Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania

by Jewett C. Gilson

THE SAHARA

An expanse of land as large as the main body of the United States stretches across the northern part of Africa. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and from the foot of the Atlas Mountains to the Sudan, it is a weird panorama of rock waste—level, rugged, shingly, and mountainous, according to locality. In places only it is penetrated by large and permanently flowing streams. On the eastern borderland the Nile pours a mighty flood, winding a sinuous passage along its self-made flood-plain, the Egypt of history. In the west the Niger has forced its way into the confines of the desert and then, as if rebuffed, turns its course southward.

This great domain of the simoom has every diversity of surface. The higher summits of the Tarso Mountains are eight thousand feet above sea level; the Shott, a chain of salt lakes south of the Atlas Mountains, are about one hundred feet below sea level. The depression in which these lakes is situated probably was once the head of the Gulf of Sidra; but the never-ceasing winds have partly filled the depression, cutting off the head of the gulf in the same manner that wind-blown sands severed what is now Imperial Valley from the Gulf of California. Around the briny lakes are marshes of quicksands, and woe betide the luckless traveller who strays to the one side or the other of the beaten trails. Unless help is at hand, life will have neither joys nor troubles for him after a few brief minutes of struggle.

The Sahara proper begins at the south slope of the Atlas Mountains. Where there are no Atlas Mountains, it begins almost at the Mediterranean's edge. In the valleys of the Atlas and along the Mediterranean coast there is a strip of fertile land, wide here, narrow there, that produces grain and fruit. The Arabs call it the Tell. "Beyond the Tell is Sah-ra," or the Sahara. This is the name which the Arabs apply to the archipelago of fertile spots, or oases. Beyond the zone of oases is the desert. One becomes instantly and painfully aware that it is a desert on leaving the last oasis. Go a thousand miles southward, eastward, or westward from Tripoli, and one encounters but a single thing—an ocean of orange-colored rock waste, the Guebla of the Arabs.

On the sands of the desert
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The desert is a desert for want of water only. There is no lack of nutrition in the soil, nor is there anything in surface or temperature that makes a desert unproductive. Temperature and winds reach great extremes in fierceness, however. The temperature of the air in the noonday sun will often exceed one hundred and forty-five degrees; it may reach one hundred and fifty-five degrees. In the shade it frequently climbs to one hundred and thirty degrees in the vicinity of the tropics. Unless one is at a considerable altitude there is not much relief at night, though the thermometer may drop to ninety degrees. Farther north, however, and at an altitude of five thousand feet or more, the temperature of the night is even more cruel than that of the day. Immediately after sunset a sharp chill becomes perceptible. At first it is a welcome relief from the intolerable heat. By nine o'clock it begins to cut like a stiletto, and at midnight the water suspended in shallow dishes clinks into ice. The drivers burrow deep into the sand and wrap woollen baracans about them; the camels shiver and even blubber like whipped bullies.

The air is so dry, however, that the extreme heat of day is by no means insupportable. Sunstroke is almost unknown, and even the tragedy of perishing for want of water is very rare; for the caravan drivers know just where to find water, and there are many hidden watering places that are known to the crafty Tuaregs and Bedouins. Many of the watering places are wells that have been sunk in various localities along the caravan trails. The intense heat, great depth of rock waste, and dry air are not favorable to the above-ground flow of rivers. But nearly every river has an underground flow that is pretty likely to exist all the year round.

One may follow a stream of considerable volume down the southern slope of the Atlas Mountains. The volume of water grows less and less until at last it apparently disappears. Not all is lost by evaporation, however; possibly the greater part sinks into the porous rock waste. And the rock waste?—perhaps it may be twenty, fifty, or one hundred and fifty feet deep. At all events, the water sinks until it reaches bed rock or clay through which it cannot pass. Then it flows along what may once have been an above-ground channel until fierce winds and cloud-bursts buried it deep.

But the half-savage dwellers of the desert know just where to tap these underground reservoirs and streams; even the dumb animals know instinctively where to look for water. It is merely a question of instinct coupled with experience, and the animal's judgment is about as good as the man's. When one finds the spot, it is necessary only to dig. The water may be two feet below the surface or it may be ten feet. When the moist sand is reached the task is half over. A foot or two more and the hole begins to fill. The water is hot, brackish, and repulsive to the taste, but it is water—and in the desert, water is water!

