them. He began to read the Quran and the multitude then prayed. On either side of the Sultan, as he knelt to make his prostrations, a Tuareg remained standing with his sword drawn, extended point downwards at arm’s length, in protection and salute. As the Sultan rose to his feet the guard sloped their swords, repeating the salute every time he bowed before the name of God. These two men are distinct from the officials in the local administration;[83] they are the personal body-guard of the Sultan, chosen among the “courtiers of the king,” who are young men selected in turn from the tribes in Air which owe allegiance direct to the Sultan.

After the prayers were over two sheep were slaughtered in the orthodox manner. Their throats were cut by the Imam, reciting the invocation of Islam, and the blood was wiped away with holy water to the accompaniment of suitable prayers.

The Sultan and the people then returned to the city, making a detour by the N.W. side through the ruined suburb outside the walls and past the Great Mosque to the present palace, an indifferent building, both tumbledown and dirty. The reigning Sultan, Omar, like all his predecessors, is of slave descent. He was chosen in 1920 by the tribes which have the right to elect him, from a collateral branch of the ruling family. He is a weak man, and too much in the hands either of interested advisers or of the French, which does not always mean the same thing. His[98] predecessor, Tegama, on the other hand, was a remarkable man. His intrigues with Kaossen were successful in preparing the revolution in Air so quietly that practically nothing was suspected of his intentions until the fateful dawn when the black troops on parade at the post were fired upon from the outskirts of the city. After the French columns had relieved the besieged garrison, both Kaossen and Tegama fled east to Kawar, whence the former found his way to the Fezzan, only to be killed, so it is believed, in obscure circumstances north of Murzuk by some Arabs. The native accounts of the story cast some doubt on his actual death on the grounds that his body was never found among those of his massacred companions. It is further represented that the very Turks and Senussiya whom he had served put him to death for his failure in Air, but it appears more probable that on his way to seek refuge with the Senussiya in Cyrenaica, Kaossen and his friends had the misfortune to fall in with a band of Arabs whom he had raided in the olden days, and to have been killed by them.

The Sultan Tegama, on the other hand, betook himself to Tibesti, hoping to find sanctuary among the Tebu, who, though the hereditary enemies of the Tuareg of Air, were probably sufficiently hostile to the French to be counted on to harbour any prominent refugee from the wrath of the white man. By the influence of the Senussiya in these parts he expected to reach Kufra and so take up his residence among the malcontents who live in that remote land. Treacherous as ever and true to their reputation current all over North Africa, the Tebu entreated Tegama generously and took the first opportunity which presented itself to hand him over to a French camel patrol from Bilma. In the course of time he returned to Agades as a prisoner under an escort of negro Senegalese soldiers and was thrown into prison at the fort to await his trial by court-martial. He died suddenly one night in May 1922, by his own hand it is said, in the prison, while under the surveillance of the French, and he was buried. But one chief who was at the[99] funeral told me that he looked under the mat which covered the alleged corpse and discovered that there was nothing there. The story spread that Tegama escaped and fled to the north, where he is still living. Perhaps it is better that this story should obtain credence than any other. Instead of Tegama, the French officer in charge of the post was court-martialled for the suicide of the king, but acquitted. The whole episode is curious, but the truth is perhaps rather unsavoury. It is another of the fierce tragedies of the Sahara.

Before Tegama, Osman Mikitan and Brahim (Ibrahim Dan Sugi) were Sultans. Mikitan was Sultan when the post was first established at the wells of T’in Shaman, but they changed places several times in the course of the intrigues which took place between the passage of the Foureau-Lamy Expedition in 1899 and the occupation of Air in 1904. In Barth’s day Abd el Qader, son of the Sultan Bakiri (Bekri), was on the throne. His tenure of office was as precarious as that of his successors, for he had been Sultan on a previous occasion before Barth reached Agades, only to be deposed in favour of Hamed el Rufai (Ahmed Rufaiyi), whom he again succeeded; they once more changed places some three years afterwards, Abd el Qader having reigned in all about thirty-two years, Hamed some twelve. The tenure of office of the Sultans of Agades during the last century has been as precarious as it was in Leo’s time, for we read in this authority[84] that the Tuareg “will sometime expel their king and choose another; so that he which pleaseth the inhabitants of the desert best is sure to be king of Agades.” Bello in his history says the same:[85] “whenever a prince displeased them, they dethroned him and appointed a different one.”

The installation of the Sultan with the customs that obtain is in the nature of a ceremonial recognition, by the representatives of the principal tribes of the Tuareg of Air,[100] of his elevation to office. Taken in connection with the traditional mode of his selection, it throws an interesting light on relationships of the various groups of the Tuareg in Air. Barth, who was in Agades on such an occasion, wrote: “The ceremonial was gone through inside the fada (palace); but this was the procedure. First of all Abd el Kader (Qader) was conducted from his private apartments to the public hall: the chiefs of the Itisan (Itesan) and Kel Geres who were in front begged him to sit down upon the gado, a sort of couch or divan, made of the leaves of the palm tree . . . similar to the angarib used in Egypt and the lands of the Upper Nile, and covered with mats and carpets. Upon this the Sultan sat down, resting his feet on the ground, not being allowed to put them on the gado and recline in the Oriental style until the Kel Owi had desired him to do so.[86] Such is the ceremony, symbolical of the combined participation of these different tribes in the investiture of their Sultan.”[87] The throne-room in the old palace seems to have been more imposing than any part of the royal dwelling of to-day. The present audience chamber is a low, arched room, with a small daïs or seat at one end near a narrow stairway leading up to three rooms in an upper storey, which is now not in use. These rooms are lighted by small windows looking over the outer court. I wandered at random in and out of the palace except that small part which is still used by Omar himself and his women-folk. The deserted rooms were deep in dust and fallen plaster. The courts were infested with dogs, children and chickens. The palace was far less magnificent and certainly less well kept than many other houses in the city. Even the small house of the Añastafidet, with its mats and solitary carpet of horrid colours on the floor of the guest-chamber, was more cleanly.

The present Sultan enjoys little or no authority; his[101] predecessors, unless they were backed by the more important chiefs in Air, were almost equally powerless, for the position of the Sultan, or Amenokal, as he is called in Temajegh, is curious. It is said in the native tradition that in the early days there was no authority in the land other than that of the chiefs of the various groups of tribes, and these did not in any way acknowledge one another’s authority over affairs which interested the community at large. The groups and single tribes were constantly at war with one another, and there were then 70,000 people in the land, with no common ruler.[88] The more reasonable chiefs recognised that some figure-head at least was necessary, but they could not agree that he should be chosen from any of the principal groups of clans in Air. They therefore sent a deputation to Istambul or Santambul (Constantinople) to the Commander of the Faithful, asking him to appoint a Prince to come and rule over them. The Khalif called together the sons of his wives and offered them all the country from the land of the Aulimmiden in the west to Sokoto in the east (sic), and from Tadent in the north to the lands of the Negroes in the south. But Air was so far away that none of the sons of the Khalif was willing to leave the comforts of Stambul. The Embassy was kept waiting for three years. Finally the Commander of the Faithful, weakening before the tears of his legitimate wives, the mothers of his sons, selected the child of a concubine to rule over the Tuareg of the south. The candidate returned with the deputation to Air and from that day to this there are said to have been one hundred rulers in the land. This figure does not, of course, represent the exact number; it is only meant figuratively to indicate a long period of time.

From the original impressions I had received in Air I came to the conclusion that the installation of the first Sultan could be assigned to the beginning of the fifteenth century A.D., or, in other words, to a period prior to the capture of Constantinople by the Moslems. In the course of some[102] research on the subject I discovered that 1420 A.D. had been suggested by one authority on the evidence of tradition, while the Agades Chronicle, independently of all this evidence, had recorded that the first Sultan, Yunis,[89] ascended the throne in 809 A.H., or about 1406 A.D.[90] The important thing in any case is that, if the story of his choice has any historical foundation whatsoever, it must be referred to a period when Christian emperors were still ruling in Constantinople. It is therefore all the more interesting to learn that the first Sultan was called Yunis, which means John, and that the wife of the first Sultan, a noble girl said to have been given to him in marriage by the Kel Ferwan tribe, was called Ibuzahil or Izubahil, a name bearing a curious resemblance to Isabel. It is a fitting name for the companion of John, the man from the distant land.

If a deputation went to the Mediterranean at all, it was natural at this period that it should go to Constantinople, still regarded as the capital of nations, with which no other city in the fifteenth century could compare for civilisation or splendour. But we shall probably never know whether a Byzantine prince came to Air in 1406 A.D. or whether the names and legend of John and Isabel are only coincidence. Yunis is described as the son of Tahanazeta, and I must leave for others to discover Byzantine resemblances to this name. For the name of one of his successors, Aliso, I suggest Louis may have been our equivalent, and regarding the latter’s brother, Amati, who followed, comment is hardly necessary.

Yunis reigned twenty years and was succeeded by Akasani,[91] who was the son of Yunis’s sister. Elsewhere El Haj Ebesan[103] or Abeshan, a son of Yunis, and his son, El Haj Muhammad ben Ebesan, are said to have reigned respectively as second and third Sultans, but this is not substantiated by the Agades Chronicle, which mentions El Haj Ebesan only as the grandfather of the sixteenth Sultan, Yusif, who came to the throne about 1594. From this record there appear to have been some forty rulers, several of whom reigned more than once, but there are certain gaps in the series.[92]

After the very first ruler the reigning family divided into two branches, which keep on reappearing, many of the Sultans of one being deposed by powerful tribes like the Itesan in favour of candidates of the other line. The family of El Guddala or Ghodala figures prominently with several notable rulers like Muhammad Hammad, who was known as the Father of his People. From such records as are available I have tried to recover the genealogy of this stock; but the Agades Chronicle is neither accurate nor complete;[93] although it is almost the only detailed information which we possess for the present. One noteworthy fact accords well with Ibn Batutah’s observations and with certain matriarchal survivals which will be referred to in detail hereafter: there are repeated instances of descent being traced through the female line. Nevertheless, this was not an essential condition. The ruler to this day is elected by the same tribes originally responsible for the elevation of Yunis to the throne: he must be drawn from one of the two branches of the original family, and his heir, subject to due and proper election, is normally considered to be his sister’s son.

Being the son of a concubine or slave, the king, according to the rules of descent of all the Tuareg, was himself of slave caste, nor could he ever achieve the distinction of being ranked among the nobles. As it is the law among the People of the Veil that the child must follow the caste of the mother and not the father, whatever the latter’s claims, only the offspring of a noble Tuareg woman can be noble. In all[104] other matrimonial combinations the child must be a serf or slave. A slight distinction is sometimes drawn if only the mother is inferior, but it has the effect, at the most, of creating a mixed caste, without admitting the possibility of the child becoming a noble. When the problem arose of finding a wife for the first ruler who had been selected by the Khalif, despite the pre-eminence of his sponsor, tradition prevailed, that he was to be given a slave woman for wife. The arrangement had the advantage of perpetuating the status of the original Amenokal, since his children perforce had to continue in the inferior caste. For political reasons certain exceptions seem to have been made, and the Amenokal, though a serf, was also allowed to marry a noble woman, but in that case her children were not eligible. The marriage of John and Isabel—if she came from the noble Kel Ferwan, and not from Constantinople, as I suspect—may be an instance of such political dispensation. The restriction of the choice of the Amenokal to one of the two branches of the original family, and the force of tradition in regard to his descent, have resulted in the apparent paradox that in order to be Sultan of Agades the candidate has to be a slave. These considerations duly influenced the choice of the present Amenokal, Omar.

Insignificant as his power nominally is, and unimportant as the office may practically be, many of the traditional stories which purport to explain the circumstances attending the Sultan’s elevation to the throne are probably fanciful. They may be accepted but still be fictions in the legal sense. Unless or until Byzantine researches can come to our assistance, the logical explanation, if there is one, must be sought. Shorn of romance, what appears most likely to have happened is that the Tuareg of Air at a certain stage were unable to reach any agreement regarding the selection of a head of the State. They were divided up into groups which their piecemeal immigration had accentuated. But the necessities of trade and caravan traffic made it essential for the common weal to have some sovereign or head, even if he were only a[105] nominal ruler, to maintain foreign relations and transact political business on behalf of the inhabitants of Air generally with the Emirates and Empires of the Sudan. Since none of the principal tribes was willing to forgo the privilege of providing the ruler, the expedient was hit upon of appointing a man whose status would never conflict with the authority of the tribal chiefs within the borders of the country, but who could still be delegated to speak for the whole community with the rulers of the Southland. With all the jealousy that exists among the tribes on the question of relative nobility or antiquity, the only people fulfilling the essentials were of servile caste. The choice of such a man was nevertheless possible among the Tuareg, for neither “imghad” nor slaves are despised or regarded as mere animals. This, I think, is the only explanation of the usage which obtains, that whatever may be the caste of the Amenokal’s children, only the servile ones are eligible. Although the family of the Sultan may include noble persons, it is, as a whole, a servile group in both its branches; it seems that Barth is mistaken in regarding the group as noble. The family may, as he says, be called “Sherrifa,” but probably only on account of its reputed origin. It is not considered any the more noble in the Tuareg sense of the word for all that.[94]

This does not exclude the possibility of the Constantinople Embassy being true, but the explanation I have given of the slave kings of Air seems to be sufficient on its own merits and also reasonable. Every factor in the situation points to the care which was taken to eliminate all possible chances of dispute; even the relegation of the choice to one servile family singled out for the purpose would tend to diminish friction. On the whole the procedure may be said to provide a rational if cynical solution of what has always been a difficult problem in all countries.[95] Inasmuch as[106] the explanation also serves to elucidate a number of other problems, it may be said to receive confirmation.

Thus, the principal Minister or Vizir of the Amenokal is the Sariki n’Turawa,[96] a Hausa term meaning the “Chief of the White People.” The White People are the Arab traders from the north, who themselves call this official the “Sheikh el Arab.” His functions are those of Minister for Foreign Affairs:[97] his duties are to regulate the foreign community of Agades and settle all questions of trade with the outside world. Though originally appointed to deal with the Arabs of the north, he came eventually to have more to do with the Southland. He used to collect the duties on merchandise in Agades and accompany the salt caravans to Bilma, a service for which he received an eighth part of an average camel load of salt. After the salt caravan returned, the Sariki n’Turawa proceeded south with the camels returning to Sokoto, and then went on to Kano. The latter part of his journey had already been discontinued in 1850, but he still accompanies the salt caravan as the representative of the Sultan and nominal leader of the enterprise. In addition to these duties involving foreign relations, he is the Amenokal’s chief adviser and “Master of the Interior of the Palace,” with the Songhai name of “Kokoi Geregeri.” He is also known as the “Wakili” or Chief Agent of the king. The reason for the Chief Minister in Agades being also Minister for Foreign Affairs needs no further comment after what has been said of the Sultan himself and his raison d’être.

Other officials and courtiers round the Amenokal include the Sariki n’Kaswa, or Chief of the Market Place, who collects the market dues and supervises the prices of commodities. There are, besides, police officials or policemen who are also the executioners, and a number of persons called after the class from whom they are chosen, the “magadeza.”[107] The word seems to be a corruption of “Emagadezi,” meaning People of Agades, but has acquired a more restricted meaning, and is commonly applied to a number of rather fat men who are reputed to be the posterity of the attendants of the first Yunis who came from Constantinople.[98]

By virtue of his own position the Amenokal enjoys very little authority. He is used as an arbitrator and Judge of Appeal. In cases where the disputants are both from the same group of clans their quarrel would normally be referred to the head of their aggregation, except amongst the Kel Owi, over whom the Añastafidet is the administrative authority, or court of the second instance; in minor matters the tribal chief can, of course, decide on his own initiative. But in disputes between persons of different tribes who cannot agree on the finding of the chief of either of their factions, the case may be referred to the Sultan, on whose behalf the Kadhi renders judgment. Such functions as the Sultan performs are executed with the consent of the governed. Although all serious cases might be referred to him in theory, in practice his authority has never run in local tribal affairs. He has a common gaol for criminals, used in the first instance for those of the city, but also for such as cannot be satisfactorily punished under the tribal arrangements of a nomadic and semi-nomadic people. There were cases when chiefs of tribes might be, and were, imprisoned at Agades, but then it was because the power behind the throne had so desired it. The Sultan apparently at one time also had a dungeon with swords and spears fixed upright in the floor upon which criminal malefactors were thrown; but already in 1850 it was rarely used.

It cannot be too carefully emphasised that the rule of the Sultan as the elected head of the State of Agades was founded upon the consent of the governed. He is the figure-head of the community and performs the same useful duties which so many heads of more civilised States undertake. The Tuareg have probably never had occasion to discuss[108] the social contract, and the works of J. S. Mill or Rousseau are not current in Air, but nowhere are these theories of government more meticulously carried into effect or do they assume the practical form which they have often lacked in Europe. With all their aristocratic traditions of caste and breeding, the Tuareg have never favoured an established or hereditary autocracy. The government they prefer seems to be a democratic monarchy. Their king is a slave elected by the representatives of certain, at one time doubtless the most important, tribes; he exists and carries out certain functions because the mass of the people desire it so. Authority is not inherited, and even men of inferior caste may become chieftains. The evolution of society has also inevitably rendered the king dependent for support upon the principal men of the country, and the latter upon the smaller chieftains. Where there is much rivalry or where the ruler is weaker than usual the frequent changes and inconsistency inherent in democratic government ensue. Equally the ascendancy of one man’s personality independently of his position may override the voice of the people, but in the absence of organisation or bureaucracy the conditioning factor is efficiency and competence. Tribal leaders are selected because they can lead; when they cease to lead they are deposed.

The unenviable position of the king and his dependence on the influence of the chiefs seem consequently to have been the same throughout the ages. Leo[99] refers to the practice of deposing one king and electing another from the same family who was more acceptable. Bello on the subject has also already been quoted. We have just seen how often and why Osman Mikitan and Brahim changed places. Barth recounts how in his day Abd el Qader was completely in the hands of the Kel Owi, who were represented by the dominant personality of their paramount chief, Annur. His own tribe was not even, as a matter of fact, among those responsible for the selection of the Sultan, but[109] his personality was such that the Amenokal, at his request, or with his support, felt himself strong enough to imprison three turbulent chiefs of the Itesan who were stirring up the people in Agades in favour of a pretender. Yet the Itesan, a tribe of the southern Kel Geres, are the foremost of the tribes responsible for the Sultan’s very election and his maintenance in power. Without Annur’s support, Abd el Qader was powerless.

I think that the persistence of tradition shows how essential the method devised for choosing the head of the community was, and is still considered to be among the Air Tuareg. Even to-day the Itesan retain their predominant voice in the election, though they live in the Sudan and are in part within the border of the country administered by the British Government, and though their king is in French territory hundreds of miles away. They were the deciding factor in the election, after the death of Tegama,[100] of Omar from the collateral branch which lives with them.

Only in rare cases was the Amenokal a leader in war. Muhammad Hammad is an instance in point, but it is clear he was an exceptional man. When raids had taken place or were threatening in such a manner as to affect the people of Air indiscriminately, or where individual tribes might not consider themselves sufficiently involved to occasion reprisals, the Sultan used to lead a counter-raid recruited from several clans and provisioned according to his direction from those groups most capable of supplying the needs. In no case could a Sultan lead a raid against an Air tribe, whether in the north or in the south, unless he had definitely thrown in his lot with a local intrigue, which theoretically would, and usually did, entail his eventual deposition. Within Air the Sultan was neutral, or as we should say “constitutional.” He could only take the field against people like the Aulimmiden of the west, or the Tebu of the east, or the Ahaggaren[110] of the north beyond the borders of his country. As a general rule, however, leading in war was the task of tribal chieftains and not of the king.

The Amenokal does not seem to have had a fixed revenue. He lived principally on the presents given to him by the tribes on the occasion of his accession, and more especially by those tribes which owe allegiance directly to himself. He was entitled to collect a tax on foreign merchandise entering the city and a tithe from certain servile tribes in the southern parts of Air.[101] In addition he had certain perquisites in the shape of judicial fines imposed on individuals and tribes, and a revenue from legitimate trading with Bilma during the great salt caravans.

In considering the history of Agades one cannot fail to be struck by the peculiarity of the site.

Elsewhere in North Africa, where any of the great caravan roads pass through areas of fertility which break up the journeys into sections, towns and cities, in some cases of considerable magnitude, have grown up. Where these settlements are near the margin of belts of permanent sedentary inhabitation, they play the part of termini or ports for the trans-desert traffic. They have become markets and the seats of the transport and produce brokers, a development which has its parallels in Arabia and Central Asia. There are many instances in Northern Africa of such terminal points becoming large and important centres: some of the more active of these “ports,” as they may be called, in the north are Sijilmasa, Wargla, Ghadames, Tripoli, Orfella and Benghazi. Corresponding with them at the southern end of the various roads are Timbuctoo, Gao, Sokoto, Katsina and Kano.[102] In addition to that there are also the true Cities of the Desert. They have arisen in places where caravans can call a halt to rest and replenish food supplies, where water is plentiful, and sometimes also, where these requisites are present, at the intersection of important routes. These settlements are like island coaling stations in maritime[111] navigation, but they are not termini; they are particularly interesting ethnologically, for they often mark the ends of stages where the transport of merchandise changes hands. At these points one tribe or race hands over its charge to another group of people. They are thus entrepôts where goods are discharged and reshipped—not markets, but broking centres where the transport contractors and merchants who live at either end of the routes have their agents. A money market often develops, but the local trade is small, for it is confined to the requirements of the place and immediate neighbourhood. At all costs, either by means of a strong local government or by mutual consent, tribes which elsewhere may be at war with one another must be compelled to meet in peace to pursue their lawful occasions. The essentials for the growth of such centres are invariably the presence of water, pasture and, to a lesser extent, food. Where these factors can be obtained at one definite point only, the centre is fixed, whereas if there are several places all more or less equally convenient for the traffic, the settlement has a tendency to move under the influence of political changes. In Tuggurt, Laghuat and Ghat may be found instances where the centre has been unable to shift on account of geographical conditions; but in the Tuat-Tidikelt area the most important town of In Salah has had many rivals, which have prevented it acquiring the same compactness or prominence as, for instance, the city of Ghat. At the latter place a large permanent water supply in an arid country practically limited the choice of sites to one spot. A commercial city of paramount importance, if of no great size, sprang up in the earliest times and continued uninfluenced by political vicissitudes. As an entrepôt of commerce where there was peace at all times among the local population, where feuds and racial hostility were set aside within its precincts, where free trade was the oldest tradition and where an efficient municipal organisation did not seek to extend its influence far beyond the walls, Ghat developed a government similar to that of an[112] autonomous Hanseatic town. Ghat is the most interesting of all the cities of the desert, but the decline of caravan trade has brought ruin to its people and war among the tribes, which no longer have the material incentive of trade to refrain from fighting.

On the eastern of the two central roads across the Sahara there is a stage where one would expect to find a town like Ghat, for to the south on both these routes there is a tract of desert to be crossed before reaching Kawar or Air respectively. But in the Eastern Fezzan the choice of locality was not restricted by geographical and economic considerations, and Murzuk, as the counterpart in modern times of Ghat, has consequently not always been the most important centre of the area. In early classical times Garama, now known as Jerma, some sixty miles to the north of Murzuk, was the capital of the Garamantian kingdom. When Jerma was destroyed by the Arabs in the seventh century, Zuila, probably the Cillala of the Romans, became the capital of the Eastern Fezzan, maintaining its supremacy even after conquest by the Beni Khattab in the tenth century. When in the fourteenth century the Fezzan was overrun by the people of Kanem the capital again moved, this time to Traghen.

Air is the next stage on the road to the Sudan after crossing the desert to the south of Ghat. The requisites of water, pasture and food are found all over this vast oasis; the principal settlement might therefore be presumed to have changed its site under the influence of politics, and in a great measure this has happened, but the largest settlement in the country, the City of Agades, is comparatively modern and appears to owe its existence to political rather than to economic reasons.

Standing on the north side of the valley which is named after it, Agades is in one sense a City of the Desert, since it lies on the edge of a Saharan oasis. In so far as it is a true desert city at all, it is the greatest of them, but, as we shall see, it has not quite the same characteristics as its smaller[113] rivals. Ghat, before the war, was said to number less than 4000 people, but may have attained double this figure at one time; the population of Murzuk was variously estimated at 2800 by Barth and at 6500 by Nachtigal; Ghadames is believed to have a population of about 7000. But Agades in the days of its prosperity must have contained not less than 30,000 inhabitants.[103] By 1850 the population had fallen to about 7000; ten years ago the number was estimated at 10,000. To-day there are not 3000 people in the half-ruined city, but the numbers are again increasing since the efflux of population after the 1917 revolution. These astonishing variations in population are a normal feature of desert cities, even as they are of harbours and seaport towns where the places are entirely dependent on conditions of trade, which is affected by political change; in the Sahara the mode of life of the surrounding nomads makes these fluctuations even more conspicuous.

None of the considerations governing the site of other desert cities applies to Agades. It lies on the southernmost foothills of the Air mountains, and in the history of the country there has never been any danger of invasion except from the south. Some of the Tuareg, it is true, gradually penetrated Air from the north, and pushed south by the progressive occupation of the northern mountains, which the original population may not have been sufficiently interested or numerous to occupy and defend. Small raiding parties can always enter the country, but it is certain that with even inconspicuous opposing forces the success of an invading army approaching Air from any direction except the south is out of the question, owing to the difficulties of moving large bodies of men over the appalling desert which separates the plateau from Ahaggar or the Fezzan. The same conditions obtain in the east, and to a great extent in the west also. On the south only is the position rather[114] different. The steppe desert between Air and Damergu is neither so waterless nor so pastureless nor so deep as to preclude military operations from that direction. In point of fact Air was invaded on at least one occasion from that side with conspicuous success.[104] It is therefore anomalous that the capital of the country should have been located on the fringe of the mountains, where every road is defensible, in possibly the most vulnerable position which could have been chosen.

Nor is the explanation to be found in such economic necessity as has dictated the choice of site in other examples of desert cities. Agades is some distance from the great north-south road which runs, and always has run, east of the Central massif of Air, leaving the country on its way to the Sudan at the water of Eghalgawen or Tergulawen. An alternative route to the Sokoto area branching off the main road in Northern Air and descending by the Talak plain and In Gall passes some distance west of the city. No caravan road suitable for heavily-laden camels passes through Agades for the north, owing to the barrier of the Central massifs, through which the tracks are difficult even for mountain-bred camels. The old pilgrim road from Timbuctoo to Cairo enters the western side of the Air plateau at In Gall or further north, and passes to Iferuan and so to Ghat without touching Agades. Ibn Batutah’s route shows that this was so in his day, as it certainly has been the case since then. Caravans from the south crossing the Eastern Desert for Bilma pass across Azawagh to the eastern fringes of Air without going to Agades, which would involve a detour, as was explained in referring to the importance of the well of Masalet.[105]

[115]While the trade routes of the country do not, therefore, provide an adequate justification for the choice of the site, climatic or geographic conditions have equally little bearing, for there are a number of points in Air where the pasture is good and where there is sufficient water to supply the needs of a large settlement. At Agades, as a matter of fact, the water is indifferent; while the surrounding gravelly plain, like the rest of the valley, is only covered with scanty vegetation, the neighbouring Telwa valley contains some pastures, but they are not abundant, and camels in the service of the local merchants have to be sent to feed as much as three or four days distant.

If the conditions which had led to the growth of a city in Air had been of a purely economic order, it might have been anticipated that it would have occupied the site of Iferuan, the first point south of Ghat where a permanent settlement with plentiful water, pasture and land fit for cultivation was possible. So convenient is the Iferuan valley that caravans, in fact, usually do rest there for long periods to allow both men and animals to recuperate after the difficult stage to the north has been negotiated. Or, again, a city might have stood at the eastern end of the River of Agades at the north end of the stage across the Azawagh, although this position would have been less dictated by necessity than the first alternative, since the steppe desert of the south cannot be compared for hardship with the northern waste. It would nevertheless have been convenient, if somewhat exposed to raiding parties, as a point for the concentration of caravans crossing the Eastern Desert to Bilma, or in other words at the branching of the Salt Road and the north-south route. On its present site, Agades is out of the way for travellers from any direction who may be bound beyond the city. Some other explanation must then be found, and it occurred to me only when I had reached the city itself.

