But as we got on to the plateaux above Biskra we came into a land of peace and plenty. There were miles upon miles of waving fields of wheat and barley. Prosperous farms were often to be seen standing in the midst of their rich agricultural lands. That year there had been a good rainfall on the plateaux, and in consequence the crops had done even better than usual.
That night we arrived at the big town of Setif, where I had to change and wait several hours for the midnight express to Algiers. I had engaged a sleeping-berth on the train, so I had a comfortable journey to the capital. When I awoke in the morning we were passing through rich vineyards, down the western slopes of the Kabyle Mountains.
I had travelled 3758 miles across Africa, 1560 of which had been through the Sahara. The whole journey had occupied six months and two days. My stay at Algiers was short. I caught the first steamer available to Marseilles, where I arrived on the 11th of June.
On the following night I reached London, travelling via Calais and Dover.
I was two days late for my leave, but under the circumstances I had travelled as rapidly as possible.
After what I saw of the Sahara I came to the conclusion that the project of building a railway across from Algeria to the Niger is never likely to mature. Indeed, I fancy that most Frenchmen who have any experience of the Central Sahara long ago came to the same opinion.
The scheme was mooted some years ago as a useful connecting link between the Algerian railway system and the Niger. The difficulties in the way of carrying this out are almost insuperable. To start with, there is no coal in Algeria or, of course, in the Sahara. Again, if the difficulty of obtaining fuel could be overcome the constant sandstorms would make engineering works hard to construct and harder still to maintain. The railway line would probably be constantly buried in sand, so that some contrivance for clearing the way in front of the engine would be necessary. Moreover, what would be the advantages gained by the construction of such a railway?
The resources of the Sahara are practically nil, while the total values of the caravans which cross this portion of it do not amount to 1,000,000 francs per annum. Therefore as a commercial enterprise the railway could never pay, and the advantage of having this shorter line of communication between Western Soudan and France, if it could be constructed, would not certainly be worth the enormous expenditure involved. Of course, there is always the difficulty of water supply for the engines. Even along the most practicable route, from Insalah to Gao, wells are few and far between. The output is frequently very slow. Artesian wells would have to be made where possible. In fact, it appears that the resources of the Sahara are so very restricted and incapable of further development unless great mineral wealth be somewhere found, that its future state is not likely to be any brighter than its present condition. The question as to what the Sahara was originally is an interesting one.
The Arabs who wander in the desert around the Oases of Touat and Beni Abbes declare that in ancient times these oases were islands, and that a very big water existed between them and the sea and between them and Taudény in the south.
It seems possible that this theory is correct, for there is a marked depression formed by the Oued Mya, which extends south through the oases towards Taudény, eventually terminating in a big basin, called El Djouf, or “the belly of the desert.” Further, from the formation of the country it seems quite possible that the salt-water lakes, or “chotts” of Tunisia, which themselves are, or were, connected with the sea, contributed their waters to this depression, and thus there was at one time a practically uninterrupted waterway from the sea to Taudény. The water from this source then surrounded the oases, isolating them from the rest of the Sahara, which would bear out the legend of these Arab tribes.