The simoom is also an institution of the desert. The simoom is unmistakably a wind, and surely no one who has not had the experience can appreciate it. Even the West India hurricanes or the typhoons of the China Sea are more kindly. They have plenty of destructive energy, it is true, but the simoom has all this and much else besides. It comes not without warning, but the warning and the wind are not far apart. The approach of the simoom is a dense black cloud of whirling and seething fine dust. As it strikes one, the choking, suffocating blast of hot air and dust overcomes everything that has life. The caravan men and the animals as well turn their backs to the wind and lie down with faces close to the ground. In a minute or two the full strength of the blast is on and the simoom is picking up not only the fine rock waste, but the coarser fragments as well, and is hurling them along at Empire State Express velocity. One might as well try to face a hail of leaden bullets. It is a cruel blast that neither animal nor human being can withstand. The camels crouch with their heads pointing away from the wind and nostrils close to the ground; their drivers lie prone with faces in little hollows scooped in the sand.

Perhaps the full blast of the simoom may last an hour—perhaps two or even three hours. In lighter strain it may continue a whole day. When, finally, it ceases the air is thick with fine dust; one can see scarcely a rod away. Sun and sky are hidden, and the blackness of a tornado or of a London fog prevails. The fine dust floating in the air may not settle for several days. Perhaps a week afterward there may be a haze that partly obscures the sun. The dust, finer than the finest flour, pervades everything in the desert. One's clothing is full of it; one's hair becomes harsh and matted; the skin becomes rough, cracks and peels; the eyes are inflamed; mouth, lips, and nostrils are swollen. But the great bodily discomfort resulting from the simoom does not last forever; it gives place to bodily irritation of some other sort, which is indeed a grateful change merely because it is a change.

The sand dunes of the Sahara are interesting to those who are not compelled to travel among them, but to the unfortunates who traverse them they are almost heart-breaking. Imagine oneself standing on an elevation a few hundred feet higher than the surrounding country. There is but one landscape—waves upon waves of the loose rock waste, for convenience called sand, as far as the eye can reach. Sometimes the waves are in long windrows, but oftener they are short and choppy like the surface waves of midocean.

Unlike the ocean waves, in which only the form moves forward, while the water composing it moves up and down only, the sand dune and the material of which it is composed are both moving in the direction of the wind. A breeze even of five or six miles an hour will keep the lighter surface dust moving freely, while a twelve-mile wind will not only sweep along much larger particles but it also carries more of them. And just as the surface, or "skin," friction forms waves at the surface of water, it also piles the desert sand in wave-like dunes.

The loose bits of rock waste are carried along, up the windward slope of the dune until they roll over its crest, where, no longer impelled by the wind, they come to rest. Thus, the crest, built forward by new material constantly added, is advancing. Valleys are filled; old stream channels are obliterated; and the inequalities of the surface are levelled off until the whole landscape is one of shifting, drifting sand.

Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the Sahara and the arid lands southward to the Sudan are by no means destitute of life and wealth. It is an almost universal custom to speak of the barren condition of the desert. The contrary is the truth; there is no soil elsewhere so fertile and productive. It is vastly superior even to the soil of the lands reclaimed from the bottom of the North Sea.

Water is the magic wand that makes the sands of the Sahara bring forth crops that are marvellous both in quantity and quality. No fruit grown elsewhere in the world can compare with that grown on desert lands, and the French engineers are planning the means whereby water may be obtained. Surface water that is available to irrigate the wastes of the Sahara does not exist. The level of the Nile is so far below the surface on both sides of its own flood-plain that its waters cannot be used for the reclamation of any part of the Libyan Desert, and the same is practically true of the Niger, which barely more than touches the borders of the Sahara. The few wadys, or "dry washes," are destitute of water except when a cloud-burst may fill them; but this happens at intervals of years only.