The fact of the matter is that Agades is not the capital of Air at all. As we have seen, the city is not the seat of[116] the central government because there is no real central government, and the King who lives there is not really King at all. Agades is only the seat of an administration set up in the first instance to deal with exterior affairs, and more especially those connected with the Southland. These affairs were in the charge of a figure-head ruler unconnected, except to a very minor degree, with the internal problems of the Tuareg tribes. When this is once grasped, Agades assumes a different position in the perspective of history and it becomes apparent that the site is really suited to the purpose for which it was intended. The place where the city lies is neutral as far as the tribes of Air are concerned; it has easy access to the Sudan yet is removed from the main roads, which are considered the property of certain groups of clans. But it follows that the character of the city must inevitably partake rather of the south than of the Sahara.

Finally, there is the most conclusive evidence of all; during the early part of the Tuareg occupation of Air, there was no city of Agades at all; it fulfilled no need despite the caravan traffic. It was presumably not founded when Ibn Batutah travelled through Air, for he makes no mention of the name; although this is negative evidence, it is valuable in the case of so observant a traveller. By 1515, when Askia conquered the Tuareg of Air, Agades, however, was certainly in existence, since it is on record that he occupied the city for a year, “sitting down north of the town,” possibly at T’in Shaman. Marmol, moreover, is quite definite on the subject, saying that the city was founded 160 years before he wrote, a date which has been reckoned at 1460 A.D.[106] We know that the first Sultans of Air did not live at Agades, but by inference it may be supposed that they soon came to do so, so that the date suggested is probably correct. With the advent of a figure-head king there sprang up a figure-head capital. The story of Agades is the story of its kings: the explanation of both is similar.

[117]What seems to have struck Barth most about Agades was that the people spoke Songhai and not Temajegh; it was, in fact, one of the few places left where the language of the greatest Empire of the Niger still survived. There is reason to believe that most of the Emagadezi are not of Tuareg race at all. The Songhai element is probably preponderant even now, four hundred years after the conquest of Agades by the Songhai king, Muhammad Askia, who planted a colony there. The face veil has been adopted universally, but the physical type of the inhabitants is much more akin to that of people of the south than to that of true Tuareg. The descendants of the Songhai conquerors are coarse, broad-featured people with dark skins and untidy hair, which is an abomination among the noble Tuareg. The same characteristics reappear among the inhabitants of certain points west of Agades on the south-western outskirts of Air, where the Songhai element is also known to have become established and to have survived. The people of Agades are hardly even considered as natives of the country by the rest of the inhabitants of Air. They are not classed as a group, like the inhabitants of other settlements in the mountains. It is rarer to hear the “Kel Agades” mentioned than it is to hear such exotic compositions as “Kel es Sudan” or “Kel Katchena.” The people of Agades are more usually spoken of as the “Emagadezi,” in much the same way as the Kanuri in the Air dialect are called “Izghan” and the Tebu “Ikaradan.”

The family of the Sultan is foreign in appearance. The physiognomy of Abd el Qader, who wore the white face veil usually associated in the north with servile caste, was not, as far as could be seen by Barth, that of a Tuareg. His corpulence was equally a foreign peculiarity, despite which Barth considered him “a man of great worth though devoid of energy.” The personality of the present Sultan, Omar, has already been described; his dark skin and coarse features betray a very mixed ancestry. These peculiarities are not unexpected in a family descended through slave women, who may, of course, be of any race.

[118]The different races and languages of Agades would be interesting to study in greater detail. The name Terjeman, given to one quarter of the town, is evidence in the estimation of its inhabitants of the Babel which has occurred. Temajegh, Hausa, Kanuri, Songhai and Arabic are spoken; even the more exceptional Fulani, Wolof and Tebu are heard, while the advent of the French garrison with its negro troops has introduced further linguistic complications, and will, of course, in time accentuate the Sudanese element in the racial composition, for at no time do the morals of the ladies of Agades appear to have been beyond reproach. The consequences of city life are felt even here in the Sahara. The forwardness of the ladies so moved Barth to indignation that he discoursed at considerable length on the standards of conduct which should be observed by Europeans in these far countries towards native women. He no doubt owed much of his success to the respect in which he held the feelings of the people among whom he travelled. Rather than provoke criticism, he recommends explorers to take their own wives with them. A few pages further on, describing his journey through the Azawagh, he is again referring to advances of the Tuareg women of the Tegama. One appreciates his resentment at these importunities, but is inclined to speculate on the true inwardness of his thoughts. On one occasion at least his artistic feelings rather than his sense of propriety seem to have been offended, for he writes: “It could scarcely be taken as a joke. Some of the women were immensely fat, particularly in the hinder regions, for which the Tawarek have a peculiar and expressive name—‘tebulloden.’”

THE ORGANISATION OF THE AIR TUAREG

On 6th August, soon after noon, I marched out of Agades with twenty-six camels and eight men for Central Air. My two travelling companions had left the same morning with ten camels in the opposite direction, bound for a point called Tanut[107] near Marandet in the cliff of the River of Agades. Some men of the Kel Ferwan, who were camped under the cliff south of the river, had brought information concerning a lion. At Marandet, it appeared, a cow had been killed and the trail of the offending beast was plainly visible; notwithstanding, Buchanan was unable to secure this lion or any specimen, or even a skull, so it proved impossible to classify the animal.

Circumstantial evidence goes to show that the lion still exists in Air, but is nevertheless very rare. In the Tagharit valley, a few miles north of Auderas, there is a cave in the side of a gorge which a large stream has cut through a formation of columnar basalt: a pink granite shelf makes a fine waterfall in the rainy season with a pool which survives at its foot all the year round. A lion used to live in this den until recent years, when it was killed by the men of Auderas because it had pulled down a camel out of a herd grazing in the neighbourhood. The carcase had been dragged over boulders and through scrub and up the side of the ravine into the lair; a feat of strength which no other animal but a lion could possibly have accomplished. When I came to the overhanging rock the ground was fœtid and befouled, and the skeleton of the camel was still[120] there and comparatively fresh. One of the men of Auderas who had been present at the killing secured a claw as a valuable charm; another had apparently been severely mauled in the shoulder. They had surrounded the “king of beasts,” as the Tuareg also call him, and had attacked with spears and swords. There was no doubt of the animal having been a lion.

The cave in the Tagharit gorge is a short distance from the point[108] where Barth[109] saw “numerous footprints of the lion,” which he conceived to be extremely common in these highlands in 1850, albeit “not very ferocious.” In 1905 a lioness trying to find water fell into the well at Tagedufat and was drowned; her two small cubs were brought into Agades, and one of them was afterwards sent to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.[110] This lion, however, may not have been of the same variety as the Air species, for the latter is said never to have been scientifically examined.

The Air lion has been described as a small maneless animal like the Atlas species, though von Bary, who, however, never himself saw one, heard that it had a mane. He confirms the report that the animal was common, as late as in 1877, especially in the Bagezan massif, where it used to attack camels and donkeys.[111]

The advent of the rains during the latter part of July made travelling through Air in many ways very pleasant. But there were also disadvantages. With the first fall of rain the flies and mosquitoes came into their own again. The common house-flies were especially trying during my journey north of Agades. They infested the country miles from any human habitation or open water.

South of Agades the rains proved a terrible burden. The combined onslaughts of flies, mosquitoes and every other form of winged and crawling insect made life intolerable for Buchanan’s party; meals had to be eaten under[121] netting and naked lights were rapidly extinguished by incinerated corpses. Camels got no rest. Even the hardened natives had recourse to any device to snatch a little sleep. They went so far as to make their beds in the thorny arms of small acacia trees in order to escape the plague. The alluvial plain of the River of Agades had become so soft as to be almost impossible to cross. Mud engulfed the camels up to their bellies. The drivers used to unload them and push them bodily over on to their sides at the risk of breaking their legs in order to let the brutes kick themselves free. The several stream beds of the system, even if not too swollen to be completely unfordable, had such perpendicular banks where the water had cut its way down several feet below the surface of the ground that they became formidable obstacles. The constant threat of rain made long marches impossible, though it was abundantly clear that the longer the time that was spent in the valley the worse the ground would become. Buchanan was rewarded for his disappointment at not finding a lion by securing near Tanut two fine specimens of ostrich and an ant-bear. He also reported the existence near Marandet of a cemetery in the bank of a stream bed. It was unfortunate that he had not time to examine this site, as it seems to be an example of urn burial, probably of pre-Tuareg date.[112]

Half a day’s march from Agades brought me to the village of Azzal on the valley of the same name, the lower part of which is called “Telwa,” the most convenient name for the whole of this important basin. Azzal and the neighbouring Alarsas[113] are small settlements with a few date palms and some gardens. They were formerly inhabited only by serfs engaged in cultivating the gardens which supply Agades with vegetables. After the 1917 revolution in Air the noble population of certain villages[122] in the Ighazar, which was evacuated, settled there temporarily under their chief, Abdulkerim of T’intaghoda. They were living in straw and reed huts, hoping in the course of time to return north and resume possession of the more substantial houses in their own country. During my stay in Air several families did, as a matter of fact, go back to Iferuan and Seliufet. But the presence of the remainder of these Kel Ighazar in the south is somewhat anomalous, as the country from the earliest times has been almost exclusively inhabited by servile people. The area, extending over the foothills of the main plateau, is not yet, properly speaking, Air, in the sense in which the name is used by the Tuareg. Like the desert further south, it is called Tegama.

After following the Telwa for a short distance the track crosses to the left bank and winds over low bare hills and torrent beds. A little before reaching Solom Solom there is a wooded valley which the road leaves to cross a stretch of higher ground by a small pass covered with the remains of stone dwellings, the site, I presumed, of Ir n’Allem. The track is evidently very old at this point, for in places it has worn deep into the rock. The country is wild and picturesque, but the earth-brown hills are fashioned on a small scale. The district used to be infested by brigands who preyed on the caravans bound to and from Agades.

The southern part of my journey followed the usual route, though Barth on his expedition from T’intellust to Agades travelled both there and back by an alternative track rather further east in the Boghel valley and via Tanut Unghaidan, which is not far from Azzal, where he rejoined the more habitual way.

At Dabaga my road from Solom Solom rejoined the Telwa valley and crossed the stream bed after a short descent into a basin covered with dense thickets of dûm palms and acacias. The trees were filled with birds. The river was in full flood, over a quarter of a mile wide and some two feet deep—an imposing stream draining south-western[123] Bagezan and Todra into the River of Agades. I was luckily able to cross it with my laden camels, but some travellers only a little behind me were held up for several days by the floods which followed the heavy rain in Central Air. Travelling at this season of the year is slow, as camp must be pitched before the daily rains begin, usually soon after noon. On the other hand, it is very convenient to be able to halt anywhere on the road regardless of permanent watering-points; for every stream bed, even if not actually in flood, contains pools or water in the sand.

Climatically Air is a Central African country. It is wholly within the summer rainfall belt, the northern limit of which coincides fairly accurately with the geographical boundary of the country at the wells of In Azawa. The rains usually commence in July, and last for two months, finishing as abruptly as they have begun. Within the limits of the belt, the further north, the later, on the whole, is the wet season, though great irregularities are observed. In Nigeria the rains fall during May and June, at Iferuan they occur in August and September.[114] They are tropical in their intensity, and in Air nearly always fall between noon and sunset.

During my stay at Auderas there were a few days when the sky was overcast for the whole of the twenty-four hours, with little rainfall; the damp heavy feeling in the air reminded one of England, as the atmosphere was cold and misty. On one particular day it rained lightly and fitfully for fourteen hours on end with occasional heavy showers. Such phenomena, however, are rare. Precipitation follows a north-easterly wind and usually lasts three or four hours; as soon as the westerly wind, prevalent at this season, has sprung up, the nimbus disperses rapidly, leaving only enough clouds in the evening to produce the most magnificent sunsets that I have ever seen.

[124]In 1922 the rainy season at Auderas was virtually over by the 10th September, though it continued a little later in the north. The rains were followed by a period of damp heat, and then by some days when the ground haze was so thick that visibility was limited to a few hundred yards. Until recent years there seems to have been a short second rainy season in the north of Air coinciding with the first part of the Mediterranean winter precipitation. In November near Iferuan I experienced several days on which rain appeared to be imminent, but none fell. Natives told me that up to three or four years previously they had often had a few days’ rain in December and January. In 1850 the last rain of the summer season, which, exceptionally, had begun as far north and as early as 26th May at Murzuk, was recorded on 7th October, but in November and December after a fine period the sky had again become overcast, and a few drops of rain actually fell in Damergu on 7th January, 1851. The cycles of precipitation in the Sahara are constantly varying and data are as yet insufficient to permit any conclusion. It would be quite incorrect, from the accounts of the last ten years alone, to suppose that the rainfall had markedly diminished, or that the second rainy season had disappeared.

During the rains the larger watercourses meandering among the massifs of the country often become impassable for days on end, which is inconvenient, for in ordinary times they are the channels of communication. Owing to the lack of surface soil and vegetation on the as yet undisintegrated volcanic rock, streams fill with surprising rapidity during the rains and are very dangerous for the unwary traveller. The great joy of these weeks was the freshness of the air after the intolerable heat of June and July, especially in the plains. With the rain too came the annual rebirth of plant life, which made one’s outlook very sweet. In European spring-time Nature awakes from winter sleep, but in Africa a new world, fresh and green and luxurious, is born after the rains out of a shrivelled corpse of sun-dried desert.

[125]At Dabaga I was persuaded to forsake the caravan road which continues up the Telwa and take a riding road by Assa Pool and the T’inien mountains. Difficulties began at Assa, when I tried to pitch my tent on rocky ground, with the result that it was almost impossible to keep it erect in the rain squalls which followed. The evening, after the rain, was unsatisfactory. I wounded two jackals at which I had shot, but did not kill either. I missed several guinea-fowl and only secured a pair of pigeons among the dûm palms of the valley. Also, there were many flies. However, I made the acquaintance of one of the greatest guides in Air, Efale, who overtook me on his way north, and camped near me. He talked volubly that night. Next day, after dropping sharply into the T’inien valley by a narrow defile, the road became frankly devilish. At the bottom of the steep sides the soil is impregnated with salt, which effectually prevents anything growing. There are a number of circular pits where the sandy salt, called “ara” or “agha,” is worked. The mixture is dried in cakes and sold in the south for a few pence. It is only fit for camels, which require a certain amount of salt every month, more especially after they have been feeding on fresh grass. “Ara” can only be used for human food if the sand has been washed out and the brine re-dried.

After leaving Assa the vegetation had almost entirely disappeared. Low gravel-strewn hills on the right obscured the view to the east. The T’inien valley soon made a right-angle turn to the north, closing to a narrow cleft, which became even rougher. The track was a series of steps between huge granite and quartz boulders, among which the camels kept on stumbling. Their loads required constant readjustment and there was no room to kneel them down. The way was really only fit for unloaded camels or riders on urgent business. There had not been a tree or bush for hours. We climbed some 600 feet in about a mile, almost to the very top of the jagged peaks on the left that marked the summit of the T’inien range. By 11.15 a.m. I was beginning to despair of finding a camp[126] site before the rain was due, as I foresaw a similar unpleasant descent on the other side of the col which had so long been looming ahead. Then as I reached the gates of the pass a view over the whole of Central Air suddenly burst upon me in such beauty as I can never forget.

The ground sloped imperceptibly to the east. It fell away only about a hundred feet to the north, where a row of small crags, the continuation of the T’inien range, cut off the western horizon. Straight in front in the distance, piled mass upon mass, the blue mountains of Central Air rose suddenly out of the uplands, soaring into the African sky. Between the bold cliffs and peaks of the Bagezan mountains and the long low Taruaji group to the right, a few little conical hills of black rock broke the surface of the vast plain which rolled away to the east. From so great a distance the plain seemed tolerably smooth, veined like the hand of a man with watercourses winding southwards from the foot of the mountains. Black basalt boulders covered the flat spaces between lines of green vegetation and the threads of white sand, where the stream beds were just visible. Over the whole plain the new-born grass was like the bloom on a freshly-picked fruit. To the south-east stood the blue range of Taruaji itself, flat-topped and low on the horizon. Either side of the hills the curve of the world fell gently away towards the Nile.

I camped a mile or so north of the pass in a valley below the precipitous cliffs of a rock called Okluf, which has a castellated crown several hundred feet high. The rocks shone blue-black, with their feet in a carpet of green that seemed too vivid to be real. There were plenty of guinea-fowl and many other birds in the palm woods and thorn groves, and such grass as I thought only grew in the water meadows of England. I shall never forget the beauty of Central Air on that noonday in the rains, though I have it in me to regret the fiendish temper in which the day’s march had left me. The flies in the evening and the fast-running things upon the ground at night only made it worse. I had hurriedly and laboriously pitched a tent, and it never rained after all.

[127]On the following day I ascended the T’ilisdak valley which flows into the Telwa, and reached Auderas village, where some huts had been prepared for us by the chief Ahodu, a man who soon became my most particular friend. The T’ilisdak valley is renowned for its excellent grazing and for some mineral springs where men, camels and herds go after the rainy season to take a “cure” of the waters.[115] Near Okluf there are the remains of several hut villages, and some with stone foundations of a more permanent character. They belong to a servile tribe of Southern Air called the Kel Nugguru, who at present are living somewhat further west.

Air proper may be said to begin at the head of the T’ilisdak valley. The part of the plateau I had traversed was therefore still in Tegama, which includes the whole area south of Bagezan and Todra as far as the River of Agades, as well as the Taruaji massif, but not the country east of the latter and of Bagezan. Most of the villages in Tegama have gardens, and some have groves of date palms. That they are inhabited by serfs is, of course, natural, since the cultivation of the soil, in the estimation of the noble Tuareg, is not a worthy occupation for a man. When, however, in a nomad society agriculture is relegated to an inferior caste of people, it is inevitable that the practice should undermine the older allegiances. It becomes possible for the settled and therefore originally the servile people to accumulate wealth even in bad times when the profit from raiding or caravaning is denied to the upper classes of Air. The social effects of the disruption caused by the 1917 revolution may be observed in the village organisations, where people of different tribes are now tending more and more to live in association under the rule of a village headman, who for them is displacing the authority of their own tribal chiefs. The village headmen,[128] it is true, are sometimes themselves the leaders of the tribes in whose area the village is situated, but more often they are merely local men acting on the delegated authority of the tribal chief, who in Tegama is probably the head of an Imghad or servile tribe dependent in turn upon some noble tribe living in a different part of Air. But in time the population of a village may become known collectively as the people of such and such a place, and so reference to the old tribal allegiance of the inhabitants disappears.

Tuareg tribal names deserve close investigation. They are of two categories: those which begin with “Kel” (People of . . .) and those which begin with “I” or sometimes “A.” This “I” or “A” may be quite strongly pronounced, but often represents the so-called “neutral vowel,”[116] which is very difficult to transliterate. Thus the word “Ahaggar” might as correctly be written “Ihaggar”; the initial vowel indeed is so little emphasised that the French have come to write simply “Hoggar” or “Haggar.” On the other hand, in the name Ikazkazan, an Air tribe, the “I” is marked; in the Azger tribe, again, the Ihadanaren, it is so lightly accentuated that Barth writes “Hadanarang.” This point, however, is of little moment: what matters is the question of the type of prefix to the name. To simplify reference I propose to call these two types “Kel name” and “I name” tribes. After examining the two categories at length, a distinction seemed to me to stand out clearly; I believe it holds good among other Tuareg as well as those of Air. The primary tribal divisions have names of the “I” category, except in certain cases where they are nearly always known to have been forgotten; the subdivisions of these tribes have “Kel names.” The former are proper names; the latter are derived either from the place where the people usually or once lived, or from some inherent peculiarity. The word “Kel” is also used to cover generalisations of no ethnic importance: the “I name,” on the other hand, is[129] scarcely ever geographical or adjectival. The generalisation will be clearer for a few examples, chosen among the Air tribes. The noble tribe called Imasrodang has for sub-tribes the Kel Elar, Kel Seliufet and Kel T’intaghoda, called after the villages where they lived in Northern Air. Again, the Ikazkazan have one section or group of sub-tribes called the Kel Ulli—the People of the Goats—who are themselves subdivided into other factions bearing “Kel names.”

Certain other “Kel names” like Kel Ataram or Kel Innek are often heard in Air, but are not proper names at all; they were erroneously regarded by Barth as tribal names, but simply mean the “People of the West” and the “People of the East” respectively, and have no inherent ethnic significance. In Air the former term logically includes, and is meant to include, the Arab as well as the Tuareg tribes of the west.[117]

So clear is this use of geographical “Kel names” that we shall find repeated instances later on of tribes who, having migrated from a certain area, retain their old names, though these are no longer applicable to their new ranges. Take, for example, the Kel Ferwan—the People of Iferuan, in North Air; they now live in the southern parts of the country. Or, again, there are two Kel Baghzen, called after a mountain group in Central Air; the one group is still in that area, the other, which once lived there, has since migrated to the country north of Sokoto.

In certain forms the word “Kel” corresponds to the Arabic word “ahel,” but the latter seems more usually employed in connection with wide geographical indications of habitat, without much ethnic significance, like Kel Innek. The use of this type of “Kel name” is the exception rather than the rule in Temajegh and has a colloquial rather than traditional sanction. The more common “Kel names,” on the other hand, are definitely individual tribal[130] names, and refer to small areas. They are not by any means restricted to sedentary tribes.[118]

A third category of names commencing with the “Im” or “Em” prefix is regarded by Barth[119] as virtually identical with the “Kel” class, but this is not quite accurate. The “Im” prefix is used to make an adjectival word form of place names; the “Kel names” only become adjectival by prefixing “People of . . .” Thus “Emagadezi” would be more correctly translated as “Agadesian” than as the “People of Agades,” whose correct designation is Kel Agades. “I names” partake of neither of these characteristics. For the most part their significance remains unexplained. It follows that “Kel names,” although proper to the tribes that bear them, being descriptive or geographical, are certainly not so old as the individual and proper “I names.”

There are examples of tribes which have lost their “I names” and are only referred to by a “Kel name,” though in many cases this is more apparent than real. When a tribe with an “I name” increases until the point is reached where it subdivides, one of the subdivisions retains the original “I name,” the remainder take other and, usually, geographical appellations. This process might be shown graphically:—

[131]This difference of nomenclature has a definite bearing on the difficulties of co-ordinating sedentarism and nomadism in one people, which must have occurred to everyone who has studied the problem in administration. The exact relations between a village headman, the tribal chiefs of the persons who are living in his village and the tribal chief of the area in which the village is situated cannot be defined. One set of allegiances is breaking down and another has not yet been completely formed. This was already going on in Air when the position was complicated by the advent of a European Power demanding a cut-and-dried devolution of authority, and tending to encourage sedentary qualities in order to prevent raiding. These problems in Air to-day are almost insoluble, but they are of an administrative rather than of an anthropological order.

Auderas at the present time is probably the most important place in Air after Agades. As an essentially agricultural settlement it is an excellent example of the village organisation. The valley of Auderas lies about 2600 feet above the sea. Seven small valleys unite above the village and two affluents come in below, draining the western slopes of Mount Todra and a part of the Dogam group. The main stream eventually finds its way out into the Talak plain[120] under various names. The sandy bed of the valley near the village contains water all the year round. Both banks are covered with intense vegetation, including a date-palm plantation of some thousand trees. Under the date palms and amongst the branching dûm-palm woods, where the thickets and small trees have been cleared or burnt off, are a number of irrigated gardens supplied with water from shallow wells. Some wheat, millet, guinea corn and vegetables are grown with much labour and[132] devotion. Onions and tomatoes are the principal vegetables all the year round, with two sorts of beans in the winter. Occasionally sweet potatoes and some European vegetables like carrots, turnips and spinach are grown from seeds which have been supplied by the French. Pumpkins do well and water melons are common. There is also a sweet melon. Three different shapes of gourds for making drinking and household vessels are cultivated. Cotton is found in small quantities, the plant having probably been imported from the Sudan. Its presence in Air is interesting, as in 1850 Barth had placed the northern limit of Sudan cotton in the south of Damergu. The cotton plant does very well when carefully irrigated and produces a good quality of fibre. Two samples which I brought home from Air were reported on respectively as: “good colour, strong, fairly fine 1³⁄₁₆ staple,” and “generally good colour, staple 1³⁄₁₆-1¼ inches, strong and fine”; the materials were respectively valued at 20·35 and 21·35 pence per pound when American May Future Cotton stood at 17·35 pence (May 1924).[121] The Tuareg spin their cotton into a rough yarn for sewing or making cord, but in Air they do not seem to weave. The indigo plant grows wild in Air: it is not cultivated, nor is it used locally for dyeing.

The gardens require much attention and preparation. The ground is cleared and the scrub burnt off as a top dressing. The soil is then carefully levelled by dragging a heavy plank or beam forwards and backwards by hand across the surface. The area is divided up into small patches about six feet square with a channel along one side communicating with a leat from an irrigation well. These wells are usually unlined and shallow, with a wooden platform overhanging the water on one side; on this a rectangular frame is set up with a second cross member carrying a pulley over which a rope is passed. An ox or[133] a donkey pulls up the big leather bucket by the simple process of walking away from the well, returning on its tracks to lower it again. The bucket is a tubular contrivance, the bottom of which is folded up while the water is raised; when it reaches the level of the irrigation channel, a cord is pulled to open the bottom of the leather tube and the water allowed to run out. The other end of this cord is attached to the animal, and the length is so adjusted that the operation is performed automatically each time the bucket comes to the top. The pole and bucket with a counterweight and the water wheel are not known in Air for raising water; nor are any dams constructed either to make reservoirs in ravines or to maintain a head of water for flow irrigation in the rainy season. Each little patch in the gardens is hoed and dressed with animal manure. The seed is planted and carefully tended every day, for it is very valuable. Barth records seeing at Auderas a plough drawn by slaves. This was clearly an importation from the north; the plough is not now used anywhere in the country, which at heart has never been agricultural.

As in the south, millet and guinea corn are sown during the rains, but they usually require irrigation before they reach maturity. In certain areas rain-grown crops could be raised most years. In the past a fair amount of cereals seems to have been produced in this way; to-day the Tuareg are too poor to risk losing their seed in the event of inadequate or irregular rainfall. Although the wheat grown in the Ighazar used nearly all to be exported to the Fezzan, where it was much in demand on account of its excellent quality for making the Arab food “kus-kus,” Air at no time has produced enough grain for its own consumption. In the economics of Air necessary grain imports are paid for by the proceeds of wheat sales or live-stock traffic with the north, and by the profits of the trade in salt from Bilma; these provide the means of purchasing the cheaper millet and guinea corn of Damergu. Any additional surplus, representing annual savings, is invested[134] in live-stock, especially camels, within the borders of the country.

The breakdown of the social organisations of the Tuareg in Air compelled numbers of nobles out of sheer poverty after they had lost their camels and herds to cultivate the soil; before the war not even the servile people were very extensively so employed if they could find enough slaves to do the work.

Neither the advent of a European Power nor the subsequent changes in the social structure of the country has had very much effect on the position of slaves in Air. Of these there are two categories,[122] the household slave and the outdoor slave, and both of them are chattels in local customary law. The former are called “ikelan,” the latter “irawellan,”[123] or alternatively “bela,” “buzu” or “bugadie,” which, however, are not Temajegh words, but have been borrowed from the south. The term “irawel” is also used generically to cover both categories of slaves, although it primarily refers to the latter. In the use of this word Barth[124] makes one of the few mistakes of which he has been guilty, where he states that the most noble part of the Kel Owi group of tribes in Air is the “Irolangh” clan, to which the Amenokal or Sultan of the Kel Owi belonged. The paramount chief of his day, Annur, belonged to the Kel Assarara section of the Imaslagha tribe, which is probably the original and certainly one of the most noble of the Kel Owi, for it includes the Kel Tafidet, who gave their name to the whole confederation. The traveller’s mistaken reference to Irawellan or Irolangh is[135] probably due to his having been informed by a member of some non-Kel Owi tribe that Annur and all his people were “really Irawellan,” or servile people. Such abuse of the Kel Owi is common among the other Air Tuareg. It is certainly not justified in fact, and is due to the contempt in which an older nobility will always hold more recent arrivals.[125]

The negro slaves, the Ikelan, are primarily concerned with garden cultivation, and are consequently sedentary. One half of the produce of their labour goes to their masters and the other half to support themselves and their families. Ikelan also perform all the domestic duties of the Tuareg to whom they belong, and herd their masters’ goats and sheep if they happen to be living in the same neighbourhood. A certain proportion of the offspring of the flocks is also given to the slaves. Since, primarily, they are cultivators of the ground, they do not move from place to place with their owners. They consequently often escape domestic work and herding. Despite their legal status they are in practice permitted to own property, though, if their masters decided to remove it, they would be within their rights to do so. In other words, the theoretical status of slavery which makes it impossible for a chattel to own property has been considerably modified, and not as a consequence of the altered conditions, or of the legislation of a European Power, but because slavery among the Tuareg never did involve great hardship. Their slaves, furthermore, always had the hope of manumission and consequent change to the status of Imghad or serfs, a rise in the social scale which, in fact, often did occur. It was in slave trading and not in slave owning that the Tuareg sinned against the ethical standards which are usually accepted in Europe, and obtained so unenviable a reputation last century.

