There are five caravan stages between Aderbissinat and Agades, known to the natives as Timboulaga, Tessalatin, Abellama, Tegguidi, and Tilaràderas. The camping-ground known as Timboulaga is within the bush-belt, but the others are all in the open desert, which commences about 19 miles north of Aderbissinat.
I continued my journey on the following day, leaving Aderbissinat in the cool of the late afternoon, and utilising the kindly moon to light us on our way until camping-ground was chosen, about midnight, some distance beyond Timboulaga.
On the next day, which was a Sunday (4th April), we again did not move until the afternoon, while the camels, fifteen of them, were turned out in the bush to partake of a good meal, as fodder promised to be less plentiful ahead. Under suitable conditions, camels should be allowed to graze at least five or six hours each day after halt is made.
Early in the day I shot two gazelles to augment the food supplies of the natives, and put in rather an uncomfortable time thereafter, for, when the sun rose high overhead, we were left without shade, and enjoyable rest was thereby impossible. In the full midday hours the sun is so directly overhead, that on no side of the dwarf, thin-leaved bush is there shade, which is a circumstance that reminds me to recount the wisdom of my camels, for, if the tired beasts happen to be off loaded about that time of day, they all proceed to select, with perfect knowledge and precision, the north-east side of the thickest bush available, thus choosing resting-places exactly where shade will be thrown later on when the sun commences to swing into the west.
I had intended to travel again at night, but the sun became so irksome, that I grew very restless, and about 2 p.m. was glad to call the camels in and start loading up, even though it entailed unpleasant labour for the camel-men in the intense heat.
Three hours after leaving Timboulaga we ascended perceptibly to country of changed aspect, where the land was a desert of sand-dunes, and sand-pockets, and level pools of small gravel. This was the beginning of the desert, and the end of earth’s fertility; behind lay the bush that struggled for a patchy existence in an ungenerous soil, which was a circumstance sad enough, yet infinitely more blessed did that barely clad beggary seem when compared with the awful desolate deadness of desert, which was, in general, unable to support life altogether.
On this night we camped at Tessalatin, which was but a name in a drear level land of sand. The altitude there was 1,875 ft., 225 ft. above Aderbissinat, which now lay 31 miles behind.
On the following day we left camp at 3.30 p.m. and camped at Abellama about 11 p.m. Throughout the journey we travelled over level desert— desert cloudless and pale as the sky, but of a buffish or khaki tone, and in places covered with tussocks of hardy grass, which catch and hold the loose sands that are the sweepings of the wind, so that they bank up in mounds and wave-crests, and bear the appearance of sand-dunes on the sea-shore. Here and there a tiny thorn bush, alone and hardly living; at other times, a scattered group of bushes that find existence possible and a little easier, since they are banded together, and each protecting the other from exposure to the onslaught of withering sand-storms. After crossing a gradual rise to a height of land about mid-journey to-day, we began a slight descent toward Abellama (alt., 1,700 ft.), where there is a deep well which is said to be as ancient as the old caravan roads across Africa, and which is the only place where water is to be found between Aderbissinat and Agades; so that, though drear and comfortless and lacking in everything that is picturesque, Abellama is a name that is conjured with by weary men of the caravans that travel there thirsting for water and sorely in need of replenishing the precious store that for some days has been slowly diminishing in sagging goat-skins.
At Abellama, as there was no shady bush to camp beside, I resorted to rigging up the baggage tarpaulin in the open desert, and camped under a few feet of shade like the veriest gipsy Tuareg.
As the months advance, so is the temperature increasing, and now that there was less protection than ever from the sun, it seemed to me that I was experiencing greater heat than I had ever known, and heat that was terribly exhausting.