The engineer takes into his confidence a caravan driver—perhaps an Arab, possibly a Berber, but quite as likely a slave. And the long experience has taught the caravan man where to find the precious water. The engineer then brings his science into play and drives an artesian well. The well thus driven may be a "gusher," but for most of them pumps are required to raise the water to the surface. The best well, however, furnishes water enough to irrigate but a very small area. Indeed, all the lands of the Sahara together irrigated by artesian wells would make an area scarcely larger than the State of Delaware, and all the water thus obtained would not supply New York City!

Nevertheless, the water obtained by artesian wells has proved a great blessing to the dwellers of the desert. If the water is found along one or another of the numerous caravan routes, an increase in caravan commerce is apt to result, for along many routes the volume of caravan commerce depends very largely on the number of wells. The location of artesian wells has also led to the opening of trade along new routes as well, for wherever water can be found there will be camels to drink it.

The date palm is essentially a plant of the desert, or, rather, of the oasis. Nowhere else does it grow in such profusion as in northern Africa. The number of productive trees there is estimated to be anywhere from ten million to twenty million, though the estimate is but little better than a guess. At its full growth the date palm is a most beautiful object. Usually the feathered tops of the trees are the only foliage to relieve the harsh landscape. Like the bamboo, every part of the tree is used. The leaves may be made into fans, or shredded and woven into mats. The wood is used in making the framework of buildings, and the waste material is very handy as fuel. A refreshing fermented drink and a most vile liquor are prepared from the juice. But the fruit, when properly prepared, is the chief food of many thousands of men and beasts. Even the stones, or "pits," of the dried fruit are useful; those which are not sent to Italy to be used for adulterating coffee are made into an "oil-meal" for fodder.

Esparto grass, called "alfa" or "halfa" by the Arabs, is another unique product of the Sahara. In spite of its name, it is not a grass but a flowering plant whose stalk has a tough fibre useful in making cordage and paper. When the plant turns brown and has become dry to the root, the esparto picker gets busy.

By four o'clock in the morning he is at work, his heavy woollen baracan, or blanket, wrapped tightly about him, for the air is not only chilly but almost freezing cold. By sunrise the chill begins to disappear, and a few brief moments is the only interval between piercing chill and midsummer heat. The baracan is quickly shed and the fez, if the picker is rich enough to possess one, is discarded for an esparto hat with rim of mammoth proportions. Esparto grass sandals protect his feet.

Almost all the animal life of the Sahara is deadly, and the esparto grass picker is constantly facing danger. The clump of esparto, into the bottom of which he must reach to cut the mature stalks, is quite likely to be the lair of a poisonous viper; and if the reptile sinks its fangs into the flesh of the unfortunate picker, long weeks of suffering and disability—perhaps death—are in store for him. Between the bite of a rattler and that of an esparto viper there is little to choose.

The scorpion is another peril to the esparto picker. The great rock-scorpion of the Sahara is about as ugly as the centipede of Arizona and Mexico; in size it is also about as large—from six to ten inches in length. Its sting, too, is about as dangerous as the fangs of the rattler. But the esparto picker has a method of heroic treatment for both the bite of the viper and the sting of the scorpion. He squats calmly upon the sand while a brother picker cuts out the flesh that has been pierced. If he survives the twenty-four hours following, he is pretty likely to pull through. If not—well, the vultures know when and where to look.

The esparto grass is delivered to the nearest local market compressed in bales of five or six hundred weight, held together by a coarse netting of esparto weave, and shipped to Europe. Nearly all of it goes to Great Britain. There it is shredded and made into cordage, coarse cloth, or paper.

But the esparto has a rival so far as its use in making paper is concerned. The wood pulp of Norway and the United States is slowly displacing it, and in time esparto will be but little used except for making cordage or gunny cloth. Already the French Government is having troubles of its own in providing employment for the esparto pickers, but it is not likely that such a useful plant will be discarded; on the contrary, its use is likely to increase in the future.

The camel is the institution upon which the commerce of the desert depends. A more awkward, ungainly beast can hardly be imagined—a shambling collection of humps, bumps, knobs, protruding joints, and sprawling legs seemingly attached to a head and neck in the near foreground. But that shambling gait will carry a load three times as heavy as the stoutest pack mule can bear, and it will carry it twice as far in a day.