Herding live-stock, and especially camels, is the primary function of the outdoor slave or Buzu. Though often also a negro, he is considered to possess a somewhat higher[136] status than the Akel, for he does not as a rule work in the house or village. The Buzu’s work, if on the whole less strenuous than that of the tiller of gardens, is felt to be more manly because he is associated with camels. He travels with nobles or Imghad, to either of whom he may belong. He does all the hard menial work on the march. He is responsible especially for herding the camels at pasture and for loading and unloading them each day on the road. Such duties as filling water-skins, driving camels down to water, feeding them on the march and making rope for the loads, all fall to his lot. The Buzu may even accompany his master’s camels on raids or act as personal messenger for his lord. When the camels are resting he spends his days watching the grazing animals, or looking after any other herds which his master may own in the neighbourhood. On the whole I have found the Buzu a remarkably hard-working person. He is almost useless without his master to give him orders and to see that they are carried out, but ready to undertake any exertion connected with his work, which he regards as his fate, but not his privilege to perform without complaint.

It is difficult to determine whether there is any racial difference between the Buzu class, the tillers of gardens, and the ordinary household slaves. The first are more respected than the last, which may mean that they are more closely related in blood to their masters. The practice of concubinage, though not very widespread, has probably created the caste, and from them, in time, a certain proportion of the Imghad. While theoretically the children of a slave concubine and a Tuareg man ought to be “ikelan” like their mother, in practice they tend to rise into the superior caste of the Buzu, and eventually in successive generations to Imghad. In Air at least the general tendency is for the old-established caste distinctions to become more elastic and for the ancient order to pass away. Although the events of the last twenty years have contributed greatly to this change, the strongest factor has certainly been the[137] increasing wealth of the Imghad, but another reason is probably that many Imghad tribes in Air were themselves originally Imajeghan before their capture in war or their subjugation by some means. Consequently with the dissolution of tribal allegiances in Air and enhanced prosperity they have tended to revert to their former status. They cling so tenaciously to nobility of birth that, rather than accept the logical results of inferiority consequent upon defeat in war, the people collectively combine to admit the fiction of servile people possessing dual status.

The presence of more than one racial type among the Imghad has led certain travellers to make quite unjustifiable generalisations about this section of Tuareg society. There have also been advanced numerous and most unnecessarily complicated theories to account for the division of the race as a whole into these two castes. The problem is really much simpler. Although by no general rule can it be said that the Imghad originally belonged to this or to that people, they are all clearly the descendants of groups or individuals captured in war and subsequently released from bondage to form a caste enjoying a certain measure of freedom, and having a separate legal or civil existence under something more than the mere political suzerainty of the noble tribe which originally possessed them. In this first stage, the noble tribe represents the original pure Tuareg race, while the oldest Imghad are the first extraneous people whom they conquered, in some cases perhaps as early as in the Neolithic ages. “It is necessary,” says Bates,[126] with great justice, “to state emphatically that the division into Imghad and Imajeghan is so ancient that the Saharan Berbers preserve no knowledge of its origin.” This antiquity may be held to account for the complete national fusion which has taken place among the two castes: nearly all Imghad would utterly fail to grasp a suggestion that they were not to-day as much Tuareg as their Imajeghan overlords, however they may dislike and abuse the latter.[138] As time went on more and more Imghad were added to the race, each group being subject to the noble tribe responsible for its conquest. The possibility of a group of people becoming the Imghad of an Imghad tribe was precluded by the relations obtaining between serfs and nobles, whereby it is the sole prerogative of the latter to wage war or make peace. Should an Imghad tribe capture slaves in war they could not be manumitted except by the Imajegh tribe, the lords of the victorious Imghad; and by the act of manumission the newly-acquired slaves would then become the equals of their Imghad conquerors under the dominion of the Imajeghan concerned.

The Imghad of Air may be divided into three categories whose history is so intimately bound up with the noble tribes that it cannot be considered separately. There are the Imghad whose association with their respective Imajeghan dates from before their advent to Air; their origin must be looked for in the Fezzan or elsewhere at some very early date. Secondly, there are the Imghad who were the original inhabitants of Air before the Tuareg came, and who by some agreement at the time, like the traditional one of Maket n’Ikelan,[127] were not enslaved but allowed to continue living in the country side by side with the new arrivals in a state of vassalage or semi-servitude. Lastly, there are the Imghad who are either Arabs, Tuareg of other divisions, or negroids from the south captured in the course of raids from Air, in some cases as recently as a generation ago. With these different origins it is not surprising to find among the Air Imghad both a strongly negroid type, a non-negroid and non-Tuareg type, and a type showing the fine features and complexion characteristic of the Imajeghan themselves. The first type is the pre-Tuareg population of Air. It is the most common, if only for the reason that negroid characteristics always appear to be dominant in the cross-breeding which ensued. The second type represents the Arab or Berber element acquired by[139] conquest. The third type represents the subjugated groups of Imajeghan of other divisions.[128] Of the latter category are, for instance, the Kel Ahaggar, Imghad of the Kel Gharus, who were originally nobles from the great northern division of the Tuareg. Many of the Kel Ferwan Imghad are believed to be Arabs or Tuareg of the west, captured comparatively recently on raids into the Aulimmiden territory. The Kel Nugguru are the freed slaves of the Añastafidet, the administrative head of the Kel Owi confederation: they have become so prosperous that they are now laying claim to be of noble origin, a pretension which no right-minded Imajegh in Air will admit for a moment. But it is almost impossible nowadays to trace the history of each Imghad tribe in detail. Generally, in the absence of more precise data, it may be assumed that those Imghad tribes which have “I names” are the oldest; for here the process of assimilation to the mass of the Tuareg race is most complete, either on account of the length of their mutual association or owing to the fact that they were originally themselves of the same race; the “Kel name” Imghad, on the other hand, are probably more recent additions.[129]

The confusion reigning on the subject of the “Black” and “White” Tuareg in the minds of the few people in Europe who have ever heard of the race is due to the practice in the north of the servile wearing a white, and the nobles a black, veil. But a “Black” Tuareg, being a noble, will, in the vast majority of cases, have a much fairer complexion and more European features than a “White,” or servile Tuareg. In Air the colour of the veil affords no means of distinguishing the caste of the wearer. The[140] best veils, being made in the south, are consequently cheaper in Air than in the north, and this is probably the reason why Imajeghan and Imghad alike in Air wear the indigo-black Tagilmus. When a white veil is seen, it usually means that the wearer is too poor to buy a proper black one and has had to resort to some makeshift torn from the bottom of his robe.

Slaves, domestic or pastoral, do not wear the face veil at all. This is the essential outward difference between them and the Imghad. The latter, whatever their origin, are considered to be a part of the Tuareg people; the former cannot be so, for they are simply accounted to belong, as camels do, to the People of the Veil.

The exact status of the Imghad, or “meratha” (merathra) as they are called by the Arabs in Fezzan, is somewhat difficult to define. There is no adequate translation in any European language of the word “amghid.”[130] The process of their original enslavement and subsequent release to form a category of people who have achieved partial but not complete freedom has, I think, no parallel in Europe except in a modified form in the state of vassalage. Yet, as “servile” conveys too narrow and definite a relationship, so “vassal” is certainly too broad a term. In the state of servility or, to coin a word, “imghadage” to which the pre-Tuareg inhabitants of Air appear to have been reduced, the process of enslavement and release may be said to have taken place only as a legal fiction, and not, if the tradition is to be accepted as accurate, in real fact. The general practice seems to have been that when large groups of people were subjugated or captured in war they were simultaneously released into the state of imghadage, but when individuals or a few persons were acquired by force or by purchase, they were only manumitted in the course of time, if at all, and incorporated at some later date into an Imghad tribe or village already in existence.

In contradistinction to slaves, the Imghad are not bound[141] individually, but collectively, and not to individuals, but to a noble tribe or group of tribes. They are in no sense considered to be the property of the latter; but the relationship is closer than that of suzerain and vassal. It is not within the power of an Imghad tribe to change its allegiance, since in the first instance its members were theoretically at least the property of its overlord tribe; they owe their separate existence to an act of manumission freely and voluntarily accomplished. A change of allegiance could occur only if a servile tribe were captured in whole or in part; it follows that when this has occurred one servile tribe might owe allegiance in several parts to different noble groups.[131] The bond between them consists of the right of the responsible noble tribe alone, and therefore of its chief, to administer justice among the dependent Imghad, either in small cases by tacitly confirming the verdict of their own headman, or in more weighty matters by express reference. The Imghad tribe may be fined or punished collectively by their lords, and would have no right to appeal to the Amenokal without permission. For the Amenokal to interfere on behalf of an Imghad tribe would constitute a breach of tribal custom and ensure a rebuff, if not worse. A certain proportion of the marriage portions payable in the Imghad tribes goes to their Imajeghan, who have the right to give or withhold consent to these contracts. One of the functions of the Imghad is to take complete charge of and use the camels of their lords for long periods or to trade with them on their behalf. In such cases the Imghad act as the agents of the nobles, each one of whom has a right to ask the servile tribe as a whole to undertake these duties. But such obligations are imposed collectively on the tribe and not on any one Imghad. It is the custom to share the offspring of the camels thus herded in equal shares, though in the event of any of the animals dying whilst under the charge of the Imghad, the[142] latter are collectively responsible for making good the loss, save in extenuating circumstances. Conversely, the nobles are, in every case,[132] the protectors of their dependents. The relations between Imghad and Imajeghan are a mixture of those obtaining under the feudalism of Europe and the “client” system of Rome.

A consequence of the interruption of caravan traffic and the disappearance of one of the principal sources of revenue of the noble Tuareg is that the Imghad as camel herders, and generally speaking as the more laborious members of the community, have gained where the nobles have lost.

Prosperity is emancipating the Imghad, and is materially assisting the breakdown of social distinctions which in time will survive only in the philosophic contemplation of the Imajeghan dreaming idly of the return of better days. The Imghad tribes used to be the unquestioning allies of their overlords in war; their numbers contributed greatly to the strength of any Imajegh tribe. Though they might not make war on their own initiative, the Imghad carried and still carry weapons.[133] They used to go on raids with their masters, or, if the Imajeghan were busy elsewhere, represent them with their masters’ camels and the weight of their own right arms. But the chiefs of the Imghad were never more than subordinates, or at the most advisers to the nobles.

To-day this unquestioning subservience has almost disappeared and we even find Khodi, chief of the Kel Nugguru, disputing with the noble Ahodu the leadership of the village of Auderas. This issue was one of great importance in local politics and originally arose out of the disputed ownership of certain palms which had been given to Ahodu when he was installed as head of the village as a reward for service rendered by him to the Foureau-Lamy expedition. The[143] village is on the edge of the Kel Nugguru country, while Ahodu in fact comes from a northern tribe, the Kel Tadek, who have no real concern with this district. The impossibility of reconciling the tribal and settled organisations was clearly demonstrated in every aspect of this controversy. Khodi, living as a nomad with his people and camels at some distance from the village, sought, without success, to govern the community through various representatives, while Ahodu, who had given up wandering, was suspended by the French during the settlement of the legal case, and sat in the village watching mistake after mistake being made. Under the old system Khodi could never have pretended to dispute with a noble the position of chief of a large village: in fact an Imghad tribe without a protecting noble overlord would have been unlikely to administer a village at all. Similarly among the Ahaggaren Imghad of the Kel Gharus, a man of servile origin, Bilalen by name, has come to share with T’iaman the lordship of a once noble people of the north, a position of such importance that he is regarded as one of the most influential chiefs in Air. Bilalen has only become associated with the Ahaggaren by marriage; he could never have achieved even this, much less could he have attained so powerful a following in the country, under the old régime.

In addition to the social distinctions between nobles and serfs, the Tuareg attach great importance to tribal classification. Among the inhabitants of the mountains a man will describe himself as, say, “Mokhammad of the Kel Such-and-such of the Kel Owi,” or of the other category, which is called the “People of the King,” as the case might be. These two great tribal divisions (there were three before the departure of the Kel Geres for the Southland) will be referred to in detail when the history of the migrations of the Air Tuareg is considered. The divisions are absolute; a tribe either is of the Kel Owi or is not of the Kel Owi. There is usually never any doubt; the erroneous attribution of a man’s tribe to the Kel Owi confederation would[144] provoke the indignant rejoinder that his clan were “People of the King” and did not “belong (sic) to the Añastafidet.” The distinction means all that the difference between an ancient landed nobility and a parvenu commercial aristocracy denotes. Many of the older men of the “People of the King” go so far as to say that there are no nobles among the Kel Owi at all.[134] Apart from their slightly different ethnic origin, the principal reason why the Kel Owi have stood apart from the other tribes is that they possess an administrative leader of their own who represents the whole confederation; as they say, “he speaks for them to the Amenokal at Agades.” He is called the Añastafidet, the Child of Tafidet. The non-Kel Owi tribes, on the other hand, have no single leader other than the king; in their case each tribal chieftain transacts the business of his own tribe with the former independently of the other chiefs.[145] For them the Amenokal of Air assumes the dual function of nominal ruler of the whole country and of direct overlord of certain tribes.

In accordance with the democratic traditions of the Tuareg, the Añastafidet,[135] like the Sultan, is elected. He must be a noble, but need not always be chosen from the same family. He is elected for a period of three years, but his tenure of office is really dependent upon a yearly revision by the Kel Owi tribes when they concentrate in the autumn to go with the salt caravan to Bilma. The tribal groups mainly responsible for the choice are the Kel Tafidet and Kel Azañieres; the Ikazkazan, being the junior group of the confederation, have little voice. The Añastafidet’s badge of office[136] is a drum; he retains no authority on leaving office, though it entitles him to a certain degree of respect, and leads to his being consulted on State matters. In practice if the Añastafidet is reasonably capable he is confirmed in power for a succession of three-year periods. During the last fifty years there have been in all about six Añastafidets; one, I think the last holder of the office, is at present living at Zawzawa in Damergu. The Añastafidet’s official place of residence was at Assode in Central Air, but since the evacuation of the north he has been living at Agades in direct touch with the Amenokal. His principal duties are to represent the confederation at the Court of the Sultan and maintain the freedom of transit through Air and Damergu for caravans, on which the prosperity of the tribes depends. Trade with the north and the position of the Kel Owi in Air astride the great caravan road which passes from north to south, east of the Central massifs, have in effect combined to place the foreign relations of all the Air people with Ghat and the Fezzan in the hands of the Añastafidet, business with the potentates of the south, on the other hand, being, as has already been stated, in the hands of the Amenokal at Agades. The[146] breakdown of the trans-desert traffic during the war deprived the Kel Owi of most of their prosperity and the Añastafidet of his work.

The Añastafidet was assisted in his duties by four agents, two of whom dealt with local business, while the other two lived in the Southland to assist the Kel Owi tribes in their transactions there. Neither the Añastafidet nor his agents ever seem to have received a salary, and the former at least was expected to give munificent presents, but no doubt their official positions brought perquisites which compensated for any outlay. As in the case of the Sultan, the importance of the Añastafidet’s office depends entirely on the personality of the holder. When von Bary visited the country, Belkho, chief of the Igermaden tribe, living at Ajiru in Eastern Air, thanks to his military prowess and political wisdom, was the de facto ruler of the whole country. His relations with the Amenokal were strained, even though he had him more or less under his influence; the Añastafidet had become of so little moment that he is only once mentioned by this traveller.[137] In Barth’s day, when Air was under the domination of Annur, another Kel Owi chief of the same type, the Añastafidet was a mere shadow in the land.

The Añastafidet doubtless represents the surviving functions of a Kel Owi Amenokal. The restriction of his duties was probably the result of a compromise arrived at when the Kel Owi entered Air and found an Amenokal already established in the country, supported by the Kel Geres and the various tribes known as the “People of the King.” The more intimate inter-tribal relations between the various units of the Kel Owi confederation and the organisation of the “People of the King” will be referred to hereafter in detail.

The system by which the Kel Owi have an administrative leader who seems to have practically no warlike or judicial functions has in no way modified the tribal or social organisation[147] of the confederation. As in the case of all the Tuareg tribes, other than those which have become entirely sedentary, the government of each unit, large and small, is patriarchal and similar to that of Bedawin tribes. The chief of a noble tribe is the leader in war and the dispenser of justice in peace. The functions are not necessarily hereditary. In council with the heads of families he exercises authority over the Imghad tribes associated with his clan, through the chiefs of these servile groups in the manner already described. The council of the heads of families is of great importance, but plays an advisory rather than an executive part. The heads of families rule their own households, including their slaves.

Within ill-defined limits, certain tribes are grouped together under a common leader known as the “agoalla” or “agwalla.” This usually occurs in the case of tribes which are nearly related to each other. Three groups in the Kel Owi division have already been mentioned; in two of these, the Kel Tafidet and Kel Azañieres, the office of “agoalla” is said[138] to be hereditary, but I have been unable to find any confirmation of this except in so far as the son of a man who, by his personal ascendancy, has secured control over more than one tribe, would probably more easily step into his father’s shoes than another person. The grouping of tribes may also occur for military reasons, but in such cases it has a tendency to be of a temporary character. It is best to assume that the tribe is the unit of Tuareg society and that the tribal chiefs are the elements of which their Government is constructed. “Agoallas” are an exotic form principally due to individual personality or temporary conditions prevailing over long-standing customs.

Tribes sometimes group themselves into temporary or permanent alliances. The former probably spring from military exigencies, the latter may be due to common origins in the recent past. Such aggregations as the Kel[148] Azañieres and Kel Tafidet in the Kel Owi tribes are so obviously due to common tribal origins that they require no further examination. But the Kel Owi confederation in Air plays a far larger rôle than do mere tribal alliances. Here is no mere question of relationship or community of origin, but a more strict bond, which, however, cannot be defined. Such groups as these have been termed confederations, though the term is a little misleading, as no unity of government is implied. The origin of the confederation, which carries with it more moral than material obligations, is to be explained by the entry of the Kel Owi tribes into Air as a mass of people confronted by an already established hostile or at least jealous population of the same race as themselves. It followed that the new arrivals would tend to hold together and act with one another. The conditions of the confederation nevertheless have been such that the representative is only an administrative head and not a ruler. He is there to embody a common policy and to dictate one. Loose as these bonds have been they have served the Kel Owi in good stead, for their commerce has gained by co-operation at the expense of their rivals, the “People of the King,” who in the absence of any organisation have been forced to rely on the fickle ties of common jealousy. How far there are groups or confederations like the Kel Owi within the larger northern division of Azger or Ahaggar I cannot say, but the former are a confederation as the people of Air generally never have been.

Much has already been said of the status of the Tuareg men and their tribal organisation, but before it is possible to consider their family life, the method they follow in tracing their descent must be described. A man’s status, in Air, as elsewhere among the Tuareg, is determined by the caste and allegiance of his mother. Survivals of a matriarchal state of society are numerous among the People of the Veil. They colour the whole life of the race. A woman, they say, carries her children before they are born,[149] and so they belong to her and not to the father. “After all,” as one of them said to me when we had been discussing this question for some time, “when you buy a cow camel in calf, the calf is yours and not the property of the man who sold the camel to you. It is the same with women,” he added; and he seemed to me to have some show of logic. Our medieval (and perhaps modern) lawyers would have said instead, “partus sequitur ventrem,” but he would have meant the same as my Tuareg friend. If a woman marries a man in her own tribe the children, of course, belong to that tribe, but if she marries away from her people they belong to her own, and not to her husband’s clan. In this case, were the husband to predecease his wife, the children and their mother would return to live with her tribe. If the father survives, the children usually go on living with him for a time, but as they belong to their mother’s tribe in any event, they eventually return there. Should inter-tribal hostilities break out they must leave their father and fight for their mother’s tribe, even against their own parent if need so be. Until this is understood the relationships of the Tuareg appear very puzzling to the traveller. When I first met Ahodu he informed me that he was of the Kel Tadek people, who are Kel Amenokal, but he had a half-brother and a paternal cousin who belonged to the Añastafidet. It appears that the fathers of Ahodu and Efale, the famous eastern guide, were brothers of a man in the noble Kel Fares of the Kel Owi confederation. Ahodu’s father took a wife from the Kel Tadek, so the son became a member of the latter tribe, whereas Efale’s father married within the confederation. The maternal allegiance is so strong that, though proud of his father’s repute as a holy man and representative of the fifth generation of keepers of the mosque of Tefgun near Iferuan, Ahodu used to speak of the Kel Owi in disparaging terms when comparing their recent origin with the antiquity of the Kel Tadek and the other “People of the Amenokal.”

[150]The following examples of definite cases may assist in understanding the position:

1. A man of the noble Kel Tadek marries a woman of the noble Kel Ferwan. The children are Kel Ferwan, but will live with the father until his death or the divorce of the mother, when they return with her to her own tribe.

2. A man of the noble Kel Tadek married a woman of the Imghad of the Kel Ferwan. The children will normally be Imghad of the Kel Ferwan.

3. If a man marries a slave woman of another tribe, this woman has become the property of the husband’s tribe by his purchase or payment of the marriage portion, and the children belong to the father. This occurred in Ahodu’s case. One day the Kel Gharus came over and stole eight slaves belonging to the Kel Tadek, who proceeded to retake them. The slaves in question were Kanuri people of Damagerim. The Kel Gharus appealed to the religious court at Agades, which awarded four slaves to each tribe. Later two of those allotted to the Kel Gharus ran away to the Kel Tadek, who were allowed to keep them on the ground that they had been ill-treated by their former masters. One of these two women Ahodu married, and his son is considered to belong to his own clan and not to his wife’s former tribe. In this case Ahodu nevertheless had to pay some compensation to the former masters of his wife.

The derivation of tribal allegiance through the female line has carried in its train the consequence that a man or woman’s social status is always determined by that of the mother. But the restricted number of noble women, the deference and respect paid to them, and the impossibility of taking them as concubines have combined to diminish the numbers of Imajeghan as compared with the Imghad. The hard-and-fast rule among all the Tuareg, that nobles can only be born of a noble mother irrespective of the caste of the father, has done much to preserve the type and characteristics of the race. In recent years the custom has tended to break down, for where a noble father,[151] who has taken unto himself a servile wife, is sufficiently powerful to assert himself he will often succeed in passing off his sons and daughters as Imajeghan. Ahodu has done so with his boy; but had this been impossible the child would have been accounted of the Irejanaten or mixed people. The old laws of succession are said by von Bary to have become especially slack among the Kel Owi, but even here the status of noble women has remained so unassailable that it would still be impossible to-day for them to marry outside their own class.

The laws of inheritance and succession also show the strength of the matriarchal tradition. Although hereditary office is rare among the Tuareg nowadays, it seems to have been more frequent in the past.[139] Ibn Batutah states that the heir of the Sultan of Tekadda was the son of the ruler’s sister.[140] Similarly of the Mesufa who were Tuareg, he records that descent is traced through the maternal uncle, while inherited property passes from a deceased man to the children of his sister to the exclusion of his own family.[141] The traveller adds that nowhere except among the infidel Indians of Malabar did he observe a similar state of things.[142] Bates thinks that Egyptian records tend to show that the succession of the chieftainship of the Meshwesh Libyans passed in the female line. The genealogy of many of the kings of Agades is recorded by their female parentage. The Tuareg of Ghat not only treat their women-folk in much the same way as their brethren further south, but Richardson specifically states that the succession of the chiefs and Sultans of those parts is similar to the practice of the Tekadda house and at Agades. It is the son of the[152] sister of the Sultan who succeeds.[143] It seems clear that before the advent of Islam, which has tended to modify the system, the Tuareg had a completely matriarchal organisation. In this earlier state of society may perhaps be found the explanation of the reputed Amazons of the west of North Africa, recorded by Diodorus Siculus in a grossly exaggerated version of some story which he had probably heard concerning the status of certain Libyan women.[144]

I know of no reason to suppose that these matriarchal customs were derived from association with the negro people; the reverse is quite as likely to have occurred, as the culture contacts of North Africa, following the trend of migration, seem to have taken a course from north to south and not the opposite direction.[145] The matter is one of great interest,[146] for the matriarchate is found in a highly developed state in Ashanti, and it would be of interest in connection with the origin of this people to learn if the system can be traced to a common origin.[147] I cannot agree with Barth’s[148] conclusion that the descent of the Sultan of Tekadda “is certain proof that it was not a pure Berber State, but rather a Berber dominion ingrafted upon a negro population, exactly as was the case in Walata,” where he cites the case of the Mesufa. Moreover, this remark is in contradiction with his previous assumption,[149][153] to wit: “With respect to the custom that the hereditary power does not descend from the father to the son but to the sister’s son . . . it may be supposed to have belonged originally to the Berber race; for the Askar (Azger), who have preserved their original manners tolerably pure, have the same custom. . . . It may therefore seem doubtful whether . . . this custom belonged to the black native,” with which statement I am decidedly inclined to agree. The problem, however, is one which I prefer on the whole to leave to qualified anthropologists.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS

By constantly seeing the same people for nearly three months at Auderas and in the neighbourhood, I was able to dissipate much of the innate diffidence which the Tuareg display in their relations with Europeans. Language always remained a source of difficulty. An interpreter is never satisfactory, more especially if he belongs to a people whom the Tuareg at heart really despise, while real proficiency in a language cannot be attained in so short a time as I had at my disposal. By the end of my stay in Air I had acquired a sufficient knowledge of Temajegh to be able to travel comfortably with a guide speaking only that language, and to collect a considerable amount of vicarious information, but never at any time was I able to discuss really abstruse questions. At Auderas I was lucky enough to find that Ahodu, the chief of the village, had a working knowledge of Arabic which was almost as indifferent as my own; but we both made up for lack of grammar by volubility. The local “inisilm,” or holy man, named El Mintaka, was a Ghati who had been settled for fifteen years in Air, where he had taken a Tuareg wife. He, of course, spoke Arabic in addition to Temajegh, and acted as scribe to Ahodu, who could neither read nor write. With these two men in the village, with my servant Amadu, a Fulani soldier who had served with distinction in the West African Frontier Force during the war, and had a working knowledge of English and Hausa, which most of the Air Tuareg speak, and with my interpreter Ali, a man from Ghat, I found myself quite at my ease.

This Ali ibn Tama el Ghati had lived for some years in Kano and had travelled all over the Central Sudan. He[155] was small and very black, but constantly cheerful and as clever as a tribe of monkeys. Somewhat of a rogue unless watched, he was tireless and devoted, and proved to be one of only two natives who, after I had been obliged to return home, completed the whole journey with Buchanan. He was one of the original race of Ghat, now called the Atara, who were there before the Tuareg and Berbers came. Ali spoke no English, but was loquacious in Hausa, Temajegh and Kanuri; he also spoke some Tebu and Fulani, in addition, of course, to Arabic. His especial joy was to wear many different combinations of gay clothes for periods of about ten days at a time. He would then change his apparel and adopt another disguise until the novelty of appearing as a Tuareg or a Hausa or an Arab in turn had worn off.

On reaching Auderas I took up my residence in some huts which Ahodu had prepared on the edge of a diminutive plateau between the main bed of the valley and a secondary affluent. The area between the valleys and ravines which intersected the little plain was bare, but the sides of the valleys were covered with vegetation. About a hundred yards away across a steep gully was Teda Inisilman, the House of the Holy Men, the smallest of the three hamlets which together make up Auderas. On the other side of the main stream bed, where the water-holes of the village were dug in the sand, lay the larger hamlet called Karnuka, containing the house of El Mintaka. The third settlement was a few hundred yards further down-stream. These hamlets were all built of reeds and palm fronds, but the little plain was covered with what proved to be the ruins of stone houses, many of which were inhabited until 1915. Teda Inisilman is the village of the nobles where Ahodu and the only other three Imajeghan families of the place lived, together with their own dependent Irawellan and Ikelan, and the Enad or smith, a most important person in Tuareg society. Down-stream of Teda Inisilman and Karnuka lay the date-palm groves and most of the gardens;[156] there were a few above our camp also, in a side valley and in the main bed under a huge mass of overhanging rock resembling the keep of a fortress rising high above the sheer side of the stream. To the south were only dûm palms and the rugged hills, called Tidrak,[150] which formed the further edge of the valley. Elsewhere the ground was more open. Down-stream to the west were the low Mafinet and T’ilimsawin hills, joining on to the T’inien peaks north of the point where my road had emerged from among them on the way from Agades. To the north the ground rose over a low ridge to the Erarar (plain) n’Dendemu, the Taghist plateau[151] and the distant peak of Dogam.[152] The glistening black domes of the Abattul and Efaken peaks were rather nearer, on the far edge of the Auderas valley itself. A few miles north and north-east, this basin reached to the foot of the mountain group of Todra, which towers 3000 feet and more above the valley to a total height of about 5500 feet above the sea. The rounded sides rose out of a bed of green and yellow to a crest of bare red rock at the top. The mountain used to change colour all day, a whitish gleam off the rocks at high noon giving place to blue-black shadows under storm clouds and in the evening. At sunset it seemed to glow vivid red from within. It is one of the most beautiful mountains in the world. The Tuareg regard Todra and Dogam as one group, but separate from the Bagezan Mountains, and this is certainly the case. They are reckoned among the five principal massifs of Air, the others being Taruaji in[157] the south, Bila or Bilet north-west of Todra, and Tamgak which includes the Azañieres, Tafidet and Taghmeurt ranges in the north.

