Exploration of Aïr

by Angus Buchanan

At the end of my stay at Takoukout I lost the services of Sakari. He had grown less and less inclined to follow the arduous life I led him, whilst he had developed a hankering to be back amongst the companionship of his own people. Moreover, he had now a better idea of the stern conditions which the nature of the country imposed—conditions that promised to grow worse rather than better—and plainly he did not relish the prospect of what lay ahead. His three experiences of being lost in the bush, which I refer to in the preceding chapter, did not tend to help matters, and, finally, seeing that his heart was no longer in his work, I considered it advisable to pay him off and send him back, though I was very sorry to lose him, since his departure left me without any one to assist in the task of skinning specimens.

I bid good-bye, also, to the old hunter Tsofo, who had joined me for the period that I hunted at Takoukout, so that I might have the assistance of his local knowledge. He had never been to Aïr, and, therefore, could not aid me in the same way further on; a circumstance which I think we both regretted, for the old fellow was genuinely loath to go home, and I sorry to lose him. There had always been plenty of buck-meat in camp, and the old fellow had never wanted food, which was a state of affairs that greatly pleased him, for he had close acquaintance with poverty in the ordinary round of living in this poverty-stricken land.

John, therefore, was the only personal servant to go on with me to Aïr—faithful, cheerful John, who did not care two straws where he went, so long as he had his master with him.

Therefore John and the camel-men were all that composed my following on the way to Agades, while the caravan was accompanied by the escort of six native soldiers, who had been detailed by the officer at Tanout to escort me as far as Aderbissinat, where there was a small Fort midway on my journey.

I intended to leave Takoukout on the night of the 30th, for the moon was full and opportune for night travel.

The day was employed proportioning loads and securely roping them, when sufficient rope had been found, for it is astonishing how such things disappear in the careless hands of natives during a month in camp, and on this occasion, when packages came to be made up, many ropes were short and others destroyed by white ants. As there was no longer village nor market-place where such native commodities could be purchased, there was no alternative but to insist that the camel-men search the bush for suitable tree-bark which could be plaited into rude cords; and this task kept the men fully employed all afternoon.

With the aid of the light of the moon and brightly blazing camp-fires, the camels were loaded up about 11 p.m., and we filed out of the old stockade, which had been home for almost a month, and made slowly off into the shadowy bush.

Night travel always holds for me an element of adventure, and it is not without livening and keenly alert senses that one advances into the unknown in the dark in the wake of some dusky leader who has none of the apprehension which the tendency to blindness produces in the stranger who is ignorant of the lie of the land ahead. Under such circumstances night travel also holds novelty, and, although one loses the opportunity to view the landscape as one passes along, there is a freshening of the senses that makes ample compensation: I am aware that it is cool, and that in consequence it is good to be out in those common hours of sleep; I observe the gaunt outline of the phantom-like camels that advance without sound of foot-fall; I see the shadows of low trees that ever change their shapes as we wend our course in and out among them over the gleaming moonlit ways of sand; I hear, sometimes, the low soft speech of the camel-man in consultation, followed, as a rule, by the caravan being halted and the discordant roar of a camel, which jars on the calm night stillness, while the men are righting a load; . . . afterwards silence is regained, and we are as a part of the brooding night, the camels padding along quite noiselessly in the sand, and there is naught that I can hear but the slight creaking of a load that rests uneasily on a pack-saddle, and the gritty scrape of the hard-skin sandals of a shuffling camel-man near me.

When the moon went down about 3 a.m., we camped for a few hours in the bush, off-loading the camels and lying down to rest on the bare ground without troubling to unpack blankets.

At daybreak, 6 a.m., the journey was resumed, and we camped at the well known as Tchingaraguen about noon, having travelled 25 miles since we broke camp.