A horse or a mule must be fed twice a day, but a camel will worry along for a week at a time with nothing more substantial than its cud. Horses and mules cannot traverse regions where the watering places are more than twelve hours apart, unless water be carried in storage; but the camel is its own storage reservoir, and can carry a supply sufficient to last for ten days.

At the end of his week of fasting the hump of the camel has shrunken to a fraction of its former size. When the animal has a few days of feeding the hump grows to its former proportions again. Indeed, the hump is merely a mass of nutrition ready to be formed into flesh and blood.

A caravan crossing the desert on the road to Jaffa
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Within the paunch of the animal and surrounding its stomach are great numbers of cells capable of holding seven or eight gallons of water. When the camel drinks copiously these cells become filled and afterward slowly give up the water as the stomach requires. It may be truly said that the camel is a camel because of the desert and not in spite of it.

The sparse population of the Sahara—Arabs, Berbers, and negroes—are dependent upon the camel, for until the railway shall traverse the Sahara the camel will be practically the only means of transportation. The camel's flesh furnishes about the only meat consumed by the dwellers of the desert, for ordinary cattle can live only in a few localities along the desert border lands.

The native people of the desert are mainly of the race to which the Arabs also belong, although there are many Arabs and negroes. The Tuaregs and Bedouin Arabs are the best known. The Tuaregs are thought to be the descendants of the Berbers and of the same race as the Carthaginians, whom the Romans many times defeated but never conquered. They have whiter skins than the Arabs and in appearance are perhaps the finest peoples of Africa. They are also the most ferocious and blood-thirsty villains on the face of the earth. Many of them live in the white-walled cities such as Ghadames, Kand, and Timbuktu—all large centres of population.

Their government is well organized. Each of the larger tribes is governed by a sultan, and in each there are several castes—a sort of nobility of unmixed Tuareg blood being at the head and negro slaves at the lower end of the social ladder. The families of the highest caste are usually well-to-do, and both the men and the women are taught to read and write. The garments usually worn by a Tuareg man consist of white trousers, a gray tunic with white sleeves, sandals of ornamented leather, and a white turban. When away from home the Tuareg covers the lower half of the face by a cloth mask.

The usual occupation of the Tuaregs is twofold—to guard caravans or to rob them. The average Tuareg is perfectly indifferent as to which he does. A caravan from the Sudan enters, we will say, Kano. The garfla sheik pack master, or superintendent, goes at once to the financial agent of the sultan and pays the usual liken, or tariff charges. Then he goes to the sultan himself and incidentally leaves in his possession a generous money present. Then, if he desires, he may hire half a dozen or more guards.

The hiring of these will insure the caravan against theft or robbery on the part of the predatory bands living at Kano. The guards will also faithfully defend the caravan in case of attack by Bedouin Arabs. On the other hand, should the garfla sheik forget the present to the sultan, or neglect to hire guards, those same Tuaregs would be the first to attack and loot the caravan.

The Bedouin Arab is the chief trial of the caravans. He is always a foe to them; and although he ostensibly herds camels and horses, his real occupation is robbery and pillage. For days nomadic Arabs will follow a caravan, keeping always out of sight. Most likely a band of a dozen or more mounted on swift horses will survey the caravan from a distance at which they are not likely to be discovered. Then they make their way ahead of it to some point where a dune or a gully will conceal them. Then, just as the end of the caravan drags by, there is a sudden sortie and a rattling musket fire. And before the guards can gather to the defence half a dozen camels are cut out of the train, a driver or two is shot down or pierced with assegais, and both the robbers and their loot are beyond the reach of the guards.

But perhaps the greatest value of the desert is its effect upon the climate of Europe. Hot winds blow from the Sahara in all directions; the northerly winds, crossing the Mediterranean, are not only tempered thereby, but the desert blasts tempered and filled with moisture finally reach the southern slopes of Europe, where they convert the nutrition of the soil into bountiful crops of corn, wine, and oil.

The conquest of the great African desert is already in sight, and the railway will be its master. The Cape to Cairo line is no longer a vision of the future; the ends of its two parts are rapidly shortening the interval that separates them and they are almost in sight of each other. When the lines that are projected from the Mediterranean coast shall have traversed the stronghold of the Tuaregs to penetrate the wealth of the Sudan and the Kongo, the Sahara will have become merely an incident.

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