The advent of Europeans in Auderas caused a certain amount of excitement, but the novelty soon wore off as the routine of life was resumed. I was welcomed by Ahodu’s wife and other persons with a present of fresh dates, which were then ripening,[153] and newly-made cheese, known as T’ikammar, which is excellent food. The Tuareg live very simply and take so little trouble about their food that for Europeans it is almost uneatable. The staple diet is milk and cheese, but the more sedentary people eat locally grown or imported grain. The millet is pounded in a mortar as in the south and cooked with water, making a sort of porridge; but whereas in the Hausa countries this “pura,” or “fura” as it is called, can be quite palatable when seasoned or eaten with meat, the Tuareg in Air are too poor and too lackadaisical to dress it in any way. They often even forget to add salt, and without it the mess is peculiarly nasty on account of a certain glutinous consistency which it acquires. The finer flour obtained from the millet after it is pounded is also mixed with water and dry powdered cheese and drunk uncooked as very thin gruel; the dry cheese gives it a sour taste to which in time one gets used, and then it becomes really rather refreshing if one is thirsty. It is much better on the march for the stomach than large quantities of plain water. The drink is called “ghussub” in the south; it is often the sole means of sustenance of a Tuareg travelling quickly without baggage or when a scarcity of fuel makes it impossible to light fires. In the place of millet, guinea corn is also eaten; it is pounded and baked in embers into a heavy tasteless cake which is slightly more edible than millet porridge. The best food in Air is undoubtedly the wheat “kus-kus” of the Arabs and Berbers in the north: it is made in the same way by grinding wheat[158] into rough flour, and then steaming and rubbing it until it forms grains about the size of small barley. It is carried dry and can be prepared by boiling in water or stock for a short time. It has the great advantage of requiring very little fuel to cook it. With no other adjunct than a little salt it is very good indeed. During the latter part of my stay I lived almost exclusively on kus-kus and rice, with hardly any meat, but as many vegetables as I could procure. When neither millet, guinea corn nor wheat is available, the Tuareg collect the seeds of various grasses and grind them, notably of the grass called Afaza and of the prickly burr grass. The former is a tall grass with stems of such strength that they are used when dry with a weft of thin leather strips for making the stiff mats which are spread upon their Tuareg beds. The stalks grow as much as five feet high; the grass is dark grey-green when fresh, or yellow when dry. The burr grass is fortunately rare in Air. One can only be thankful that Nature has found some useful purpose in this damnable plant as food for the Tuareg.

Of all the Tuareg food their cheese is best. It is usually made of equal parts of sheep’s or goat’s and camel’s milk, but any of them alone will do. The rennet is obtained from the entrails of the goat; the curds are pressed in matting made of dûm-palm fronds and formed into cakes about 4 in. × 5 in. × ¾ in. thick. The fresh cheese is pure white and soft, but nevertheless crisp; it is delicious with dates or with any other form of food, for it has no sour or “cheesy” flavour. It dries yellow and hard and is carried about by all Tuareg as a staple commodity, but in this state requires soaking or crumbling before use, and acquires rather an unpleasant sour smell. Butter is made of goat’s or sheep’s milk, churned in bottle-shaped gourds or in small skins. It is not bad mixed with kus-kus or rice or in cooking, but indifferent on bread or biscuits. Meat is very little eaten, for it is a luxury. But even when an animal is slaughtered and divided up the Tuareg do not[159] seem capable of turning it into a very edible dish. They neither roast nor fry; they either stew their meat in a pot with vegetables or with millet porridge, or on the march broil it in the hot sand under the embers of a fire until it becomes shredded. If ever there is a surplus supply of meat, it is preserved by soaking in brine and drying in the sun strung on cords.

The preparation of food in the villages is done by the women, on the march by the “buzu,” or, where there is no slave present, by the youngest member of the party, whatever his caste or status, so long as he has not reached his majority. When there are no minors or slaves an Amghid does the work, but where all are of the same caste, the duty reverts once more to the youngest member of the party. The most arduous function is preparing the millet flour. Nowadays the millet is almost invariably pounded in a mortar with a long pestle, and the meal is then graded and separated from the husk and other impurities by shaking it with a circular motion on a flat tray. The mortar and long pestle, which is used by men and women standing up and working alone or pounding rhythmically with one or more companions, is certainly a southern invention; the wooden pestle is double-headed and some 3 feet long; the mortar is cut out of one piece of wood and stands about 12 inches high. The indigenous and more primitive fashion is to grind grain on the rudimentary saddle-stone quern, a form which has been preserved unchanged since prehistoric times. A large flat stone is placed on the ground, and the person grinding the wheat or millet kneels by it with a basket under the opposite lip of the stone to catch the flour as it is made. The wheat or other grain is poured on to the flat stone and crushed by rubbing it with a saddle-stone or rounded river pebble about the size of a baby’s head, held in both hands and worked forwards and backwards. As the grain is crushed the flour is automatically sorted out and pushed forward into the basket in front, the heavier meal remaining on the flat stone. These querns[160] may be seen lying about all over Air on all the deserted sites; the lower stones can readily be recognised by the broad channel which is worn along their length. Except for wheat, which is too hard to be pounded, they have largely been discarded in favour of the handier mortar and pestle. I do not think a more widespread use of the quern necessarily indicates that wheat was more extensively eaten than millet in olden days nor yet that agriculture was formerly more pursued than nowadays. The explanation of the fact is merely that pounding grain in a mortar was found a simpler method in a country where millet was the staple cereal and the consumption of wheat a luxury. Moreover, the Northern Tuareg when they came to Air were probably less familiar with millet than with wheat, and only modified their habits and utensils after they had settled down.

Though certain wild herbs are employed for medicinal purposes, I know of none which is used in cooking. Besides Afaza and the burr grass, several other seeds or berries are used by the more nomadic Tuareg for food; there are said to be some twenty odd varieties in Air which ripen at various times of the year. The Abisgi (Capparis sodata) leaf has a biting taste and is sometimes used as a condiment; the tamarind does not grow so far north; limes are found only in Bagezan, and are rare. Dates are eaten fresh, or are preserved by soaking them for a short time in boiling water, and pressing them into air-tight leather receptacles, which are then sewn up. The practice of drying dates and threading them on a string is resorted to in Fashi and Bilma but not in Air.

Food is cooked in pear-shaped earthenware pots of red clay. The vessels are only half baked when they are manufactured, principally in the Agades neighbourhood, and have to be fired before they can be used. They are plain and unornamented, with a lip or rim round the mouth, which is bound with a cord to prevent cracking. More elaborate pitchers with a blue design are used for[161] liquids, since the universal calabash of the south is comparatively rare in Air.[154] These pots are also made near Agades. The designs appear to be of local origin. The Sudanese jars and pots with bands of geometric design in straw-coloured slip and blue pigment are not used in Air. Many small pots for inks, spices and condiments are found in the houses of Northern Air: black and red pottery is used for such vessels and for saucers and little bowls. With the exception of what may be termed the “grape design” (Plate 22), none of the pottery is very remarkable. The pots used in the urn cemetery at Marandet seem to have been shaped like the common cooking-pot or with a slightly more round appearance: they are reported to have stood in saucers or plates. None of the pottery is wheel-turned.

Auderas being essentially a sedentary and servile community, did not contain many characteristic noble Tuareg. Neither Ahodu nor his wife represents the fine physical type of the race, for he is of somewhat mixed parentage, having, according to his own tradition, some Arab blood in his veins, while she is a Kanuri woman. Among the Tuareg, as in all races, it is hard to find the absolutely pure type. I came across one or two examples, and must count myself lucky to have seen so many. I was never able to confirm the story one had so often heard of Tuareg with blue eyes, but such accurate observers have recorded this feature that its occurrence must be admitted. In Air it must certainly be most uncommon; nowhere is it the rule; light brown and grey eyes, however, are not unusual, nor is it rare to see hair which is not so much black as dark brown and wavy; it is never crinkled or “fuzzy” unless there has been an obvious infusion of negro blood. Very fair skins, as fair as among the people of Southern Europe, are comparatively frequent, but the transparent white skin of the North is not known: no deduction can be drawn from this, as skin pigmentation is notoriously[162] unreliable. Fair skins are held by the Tuareg to represent the purest type: a range of every shade to the black of the negro occurs. The Tuareg of Air differentiate the colouring of people somewhat arbitrarily: they call the pure negro “blue,”[155] but the dark-brown Hausa, “black”; the Arab is always “white,” whatever shade of bronze he happens to be; the Tuareg himself is “red,”[156] which is the most complimentary epithet he can apply to others. Fairness of complexion is much prized and is a social distinction, though when carried to such extremes as among Europeans it is apt to be regarded as strange and odd. Certain tribes in Air are reputed, even among the Tuareg, to be more than usually fair. When von Bary was in Air his acquaintances seem to have chaffed him about his celibacy; they offered to find him a woman of the Iwarwaren tribe, for, they said, she would match his own complexion.[157] Once on a time in Auderas I dressed completely as a Tuareg, a disguise which was not difficult, for I had grown a full dark beard and was very deeply sunburnt all up my arms and legs from wearing a sleeveless tunic, diminutive shorts and no shoes or stockings—the ideal garb for hot weather and an active life. I rode into the village on a great white camel by a circuitous path: the people were puzzled about my identity, and some, as I was later told, decided from the colour of my limbs that I came from the Igdalen tribe. It was typical of the Tuareg that they eventually recognised not me, but my camel, and so guessed who I was.

In spite of the occurrence of many fair-skinned people, it must be admitted that the vast majority of Imajeghan and Imghad in Air are comparatively dark, yet these Tuareg are among the purest of their race. Their skin pigment seems to have changed before other characteristics.[163] The darkness of their complexion in Air is accentuated by the prize set upon indigo clothing, which is so impregnated with dye that it wears off on the skin of the proud owner, whose ablutions are conspicuously infrequent. The Tuareg does not believe in washing unless it is absolutely necessary, and he avers that an indigo-stained skin is good protection against strong sunlight, which may or may not be true. In justice to my friends, I must admit that they washed their clothing, especially their white trousers, very frequently, and when they washed their person, they did so very thoroughly from head to foot, with much rubbing and a prodigious splashing of volumes of water.

The beauty and grace of their bodies are the principal characteristics of the Tuareg. They are tall, more commonly in the neighbourhood of six feet than shorter. They look much taller owing to their flowing robes. When at rest they have little superficial muscular development; their bodies are not corrugated and knobbly like the powerfully built Latin: they are more like Nordic folk in that their limbs and backs are smooth until exerted, when the muscles stand up hard and tough. Their arms and legs are long and shapely and exceedingly graceful; they never have flaccid or cylindrical limbs like Abyssinians or certain Indian races. Their bones are small. They have wrists and ankles as slender as a woman’s; it is noteworthy that whatever the degree of negro admixture this sign of high breeding is the last to disappear. It is a most infallible mark of pure Tuareg parentage. With it, of course, go slenderness and refinement of hands and fingers. The men never grow fat: they are hard and fit and dry like the nerve of a bow, or a spring in tension. Of all their characteristics the one I have most vividly in mind is their grace of carriage. The men are born to walk and move as kings, they stride along swiftly and easily, like Princes of the Earth, fearing no man, cringing before none, and consciously superior to other people.

Grace and mystery are added to their appearance by the[164] veil over the face and by their long black robes, which are called “takatkat.” They are of plain indigo black cotton stuff, and though some are embroidered on the breast, the old-fashioned men shun such ornament as ostentatious. More rarely their robes are white. Their dress, to be in good taste, must above all be simple. Silk is hardly known and not in great demand: plain native cloth made up of many narrow slips sewn together to the desired width is esteemed superior to the European sorts. Buchanan had brought for presents an indigo stuff of excellent quality, made in Lancashire and better than anything of the sort that could be bought in Kano. It was much appreciated, but as it had a thin white stripe in it, not a single man would wear it for a dress. They gave it to their women for skirts. Broad Moslem trousers called “takirbai” are worn beneath the robe; they are always of white cotton. Sometimes a tanned goat or sheep skin is worn around the loins below the trousers, more especially in bush country where burr grass is very prevalent.[158]

The best sandals used to be made in Agades only, but since the emigration of so many craftsmen from Air they can now also be procured in Kano, and more cheaply. They are of a shape peculiar to the Tuareg and are much in demand all over the Sahara. The form is pleasing: it is wide and round under the toes, slender under the instep, and at the heel, and just broad enough to carry the weight of the body. They are made of two thicknesses sewn together with neat white raw-hide stitching; the top piece is of red leather with a stained black border: the lower piece is of raw hide. Two red straps from the sides level with the instep join a thong, which passes under the top leather and is fastened between the two thicknesses of the sole in order to protect the sewing from wear on the ground. The thong is slipped between the big and second toes; the red straps pass over the breadth of the[165] foot to the sides of the sandal. The heel is free. It is the ideal footwear in sandy country, as nothing can collect on the surface and rub the foot. I wore nothing else for nine months and can vouch for the comfort of these sandals. They are usually made in two sizes[159]; the correct pattern for all those who can afford them is 12 inches long and 6 inches broad across the toes. This great surface, leaving several inches all round the breadth of the foot, gives much support on loose sand, on which it rests like a platform. Many other forms of improvised sandals are made, covering the sole and sometimes the sides of the foot, but the most ingenious home-made type I saw was woven in a few minutes of green dûm-palm fronds. These sandals were really a sole of palm matting under the foot: they have the advantage of costing nothing and, when the fronds are still green, of being supple and springy in any weather, whereas the leather sandals become flaccid on wet ground. They are, however, not proof against long acacia thorns, as I learnt to my cost. During the rains I used to have a new pair made for me every day by Ahodu’s son, aged nine, at the grossly excessive rate of about 6d. a dozen. The best leather sandals cost as much as 6s. a pair at Agades nowadays.

Walking barefoot over loose sand in time produces severe cracks in the sole of the foot. The ball of the big toe and the inside part of the foot are particularly liable to be affected. In cold dry weather it is common to see men rubbing fat into the callous skin of their feet and warming them in front of a fire to soften the leather, for when a crack has begun to appear it is very difficult to induce healing. The skin of their feet is so insensible and thick that men often take a needle and thread and sew up their sole as one would mend a sandal. Some form of foot-wear is likewise desirable when there are many thorns about, and in the bush, where burrs find their way into the tender skin between the toes. As I often wore no foot-covering at all my feet became very hard, but I contrived on several[166] occasions to pick up thorns, which went as much as three-quarters of an inch into the sole of my foot. I well remember how the extraction of these spikes used to cause a most peculiar form of pain; it produced almost physical sickness. Curiously enough, these wounds never seemed to get septic, and I have always wondered why. For several months I did have septic sores on my feet and legs whenever a rub or scratch occurred, but they were principally due to being run down after malaria and the rainy season. Acacia thorns or burrs in my feet never became infected.

With a veil, robe, trousers and sandals, the wardrobe of the Tuareg is complete. Some carry a white blanket of heavy native cotton stuff known in Nigeria as “Kano cloth,” woven in six-inch strips sewn together, with a blue border and fringe. But the article is a product of the Southland and almost seems to be considered a luxury in Air, where few men have any additional clothing or covering in cold weather. Some wear the conical hats of Kano basket-ware associated with the Hausa countries, but the practice is regarded as an affectation and is not very common.[160]

The scantiness of the clothing of the Tuareg in Air is very remarkable. Their robe is admirably suited for hot weather, since any covering which hangs in loose folds over the back is good protection against the sun. The garment consists of two large squares of stuff, forming the front and back, the height of a man’s shoulder, or say about 5 feet × 5 feet. The two lower corners of the squares are sewn together, the bottom and sides are left open. The top is sewn up except for a space of about 18 inches where the head is put through, and a slit with a pocket is cut on the breast. The sides of the upper part either fall down the arms or can be looped up over the shoulders to leave them clear. As the sides are open, the circulation of air under the robe is quite free. In cold weather the ample volume of the robe enables it to be wrapped well around the body,[167] nevertheless it is very inadequate protection when the thermometer falls to freezing point. It speaks highly of the hardihood of these people that they wear this garment only throughout the year in spite of variations in temperature, such as in December I encountered on my way south through Azawagh, of as much as 60° F. in twenty-four hours. The three Tuareg with me had no sort of extra covering for the night until I gave them a ground sheet in which to wrap themselves near the fire. But they discarded it, because the canvas, as they said, “attracted the cold” more than did the sand. The dying embers of a fire warmed the soles of their feet, but the rest of their bodies must have been frozen.

The Tuareg woman wears a long piece of indigo cloth rolled round her body as a skirt and tucked in at the waist. Over her shoulders is a garment which resembles a sleeveless coat, but is really a small square of light indigo or black stuff with a hole for the head. The ends hang down in front and behind to the level of the waist, the sides are open. She never veils her face; the upper garment, or a dark cloth worn over the head like a nun’s hood, may be drawn across the face, but more often in coquetry, I think, than in prudery. This upper garment is sometimes embroidered with a simple cross-stitch pattern around the neck; usually it is a piece of plain native cloth made, like the robes of the men, of narrow bands sewn together. Women who can only afford one piece of stuff wear it wound round their bodies close under the armpits, though, as a general rule, it may be said that there is no feeling of immodesty involved in exposing the body above the waist.[161]

This ease of garb among the women and their unveiled countenances are in keeping with the perfect freedom which they enjoy. Irrespective of caste or circumstance, whether they be noble or slave, rich or poor, the women[168] of the People of the Veil are respected by their men in a manner which has no parallel in my experience. It is the more significant in a Moslem people, inasmuch as Islam has not hitherto taught the men of the Eastern world to treat their women-folk as their equals, still less as their betters. In saying this much I write in no depreciatory spirit, for the Western world has happily long ceased to regard the followers of Muhammad’s teaching of the Faith of the One God as heathen or pagan. But the morals and ethical code of Islam differ most essentially from those of the north of Europe and America precisely in regard to women; and in this respect Islam has lagged behind. But even in European countries the complete emancipation of women is only a modern development which may perhaps have just begun in Islam. Yet judged by our Northern standards the Tuareg have much in common with ourselves. So strange in Africa seems their conduct to women, that early travellers called them the Knights-Errant of the Desert Roads. The extent to which they have earned this name is their justifiable pride.

Their women have position and prerogatives not yet achieved by their sisters in many of those countries which we term “civilised.” The Tuareg women are strong-minded, gifted and intelligent. They have their share in public life; their advice is proffered and sought in tribal councils. Contrary to Moslem practice and to that of many European societies, a Tuareg woman may own property in her own name, and, more than that, may continue to own and administer it after her marriage without interference by her husband, who has no rights over it whatsoever. At death a woman’s property, unless otherwise disposed of in satisfaction of her expressed wish, is divided in accordance with the Moslem laws of inheritance, but if her family has been provided for as custom demands, she may bequeath what is over as she pleases. There are many instances of Tuareg women of noble birth being heiresses or receiving a share of property which has become available,[169] by conquest or the extinction of some group, for distribution generally among the community. Sometimes, if a tribe moves away from an old area, the community goes so far as to divide up and settle the free land on the chief women, who become, as Duveyrier has called them,[162] the “femmes douairières” of the Tuareg.

Their bravery is famous in Africa. Instances are not lacking where they have played great parts in war. In one engagement in Air the Kel Fadé women led their men into battle, covering them with their own bodies and those of their children to prevent the French firing.[163] When Musa ag Mastan, the Amenokal of Ahaggar, went to France in 1910 his sister ruled the people in his stead. Though no instances are recorded in Air itself of women becoming chiefs of tribes they rule several villages among the Kel Geres. By usage and by right their functions are more consultative than executive. They do not seek election to tribal councils. They enter them as of right and not in competition, but not even then do they order men about. Their function is to counsel and to charm. They make poetry and have their own way. In recent years there seems to have been only one example in Air of a woman playing a definitely masculine rôle. Barkasho, of the Ikazkazan, was already an old woman when, as a small boy, Musa, of the same tribe, who was with me at one time as a camel-man, knew her. Soon after she married, Barkasho told her husband that she was going about a man’s work and proceeded to don the robe, veil and sword of the other sex. She set off on a raid to the east to avenge some depredations on her people. As her courage grew and became famous she turned her attention to the west and led a raid, it is said, as far afield as the Tademekkat country. On one of these expeditions she lifted, single-handed, seven camels from a party of three men who were guarding them. The curious side of Barkasho’s personality was that when she returned from these excursions, she put off her male attire[170] and quietly resumed her place and occupations in the household. Evidently, however, her husband must have become restive, for in the end she advised him to get rid of her, or at least to marry another woman as well, since she was useless to him as a wife. But history does not relate what the husband did. Musa last saw her as an old, old woman, sitting in front of her hut, looking into the sunset over the country where she used to raid, and dreaming. I failed in my endeavours to obtain other stories of women leaders. I found, therefore, nothing to bear out the Amazonian legend,[164] except the survival of the matriarchal system generally.

Kahena lives on among the Tuareg only as a memory and as a proper name. They do not claim as one of their race the Berber queen who defended Ifrikiya against the Arabs in the seventh century. Ahodu had heard of her as a woman of the Imajeghan who were in the north when the Arabs came. “She led these noble people and defeated the Arabs, it is true, and those Imajeghan were great people, of course, but she was not one of our people: our people are older than they; and the Arabs—why, the Arabs have only just come to the land,” said Ahodu, who, where his own Kel Tadek were concerned, was always an intolerable snob.

Under Moslem law a man may take unto himself four legitimate wives in addition to a number of slave concubines. The rules laid down by the Prophet for the governance of the marital relations of good Moslems are theoretically, at least, in force among the Tuareg of Air. In practice, however, monogamy is more frequent than polygamy. I am not clear whether an explanation of this phenomenon is to be looked for in a survival of a matriarchal state of society where one would indeed be led to expect polyandry rather than polygamy, or whether the reason is rather to be sought in the economic condition of a people whose poverty does not allow them to keep more than one wife. I have no hesitation in disagreeing with Jean when he says[165][171] that monogamy is rare and even anomalous in Air. It does not accord with my personal observations, nor is it consistent with what I heard of those traditions and conditions which I was unable to verify. How often has it not been said to me that “the Imajeghan respect their women, and therefore have only one wife, not like the negroes, and heathen”? It does not accord with the conditions governing the status of women as described by Jean himself, nor yet with the remarks which he makes on the subject of the matrimonial relations of the Tuareg. It is, finally, in contradiction with the accounts given by Duveyrier[166] and others of the Northern Tuareg, concerning whom his enthusiasm even led him into the exaggeration of asserting that polygamy was unknown.

After considering the question carefully, I have come to the conclusion that monogamy is probably an old tradition dependent upon and consistent with the status of Tuareg women, and not a consequence of economic conditions which have, however, served to perpetuate the custom. It is certainly connected with the matriarchate. The practice of concubinage is restricted, and where it does occur, is usually confined to women of the slave caste. A noble woman is not, and never could be, a concubine so long as the status of noble and of serf continues to exist; but if the maintenance of only one wife were due to economic necessity alone, the same conditions would not obtain in regard to concubinage in a community where every additional slave, male or female, is an asset as a productive unit. The position of women among the Tuareg has no real parallel in any other Oriental country. Even in Ashanti, where there are analogies for some of the matriarchal survivals found among the Tuareg, the exceptional positions of some of the royal women seem to be less favourable than that of any of the noble and most other women in Air, where all the sex is held in honour.

At Auderas I played the rôle of doctor to the best of my[172] ability. I found a great ally in Ahodu’s wife, who, though not a Tuareg by race, had acquired all their traditions and manners. Her appearance was not in the least characteristic; her negroid features were frankly ugly from the European point of view. But she made up for these physical disadvantages by her unfailing sense of humour and constant cheerfulness, which are very valuable qualities in Africa. In general the young Tuareg women are handsome and possessed of considerable charm. They are smaller in build than the men, but when their parentage is reasonably pure, they possess the same aristocratic features and proportions. Their demeanour is modest and dignified. In this Ahodu’s wife resembled them. She was perfectly natural and had great quickness of mind. She was what might be called “une femme du monde.” Ahodu had divorced at least two previous wives for their uncouth or unrestrained behaviour. He was devoted to his present one. He always used to speak with pride of her capability, which he averred was second to no man’s: one could place complete reliance in her. I made a point of taking her with me when visiting sick women and children in the hamlets, and through her tact and presence of mind gradually came to understand their perfect ease and bearing. In their tents or huts they would sit and listen without fear or shyness. After the inevitable diffidence had worn off they talked and were free from awkwardness, but never familiar like the negro or negroid women. They are gay but not infantile. They never lose their dignity. Their dress is staid and sombre like that of their men, with a few ornaments of beads and silver.[167] As they grow older the women of good family and wealth become fat, especially, as Barth remarks, in “the hinder parts,” for fatness is a sign of affluence, since it implies a sufficiency of the good things of life, like slaves and food, to obviate having to do much manual work. But among the unmarried women I saw no large-proportioned ladies: indeed few enough even of the married ones[173] at Auderas were fat, indicating, I am sorry to say, the poverty of most of them. When the women do not run to fat, they age with great beauty; nearly all the old women looked typical aristocrats and conscious of their breeding.

The women use henna, which grows in Air, on their finger and toe nails, and “kohl” (antimony) for their eyes. On festive occasions they have a curious habit of daubing their cheeks and foreheads with paint, prepared either from a whitish earth found especially near Agades, or with red or yellow ochres which occur in several places. The effect of these colours on different shades of skin is uniformly ghastly, especially when the more usual yellow pigment is used, but they apparently like the habit. A possible explanation is that in the first instance the custom was intended as a symbolic or conventional method of expressing the respect felt for the fairer complexions of their original ancestors. The negro is despised in Air, the “red” man is respected; painting the face was perhaps at first intended to create an illusion of purer blood. Although the practice is supposed to be restricted to festive occasions, where the women have little work to do, they remain daubed most of the time: this seemed to be the case at T’imia, for instance, where the women were noble and had plenty of slaves. Tuareg men do not so adorn themselves.[168]

Before marriage, which for Oriental women occurs comparatively late in life, Tuareg girls enjoy a measure of freedom which would shock even the modern respectable folk of Southern Europe. They do no work, but dance and sing and make poetry, and in the olden days they learned to read and write. The art of literature is unfortunately dying out, but the women still are, as they always were in the past, the repositories of tradition and learning. Where the script of the Tuareg is still known[174] and freely used, it is the women who are more versed in it than the men. It is they who teach the children. When families have slaves, the noble woman does as little work as she can: her occupation among the poorer people is confined to the household work or to herding goats and sheep. They make cheese and butter and sort dates, but they do not as a rule work in the gardens. They are never beasts of burden. They have never learnt to weave or spin, but they plait mats and make articles of leather. The leather-working industry at Agades is exclusively in their hands. Their knowledge of needlework is limited; the men on the whole are more skilled than the women at cutting out and sewing clothes.

The household duties are simple but laborious. The children for the first few years of their lives are washed frequently, but when they are able to look after themselves in any way the practice is abandoned. The hut or tent is cleaned out several times a day and food has to be prepared. This entails pounding millet in a mortar and stewing the porridge, or steaming wheat to make kus-kus. The women eat their food with the men, a privilege often denied their sex among other Moslems. Among the Kel Ferwan[169] the women eat their food before the men do so, and the latter have to be content with what is left, which is often not very much. A man once said to me, to emphasise the good manners required by usage to be observed before women, that in the olden days if anyone had dared to break wind in their presence, the insult was punishable by death alone.

