27th April.—Left Azzal before dawn. Yesterday we had skirted the foothills in travelling up the broad dry river-bed of the shallow Azzal Valley, but to-day we departed from the edge of the level desert, and entered low hill country of strange appearance, composed of rock and boulder and gravel, bare of any vegetation, and therefore dreadfully melancholy and barren. View after view of brown coloured hills unfolded before us as we passed onward over gravel-strewn ground, or picked our way through rocky outcrops, or descended to sandy river-bed; while always one could follow out the thin line of the river banks or hollows which caught moisture in the rains, for they contained a bright green growth of dum palm and “abisgee”[9] bush, which was very striking and conspicuous among the sombre hills.
Without any doubt it is beyond Azzal that the traveller enters the true brown-grey rock country of Aïr: the low country, which contains many isolated cone-shaped hills or kopjes, that leads one, in time, to the great central mountains. Bare the land is of generous elements of beauty, and almost equally bare of living thing. In many places the only vegetation in a large area lies in the thin rift of some infant rivulet—a meandering line of sand which seeks a way among the grey pebbles and rocks, wherein a few dry tufts of grass, and, perhaps, a stunted dwarf acacia, a grasshopper or two, and, if you are in luck, a small mouse-like, sand-coloured lark crouching on the ground may be seen, for scarcely any moving living thing misses the eye in a land that is well-nigh motionless.
We camped at Solom Solom about noon, and obtained some water from a well which is on the banks of a river there, and about which one or two Tuaregs are camped. The Tuaregs with me pronounce this name Selim Selim. It is about 18 miles due north of Azzal, and has altitude of 2,100 ft. (Agades is 1,710 ft.)
28th April.—Left Solom Solom an hour before daybreak; reached Tchefira about noon, after stopping to replenish our water-skins in the river-bed known to the natives as Arrajubjub. Water obtained by digging down in the sand of the river-bed close under some large rocks on the east bank of the stream.
There is a height of land at Arrajubjub where the river falls south to Agades and north toward Baguezan. The river valley, which we chiefly followed to-day, and which turns almost due east not long after leaving Solom Solom, is named in sections, as are most rivers in the country: thus it is the Solom Solom (which becomes the Azzal river further south) at the beginning of to-day’s journey, then Dabaga, then Injerwdan, then Arrajubjub, and, finally, Tchefira. The river banks continue to have the green fringe of vegetation: dum palms, Hausa Kaba; small skunk-smelling tree, Hausa Abisgee; small dwarf acacia, growing 3 ft. to 4 ft. high, Hausa Giga; and a fairly large acacia, say, 20 ft. high, Hausa Zandidi.
MY CARAVAN ON THE ARRAJUBJUB RIVER.
TYPICAL AÏR LANDSCAPE.
Some picturesque hill country was passed through, though the hills remain bare of vegetation. The large mountain range of Aouderas was sighted faintly in the north about 11 a.m., distant a little more than 20 miles.