Half the poetry of the Tuareg deals with the loves and adventures of young men and women. Marriages are not arranged as among the Arabs. It often happens that a girl has two or more suitors, when her free choice alone is the deciding factor. It is common for a girl who is in love with a man to take a camel and ride all night to see him and then return to her own place, or for a suitor to make[175] expeditions of superhuman endurance to see his lady.[170] Fights between rivals are not uncommon. Illicit love affairs inevitably occur: if they have unfortunate consequences, the man is called upon to marry the woman, but infanticide is not unknown. Once married the woman is expected to behave with decorum and modesty. Public opinion on these matters is strong. The married state, however, does not prevent a woman admitting men friends to an intimacy similar to that existing, perhaps, only among the Anglo-Saxon peoples. In a passage in which Ibn Batutah describes the Mesufa, who before becoming debased were of the Western Sanhaja Tuareg, but had in part settled south of Air, he comments on the status of women in these charming terms:[171]

“The women of the Mesufa feel no shame in the presence of men; nor do they veil their faces. Despite this, they do not omit to perform their prayers punctually. Anyone who wishes to marry them can do so without difficulty. . . . In this country the women have friends and companions among men who are strangers. The men for their part have companions among women not in their own families. It often happens for a man to enter his own house to find his wife with a friend. He will neither disapprove nor make trouble. I (that is, Ibn Batutah himself) once went into the house of a judge at Walata after he had given me permission, and found quite a young and very beautiful woman with him. As I stopped, doubting, and hesitated, wanting to return on my steps, she began to laugh at my embarrassment instead of blushing with shame.” The great traveller is evidently very much shocked, for he goes on: “And yet this man was a lawyer and a pilgrim. I even heard that he had asked the Sultan for permission to perform the[176] pilgrimage that year to Mecca, in the company of this friend. Was it this one or another? I do not know. . . .” Again, he goes on to describe how he visited the house of one of his companions of the road and found him sitting on a carpet, “while in the middle of the house on a couch . . . was his wife in conversation with a man seated by her side. I asked Abu Muhammad: ‘Who is that woman?’ ‘It’s my wife,’ he replied. ‘And who is the individual with her?’ ‘It’s her friend.’ ‘But are you, who have lived in our countries, quite satisfied with such a state of affairs—you who know the precepts of the Holy Writ?’ He replied: ‘The relations of women with men in this country bring good and are correct, they are right and honourable. They give rise to no suspicion. Our women, as a matter of fact, are not like those in your country.’”

And that is the whole truth. The Tuareg men and women are not like the other inhabitants of North Africa. But Ibn Batutah must have been none the less shocked, because, though Abu Muhammad invited him to visit him again, he did not go.

Conditions have not changed since those days among the People of the Veil, but habits which would be considered natural in America or in England admittedly seem strange in Africa. They are all summed up in the Tuareg proverb which says: “Men and women towards each other are for the eyes and for the heart, and not only for the bed,” as among the Arabs. The consequence of such a frame of mind is that the men and women of the People of the Veil are often blessed, or cursed, with love so lasting, so sincere and so devoted that, like in our own society, it makes or mars a life.

Bates has discussed the marriage customs of the Libyan tribes mentioned in the classics. While some of these groups of people may represent the ancestors of the Tuareg, there is no evidence of the outrageous performances mentioned, for instance, by Herodotus, having persisted into modern times in Air. Divorce among the Tuareg is fairly frequent[177] and is carried out in accordance with Moslem prescription, but adultery is not very common. Prostitution exists, but perhaps, on the whole, is less common than in more favoured parts of the world. It is, of course, more frequent in Agades than in the villages, and in the latter than among the tribes. The harlot is not respected, and her marriage with a decent man is reprobated.

The husband is required to purchase his wife, the money or equivalent being paid to her parents. The sum varies from a few silver francs to several camels. Marriage portions in cattle, sheep or goats, according to the circumstances of the parents, are frequently given to women; the “dot” remains the property of the bride.

The children of the Tuareg, and especially the little girls, are adorable persons. They are fairer than their parents, largely, I think, because they wash more often than their elders, but even discounting this factor they appear to turn darker as they grow up. Up to the age of seven or eight the children wear no clothes at all, summer or winter, indoors or out of doors, except perhaps a rag to keep off the flies when they are asleep. After that, their first clothes are white cotton shifts. Small boys have their hair cropped close, except for a crest along the top of the head; in some tribes, notably in the west of Air, a lock on either side of the head and a patch on top are sometimes left. Little girls are allowed long hair until they first put on a smock or cloth about their waists. At the age of puberty both sexes dress their hair in one of the several fashions current in Air, usually in small plaits all over the head; thereafter the boys continue to wear white shirts, but the girls put on the indigo skirt cloth. The children are so well brought up that European parents might be envious of them. I have never met small boys with such perfect manners and so free from selfishness as I experienced in Air. As soon as they are old enough to take an interest in things, the boys accompany their fathers on journeys, to which they are thus gradually broken from an early age.[178] They are made to work and do all the domestic duties that their powers allow in camp or on the march. They feed the camels on the road with grass or plants picked by the way; they carry water to their elders to drink; they bring in stray camels at loading-up time and hobble them when turned out to graze. The slaves, who prepare the food, are assisted by the boys and send them out to do all the hundred and one little jobs that are required. So the boys grow up to be useful men before they are mature, and in the process learn the respect which is due to their elders, and their elders show them such devotion as these pleasant little people deserve. The training is evidently successful, for nowhere else have I seen children so thoughtful or so kindly to all and to each other. It had never been my lot until I met the Tuareg to see a right-minded boy, for instance, who had been given a sweet or a penny or some equally valuable object, run off and offer it first to his father and then to his companions, who refused it. And this I saw not in an isolated instance, but as an universal practice.

In the primitive conditions of life in Air, infant mortality is high. The happiest and some of the most successful days I spent in Air were doctoring people, and especially children, at Auderas. There are not many diseases in the clean dry mountain air, but under-feeding and malaria, which comes after the rains, take their annual toll. The almost miraculous effect of quinine on the fevers is a very saving grace. One can never have enough quinine, but fortunately small doses at frequent intervals will keep fever in check during bad attacks and prevent collapse. Thus can a great deal be achieved. But it was the good sense of the women, who had some faith in my elementary remedies, that did most to save several children of Auderas in the autumn of 1922.

I was interested to find how long women went on suckling their children. I saw children of three and four years still feeding at the breast, though they were already eating[179] solid food. A woman will go on suckling an older child for many years so long as her younger ones do not suffer; she is especially prone to do so if her last baby has died. In company with most races living under primitive conditions, even advanced pregnancy does not interfere with a woman’s activities, nor do mothers suffer much from the effects of childbirth. The processes of nature take place unassisted: there are neither local medicine men nor midwives. Women in labour are attended by their older relations or intimate friends, whose assistance is limited to massaging the body with hands steeped in butter or fat. Death in childbirth appears to be rare. Newly-born children are wrapped in some ragged garment, but receive no especial care. Cradles or swaddling clothes are unknown; but perhaps a cushion of grass or leaves for the infant is prepared on the family sleeping mat or bed. Babies are carried on their mother’s back or by a slave woman, slung with one tiny leg each side of the woman’s waist, in a fold of the cloth which constitutes her skirt. The cloth is firmly rolled round the baby and the woman’s body, and tucked in over the breast; only the child’s head emerges from this pouch on her back. So the child sleeps or cries or sucks its finger, and the mother goes about her daily occupations, pounding millet or plaiting mats.

Neither at birth nor later is any form of bodily deformation practised. Such horrors as flattened skulls or filed teeth are unknown. The only eunuchs in Air are negroes purchased in the south. As in the case of all good Moslems, the boys are circumcised at the age of a few months. The diseases which I myself observed in Air, I must admit, seemed few. Syphilis, malaria, certain digestive troubles, dysentery, a few minor skin diseases and eye troubles were the most serious. Syphilis is common, but apparently not very virulent: its method of propagation and origin are well known to the natives: in the Northern Sahara it is called the Great Disease. Von Bary thought that it, like malarial fevers, came from the Sudan, but there is no reason[180] to believe this, for it is very evenly distributed all over North Africa. The juice of the colocynth as a purge is believed to do good in cases of venereal disease. Guinea-worm is fairly common; the milky juice of the Asclepias, known as Calotropis Procera,[172] which grows all over Air, is said to have a curative effect, in addition to the usual method of extraction known to everyone who has travelled in Africa. I saw one case of tuberculosis of the lungs at Auderas, accompanied by hæmorrhage. It was rather an interesting case of a woman whose family for three generations was said to have died of the disease. I was too honest, I suppose, to profess to be able to cure her, but I need hardly say that my servant, Amadu, took over the case. He claimed to have established a complete cure in a few days with some herb which he had found. My reputation suffered, but my advice to Ahodu to move her hut to the outskirts of the village was nevertheless admitted to be reasonable, and was followed. Duveyrier[173] mentions a form of ulcer in the nose, said to be due to constant sand irritation. He describes hernia from long-distance camel riding as being frequent: to prevent abdominal strains from this cause the Tuareg bind a long strip of cotton stuff tightly about their waists. Von Bary[174] records having seen, in addition to the above diseases, epilepsy, atrophied children, skin eruptions, small-pox, hypochondria and madness. He remarks that the Kel Owi seemed to suffer more from disease than the other tribes, that their women were very fat, and that they appeared to have irregular periods. My investigations into local medicine were unproductive. I brought home some drugs which were used locally as purges, lotions and astringents, but they were without value. The empiric knowledge of the Tuareg may yet be worth[181] investigating, but has so far disclosed nothing of any value.

Festivals connected with social life are not interesting. Births occur without unusual or curious celebrations. The naming of the child is supposed to be in the hands of the local holy man, but the mother brings her influence to bear in his choice by suitable payments. Marriages are celebrated with feast and rejoicing after the bridegroom has wooed his bride and paid the stipulated portion. Burials equally follow the Moslem practice. The body is laid in the ground on its back, the head to the north and the feet to the south, with the face turned towards Mecca. The rope by which the body is lowered into the grave is left lying to rot away on the tomb. The grave is marked by one or two standing stones according as the deceased is male or female. The graves in Air are intimately connected with the architecture and dwellings of the Tuareg, and are dealt with in a later chapter. There are cemeteries all over Air: the little one now in use at Auderas lies on the south side of the valley under the hills of Tidrak, opposite the site of our camp. In the rains, malaria claimed several victims. They were mournful little processions which I used to see from my hut. One such occasion particularly impressed itself upon me. I was returning from South Bagezan one evening, climbing down on a rough path in a ravine with three camels and three men, when Ahodu, El Mintaka and a few more appeared, carrying a man to his grave. They were walking quickly so as to have done as soon as possible, proclaiming as they went that there was no God but God. They did that which there was to be done in haste, and returned at their leisure near sundown when the sky and the mountains of Todra were on fire. It had been raining and the black clouds were still in sight, covering the place of sunset. Above, everything was as red as the light of a blast furnace shining on Todra. Already the darkness had gathered in the north-east and the stars were coming out, and the deep[182] valley with its white, sandy bottom was scarcely seen for the many trees in it. A chilly wind blew down the valley, waving the palms and troubling the gardens. As I reached my hut, Ahodu and his men joined me, and night fell, leaving purple and then dark red and then a yellow glow in the west. Last of all came the pale zodiacal light climbing up nearly to the zenith of the night, and the wind died down. Ahodu did not speak of death because it was unlucky, but he sat on the sand and told me many things. Ultimately came the information that a raid of Ahaggaren had plundered some villages in Kawar. He was afraid they would come on to Air, and that the village would have to be abandoned, and that his people would have to retreat into the mountain which towered as a black shadow in the east. He had left this subject to the last, because there was nothing in the matter to discuss. The raiders either would or they would not come. There was a proverb: “Reasoning is the shackle of the coward.”

THE MODE OF LIFE OF THE NOMADS

One of my first trips from Auderas was to the village of Towar,[175] which lies under the south-western spurs of Bagezan on the edge of the plain between this massif and Todra. Leaving Auderas by a very rough path over the hills on the south side of the valley, a narrow track with difficulty climbs up to the watershed of the basin where the central plain is reached. The northern part of the plain skirting Todra and Bagezan is covered with black basalt boulders all the way to Towar. The boulders are polished and range in size from a large water-melon to an orange. They were probably thrown out from Bagezan by some volcanic activity, which, in conjunction with later eruptions at Mount Dogam, also produced the basalt and cinerite formations in the Auderas valley. The plain is intersected by several valleys, the head-waters of the Buddei-Telwa system which drains the southern slopes of Todra. Further east is the Ara valley, which comes down from the south-east face of Mount Dogam between Todra and Bagezan. Several valleys descend from the south-western parts of Bagezan as tributaries to the Ara and Towar, which both flow into the Etaras, whose waters eventually find their way east of Taruaji into the River of Agades opposite Akaraq by the Turayet valley. The Ara valley is particularly important, for it divides Todra from Bagezan, which are distinct groups and not a single massif as the Cortier map implies.

The plain between Bagezan and Taruaji is dotted with small conical hills. There is no vegetation except along[184] the watercourses: between the boulders a little grass finds a precarious existence. But there are many gazelle always roaming about. Of the two roads from Auderas to Towar village, I first tried the northern one, which is also the shortest. At the point where it crosses a col over a spur of Todra it proved precipitous and dangerous, but the alternative road, on the other hand, is more than half as long again, running south-east from Auderas and then turning north-east to rejoin the first track at the domed peak of Tegbeshi, some six miles east of Towar. At Tegbeshi the road to Towar crosses a track from Agades to Northern Air, running over the pass of the Upper Ara valley not far from the village of Dogam, which lies on the south slope of the peak. A branch leads up into the Bagezan mountains by a precipitous ravine north of Towar village.

After crossing several more tributaries of the Ara and Towar valleys the village itself is reached, on the east side of the stream bed. There are two older deserted stone-built settlements, respectively south and east of the present site, which consist of a group of straw huts. The dwellings are typical of the Tuareg mode of hut construction. The frame is made of palm-frond ribs planted in the ground and tied together at the top; the section of the huts is consequently nearly parabolic. This framework is covered with thatch of coarse grass on top and mats round the lower part. The dwelling is built in one piece; it does not, as in the Southland, consist of two separate portions, namely, the conical roof and the vertical wall.[176] The stone houses of the two older villages point to the former settlements having been more extensive than the present one. There are small palm groves and a group of gardens on the banks of the valley, which contains plenty of water in the sand. The site was deserted during the war and has only recently been occupied. The population is mixed, but principally servile, derived from several tribes. The present inhabitants owe allegiance to the Kel Bagezan (Kel Owi) but the plain all round belongs[185] to the Kel Nugguru of the chief Khodi, whose camels were pasturing in the little watercourses of the plain. One of the first people I met on camping near the village on the east bank was a man from Ghat, Muhammad, who had left his native town many years ago in the course of a feud between the leading Tuareg of the city and some neighbouring villages. He had become completely Tuareg and had almost forgotten his Arabic. The man, however, I had come to see was working on his garden, and I sent a friend whom I had brought from Auderas, one Atagoom, of Ahodu’s group of Kel Tadek, to find him. Eventually the man returned, and I became aware that I had found the purest Tuareg type in Air.

I went forward with the intention of greeting T’ekhmedin, but was met with a look of disdainful inquiry which said more clearly and forcibly than words could express, “Who the hell are you and what the devil do you want?” He is one of the most remarkable men in Air, and the greatest of all the guides to Ghat on the northern roads of Air. Now barely forty years old, he has done the journey from Iferuan to Ghat, which is some four hundred miles in a straight line on the map, more than eighty times. He knows every stone and mark on all the alternative tracks over this terrible desert, as well as one may know the way from Hyde Park Corner to Piccadilly Circus. He is famous all over the Central Sahara, among the hardest travellers of the world, as the surest and toughest guide alive. His birth is noble, his spirit uncompromising. He has fought against the French on many occasions: his activities at Ghat in connection with the capture of the French post of Janet are known to all who followed events in North Africa during the war. He continued to fight against the French when Kaossen came to Air, and was imprisoned after the termination of that revolution; the fetter-marks round his ankles will endure until he dies. He had lost all his property; the rags on his back were pitiful to see, but his leather tobacco bottle and sheath knife, though almost falling to pieces, were of a[186] quality which betokened affluence in the past. When I saw him he had nothing in the world but a small garden at Towar, which he had been reduced from high estate to cultivate like a mere slave. He seemed to be half starved. He was certainly over-worked, trying to grow enough food to keep life in his wife and small boy. The French at Agades have offered him pay to join their Camel Corps as a guide, but T’ekhmedin would have none of them. I wanted him to come with me as a guide, for his knowledge of the Central Sahara would have been invaluable to me in my researches, but he refused to come for pay. After I had broken the ice and explained my purpose in desiring to see him, T’ekhmedin began to thaw, and eventually became more affable. In time I learned to know him well, but in all our relations he never modified his independent attitude. He said: “I will come with you when my wife is provided for out of the harvest from my garden, and when I have placed her in the hands of my relations in T’imia. Then I will come with you for a month or for a year, but only because I want to come, and not for pay: if I come, I will go anywhere you want, but I will not come as your servant. You may give me a present if you like; you must feed me because I am poor, and give me a camel to ride, but I will not be paid for any service. I will come only as your friend because I, I myself, want to come.” On a second trip to Towar I had occasion to nurse him when he had fever. He was thus one of the few men I ever saw without the veil, and as he is so typical of the pure Tuareg, I will copy the description of his appearance which I recorded in my diary at the time. “On reaching Towar I found the whole village laid low with malaria due to the proximity of stagnant wells in the gardens on the edge of the settlement. So I delivered a lecture on the desirability of moving the huts further away, and set to work to dose T’ekhmedin with quinine, the only drug I had with me. He was very bad, and had been ill ever since he left me at Auderas ten days before. I persuaded him to come away with me again; he came, but had[187] a rotten time riding in the heat of the sun, and arrived rather done up. Thanks to good food and quinine he is better now. He is a handsome man, say six feet tall, of slight build, with a small beard and clipped moustache which, like his hair, is just steeled with grey. His domed forehead joins a retreating skull running back to a point behind. He has heavy eyebrow bones and the characteristic Libyan indentation between the forehead and root of the nose, which from that point is straight to the flat extremity. The nostrils are moderately flat and wide, but thin. The lips are not at all everted, rather the reverse. The upper lip is of the type which is very short, but in his case is not unduly so. There is an indentation between the lower lip and chin, which is very firm, very fine and very pointed. The cheek-bones are prominent but not high, and from here, accentuating their prominence, the outline of the face runs straight down to the chin. The ears are small, thin and flat. The profile is somewhat prorhinous; it is not at all prognathous. His hands and ankles are as slender as those of a woman; his body and waist are also slender; as is the case among all Tuareg, there is no superficial muscular development.”

T’ekhmedin’s colleagues on the north roads, Kelama, who is nearly blind, and Sattaf, together with Efale, in the Eastern Desert, enjoy enormous respect in Air and indeed among all Tuareg. As a race the People of the Veil are all born to travel, but anyone among them who has a specialist’s knowledge is as important as a great scientist is in Europe. In general the topographical knowledge of Air and the surrounding countries has declined since raiding ceased, for this pastime was as much a sport as anything else. It is now confined to the people of those areas which are not under European control, that is, most of Tibesti, all the Fezzan and southern parts of Tripolitania and the interior of the Spanish colony of the Rio de Oro. Some of the exploits of the raiding bands from these areas sound so fantastic that they would hardly be credited were they not[188] established facts. The Arab and Moorish tribes from Southern Morocco and from the Rio de Oro, for instance, when they have finished cultivating their scanty fields, turn out nearly every year for the especial purpose of lifting camels from the salt caravans between Timbuctoo and Taodenit, but the parties do not confine their operations to this area if they miss their objective. They have, on several occasions, gone on until they have found elsewhere a sufficient number of camels to make their journey profitable. Thus they have come as far as Damergu and Tegama, south of Agades, a journey from the Atlantic half-way across North Africa and back. Once, with consummate humour, a band stole all the camels of a French Camel Corps patrol in the Tahua area north of Sokoto. These people usually start out in as large a body of men as they reckon can water at the wells by the way, and break up into small parties as soon as they have looted some camels, returning home by different routes. Although they often lose a part of their booty and suffer casualties at the hands of the French Camel Corps, their tactics make them very hard to catch.

The Tebu and Tuareg from the Fezzan raid Kawar and Air. Their procedure varies considerably, and it is impossible to know which way they will come or return. One year a party from the north-east entered Air by the western side and left in an E.S.E. direction. The raiding season begins as soon as the rains have fallen, when there is plenty of water all over the Southern Sahara even in the most inaccessible places. Outlying watering-points which can rarely be visited are their favourite haunts. The wireless stations at Agades and Bilma are a serious handicap, for intercommunication enables the French Camel patrols of different areas to obtain a start, and very often some idea of the possible roads which the raiders are following. Yet even so the two Camel Corps platoons in Air have let many bands slip through their fingers. It is generally recognised as impossible to prevent a raid reaching its objective; at the most the raiders can be followed up and brought to action or forced[189] to abandon their loot on the way home. The latter politically is the end kept in view, for it exposes the raiders to the ridicule of failure rather than the sympathy of defeat. One of the great difficulties of defensive operations in the deserts of the Territoires du Niger is the use of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais as Camel Mounted Troops. The negro of the coast is not, and never will be, a good camel-man, and his efficiency cannot compare with that of the natives used by the French authorities in Southern Algeria, where tribesmen who have been born and bred in the saddle are enlisted as volunteers. Here, there is nothing to choose between the capacity of the raider and his opponent.

The technique of raids is interesting. The size of the bodies attacking Air must always be limited by the capacity of the outlying watering-points, which, except in Damergu and Azawagh, are small. Bands of as few as ten men sometimes operate; a raid of one hundred men is considered large. They travel astonishing distances on practically no food or water: a few dates and a little water serve them for several days. If I were to record the periods of time for which men have lived without water in the lands of the People of the Veil, I would be accused of such mendacity that I will refrain from risking my good name. I will only say that seventy-two hours without water is an occurrence just sufficiently common not to pass as unduly remarkable. Similarly the distances ridden by raiders are fantastic. A hundred miles in the day have been covered by a band of a few hard-pressed men. Individual performances are even better. A messenger quite recently rode from Agades to In Gall in one day and back the next on the same camel, which therefore covered not less than one hundred and forty miles as the crow flies in forty hours, and probably one hundred and sixty by road. Another man, on a famous camel it is true, rode from the River of Agades near Akaraq to Iferuan, a distance of not less than one hundred and sixty miles, in just over twenty-four hours. The two messengers who brought the news to Zinder in 1917, that the post of[190] Agades was besieged, covered over four hundred kilometres in under four days. And such instances could be multiplied. A raiding party, however, will not usually average more than thirty-five miles a day, and even so the hardship is considerable if this rate has to be kept up for many days. The bands are often made up of more men than camels, some of them in turn having to walk until they can loot more mounts. The Tuareg on raids are generally well-behaved towards each other. They do not kill unless the looted tribe or village puts up a fight, for it is an unwritten law among them that on ordinary raids, as opposed to real warfare, only live-stock is taken. Houses are not destroyed and villages are not burnt. This forbearance is, of course, largely due to the fact that there is nothing of any weight worth removing, such wealth as the Tuareg possess being principally in flocks and herds, of which only the camels can readily be driven off. But secrecy is essential, and when, therefore, a stray wanderer is met on the road who might give warning of the arrival of a raiding party, he may be made to accompany the robbers, or, if his presence is inconvenient, he may have to be killed. The Tuareg do not capture each other as slaves unless they are at war, though to steal someone’s slaves is, of course, as legitimate as to steal his camels. Descents on French patrols, posts, and tribes known to be engaged in assisting them are considered legitimate, but they generally have had serious consequences. For here more than raiding is involved—it is war. At the end of last century raiding from Air was frequent: lifting camels from the Aulimmiden had, in fact, become so common a pastime that it was proscribed by the Holy Men, who decided that even though no killing of Tuareg was taking place, the People of the Veil should leave the People of the Veil alone and turn their attentions to the Tebu, who were legitimate enemies. With the latter the Air Tuareg neither give nor expect to receive mercy. Raiding eastward at the end of last century became popular, but fraught with more serious consequences. On one such[191] occasion the expedition turned out so badly that Belkho’s own people, the Igermadan, after successfully lifting camels and taking many prisoners in Kawar, were virtually exterminated. They were surprised at night in their over-confidence and massacred, a reverse from which the tribe to this day has never recovered.

In his youth Ahodu accomplished some very successful raids in the east. His greatest adventure was when he captured a big Arab caravan bound from Murzuk to Bornu, some thirty years ago. He told the story as follows, with Ali of Ghat sitting near him on the floor of my hut. Now when a Tuareg tells a story he always draws on the sand with his fingers to show the numbers of his camels and men and the direction of his march, and when he counts in that way he marks the units by little lines drawn with two or three fingers at a time till he has reached ten, and then marks up a group of ten with a single line to one side.

“That was nearly thirty years ago,” he said, and drew:

“I was one leader and Ula with the Ifadeyen people was the other. There were” (rubbing out the first marks with a sweep of the hand):

(that is) “twenty-five of us and about I I I thirty of the Ifadeyen.

“First we found a group of camels, the ones we came for, half a day on the Fashi side of Bilma. And some of the men went back with them from here. They were afraid, but we went on. As I was the leader I went too.

[192]“Then we had news of a caravan of Arabs coming down the road from Murzuk, but my men were afraid, for all the Arabs were supposed to have rifles—they were only old stone guns [flint-locks]—and horses to pursue us. We took counsel, and I agreed to go in and stampede the horses, when my men would rush the caravan, which was camped in the open under a dune. The dune had a little grass on it. [He then drew a rough map of the battle-field on the sand.] So we hid for the night behind another dune, and I crept in on the sleeping caravan and lay still till dawn, behaving like a Tebu. In the cold before dawn my men came up, but the Arabs saw them a little too soon and the alarm spread. My men rushed the caravan all right, but one Arab got away on his horse, barebacked, with a rifle, and nearly created a panic among my men when he sat down to shoot at us from a hill. He only fired two shots and they did no harm, but my men ran away till I showed them that we had picked up the only other two guns of the caravan. Then my men regained courage. We took two hundred laden camels with ‘malti’ [cotton stuff], tea and sugar, and we emptied even our waterskins to fill them with sugar, and still so had to leave much on the ground.”

Self. “What happened to the Arabs?”

Ahodu. “A few were able to run away—the rest died.”

Ali. “Was that the caravan of Rufai el Ghati?”

Ahodu. “Yes; why?”

Ali. “I knew the man: he was my friend: and were Muhammad el Seghir and El Tunsi and Sheikh el Latif there?”[177]

Ahodu. “Yes. I killed them myself, but there was a child . . .”

Ali. “. . . who was not killed but was found with his head all covered with blood. He was sitting on the ground playing when someone found him.”

Ahodu. “Yes, it is so.”

Ali. “I was in Bornu then, waiting for that caravan.[193] Ai! There was dismay in Ghat when the news came there. It was you who did that! I did not know till now. The boy was my sister’s son. His father was her husband.”

Ahodu. “Yes (relapsing into silence); and we also got another caravan that time.”

Self. “Will you come on a raid with me one day?”

Ahodu (quite seriously). “Wallahi, anywhere; and my people will come too, and many more, if you want.”

Self. “But where shall we go?—there are no caravans now.”

Ahodu. “Never mind, there are some fine female camels in Tibesti.”

It was their great sport and had its recognised rules. It kept their men virile, but is finished now.

The essence of rapid travel by camel is lightness of equipment. It is a mistake to suppose that the actual rate of progression on camels is anything but very slow. It may come as a surprise to many to learn that even riding camels rarely move out of a walk. They say in the Sahara that it is bad for the camel to run. The riding camels of the Tuareg are selected and tried beasts, but they are never, in fact, trotted except for quite brief periods. The French camel patrols, after many years of experience, are by regulation forbidden to move out of a walk: the weight of equipment which they have to carry may be a reason, but there must be more in it than that, for even raiding parties follow the same practice. It is held that the fatigue of man and beast consequent upon trotting is disproportionate to the results achieved. But the walk of a camel is slow at any time; to average 3·5 miles an hour over long distances is very good going, while 2·5 with a baggage caravan is all that can be managed.

Where the raider has the advantage over any organised military body engaged in chasing him is in the lightness of his load. The Tuareg camel saddle weighs a few pounds only; the head-rope or bridle is a simple cord without trappings: a small skin of water, a skin of dates, a rifle and perhaps twenty to thirty rounds of ammunition are the only[194] serious additions to the rider’s own weight. But long marches under these conditions are tiring, and scarcely anyone not born to the saddle can survive ten to fourteen hours’ riding day after day for hundreds of miles on a minimum diet. It is the habit of the Tuareg, in Air and elsewhere as well, when they start on such expeditions to procure a long length of stuff woven in the Sudan and tie it round their bodies as support for the abdomen, on which the motion of the camel imposes great strain. In Air the stuff they use is rather like a bandage some four inches wide, of unbleached and undyed cotton tissue; the material is similar to that used for making up robes, for which purpose numerous strips are sewn together and then dyed. These strips of cotton stuff are wound several times tightly round the waist and then over the shoulders, crossing on the breast and back.[178] The practice is particularly interesting, because many of the Egyptian pictures of Libyans show the belt and cross strapping. In referring to the dress of the Libyans, who are often described as “cross-belted,” Bates[179] has made a peculiarly apposite remark: “As seen on the Egyptian monuments, the Libyan girdles were like some modern polo belts cut broader in the back than in the front.” And the Tuareg bandages serve identically the same purpose in similar circumstances, namely, during periods of great physical strain on the stomach muscles. On the analogy of the Tuareg practice, Bates is right in supposing that the Libyan method of wearing the “belt” was to pass it several times round the body: the end was then pushed “down between the body and the girdle, and afterwards again brought up and tucked in.”

To own camels, and yet more camels, is the ultimate ambition of every Tuareg. A man may be rich in donkeys, goats or sheep, or he may have houses, gardens and slaves, but camels are the coveted possessions. Therein the nomadic[195] instinct obtrudes. When I found T’ekhmedin at Towar, he possessed the few rags on his back, and a garden which just kept him alive. He had no prospects of becoming richer; there were no caravans to Ghat, by guiding which he might earn his fees: the French he would not serve: his surplus garden produce had no market. After I had known him a little while I gave him a white cotton robe embroidered on the breast, of the fashion worn by the Hausa, but not favoured in Air. One day not long afterwards I met him and noticed that he was in his old rags once more. He became confused and avoided me. He eventually begged my excuses and hoped that I would not be hurt; he had sold the robe I had given him to the Sultan of Agades, who had found the Southland fashion more to his taste than a true Imajegh would have done. With the proceeds of this deal, T’ekhmedin had bought a half-share in a young camel which had gone to Bilma in charge of a friend with the great caravan to fetch a load of salt. He became more cheerful as he explained. In a few weeks if all went well he expected to have enough money to buy a small camel of his own, and so build up his fortune once more. He nearly wept with gratitude when he had done telling his story. It seemed, I had been the means of rehabilitating him in the world of men, a prospect which appeared only a short time before to be beyond the range of possibility.

To a European all camels at first look much the same, but a few weeks’ association with them enables one rapidly to differentiate between the different breeds. They vary as much in build as they do in colour. Camels of almost every African and some Arabian varieties may, sooner or later, be seen in Air, but only two varieties properly belong to the country or to the Tuareg of these parts. The tall, sandy-fawn-coloured Tibesti camel, standing an immense height at the shoulder, is much prized; the Ghati camel, reddish-fawn in colour, is fairly common. The latter is short-legged with heavy stubby bones and big foot-pads; he has a straight back, holds his head low, and is capable[196] of carrying immense loads over sandy country, but at a slower pace than the Tebu animal, which is generally more of the riding build. The western camel of Timbuctoo is represented by an animal with a well-arched back, generally lighter-limbed and more graceful than the Ghati sort. The Ahaggar camel is recognisable by his great height and strength, and above all by his very shaggy coat with a long beard and fluffy shoulders: he is usually dark in colour. The Maghrabi camel also has very hairy shoulders, the colour varying from red-fawn to very dark brown. The two types of camels belonging to the Air Tuareg are both very distinctive. There is a great white camel and a smaller grey or piebald animal. The white camel is said originally to have belonged to the Kel Geres, to have been specially bred and brought by them originally to the Southland. He has long flat withers and a round hump; but either because the Kel Geres in recent years have lived in the Southland, or for some other reason connected with their original habitat, the white camel is a plain land animal and is almost useless on rocky ground. He is consequently not very highly valued in Air.

The true Air camel is very peculiar. The species may be divided into two categories, the grey and the piebald, the latter being perhaps derived from a cross between the former and some other breed. The Air grey is a sturdy and straight-backed animal with sloping quarters and a long neck, which he holds rather low. He can carry a fair load and negotiate any sort of ground. The colour varies from iron-grey to brown-ash and is quite distinctive; the coat is either uniform or speckled. Although the Tuareg say that the original stock is the piebald, the pure-bred animal apparently has a uniform coat. The “type animal” is called the Tegama camel, the iron-grey colour is known as “ifurfurzan.” In the parti-coloured animal the markings take the form of large patches of dark grey and white with sharp edges, as if the skin had been painted, or of small patches giving a dappled appearance, or of a combination of the two, or, more rarely, of undefined patches merging into one another. Inter-breeding has produced the red-fawn[197] and white, and the brown and white animals. Though very sturdy, they are light-boned and small-footed, but their short legs and short sloping withers give them an agility which is quite unbelievable in what the world has always regarded as an ungainly animal. The eyes of these camels are sometimes pale blue and white, a peculiarity which makes them look very strange. The breed is much prized as a curiosity or freak outside Air.

Temajegh, like Arabic, has innumerable names for various types of camels. The most valuable animal is the cow-camel which has calved once; they are not used more than can be helped for long or very strenuous work, because they are, on the whole, not so strong as the males. They are rested as much as possible prior to, and after, calving. If a cow-camel has calved on the road it is common to see the small calf carried on the mother’s back until it is fit to run alongside, which is within two or three days. Stud fees are unknown: attempts are made as far as possible to avoid cross-breeding. A certain Ahmadu of the Kel Tagei is known throughout Air as the possessor of the finest herd of pure Tegama cow-camels in the mountains: they are maintained exclusively for breeding purposes. These are some of the commonest Temajegh names used in Air:

[198]Camels are curiously delicate animals, as anyone who has had anything to do with them will know to his cost. They lose condition very quickly and mysteriously, and do not regain it easily. Camel travelling implies a perpetual fruitless attempt to maintain their condition by seeking to reconcile progress and pasturing. The ideal is to give the beasts at least four hours’ grazing, which must not be at night or in the heat of the day, when the camel is prone to rest in the shade of a tree instead of feeding. At the same time, when it is very hot it is neither good for man nor beast to march; nor should the camel march all night either, when four hours’ rest are very desirable. Lastly, it must be remembered that it is tiring for camels to be on and off loaded more than once a day, since every time they kneel or get up with a heavy burden they are subjected to a considerable strain; it is consequently inadvisable to divide a march into two parts. To reach a satisfactory compromise is difficult. So long as not more than about twenty miles a day are being covered, any system works well enough, but where long marches are necessary there is no really satisfactory solution. The Tuareg himself usually starts late in the morning and marches till dusk, when he off-loads; he then drives his camels to pasture, leaving them out all night; they are slowly collected after dawn, when they have again begun to feed. The disadvantage from the European point of view is that there is always some delay in finding the camels in the morning, as one or two are sure to have strayed, nor is it always safe to leave camels wandering about unguarded at night. The French Camel Corps patrols and other Europeans usually prefer to start in the night and march until high noon or the early afternoon. I have myself tried every course, and with all its disadvantages finally adopted the Tuareg system. To these complications must be added the consideration that if a camel is watered it should be at noon, when the sun is hot, in order to make him drink well. If there is no reason to anticipate long waterless journeys, camels are watered every third day, but if they are[199] required to cross difficult tracts of desert, the intervals must gradually be increased beforehand. Above all, the camel must be made really thirsty prior to his final drink before the longest waterless portion of the journey is attempted. The camel must start almost bursting with the water in his belly.

It is generally more important for a camel not to miss a day’s pasture than a day’s water. When the rains have fallen and green vegetation is abundant, camels need not be watered for long intervals. If they are not being worked they can go for weeks without drinking. Camels will eat anything if put to it, from hard grass with a straw like wire to any kind of tree or shrub; acacia thorns three and four inches long appear to make no difference to his digestion. Pasture is the most important factor on the march, for the animal is really a fastidious feeder and requires plenty of variety.

The woes which afflict the camel are numerous. First and worst are saddle sores, which rapidly become stinking and gangrenous. They develop quickly from a slight rub or gall under the saddle, and often end by infecting the bones of the spine or ribs. They discharge a thick offensive pus either through the sore or under the skin. In treating them the first thing to do is to open the wound and let the pus escape, after which the best cure, I found as others have discovered, is to wash the wound with a strong solution of permanganate of potash. Thereafter an iodoform dressing is almost miraculous in its quick-healing properties, as it keeps away the flies, and consequently obviates maggots and re-infection. The great black crows in Air have an odious habit of sitting on the backs of camels and pecking at these sores. They do terrible damage with their long powerful beaks. The only way to keep them off is to tie a pair of crow’s wings to the hair on the hump of the camel. The remedy is sovereign, as I learnt by experience, but I am at a loss to explain the psychological process governing the action of the live crows which are thus scared away.

[200]Apart from deaths due to eating poisonous plants, which are far more numerous in the Southland than in Air, the highest mortality among camels in Air comes from a disease known locally as “blood in the head.” It is a form of pernicious apoplexy or congestion of blood in the head. The early symptoms are hard to observe unless one happens to be born a Tuareg. As the attack develops the camel becomes dazed and lies in the sun with rather a glassy stare, instead of feeding. Later it runs about, hitting its head against trees, and finally falls to the ground in contortions, dying very rapidly of a stroke. The disease is especially common after the rains, when the pasture is rich or when the animals are idle, recovering condition. If they are left in the Southland for the whole year, the rich feeding there aggravates the incidence of the disease. An attack may be staved off by the remedy, which is also used for dealing with refractory animals, namely, of putting tobacco snuff in their eyes. This apparently cruel treatment is singularly efficacious, and I can only suppose that the irritation or smarting has the effect of a stimulant which draws or dispels the blood pressure. When the disease is more advanced, resort has to be had to blood-letting; the jugular artery is cut a span below the left ear and blood is drawn to an amount which will fill three cup-shaped hollows in the ground made by removing a double handful of sand or earth from each. The blood is seen at first to flow very dark in colour; as it gradually resumes its normal hue, the hæmorrhage is stopped by taking a tuft of hair, dipping it into the coagulated blood and inserting it in the cut. As soon as a clot is formed the incision is covered with sand. The whole proceeding sounds a fantastically imprudent and septic way of dealing with an arterial hæmorrhage, but it works most successfully. If camels are sickening for disease, and especially for “blood in the head,” which may sometimes be recognised by the premonitory symptom of very hard, dry droppings, they are dosed with a mixture made of tobacco leaf, onion, and the seed of grain called “Araruf,” containing a pungent[201] oil apparently of the mustard variety. These ingredients are pounded up, mixed with about a gallon of water and poured down the camel’s throat.

Firing is resorted to for various ills, especially around bad sores to prevent them from spreading and to induce healing. A cow is very often fired across the flanks after calving, when she is also given a goatskin-full of millet and water “to fill up the empty space in her belly.” Firing round the breast pad is carried out when the animal is suffering from the disease which causes the pad to split. Mange is fairly frequent, and is treated with a mixture of oil and ashes. The worst disease of all is called “Tara,” for which there is said to be no cure: the symptoms are a wasting of the legs, and eventual death from debility and breakage of the bones: luckily I had no experience of the malady, which is said to be infectious or contagious. The Tuareg say that there is no reason for its coming, but that Allah sometimes unaccountably sends it.

The Tuareg empiric remedies, other than those described, are not interesting except in their treatment of gangrenous wounds. When they have washed the wound with a lotion of female camel urine or brewed from one of several plants which seem to have remarkably little effect, they cover the exposed flesh with a powder of crumbled donkey droppings dried in the sun. I was appalled at the danger of septic infection when I first saw the practice, but soon discovered that the powder, which had, I supposed, become sterilised in the sun, was a really effectual method of preventing the great harm caused by flies settling on the wound. I can now confidently recommend this practice.

Camels, of course, are branded with tribal marks, a complete study of which would be worth making. Each mark has its own name, and many of them are derived from certain known symbols or perhaps letters, all of which call for investigation in connection with marks from other parts of Africa. Some of the principal brands in Air are given in Plate 21, the most interesting being the mark of the Ghati[202] Tuareg (Azger); it is called the Hatita, after the name of the famous leader of Barth’s day.

This necessarily brief note on the animal which is so intimately bound up with the life of the People of the Veil, not to say their very existence, may be supplemented by some mention of the other domestic animals of Air.

In Nigeria the best horses are described as Asben horses; yet in Air there is hardly a horse to be seen. The explanation is presumably that the Tuareg bring, or used to bring, the best horses for sale in Hausaland; but they were not necessarily bred in Air. The supposition is reasonable, for the Tuareg north of Sokoto, and especially the Aulimmiden, west of Air, possess a number of horses which are renowned for their hardiness, and of course all Tuareg in the Southland are called Asbenawa. In Air the best of the few horses are, with an even lesser show of logic, described as Bagezan horses; but there are no horses in the mountains. The tracks are far too rough for there ever at any time to have been a considerable number of horses in the hills. I can offer no explanation of the name. Air is not a horse-breeding country. The pasture is too rough even after the rains, while during the dry season the only green stuff is on the trees, which, even if it were good fodder for horses, could only be reached by animals of the build of camels. The few horses which I saw in Air belonged to the Sultan at Agades and to the Añastafidet. They were small and wiry but rather nondescript, a variable cross of Arab and Sudanese blood; in no case could they be said to represent an “Air breed.” The Tuareg say the horse came to Air from the north, and in point of fact all those I saw bore a certain resemblance to the little animals of Tripolitania. There are probably not more than 100 horses in Air altogether to-day. Water is far too scarce a commodity for horses to be much used for travelling. Those in the mountains are never watered more than once a day, and can easily do three days between drinking without undue fatigue.

The other domestic animals are donkeys, cattle, sheep,[203] goats, dogs and a few Hausa cats. Falconry is not a pastime in Air. The cattle come from the south; they are of the humped and ordinary varieties. The bulls are used for drawing water from the garden irrigation wells; cows are more scarce. Before the war the Tuareg used to carry on an active trade in cattle, buying from the Fulani in Damergu and selling to the people of Ghat and the Fezzan. Incredible as it may seem, cattle used to be driven over the roads to Ghat after the rains, and do as much as four and five days without water. The mortality must have been considerable, but their cheapness in the Southland made the trade profitable. It is curious how all the animals in Air, including man, seem to get used to going without water for long periods. Oxen are used to a certain extent as pack animals both in Air and Damergu; Barth started his journey from Northern Air to Agades on an ox; he considered this mount indifferent as a means of transport, for he fell off and nearly broke his compass. The association of cattle with a well-watered country where they can drink every day must be dismissed in the Sahara, and this disposes of one of the difficulties surrounding the problem of the ox-drawn chariots of the Garamantes which so exercised Duveyrier;[181] loaded oxen can march comfortably with water only every third day.

The donkey is very nearly as good a performer in the desert as the camel. In austerity of diet he is better, being less fastidious about pasture and quite as capable of doing four and five days in cold weather, between wells. But his pace is even slower than that of the camel, and his maximum load should not exceed 100 lbs. Curiously enough, donkeys suffer from the same disease as camels after the rains: they get “blood in the head,” but in their case a treatment of snuff in the eyes is said to be useless. They have to be bled by making an incision with a curious bent iron instrument in the roof of the mouth above the lower molars. The operation looks ridiculous, but the donkey is always a humorous beast. The ones in Air and nearly all those in the Southland[204] are small grey animals, standing not more than four feet from the ground, with straight knife-edged backs. I saw none of the large white donkeys of Egypt. Near T’imia and in the north-eastern parts of Air there are a number of wild donkeys, roaming unbroken and unherded. They are the descendants of domestic donkeys driven out to propagate and find their own livelihood by certain tribes who claim them when captured in their own areas. These animals, like the gazelle of the country, exist on pasture alone, for they often encounter no open water to drink for ten months of the year.

The commonest domestic animals are the sheep and goats. Every village and tribe has large herds. After the camels they constitute the principal wealth of the people and do exceedingly well. The sheep are all of the gaunt wire-haired variety without woollen fleeces, resembling goats. The latter provide most of the milk in the villages, and vary in colour from white to black, with every intermediate shade of brown and type of marking. Curiously enough, none of the Tuareg of Air, and, I believe, none of the other groups, either spin the hair of goats or the wool of their own camels. A good sheep in 1922 could be bought for six to seven and a goat for four to five silver francs. Camels ranged between £5 and £12 a head.

The number of domestic animals in Air, hard and barren as the country seems to be, is surprisingly large. In a rough classifying census of the Tuareg of Air, including only a few tribes in the Southland and not counting either the Kel Geres or Aulimmiden, Jean[182] in 1904 estimated (Column I) the numbers as follows:

[205]The figures in Column II are Chudeau’s[183] estimate of 1909, while those in Column III were compiled by another authority: those in Column IV are my present estimate. There is little doubt that the number of camels in Air before the war was grossly under-estimated by the early authorities. From fear of taxation and requisition the Tuareg will resort to every device to conceal their possessions, and especially the number of their camels. The same applies to their sheep and goats. In 1913 the number of camels in Air was put down at 60,000, which then was probably a reasonable figure. The herds were seriously depleted by the requisitions made for the expeditions of 1913-14 to Tibesti, when not less than 23,000 camels were taken, few of which ever returned to the country. This was certainly one of the principal grievances which led to the 1917 revolution. During the operations of 1917-18 the herds were further diminished, and have only recently again begun to increase at a rate which is bound to be slow when it is realised that a camel cannot be worked at all till it is over three years old, and ought not to be worked till it is five, while from seven years onward it is at its prime for only about five years. Nowadays there are probably not more than about 25,000 camels in Air; the sheep and goats, however, have once more reached their pre-war figure, which must have been nearly half a million.[184]

The last domestic animals worth mentioning are the dogs, of a type usually resembling inferior Arabian gazelle hounds, with short hair, often brown in colour, or with the brown or liver-and-white markings like foxhounds. The “pi” dog, which is so common in the north of Africa, I never saw in Air. Dogs are interesting owing to the friendly way in which they are treated by the Tuareg; they are much more the companions of man than is usual among Moslems, a[206] characteristic which has probably survived from pre-Moslem days. Duveyrier refers to three types of dog among the Tuareg: a greyhound (lévrier), a long-haired Arab dog which is very rare, and a short-haired cross from these two. The latter appears to be the domestic dog in Air.[185]

Chickens are common and are eaten. In this the southern Tuareg differ from the Tuareg of the north, among whom Duveyrier specifically states that chickens, other birds and eggs are prohibited as food.[186]

But all domestic animals sink into insignificance in comparison with the camel, whose rôle is so outstanding in the nomadic life of the Tuareg that one wonders how the inhabitants of the Sahara can have lived before the advent of this animal, which is usually supposed to have come from the East at a comparatively late date in history.

The camel in Africa offers a most interesting historical problem around which there has been much inconclusive scientific dispute. The camel does not appear on Egyptian monuments before the Saitic period, and is not mentioned as living in Africa either by Herodotus or by Sallust, when the horse and probably the donkey were the ordinary means of transport of the nomads. It is fairly clear that the Carthaginians did not use camels, or we should certainly have found some reference to the animal in the accounts of the Punic or Jugurthine wars. It is said by so eminent an authority as Basset[187] that none of the Berber dialects contain any names for the camel which cannot be traced to Arabic origins, but this generalisation is also disputed. Sallust[188] says the Romans first saw a camel when they fought Mithridates at Rhyndacus, but Plutarch says it was at the battle of Magnesia in c. 190 B.C. The first text mentioning camels in Africa is in the account of the fighting with Juba, when Cæsar[189] captured twenty-two on the Zeta. A camel figures[207] on a coin attributed either to L. Lollius Palicanus, a prefect of Cyrenaica under Augustus, or alternatively to L. Lollius, a lieutenant of Pompey,[190] but the first mention of camels in any large numbers is during the Empire, when in the late fourth century A.D. the general Romanus requisitioned 4000 animals for transport purposes from the inhabitants of Leptis Magna.[191] Other sources, including sculptures and texts of this period from now on, confirm their frequency, and by the time Corippus was writing the camel was the normal means of transport in the interior. The silence of Pliny[192] the Elder is valuable, if negative, evidence for Africa, as he mentions camels in Bactria and Arabia, and speaks of the East as the home of this animal. He knows nothing of them apparently in Africa. It is on such evidence that it has been supposed that camels were first introduced into Cyrenaica[193] from Sinai and Arabia. The conclusion would be more readily acceptable were it not for the unfortunate discoveries of camel skeletons associated with evidence of human industry of the Pleistocene period in more than one palæolithic site in North Africa.[194] In rock drawings the camel, of course, figures largely; these glyphs may not be of extreme antiquity, but they are quite possibly prior to the earliest classical references. It has been said that in really early rock drawings the camel is not represented, but neither has any complete catalogue of the drawings yet been made, nor has any conclusive scheme of dating been compiled. The question remains undecided, for although the camel was rare on the coast in early historical times, there is no evidence that it was not used more extensively in the interior. It is difficult consequently to discuss the question of early transport methods in the Sahara, of which I would only say that conditions of water supply have apparently for several thousand[208] years been much as they certainly were throughout historical and modern times. An interesting theory has lately been advanced that there is an African and an Eastern species of camel distinguished by the peculiarity that some camels have one and some two canine teeth on each side of the upper jaw.

In the absence of any conclusive evidence it is safest to assume, as do most authorities, that the camel was not common in North Africa till as late as the second century A.D.

Gsell[195] makes an interesting suggestion that “La prospérité de la Tripolitaine prit certainement un grand essor sous la dynastie des Sévères, dont le chef était originaire de Leptis Magna. Ce fut à cette époque que Rome mit des garnisons dans les oases situées sur les routes du Soudan, ce qui favorisa évidemment le commerce des caravanes. Peut-être le développement du trafic trans-saharien fit alors adopter définitivement l’usage du chameau.” The problem of what transport was used before this period is only in part answered by Herodotus,[196] who tells us that the Garamantes harnessed oxen to carts, a statement which is confirmed from other sources, which add that cattle were used as beasts of burden as well. Whether wheeled vehicles ever reached Air is doubtful,[197] but the use of the pack-ox there continues as it does in the south. Whatever the means of transport which they favoured in their original northern homes, the Tuareg were already using camels when they reached Air. Dissociation of the Tuareg from his camel is difficult to conceive, since his life to-day as a nomad is so intimately bound up with the animal, which in turn has served so strongly to maintain his nomadic instinct. Of all animals it alone enables the Tuareg to remain to a great extent independent of his physical surroundings. Neither oxen nor donkeys could do so to the same extent.

The historical and anthropological aspect of the introduction of the ox and camel into Africa, and the identification[209] of the races with which these animals were associated, are questions which concern the general story of North Africa rather than that of the Tuareg in particular. Fundamentally the Tuareg remains the pure nomad even when his habitat has changed and circumstances have obliged him to settle in villages or on the land. In Air all the truest nomads inhabit the Talak plain and the N.W. of the plateau, with the one great exception of the Ifadyen tribe, which during the last generation has moved south to Azawagh and Tegama. The true nomads have no fixed centres of permanent habitation whatsoever, thereby differing considerably from many of the purest Arabian nomads. But, unlike the latter again, they do not migrate very far afield; their winter and summer pastures are usually not very distant from each other. The only exception that I know to this rule is the case of some of the Ahaggaren, who send their herds to graze as far afield as the Adghar n’Ifoghas[198] and at times Damergu.[199]

For many months of the year after the rains the true nomads do not even trouble to cluster round a group of wells; living on the milk of their camels and goats, they dispense with water for weeks on end. So long as their camels are only pasturing and the fodder is green they do not require to be watered. They are therefore able to live many days from the nearest wells. In such conditions water is a luxury, for it entails long marches and is not essential to man or beast. In South-eastern Air I came across a small party of Kel Takrizat, who had wandered some distance away from their usual grounds in North-western Air, to an area which had been uninhabited since the war. I was riding out from Tabello on the upper Beughqot valley to look for an old village site of which I had heard. Neither my companion, Alwali, nor I had any baggage, and we were short of water, as the skin I carried was leaky. For a mere two days’ journey Alwali had not thought it worth while[210] to bring any food for himself except a small skin of millet meal milk, which he had finished early the first afternoon. In the evening we entered a wide valley known as Tsabba,[200] where we saw a number of camels pasturing. We discovered that they belonged to a charming man called Ahmadu ag Musa. The valley was about miles broad from lip to lip, very green and full of a veitch-like plant called “Alwat,” which contains much moisture. The bottom under the steep sides lay some 100 feet below the level of the plain, which was covered with round basalt boulders wherever there were not hillocks of bare rock rising above it. It is a very arid country looking out towards the Eastern Desert, where the last rocks of Air are swallowed up in sand some thirty miles further on. Ahmadu’s camp consisted of a few mats spread under two or three little trees. As we reached it he came out to meet us. When he found out who we were, he asked me to spend the night with him; and this, having at the time intermittent fever which was due that evening, I willingly agreed to do, provided he could let me have some water. He regretted that he had no water, as he had not been near a well for three weeks, but his men went to fetch milk. I had barely dismounted and agreed to stay when a man ran up with a mat for me to sit on and a bowl of sour milk to drink. Among the Tuareg, if a man comes as a guest his host is personally responsible for his guest’s life, camels and property, so a slave unsaddled my two camels and hobbled them in the usual way by tying the two fore fetlocks together with the short hobble rope which everyone carries. My animals were driven off to feed with Ahmadu’s herd of piebald cow camels. I thought at first it was part of the famous Tegama herd of Ahmadu of the Kel Tagei, but it turned out to be another Ahmadu.

I met him only that once, and for a few moments two days later at Tabello. I have the pleasantest recollections of a great gentleman. We sat talking of the impending departure of the salt caravan for Bilma. The sun set slowly, and, as the[211] light grew less, the cruel gleam left the basalt and granite of the plateau beyond the eastern lip of the valley. The rocks ceased to look metallic in the dance of the hot air, and became soft red and purple in the green-blue sky. Here and there white sand from the outer desert had been washed up against the hillocks. Mount Gorset, with one slope inundated by the sand flood, lay just north of the valley where we sat surrounded by acacia bushes and “Alwat.” The wind had fallen. More and more food was brought for us to eat, all of it of the sort on which the true nomad lives. Cheese, sweet and sour milk, curdled milk, whey water, some cakes of baked burr-grass seed and a very little millet. We sat down to eat; they thought I wanted to eat alone at first, but became more friendly when they saw that some white men were only human like themselves. A pot of cooked millet meal was set down in the middle; luckily they had added salt to the porridge. Each man in turn ate a mouthful from the big wooden spoon and handed it on to his neighbour. I ate little, having fever, but drank much milk, both sweet and sour. The former arrived during the meal, warm and fresh from the camel. It is best quite fresh; when it gets cold in the night it is good too, but becomes rather salt and thin to the taste. We went on eating slowly in the evening, and suddenly night came with a greenish light in the west behind our backs. Milk was left for me to drink during the night; a slave was told to fill my skin with millet meal and milk for the next day. We went on talking, and then the snuff-box was passed round. The Tuareg in Air do not smoke: their only vice, in the austere life they lead, is to take snuff, when they can get it, or to chew green tobacco mixed with a little saltpetre to bring out the taste. The tobacco and snuff are traded from the Southland: the saltpetre is found in Air, and is also used in cooking, for they say that a pinch in the stew-pot makes the meat cook in half the usual time. Presently I turned over to go to sleep on Ahmadu’s mat, in a blanket which I had brought. He and Alwali went on talking far into the night, for they were old friends: Alwali had travelled with him when he was a boy many years ago.

[212]I thought of how very happy these nomads were. They have no possessions to speak of: a few mats, the clothes they wear, some water-skins, some camel trappings, a few weapons, some gourds and bowls, a cooking-pot or two and their camels. They have no routine of life, and no cares except to wonder if a raiding party will or will not happen on them. Even in their normal centres where their tribes are living more or less permanently they often have neither tents nor covering. At the best their tent is a leather roof made of two or three ox skins carried on a few poles, with brushwood laid across so that the top is dome-shaped. The sides are enclosed with vertical mats, and inside, if they are rich, they have a bed—two poles supported on four forked sticks stuck in the ground, with six transverse poles overlaid with stiff mats, woven of “Afaza” grass and strips of leather. On this bed, which is perhaps eight feet square, the whole family sleeps during the rains. At other times they sleep anywhere, on a mat on the ground. Their smaller possessions are carried in a leather sack of tanned goatskins, dyed and ornamented with fringes. All the belongings of a rich family could be loaded on one, certainly on two camels. So they move about looking for pasture. They are independent of water; their camels and goats provide both food and drink, the grasses of the field a change of diet; a slaughtered sheep or millet porridge is their luxury. When they want a fire they kindle it by rubbing a small green stick cut about the size of, and sharpened like, a pencil on a dry stick; the dust and fibre rubbed off the dry wood collect at one end of the channel which has been rubbed, and when the friction is enough, ignites. They do not even require flint and steel. I am sure they must be very happy, for they want so little and could have so much when the value of their herds often runs into thousands of pounds, but they prefer the freedom of the open world. They are even envied by the village dwellers, whose sole ambition is to make enough money to buy camels and live in the same way as their wandering kinsmen.

TRADE AND OCCUPATIONS

The Auderas country, still almost in Tegama, is far less interesting ethnically than the north or east. The old permanent habitations in the area are less characteristic of the Tuareg; there are hardly any inscriptions or rock drawings, with the exception of the large group at T’in Wana, and a few scattered about elsewhere. Owing to the many pools and “eresan”[201] there are no deep wells. At Auderas itself there are some ruined stone-built dwellings of the later type, but a few earlier examples may be seen both there and at Abattul, a village about two miles to the N.E. in the same basin of valleys. A famous mosque was founded there by Muhammad Abd el Kerim el Baghdadi. Abattul village lies between the domed peaks of Faken[202] and Mt. Abattul, which is itself a spur of Mount Todra. Behind, and between them, a valley and rough track run north to Mount Dogam. Just south of the village are the valleys which converge from Todra and Faken on the main Auderas basin. From Auderas Mount Faken is a prominent object on the northern horizon with a rounded top and vertical black sides which look unscalable. Almost at the foot of Faken on the Abattul side is a pool in a deep gorge, usually containing water enough to swim in most of the year. The path from Auderas to Abattul is very rough, as it crosses and re-crosses several small valleys where gazelle, some wild pig, and occasionally monkeys are to be found. Abattul village lies just under a low white cliff in which there are a few caves and many smaller holes inhabited by owls and[214] night birds. It was the first settlement in the basin and was only gradually abandoned as the country became less subject to raids and war. The inhabitants had settled in this place so that they could easily take refuge in the inaccessible crags of Mount Todra just behind their village, in time of raids. Even nowadays the folk from Auderas have to resort to the mountain from time to time, but not so often as to prevent them from living further away. The stone mosque at Abattul is one of the few in Air which is still used for prayer.[203]

The main road from Auderas to Northern Air runs over very rocky ground to a plain west of Faken, bordered by two valleys on the east and by low hills on the west side. The latter continue for some distance along the valley of Auderas until it eventually reaches the foothills of Air on the Talak plain. The different groups of hills are known by names which the Itesan sub-tribes adopted and retained.[204] The plain north of Agades is the Erarar n’Dendemu of Barth:[205] it contains El Baghdadi’s place of prayer mentioned by the traveller, lying under a small hill. Turning left here into more broken country by a small tributary the track enters the Ighaghrar valley, which descends from the Gissat and T’Sidderak hills.[206]

At the head of the basin a steep drop leads into a valley flowing north between Mount Bila to the west and Mount Dogam to the east. This drop, the descent of Inzerak, is equivalent to the ascent south of Auderas at T’inien on to the central platform of the plateau. It leads into one of the most beautiful valleys in Air, called Assada, the head of which, at right angles to its main direction, is formed by small ravines draining Mount Dogam. It runs along the[215] eastern foot of Bila and falls into Anu Maqaran, the central basin of Air. When we came into Assada there were two or three pools near the foot of Inzerak; further up the T’ighummar tributary lay a small village of stone houses with a deep well and mosque on an alternative loop road from Auderas branching off at the place of prayer of El Baghdadi. This alternative track was the one taken by Barth in 1850; it debouches into the Tegidda valley, a tributary of the Assada from the north, at Aureran well.

I camped in Assada three times in all, twice near the foot of the descent and once a mile or so further down at the wells of Tamenzaret,[207] which are temporary and require to be dug again every year. The deep narrow valley with its sandy bed and immense trees growing in the thick vegetation on both banks was magnificent. Towering up on either side the red mountains framed, in a cleft towards the east, the cone of Dogam seated on a pedestal of black lava and basalt. Most of the Dogam massif is so rough as to be impassable. It seems to be a volcanic intrusion in the Todra group, to which it really belongs. I suspect that the basalt boulders covering the plain north and south of Auderas, and perhaps certain features of Todra itself, owe their origin to the Dogam activity. But Bila is hardly less imposing: on the Assada side it presents a wall of vivid red rock. The fine clean colours of dawn on the first morning I saw the mountains against a cold blue sky offered the most lovely spectacle I saw in all Air.

The Assada and T’ighummar valleys are inhabited by a northern section of the Kel Nugguru, who pasture their goats and camels there, and owe allegiance to Ahodu of Auderas. There are a few ruined stone houses below Tamenzaret and the remains of a mosque at the old deep well of Aureran, where the main road divides. From here one branch proceeds north past another ruined settlement to the Arwa Mellen valley and mountain, the other turns east towards the upper part of the Anu Maqaran basin.[216] I took the latter road to T’imia. It crossed several broad valley beds flowing northwards from Dogam, notably the Bacos, where there is a village and palm grove, and the Elazzas not far from where they fall into Anu Maqaran. The road I have had occasion to mention as running from Agades by the Ara valley over the shoulder of Dogam descends from the Central massif by Bacos or Elazzas. The latter corresponds to the Ara on the other side of the Dogam pass. By these two the Todra-Dogam group is divided from Bagezan.

Near its junction with the main Anu Maqaran valley, the Elazzas is a broad bed between low rocky banks. At a certain point where it crosses a ridge of rock large quantities of water are held up in the sand. The remains of a recent village with a few date palms appear on the site. The rocks in the neighbourhood bear a few rude pictures, but the ruins, a few round pedestal foundations of loose stones some 15-20 feet in diameter and 2-3 feet high, on which reed huts used to stand, are uninteresting. Bila from here has the appearance of a long flat ridge, in pleasant contrast to the isolated peaks of Aggata and Arwa in the north, or the confused mass of Bagezan to the south and south-east.

The upper part of the Anu Maqaran valley where the Bagezan and the Agalak mountains at the western side of the T’imia massif approach one another is called Abarakan. The road passes a large cemetery and the valley narrows between high hills with bare sides until a big fork is reached: one valley goes north to T’imia village, the other south, emerging on the central plateau east of the Bagezan mountains.

T’imia village is a veritable mountain fastness. The Agalak-T’imia massif was evidently highly volcanic, for a great flow of basalt overlying pink granite boulders has taken place along the valley towards Abarakan. The track climbs steadily over the broken lava stream. The going is rough. Then suddenly the track seems to end altogether below an overhanging cliff of lava some 30 feet high lying right across the bed of the ravine. We reached this point[217] and found the men of T’imia had come down to meet us in order to help our camels to negotiate the path which follows a narrow crevasse in one side of the cliff. The cleft is so narrow that a camel with a bulky load cannot pass at all; it is so steep that the poor animals were forced to proceed in a series of ungainly lurches or jumps. Above the cliff the valley broadens out again, and where two small side valleys enter it lies the modern village of T’imia.

This settlement of Kel Owi nobles is very different from the servile Auderas. The parentage of these Kel Owi may be obscure and mixed, but their physique, the general cleanliness of the place and the neatness of their domed huts stamp them as nobles. The dwellings stand grouped in compounds, or sometimes as single huts, scattered between a row of gardens with irrigation wells, and the slope of a hill covered with huge boulders. In one of the smaller side valleys is a large grove of date palms with most of the gardens, near the site of the older village, a collection of rectangular masonry houses in ruins, and round hut sites marked by a ring of stones and a hearth. The little mosque of stone and mud construction lies between the old and new villages, but it was desecrated by the French soldiers and is no longer used. A matting shelter and compound in the new settlement serve to-day both for a place of prayer and a school, presided over by the ’alim ’Umbellu. Though over sixty he still works daily in his garden in the intervals of teaching the children of the village. Fugda, chief of T’imia, is one of the cleverest men in Air. Under the guidance of these two men the community has prospered. The villagers are enterprising. In the changing conditions of things they are an exception to the usual rule, for the men combine caravaning and trading on a large scale with gardening and date cultivation, without the help of any Imghad. When we came this way some of their camels were fattening in Abarakan ready to go to Bilma with the annual salt caravan in charge of a selected party of men. Another herd of some 100 head was going to Damergu to fetch millet for sale to[218] the French post at Agades, and later I met yet another drove in Assada going south from Iferuan by way of Auderas to fetch more grain for sale in Northern Air after working on transport duties in Nigeria for the winter.

The life of the camel-owning Tuareg may be said to centre round the autumn salt caravan, which all the best camels accompany. It usually leaves in October, starting from Tabello[208] in the upper Beughqot valley, where parties from all over Air, Damergu and the Southland rendezvous in order to start together. Since the war these caravans have been comparatively small, but even during the last few years they have numbered 5000 camels. Ever since the occupation of Agades by the French, the Camel Corps has been turned out to guard the concentration and escort the caravan across the desert, for so valuable a congregation of camels might any year, as it sometimes did in the past, prove an irresistible temptation for raiders. The largest caravan ever escorted reached the fantastic total of over 30,000 camels. The caravan marches for five days to the oasis of Fashi, where it is joined by a smaller caravan from Damagarim via Termit. There, a halt is made for a short time to water and feed on whatever scanty pasture is available, and in some three more days Bilma is reached. The animals go out empty except for a little grain or live meat in the form of goats and sheep, and some trade goods for the Tebu and Kanuri inhabitants of Fashi and Kawar and Tibesti. They bring back salt and dates both from Fashi and Bilma. The latter place has perhaps the finest salt deposits in Africa. It costs nothing to get except the labour at the pans of making it up into loaves and loading it wrapped in matting bales. The outlay may be threepence to fivepence a load, in addition to an export tax of two francs per camel levied by the French authorities. The salt is sold in Hausaland for anything up to 7s. or more a loaf according to the time of year. As a fully-grown camel can carry four to six loaves of salt, the trade is extremely lucrative.

[219]Both Fashi, or Agram as the place is also called, and Kawar have practically no pasture, and the few camels which live permanently there eat dates. The desert for five and a half days between Tabello and Fashi and three days between Fashi and Bilma is not only waterless but also nearly pastureless as well. The camels start out loaded with a sufficient supply of fodder for the outward and return journeys; the huge bales of grass are dropped en route at the end of each day’s march to provide for the equivalent return stage. Since the practice of escorting caravans has been instituted the French authorities quite rightly forbid isolated parties crossing the desert and attracting raiders to the neighbourhood. The route now chosen for the caravan runs from Tabello to Tazizilet on the edge of the Air mountains, and then straight across to Fashi in an almost due easterly direction. Formerly another road, which was more convenient for the northern tribes of Air, was also in use. It left the mountains at Agamgam pool in North-east Air and went to Ashegur well, north of Fashi; this way the distances between watering-points was shortened, and there was also rather more pasture.

This annual salt caravan is the largest enterprise of its sort in the world at the present time. It is called in Air the “Taghalam,” a word derived from “aghelam,” meaning a “prize camel,” but the French call it the “Azalai,” which means the “Parting” or the “Separation,” the name given to a similar caravan which annually leaves Timbuctoo to collect salt at Taodenit for sale along the Niger.

With the advent of European salt in Nigeria the trade has become somewhat less remunerative, as the Air “Taghalam” no longer enjoys its ancient monopoly in the Central Sudan, but the infinitesimal cost of production and the cheap transport in the hands of nomads will always enable it to compete with the imported European trade product to some extent. Bilma salt is of good quality; it is comparatively free from sand or medicinal chemicals and is preferred by the natives of the south to the purer European product.[220] The loaves are made up in conical form and are pink in colour, standing some 18-24″ high by 9-12″ at the base.

The return journey of the “Taghalam” follows the same course as the outward one. The whole trip, which is extremely strenuous for men and camels alike, takes some three weeks. There are always a number of casualties among the camels from exhaustion, but so large are the profits that every Tuareg is ready to take the risk and send as many of his herd as he can possibly spare at least once a year, either in the autumn or on the smaller “Taghalam” which goes in the spring. After returning from Bilma the camels are rested and then proceed to Damergu and the south to sell their salt and their services. They are joined by any other camels fit to go, and when they have disposed of their merchandise engage in transport work between the cities of the Southland until about March or April. Then they begin to move north again before the rains set in in the Sudan. The proceeds of this work and of the sale of Bilma salt, or dates from Fashi and Air, are invested in grain and such trade goods as cotton cloth, tea, sugar, snuff and hardware, which are the only luxuries of Air. By the time they reach the mountains the summer rains have probably begun, and they have some three months in which to recuperate on the fresh pasture of the hills in preparation for the next year’s routine.

Transactions in salt and grain are measured by the camel load, which varies considerably from place to place. Metrology is not an exact science in Air, but recognised standards nevertheless exist. The actual measures are kept by the tribal chiefs, and it is, of course, common gossip to hear it said that a certain chief gives unduly short weight. The only truly Tuareg measure is a unit of capacity; in the first instance it is the handful, whether of grain or salt or other commodity. But the measure has been standardised by establishing that a handful shall be as much millet grain as an ordinary man can pick up in his hand with the fingers[221] closed palm upwards.[209] Six such handfuls nominally make one “tefakint,” which is measured by heaping the grain in a small circular basket with sloping sides 1¾″ deep × 3⅝″ in diameter at the mouth × 2″ at the bottom. The next larger measure is the “muda,” a cylindrical wooden cup with a hemispherical bottom in a U section. As the handful and the “tefakint” are too small to measure bulky wares like dates, the “muda” has become the effectual standard in the country, but it varies in certain areas. At Auderas it is of five “tefakint,” but in Agades of ten. The T’imia and Kel Owi or Ighazar “muda” is different again, three of them being the same as two Auderas or one Agades “muda.” The three “mudas” are, however, generally recognised and are not the subject of bargaining in each transaction. The measure corresponding to the Air “tefakint” basket in Damergu is a round section cut from a large calabash; this slightly convex plate is held by a loop for the fingers fixed to the underside. All these grain measures are considered to be full when the grain is heaped up so that it runs over the edge.

For small weights the silver five-franc piece, or “sinko” as it is called, is now also used, especially in measuring the value of silver ornaments. The rate of exchange current in 1922 in Air at Agades was four silver shillings or five silver francs to the “sinko”; a general rate of five obtained elsewhere in Air, as silver francs and shillings were not distinguished from each other. The people of Air have the nomads’ dislike for paper currency in any form. Various coins, including the Maria Teresa dollar, are still in circulation, but French coinage is gradually replacing all others. Cowrie shells are no longer used and gold is now unknown. The mithkal of Agades dates from the time when the gold trade was still flourishing, and its form here is peculiar to this city. It seems to have been a unit of weight and not of currency; as a recognised amount of gold it was used as[222] the basis for striking bargains, but the metal probably did not pass from hand to hand owing to the inconvenience of handling dust. With the decline of the gold trade the mithkal survived as a unit of weight, but its theoretical value changed considerably in the course of centuries. We find in Barth’s day the exchange was reckoned at 1 mithkal = 1000 cowries, and 2500 cowries = 1 Maria Teresa dollar; but whereas the Agades mithkal was only worth two-fifths of a dollar, the Timbuctoo mithkal was worth one-third of a dollar. It is interesting to arrive by a round-about method at a rough estimate of the change in value of the unit.

The mithkal as a simple unit of weight was a part of a larger unit in the following equation:[210] 100 mithkal = 3 small karruwe = 1 large karruwe = 6½ Arab rottls. The Arab rottl weight varies between 225 grammes in Persia and about 160 grammes in Cairo, several slightly different standard rottls being used in other parts of Egypt. Taking 160 grammes as the equivalent of 1 rottl, and assuming Barth’s equation to be correct, we get 10·4 grammes for the Agades mithkal. The unit of 10·4 grammes of gold dust in the fifteenth century A.D. was in the nineteenth century equal to two-fifths of a Maria Teresa dollar weighing 28·0668 grammes silver 0·833 fine, or in other words, 13·5 grammes of silver.

The only measures of length in Air are the “aghil” (plural “ighillan”)[211] and the “tedi” or “teddi.” The former is the universal dra’, ell or cubit measured from the inner elbow-point to the first joint of the middle finger on an average man, say 5 ft. 10 in. tall. Ten “ighillan” make one “amitral,” the two measures being only used for cloth, etc. The “tedi” is the fathom and is used for measuring the depth of wells or the length of rope, etc. There is no measure in Air for distance, which is invariably calculated by the parts of a day or the number of days taken to cover the ground.

[223]The pack-saddle of Air is peculiar to the country. It is very simple, consisting of two sheaves of grass or straw, two semi-circular pieces of matting made of plaited dûm palm fronds, a skin filled with grain or stuffed with dry camel dung and a wooden arch terminating in flat boards. A bundle of grass, with the butt ends even and trimmed, is laid on the semi-circular mat, which is then rolled around it and sewn up with ribbands of palm frond by a long wooden or iron bodkin; the flowery ends of the grass project beyond the matting. One of these mat cylinders or cushions is fitted each side of the camel’s hump with the butts nearly touching one another over the withers. Over these pads is placed the arch of wood, the ends of which terminate in boards some 9″ × 3″ at the ends, resting on the pads, which are tied on with twisted dûm palm rope. A stuffed goatskin thrown transversely over the back of the camel behind the hump forms a rear pad. Its corners are tied to the two ends of the arch with adjustable cords to regulate the distance between them. The loads, which must be carefully balanced, are slung over the pack-saddle; two loops on each load are hitched to the other two on the other load with two short sticks. The weight of the load rests on the side pads and the ends of the back pad; the load cords bear on the latter and on the side pads just in front of the wooden arch, which prevents them slipping backwards. The load ropes rest on, and are not tied to, the saddle. No girths, crupper or breastband are used unless the loads are very bulky or need special steadying. Unloading is extraordinarily simple, for as soon as the camel has been knelt down the loops are disconnected by pulling out the short sticks and the loads fall down on either side.

The pack-saddle is simple and cheap, but is not efficient on steep slopes where the camel may stumble or lurch awkwardly. As these conditions prevail all over Air, the arrangement is really far from ideal, though in the plain land it is practical enough. The principal advantages are that every part of the saddle is easily adjustable to suit any particular camel, while the whole equipment weighs next[224] to nothing. The goatskin used as the back pad on long journeys is filled with a provision of grain, saving an additional receptacle on each camel of the caravan. The resultant economy of space and bulk is unequalled in any other system.

The rest of the camel’s equipment consists of a head rope, a hobbling rope and the load ropes. In Air all rope is made of split dûm palm fronds soaked in water till they have fermented, or, if no time is available, from fresh material. The strips are twisted like ordinary two or three strand “cable laid” rope. It is a strong, serviceable material costing nothing and available everywhere where the dûm palm grows, which is all over Air and the Sudan. The scarcity of date palms precludes the use of the brown fibre which grows below the fronds, known to camel travellers in the north. The dûm palm rope does not wear so well as the latter but is easier to manufacture. Every camel-man in Air spends a certain part of the day making rope, twisting the fronds from split ribbands about ¼-½″ broad, bundles of which he carries about; he sits on the ground talking and twisting, using his big toe to hold the end of the rope he has made, and weaving in strand after strand with incredible speed. The rope is nearly all two-stranded cable, but the tightness of twist and the finish vary with the use. Load ropes are very closely twisted cable, passed twice round the package at each end and terminating in a loop adjusted by a running half-hitch to raise or lower the load on the side of the camel. Lashing rope and rough nets are made of loosely twisted strands. The camel head rope is a long piece with a slip knot at one end passed over the lower jaw of the camel and pulled tight behind its front teeth. Hobble ropes are stout lengths passed round one foreleg, then twisted and passed round the other, leaving about 18″ of movement between the limbs: the ends are secured by passing a knot through a small loop. Carefully made rope is beaten with a stone to make the strands pack tightly.

Loading camels is hard work and can only properly be done by two men. The pack-saddle is put on the kneeling[225] camel, which is prevented from rising by slipping one of his knees through a looped hobble rope, which, when not in use, is carried round the animal’s neck. The camel protests vigorously in season and out of season and pretends to bite the men. They work stripped to the waist, wearing only their trousers tucked up to the thigh, and the inevitable veil. They stagger under 150 to 200 lbs. loads, swinging them on to the camel’s back, slipping the loops through one another and securing them with the two sticks. The camel is then released, gets up with a jerky movement resembling a deck chair being opened, and probably throws its burden to the ground immediately, when the operation recommences. If this does not happen at once the head rope is secured to the next camel in front with a half-hitch that can be released by pulling the free end. By the time fifty camels have been loaded, at least five in an endeavour to graze on the same bush have bumped into one another and their loads have fallen off. The operation of loading may take place in the early morning when it is cool, or before dawn when it is always cold, or at noon when the temperature is like a furnace; it is always tedious and tiresome and bad for the temper, which the incessant complaining of the camels aggravates.

Eventually the caravan moves off. The camel-men walk along, watching their loads if they are conscientious, and when everything is going well they climb up on their camels and sit on the loads. They jump up on to the neck of the camel after pulling its head down and so reach the top, but they never kneel a camel after it has started on the march until the day’s journey is over, unless the load has been thrown or has slipped very badly. The guide takes the head of the caravan and the march starts. The Tuareg of Air know their mountains as well as the average Londoner knows London: they can find their way along the more important tracks. For the less known ways a special guide must be found: in the outer deserts the reliable guides can be counted on the fingers of both hands. Efale, the leader of the “Taghalam” and veteran of the Eastern Desert, T’ekhmedin[226] and Kalama on the northern routes—are all resourceful, patient and observant men when travelling, but complete autocrats whose orders cannot be questioned. Their knowledge of the roads depends on estimation of time and memory and not on any supernatural powers. They know the stars[212] and have some sense of direction, but especially do they know every fold of ground and almost every bush. Their powers are remarkable but not inexplicable; their observation and memory rarely fail them, but for obvious reasons they do not care to travel by night. Once started the march goes on hour after hour. The heat grows more intense. The narrow path winds down the bed of a valley or among the trees on the banks, or over rocky plains or amid sand dunes.

In Air the vegetation exists principally along the valleys. In the south the dûm palm grows in veritable forests or in low thickets, when it resembles the dwarf palm. The Acacia Adansonii, Acacia Arabica (“Tamat” in Temajegh), Acacia Tortilis (the “Talha” of the Arabs and “Abesagh” or “Tiggeur” in Temajegh), as well as two or three other varieties, are common. They occasionally grow to very large dimensions. The Aborak (Balanites Ægyptiaca) also does very well; trees with trunks up to 2 feet in diameter are common in the larger valleys, and in North-eastern Air I have seen some up to 3½ feet across. The bushes and grasses are innumerable, but flowers are rare, except for the yellow and white mimosa blossom on the trees. Nearly all the trees and bushes are thorned, some with recurving barbs which are dangerous for the careless rider. If burr grass is less frequent than in the south, spear grass abounds and is almost as painful. Vegetation in Air defends itself against pasturing animals vigorously but vainly, for the animals in the country seem to thrive on a diet of thorns, and man ends up by being the worst sufferer from these useless provisions of Nature. Thorns are not the only minor horror of life. How often after a long march has some delicious glade appeared at[227] hand, cool and inviting. After angrily dismissing the suggestion to choose a camp site in the middle of an open river-bed where the sun on the sand will cook an egg in a few minutes, you throw yourself down to rest in deep green shade fanned by the breeze. The unwary traveller soon learns the consequences of disregarding native advice, for he will quickly arise from a bed of thorns with his clothes full of burrs, and his mouth full of bad words, while his whole attention will probably be directed towards dodging a large tarantula or scorpion or, happily less often, a little yellow-crested sand viper, than which there is hardly anything more deadly in all Africa.

Apart from trades directly connected with camels the Tuareg have practically no industries. They neither dye nor spin anything, except a rough sewing thread of local cotton; nor do they weave in wool or cotton. Mats of two sorts are made; the one of palm fronds plaited in bands some two to three inches broad and sewn together spirally to form rectangles or ovals worked in varying degrees of fineness, the other made of stiff grass and thin strips of black leather. The technique of the latter is good: deep borders with an intricate geometric ornament are woven in the leather warp. Mat-making and leather-working are carried on by the women. They attain great skill, but although leather-working is usual all over the country, it is at Agades that the craft is especially well developed. Fine designs in coloured strips of leather are made on cushions, bags and pouches like a sort of embroidery. The industry is in the hands of a few women and is probably of Manding origin, brought to Air by the Songhai conquerors or even before. Decorated camel riding saddles, leather head ropes and travelling wallets or pouches of various shapes are made. The leather used is the goatskin locally tanned with the seed pod of the “Tamat” acacia, and dyed with red maize leaf or indigo. A certain amount of prepared leather is also imported from the south. In these articles the foundation is usually of black leather, which is ornamented with coloured[228] strips or bands and metal studs. Camel head ropes are made of twisted or plaited leather strands with coloured tassels; the more elaborate, the finer are the strands used; the tassels are bound with coloured leather threads woven in patterns. The technique of these head ropes is the best of its sort I have ever seen. Cutting leather in strands to the thickness of coarse sewing thread is a highly skilled art, and all the more remarkable in that only knives are used, for scissors are unknown except in the blacksmiths’ equipment. I have seen cords for carrying amulets or pouches made of ten or a dozen threads, each less than ¹⁄₃₂″ thick, bound at intervals and at the ends.

A most characteristic article is a flat rectangular envelope of leather some 6″ long × 3″ broad. It is only open at the bottom and slides up and down the two cords, by which a sort of portfolio is hung from the neck; this consists of four to six leather flaps in which amulets, trinkets, needles and papers are preserved. The black cover is ornamented with some stamped rectilinear pattern and has small tassels at the bottom. A similar object is the small leather amulet case about 3″ broad × 2″ long × 1″ deep, also slung round the neck, and provided with a lid like a box. A larger semi-circular pouch with a design in strips of coloured leather suspended over the shoulder by a long cord is typical Agades work. Triangular travelling bags of all sizes are made of soft leather, closed at the neck with a running cord; they vary in size from those 5 inches long for snuff to others 2 feet or more for clothing and food. Both these bags and ornamented goatskins for packing personal belongings have polychrome patterns on the surface, which is roughed and rubbed with moist dyes. The plaited head ropes and the surface dyeing of leather seem to be a more indigenous technique than the “Agades work” proper, in which the design is procured by appliqué strips.

Carpentry is rudimentary and the craft akin to iron-working. The artisan, known as the “Enad” or smith, whatever his caste, is a person of standing in the community:[229] he is a man whose advice is sought in council though he rarely becomes a leader. In the olden days the “Enad” is said even to have had a peculiar form of grave to distinguish his resting-place from that of other men, but however this may have been, there is nothing now to show that the smith of Air ever belonged to a separate race or caste. To-day the smith is only respected for his skill. The position is usually hereditary and includes the duties of the blacksmith, jeweller, carpenter and farrier, with the same set of tools for all these trades. His adze is an acute-angled crook of wood with a socketed iron cutting edge bound on to the point of the short limb; the form dates back at least to the Neolithic period of civilisation. The axe is equally primitive: the cutting edge, instead of having a socket, ends in a point which is fitted into a hole bored through the club head of a wooden haft. With these two tools, a few hammers, usually of European shape, tin-shears, pincers, files and chisels, the “Enad” contrives to turn out some remarkably fine work. Using only his adze he will cut spoons with a pointed bowl at a slight angle to the flat handle, or round ladles, from a solid block of “Aborak” wood. They are then ornamented with geometric patterns burnt on the handles around the edge. The Air “Enad” does not smelt iron, for all the presence of ironstone in the hills and magnetite sand in the river-beds. The only iron-working done is quite simple bending, beating or tempering on an anvil shaped like a huge horseshoe nail planted in the ground. A goatskin bellows closed by two wooden slats and a clay nozzle are used as in the Southland. The iron is heated in a hearth in the sand filled with charcoal. A certain number of inferior iron knives are forged, but the Tuareg of Air must be regarded as having hardly yet reached the iron-working age of evolution.

The Agades blacksmith-jewellers melt down silver coins heated in small clay crucibles. They lose a lot of silver by oxidation, but the work is remarkably well finished, considering the primitive nature of their tools and the heavy hammers employed. The wooden household furniture will[230] be described later; so far as there is any at all, it is well made, but rough. The principal skill of the smiths is displayed in making and decorating camel riding saddles and certain U-shaped luggage rests, to which particular reference will be made hereafter.

The Tuareg riding saddle, or “tirik” (“t’iriken” in the plural) in Temajegh, or “rahla” in Arabic, is a highly efficient production, combining comfort with extreme lightness. It consists of a circular seat over an inverted V frame which fits across the withers of the camel. High above the seat are a broad, tall cantle shaped like a Gothic arch and large cross pommel. The whole saddle weighs perhaps 10 lbs. at the most. Its equipment includes a quilted saddle cloth over the withers and a single plaited leather girth two inches broad. No iron is used in the saddle, except for two rings which pull by diagonal straps from the underside of the seat over the flat Ʌ shaped frame of the saddle. The girth is permanently attached to these straps at one end, the other end is lashed to the ring on the off-side straps by a leather thong. The seat, cantle and pommel are made of separate pieces of wood held together by raw hide, which is pulled over them wet and dried in place; the violent contraction of the hide holds the component parts together as firmly as if they were screwed or dovetailed. The broad Ʌ sides which fit over the withers are of soft tanned leather stretched over a rectangular frame: the upper part is covered with leather over hide and wood. The common saddle has dark red leather over the seat and cantle and black leather over the cross pommel and along the edges of the cantle. The elaborate decoration of the more ornate patterns is invariably the same. In this variety the seat and edging are of red and black leather as previously described, but the back of the cantle and the front of the cross pommel are covered with pale green leather, on which is applied a geometric decoration of horizontal and diagonal strips of stamped and fretted silver or white metal, with red cloth showing through the holes. Every example I saw[231] had the same green leather background on the front of the pommel and back of the cantle. I observed no instance where the ornament was on a different background or where green leather without the silver metal design had been used. Where the design comes from I have no idea; it is remarkably well executed and dignified without being so barbaric in splendour as the horse saddles of the Sudan. Every element of the construction and ornament is traditional and rigidly adhered to. I can offer no suggestions regarding its origin, but can only note its presence. Some symbolism is probably involved.

Where a man can afford to have a leather bridle he usually dispenses with the running noose which, when rope is used, is slipped over the camel’s lower jaw behind the front teeth. The leather bridle is fitted to a head collar consisting of an arched iron nose-piece with a curved iron jowl-piece attached to one side by a brass or copper link ring. The bridle is fastened to the other end of the jowl-piece and runs through a ring on the nose-piece itself, so that any pull on the bridle closes the former on to the latter, compressing the jaws of the camel. The nose-piece is kept in position by a horizontal band of plaited leather attached to the ends and passing round the back of the camel’s head below the ears. The top of the arched nose-piece is usually shaped into a loop on to which a crest of black ostrich feathers may be attached.[213] As an alternative or in addition to this equipment the riding camel often also has a nose-ring in the left nostril for a light rope or leather bridle. The nose-ring is the mark of a good riding camel, but is sometimes not employed for guiding the animal, as its use necessitates light hands to avoid injuring the beast.

In addition to its lightness the Tuareg riding saddle has the inestimable merit of bringing the weight of the rider over the shoulders of the camel, or in other words over the part where the animal is strongest. The hinder parts of the camel are sloping and can carry no weight; all the heavy[232] work is done by the fore-legs. The rider, sitting in the saddle, which must be arranged with padding if necessary over the front part of the withers to bring the seat horizontal, rests one foot against the vertical part of the camel’s neck just above its curve, holding on to the neck with a prehensile big toe. The other leg is crooked below and falls over the opposite shoulder of the camel at the base of the neck. Bare feet are essential for good riding, as, in addition to enabling some grip to be obtained, they are used to guide the camel with recognised “aids.” With a broad cantle and a high pommel between the legs a far better grip can be obtained than on the Arabian saddle, on which a good seat is entirely a question of balance. Provided the saddle cloth under the Tuareg saddle is properly adjusted there is practically no galling of the withers or sides. If provisions or water-skins are carried they are slung under the seat of the riding saddle, their front ends attached to the girth rings, their rear ends tied together behind the hump, resting on a small pad to prevent rubbing over the backbone.

The large goatskins for water and small ones for meal do not differ from those used throughout the East. The goat is skinned without cutting the hide except around the neck and limbs: the skin is peeled off the carcass and well greased. The legs are sewn up and roped for slinging: rents or holes are skilfully sewn up or patched with leather and cotton thread so that they do not leak. A new skin recently greased with goat or sheep fat is abominable, as the water becomes strongly impregnated with the reek of goat. But water from a good old skin can be almost tasteless, though such skins are hard to come by. Some of the water one has drunk from goatskins beggars description; it is nearly always grey or black, and smelly beyond belief. The one compensation is that the wet outside of the skin keeps the water deliciously cool owing to constant evaporation. With a riding saddle, a skin of water and a skin of meal or grain as his sole equipment, the Tuareg reduces the complications of travelling to a minimum.

[233]His weapons are few but characteristic. First and foremost he wears a sword, called “takuba,” as soon as he reaches man’s estate, and before even he dons the veil. His sword has been romantically associated with the Crusaders and I know not who else. It is a straight, flat, double-edged cutting sword of the old cross-hilted type up to 3 ft. 6 ins. long by 2-3½ ins. broad below the hilt, tapering slightly to a rounded point. The guard is square and broad and the hilt is short, for the Tuareg have small hands. The pommel is flattened and ornamented. The hilt and guard form a Latin cross. The type never varies, though of course the blades differ greatly in quality and form, ranging from old Toledo steels with the mark “Carlos V” on them to an iron object called a “Masri” blade made in the north. Some are elaborately ornamented, but the most prized are plain with two or three slight canellations down the middle; they are probably of European manufacture. The commonest Masri blades bear two opposed crescent “men in the moon” faces as their mark; another cheap variety has a small couchant lion. The Tuareg prizes his sword as his most valued possession and many, like Ahodu, speak with pride of a blade handed down in their families for generations. His particular sword was reputed to have magical properties, for it had been lost in a fight at Assode, where the owner, rather than allow it to be captured, had thrown it from him into the air, only, through the instrumentality of a slave, to find it again many years afterwards, buried deep in the rocky ground on a hillock near the site of the battle. The sword is worn in a red leather scabbard slung from two rings by a cotton band over the shoulder. The edges of the blades are kept very sharp. As a weapon these swords are quite effective. Ahodu in a raid received a sword wound from a blow which had glanced off his shield; it ran from the left shoulder to the left knee, and had cut deep into his arm and side. It would have killed most Europeans; he not only recovered but had to ride four days from the scene of the fight back to Air.

Two sorts of spears are used, the wooden-hafted with[234] a narrow willow-leaf socketed blade and an iron socketed butt, and one made throughout of metal. The latter, called “allagh,” is a slender and beautiful weapon up to six feet long.[214] The head is very narrow, not above an inch broad: the greatest breadth is half-way down the blade, which projects on either side of a pronounced midrib. Below the head are one or more pairs of barbs in the plane of the blade. The haft is round and about half an inch in diameter, inlaid with brass rings. Two-thirds of the way along the haft is a leather grip; below that is an annular excrescence, and then the haft is splayed out, terminating in a chisel-shaped butt 1½″-2″ broad. These spears are used as lances or as throwing weapons. They are graceful and well-balanced, but are not made locally. Wherever they appear the influence of the Tuareg can seemingly be traced. It was from this people also that the cross-hilted sword probably came to be adopted in the Sudan, while they themselves certainly learnt its use in the Mediterranean lands, perhaps even from the Romans.

Sheath knives some 6″ long, with fretted or inlaid brass hilts and red leather or leather and brass sheaths, are worn at the waist. The arm dagger is the most typical of all Tuareg weapons. They seem to be the only people to use it: it has a small wooden cross hilt and a long, narrow, flat blade. This weapon is worn along the forearm, the point to the elbow, the hilt ready for use under the hand: the sheath has a leather ring which is slipped over the wrist. The hilt is held in the hand, knuckles upward and two fingers each side of the long member of the cross. It is, in fact, a short stabbing sword, the handiest and most redoubtable of all the weapons of the People of the Veil.

For defence they have large shields[215] roughly rectangular in shape and as large as 5 ft. × 3 ft., of sun-dried hide from which the hair has been removed. The best are made in[235] Elakkos and some parts of Damergu of oryx hide. The edges are bound in leather, but the shield remains stiff yet fairly flexible, as it consists of only one thickness of hide. The corners are rounded and the sides somewhat incurved, the bottom being usually a few inches broader than the top. A loop in the centre of the top side is used to hang the shield from the camel saddle. In use it is held in the left hand by a handle attached behind about a third of its length from the top rim. There are no arm loops, as the shield is too ungainly to move rapidly in parry, though its size effectually protects the whole body. The hide of the white oryx is extremely tough and is said to turn any sword-cut and most spear-thrusts. The shield is especially remarkable for its ornamentation. Some of the more elaborate have metal studs with roundels of red stuff near the edges, but an uncoloured cruciform design worked on the surface by a series of small cuts always appears in the upper part of the shield on the centre line. The design in all examples I have seen, and probably in most cases, is much the same and is certainly symbolic, for we hear of the shield and cross ornament being engraved on rocks. The design seems to be derived from a Latin cross, the lower and longer arm of which terminates in a group of diagonal members, usually three on each side, forming a radial pattern. In this form it resembles nothing so much as the Christian cross standing on a radiating mass representing light or glory, but certain examples have the radiating marks at the top as well as at the bottom of the cross.

The Tuareg does not usually use either bows and arrows or the throwing iron with its many projecting knife-blades. Instances are not wanting in which these weapons have been used, but they are neither typical of the equipment of the Tuareg nor natural to his temperament. Where they have been used they have been consciously borrowed from some neighbouring or associated people, such as the Tebu, who use the throwing iron extensively. The People of the Veil have one most especial vaunt, which is that they fight[236] with the armes blanches and disdain insidious weapons like arrows. The advent of civilisation has brought them the rifle, which they are as proud to possess as any fighting man must be, but they have never been seduced from the sword, spear and knife which are their old allegiances. It is common to hear a Tuareg say that he would be ashamed to stoop to the infamy of the Tebu: he will explain that whatever happens the Tuareg will never creep up to a camp at night and cut his enemy’s throat in the dark. He will fight fair and clean, attacking with spear and sword, preferably by day. He prides himself on the distinction which he draws between murder by stealth and killing in a fight or raid. He may be a liar and not live up to his vaunt; but to have the ideal at all is remarkable; it must be said to his honour that on the whole he has proved that he can live up to his self-set standard. In all the bitter fighting with the French during the last two generations I am only aware of one instance in which the Tuareg have stooped to what in their own view was treachery, and that was when they tried to poison the survivors of the Flatters Mission after the attack at Bir Gharama.

Their tactics in war are the usual ones of desert fighting. Guerilla warfare, ambushes, surprise attacks and harassing descents on stragglers are all known. On one occasion in an attack on a French patrol, which had exacted a fine of camels from a tribe, the men came up in the dark on the opposite side of the square to that on which the animals were lying and called to them, whereupon the animals, recognising the voices of their masters, rose and swept through the sleeping camp, which was over-run and decimated. In the desert men neither give nor get quarter, for prisoners and slaves are encumbrances to free movement. In ordinary raids the losing side is either destroyed or dispersed.

As far as possible the Tuareg fight according to their code, which in a less cynical age would be called chivalrous. They obey the injunctions of Islam neither to destroy palm trees nor to poison wells. They will give water in the[237] desert to their worst enemy. They will lie and deceive their opponent whenever possible, but they will not infringe the laws of hospitality. When they have given the “Amán” or peace, they do not break their word. They are faithful to the tribes which they take under their protection and to those who have received their “A’ada” or “right of passage,” confirmed with the “Timmi” or oath suitable to the occasion. Their reputation as base fighters has little real foundation. Every case of which I have heard, when such an accusation was brought against them, has resolved itself into some surprise attack by a raiding party, the essence of whose success depended upon an unexpected descent upon an unsuspecting enemy. Of their courage I will write nothing, for it is too easy to exaggerate; but their proverb says: “Hell itself abhors dishonour.”

ARCHITECTURE AND ART

The Bagezan group looms large in Central Air, but even its general features are unknown. The mountains have neither been reconnoitred nor mapped. The area they occupy figures as a blank on the Cortier map. I travelled around Bagezan and climbed up into one broad valley in the heart of the massif, but my own additions to the cartography hereabouts are confined to a few details along the towering sides. Buchanan in 1919-20 crossed the western side, from Towar to a valley which runs into the Anu Maqaran basin, where it is called Abarakan. A detachment of Jean’s first patrol to Air visited the southern valleys. But no European has ever entered the eastern or north-eastern part of the group. The reason for this apparent lack of enterprise is due to few of the mountain tracks being fit for camels; many of them are not even suitable for donkeys, and the complications of travelling in this sort of country, where none of the inhabitants will act as porters, thus become considerable.

The massif rises some 2000 feet above the general level of the central plateau, except in the north-east, where the latter at 3500 feet above the sea is itself over 500 feet higher than in the north and west. The principal peaks must be well over 6000 feet, the bottoms of the upland valleys perhaps 3500 to 4000 feet above the sea. Many of the latter contain perennial streams, and rumours reached me of a small lake somewhere in the unexplored north-eastern part; but this may only be a fairy tale. The southern sides of Bagezan fall almost vertically on to the central plain between Towar and Arakieta on the upper Beughqot valley. Several small villages are hidden in the folds of the mountains above,[239] wherever there is a permanent supply of water. In some cases the streams are sufficient to irrigate a few gardens; at one or two points there are some date palms and the only lime trees in Air. The climate is cooler and everything ripens some four to six weeks later than on the plateau below. Frost is common in the winter.

A few of the villages, notably those like Tasessat and Tadesa, near the southern edge of the massif, have been visited by French patrols. In addition settlements known as Atkaki, Emululi, Owari, Agaragar and Ighelablaban have been reported to exist, but generally speaking, owing to the difficulties of intercommunication, the villages are almost unknown. They are said to consist of stone houses apparently of the earliest period associated with the Itesan tribes, in whose country the mountains lay. Some of the houses, however, differ from any of those encountered in other districts of Air.

In order to see the type of country and visit some of the people of the mountains I climbed from Towar up to the Telezu valley, where there were some Kel Bagezan, to-day a composite tribe made up of portions of Kel Tadek imghad and various Kel Owi elements. They are under the chief Minéru or El Minir, who owes allegiance to the Añastafidet. My way from Towar led past the ruined town of Agejir to the Tokede valley, which soon turned east and disappeared into the mountain. I subsequently found that the Tokede was the same valley as the one called Telesu higher up and Towar further down. The path turned west along the foot of Bagezan, past a scree of enormous boulders, ranging from five to twenty-five feet across, on which numerous families of red monkeys were playing. There we turned, T’ekhmedin, Atagoom and myself, and wound up the side of the mountain by a path so steep and rough that a self-respecting mule would have walked warily. The camels went up and up over loose stones. The left side dropped away precipitately into the deep valley which divides massifs of Bagezan and Todra. A stream roared in a gorge hundreds of feet below at the foot[240] of a cliff of gleaming rock. Still we climbed over stones and boulders by a two-foot path gradually turning north and then north-east and then east. We followed up a narrowing tributary bed of the stream in the gorge until we came to a pass between bare earth-coloured hills, the tops of which were only a few hundred feet above us, and at last dropped gently down the other side past some grazing camels which seemed interested in our arrival and followed us inquisitively into Telezu. An enclosed plain opened out full of big green trees and grass with wonderful pasture and plenty of water in the sand. It ran from west to east before turning and narrowing southwards to fall over the edge into the Tokede below. The valley was shut in all round by low peaks and rough crags along the sky-line. One had no impression of being so far above the plateau of Air on a higher table-land. The great summits of Bagezan had become small hills.

There was no other way out of Telesu except on foot, either over the hills or down the ravine made by the stream falling towards Tokede, so we returned as we had come, after drinking milk with the Kel Bagezan who were living there. The descent was terrific; the camels had to be led and we only made Towar by nightfall. After reaching the bottom of the scree we cut off a corner instead of going by Agejir, and marched towards the standing rock of Takazuzat (or Takazanzat), which looks like the spire of a cathedral, on the edge of the Ara valley near the isolated peak of In Bodinam.

All the ways up to the Bagezan villages are similar, if not harder. The agility of the camels that have to negotiate these paths is unbelievable until it has been experienced.

The only account which I can give of the houses of Bagezan is second-hand, and this is the more unfortunate, because Jean’s description[216] of them as the first houses in Air does not correspond with the character of the earliest ones I saw. I will quote his exact words, as the point is important:[241] “Les premières constructions édifiées furent Afassaz et Elnoulli; maisons à dôme central recouvrant une grande pièce sombre entourée de nombreuses dépendances; l’étage aujourd’hui effondré avait été solidement étayé par des piliers de maçonnerie à large et forte structure.” To Afassaz, a large group of villages in a valley east of Bagezan, we will turn later; Barth erroneously supposed it lay near Towar, having apparently confused it with Agejir. “Elnoulli” I was entirely unable to trace under this name, and concluded that Emululi, which is one of the Bagezan villages, was intended.

My interest in Tuareg architecture was first aroused near Tabello, east of Bagezan, a point reached while I was circumnavigating the massif. From Auderas we had been to visit T’imia, whence we returned to the Abarakan valley. We then climbed laboriously up the bed of the Teghazar[217] tributary, and so reached the plateau east of the Central massif. We camped at about 3500 feet, by the spring of Teginjir. The water here is strongly mineralised, and comes out of the ground at about 90° F. charged with carbonic acid gas. Within a short distance of the spring is the volcanic crater and cone of Gheshwa,[218] the only recent vent which I came across in Air. It was visited and described by Von Bary, but curiously enough is neither referred to in other works nor shown on the Cortier map. The cinder cone is small and rather broken down on the west side, but the sides are still exceedingly steep and covered with loose scoriæ. The lava flow which came out of the vent extends from the foot of the cone, for some five miles to the south-east; it appears to have originated in the course of a single eruption. The lava stratum is level and about 20 feet thick, overlying the Teginjir plain, which consists of a surface alluvium from the neighbouring mountains, and, at one point, a disintegrating crystalline outcrop. The lava[242] is acid and vesicular, resembling in appearance recent flows from Vesuvius or at Casamicciola on the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. The surface of the Teginjir flow proved indescribably rough and devoid of vegetation; it has as yet had no time to disintegrate and is undoubtedly still in the same twisted and cracked form which it had assumed during the cooling process. E.S.E. of Mount Gheshwa are two small black hillocks which appear to be minor cinder cones, not connected with any lava flows. The eruption which formed the Gheshwa cone and neighbouring lava flow is certainly posterior to the general configuration of the plateau and is a most recent geological phenomenon, but I found no tradition among the natives of any volcanic activity within living memory.

The ground drains eastward from Teginjir along the southern side of the T’imia massif to the Anfissak valley, named after the buttress hills which form the south-east corner of this group. East of Anfissak the plain extends towards and beyond Mount Mari in the north; a number of hillocks litter the plain to the south. The caravan road from Tripoli to the Sudan runs down this plain by the Adoral valley past Mari well, which is now filled in, by Anfissak well, and by Adaudu and the Tebernit water-holes to Beughqot. Thence it goes due south to Tergulawen and over the Azawagh to Damergu and Nigeria.

A short distance to the south the Anfissak valley changes its name to Tamanet, so called after a watering-place which we reached in one day’s march from Teginjir. At least it was meant to be a watering-point, but we found that insufficient rain had fallen that year in Eastern Air and there was no water in the sand of the valley bed. We camped and left next day on a short ration of water over one of the most difficult parts of Air which I encountered in the whole of my journey. The plain is not boldly accidentated, but the valleys have cut deep into the disintegrating plateau. Their sides are steep and the flat places between them are so thickly covered with boulders that the area is almost impossible to[243] cross. We eventually reached the Tebernit[219] valley just above Adaudu and sent camels up the valley to find water at a point called Emilía on the way to Ajiru. Our supply had completely run out. It was thirsty work waiting for the watering party to return, and one’s worst apprehensions were of course aroused. I prowled about to relieve the tedium, and found a place where a ridge of rock crossed the bed or channel of the valley. I began digging in the sand to find water, for it seemed a likely place for an “Ers,” as there was an old village site near by. Sure enough I found water about two feet down, and everyone cheered up, as the Emilía party was not due back for several hours. The place became known to the expedition as “Rodd’s Ers.”

Marching from here to Tabello was light work; we camped in the valley where the Arakieta tributary comes down from Bagezan near a small hut village, and then made an easy stage to the rendezvous of the salt caravan. The valley known as Tabello we discovered to be the upper part of the Beughqot: it was another example of the confusing habit of giving a multitude of names to a single system. Each section bears a different name to which a traveller, according to where he happens to be, may refer. The Ajiru, Tellia, Tebernit and Afasas are really the same valley; similarly the Telezu, Tokede, Towar, Tessuma and Etaras are another, while the Abarakan, T’imilen, Agerzan, Bilasicat, Azar and Anu Maqaran are also one and the same watercourse.

The country east of Bagezan now belongs to the Kel Owi confederation. The northern part of the plain is the country of the Kel Azañieres, but before their advent the Immikitan came as far south as Tamanet. The Kel Anfissak, living presumably at Barth’s well of Albes, are a Kel Azañieres sub-tribe. Ajiru was the home of Belkho and the head-quarters of the Igermaden; but Tabello belonged to the Igademawen. It was at Ajiru that Von Bary was detained[244] as a virtual prisoner by Belkho until he decided to abandon his projected journey to the Sudan.

The countryside had evidently at one time been quite thickly inhabited, but presumably before the immigration of the Kel Owi, for nearly all the ruined villages contained a characteristic type of house, which every Tuareg agreed was built by the Itesan, who of course came to Air long before the Kel Owi. In the Beughqot valley where it is called Tabello a great deal of water is available all the year round in the sand, and consequently several villages sprang up on both banks. The largest group, which will be described in detail, is the northernmost on the west bank, called Tasawat. The houses here are all of the characteristic “old type,” which is culturally far the most advanced dwelling in Air. Many of the buildings here are very well preserved except for the roof, which in almost every instance has collapsed. In the Tabello houses the walls are for the most part well preserved, but elsewhere in Air the constructional material was less good, for little remains of the oldest type dwellings but the ground plan.

The oldest houses, which I will call the “A type,” are rectangular in plan and have two rooms, a larger one with two or three outer doors, and an inner one with one door in the partition wall and no outer doors. All the houses of this type and most of the later houses in Air are oriented in the same direction, namely, within a few degrees of north and south, with the smaller room at the northern end. There were a few exceptions in the fourth group which I examined at Tabello; they were houses on a N.N.W.-S.S.E. line, or oriented E.-W. with the small room at the west end. The latter is an interesting point, because although the Air dialect of Temajegh contains a proper word for north (“tasalgi”), the word for west (“ataram”), which in some other dialects of the language has acquired the significance of north, is also sometimes used for this cardinal point.

The big rooms of these “A type” houses in all the village groups examined varied but little in size, the largest one I[245] measured being 29 ft. × 14 ft. inside. The small rooms varied rather more, ranging between 9 ft. and 12 ft. in length, the breadth being the same as for the big room. The head room was in all cases remarkable, one house I measured being as much as 12 ft. from the floor to the underside of the dûm palm rafters of the roof. In every instance the height was more than sufficient for a man to stand upright, a feature which does not obtain in the later houses. The large room was usually provided with three doors, the east and west ones being of similar dimensions, the south door rather smaller. In two cases in one group at Tabello and in other instances in the north I noticed that the east doors of the old houses had small buttresses outside as if to enhance their importance, though in one house the east door had been reduced to a small aperture; but this was exceptional. Buttresses were not observed on any of the west doors. In two cases I noticed here there was no south door, an omission which also occurred elsewhere among the later houses. The east and west doors, varying slightly according to the size of the house, were 4 ft. or more in height by 3 ft. 6 in. to 4 ft. in breadth. In all the Tabello houses the door openings were recessed on the inner side to take a removable wooden door some ten inches broader and taller than the opening itself. The recess was continued for a sufficient space laterally to allow the frame to be pushed to one side without taking up room space. One side of the recess was provided with an elbow-hole in the outer wall of the house about 2 ft. from the ground for access to a latch for securing the door frame. In the later houses, but not at Tabello, the sliding frame door gave place to one swinging from stone sockets in the threshold and lintel; these doors are in some cases over 3 ft. broad and cut out of one piece of wood: they also were provided with a latch or bolt fitting into a catch in the inner part of the elbow-hole by which the door was secured and sometimes locked with a rough padlock of Tripolitan or Algerian manufacture. No doubt the door frames of the earlier houses were provided with a similar latch and lock, but none[246] of the woodwork has survived. The neatness of design of the sliding door recess was particularly striking in these dwellings.

The threshold of the doors in the older houses was on the floor level, which was a few inches above the outside level. The larger rooms had quadrangular niches of different dimensions at odd points in the walls, as well as certain peculiar and characteristic niches in the partition walls. The inner rooms were provided with small niches made of pots built into the walls; in many cases there were four shelves across the corners some 3-4 ft. from the ground made of heavy beams, evidently intended to carry considerable weights. The surfaces of these shelves, like all the inner walls of both rooms, were carefully plastered with mud mortar whitened or coloured with earths similar to those used in the washes on houses at Agades. In one case a dado or wainscot of a different colour had been applied with a finger-drawn zigzag border of another shade. The stucco surfaces were brown, earthy crimson, ochre, yellow or white.

One characteristic feature was observed in all the “old type” houses which still had walls standing of sufficient height for something more than the mere ground plan to be seen. On either side of the doorway in the partition or north wall of the large room there was a niche of very peculiar shape. The top was rather like a Gothic arch, and a recess was cut out in the base. The niches and the door in some cases were ornamented with an elaborate border, in other cases they were entirely unadorned. The shape of the niche, however, was constant and the size generally uniform. The style of decoration will be seen in Plates 29 and 30.

The later houses in Air are clearly an adaptation of the earlier type, for they have many common characteristics. These houses I have called the “B type” to distinguish them from the “A” or “Itesan type.” The “B houses” also are rectangular but single-roomed; for the most part they too are oriented north and south. An Imajegh whom I questioned on this point at Iferuan said he did not know why[247] this was so, but that all the correct houses of nobles were built in this manner, including the one in which his own family had always lived. He added that the three usual outside doors were called Imi n’Innek, the Door of the East, the Imi n’Aghil, the Door of the South, but the west door, instead of being called the Imi n’Ataram, was called the Imi n’Tasalgi, which properly means the Door of the North. When I asked him to explain this curious fact, he told me that it was because the Tuareg came from there, a statement which seemed inadequate, albeit significant. The confusion of west and north is especially curious; and the explanation of the house oriented E. and W. at Tabello is probably due to a misunderstanding on this point in the mind of the early builder. The problem is not unconnected with the varying sense of the word Ataram. Analogies between the “A” and “B” types of house are not, however, confined to those peculiarities of orientation and doors. A door in the north wall of the “B type” houses is very rare; on the other hand, in the majority of examples of this type I noticed that there was a long, very low niche on that side of the room. These recesses were not more than four or five inches high by eighteen to twenty-four inches long; they were used for keeping the Holy Books in and for no other purpose. The position of these niches, it is true, was not absolutely constant, nor was the type of niche for the Holy Books in the north walls always that shape, but the conclusion I reached from their frequent occurrence was that they in some way correspond to the ogive niches of the earlier houses, which I conceive had an indisputably ritual or religious significance. In a “B type” house at Assarara in Northern Air I came across two rectangular niches in a west wall which were obviously developments of the ornamented ogive niches of the “A type” house, and may also have been used for Holy Books, but this example of displacement with the varying and fortuitous practices adopted in the later dwellings convinced me that the use which had prescribed the earlier fashion was in process of being forgotten as modern times[248] were approached, and that no explanation was therefore likely to be obtained by consulting local learned men. In the “B type” houses, as in the earlier dwellings, there was usually a profusion of other niches in the walls serving different household purposes.

The niches and the style of ornamentation of the “A type” houses of Air occur in the Sudan, but the formality of planning, the constant orientation and the ritualistic properties of the recesses, so far as I know, have no analogies outside Tuareg lands. I am not aware that attention has hitherto been drawn to these points either in the accounts of Air prepared by the French or in descriptions of dwellings in other parts of Africa, with the exception of one reference in Richardson’s account of his travels in 1845-6 in the Fezzan. He describes the houses at Ghat as having niches, and, from sketches he made, some of them are evidently of the same type as those in the Air houses of the first period.[220] They afford a problem which requires elucidation and which might throw much light on the cultural contacts of the Tuareg, among whom they seem to be traditional.