Sahara

by Angus Buchanan

And, after all, it is only the Real that matters; particularly to the frontiersman who lives close to the earth and beyond the ken of the subtleties of Civilisation, for he sees, with the eye of the untrammelled, the dominion of the world’s outer ranges and the bigness of things as they are. Wherefore, with pen directed by hand accustomed to rope a load, coax a rein, fondle a rifle, heal a wound, or kindle a camp-fire, I set out, as an awkward man of the outdoor places, without geographical technicalities, to describe the Great Sahara as I have come to read its character in the wake of many a trail over leagues of intimate sands.

Let us first endeavour to picture something of the vastness of the Sahara. In approximate area—excepting the Libyan Desert—it is about eighteen times larger than Britain and Ireland and about half the area of the United States. Large as that may seem, it must be taken into count that there is a sentimental vastness far beyond that—the sentiment of environment. To illustrate this. Suppose that one sets out to travel for a day, or a week, or a month, through rich, inhabited country with good roads, and with the good things of life always closely about one. Is it not the case that the plenitude of the countryside pleases to such a comforting extent that Distance is prone to be unesteemed, and unthought of as a cause for anxiety? Consequently, under such circumstances, all fear of distance, and the significance of overpowering immensity, do not enter into calculation. But it so happens that that is a tremendously important factor, which must always be reckoned with, in any considered treatment of the Sahara, where conditions are entirely opposite. No one would hesitate to cross America to-day, but could anyone contemplate a journey in the Great Desert without, at once, being confronted with lively dread of its vastness and desolation? Indeed, so strong is this influence that the eventual result, once one enters that mystical land, is that the mind becomes almost disqualified to reckon in terms of numerals. All that one is constantly aware of is, that limitless leagues of drear desolate sand lie ahead, and that, no matter what effort is made, no matter how well the caravan travels, the twenty or thirty odd miles that are the record of a day’s endeavour leave one apparently in the same position as before, with horizon, and sand, and sky no nearer to the vision than from camps that lie on the trail behind.

In that prospect there is, surely, a sentiment of the temperament of the sea, in likeness of boundless, unchanging, unconquerable leagues. But the sea swings and curls and breaks in foam, and is alive; whereas the sands of the desert lie ever expressionless and dead. So that, if we accept that in majestic space the sea and the desert are the same, we still have to admit that the lassitude of the desert multiplies the seeds of desolation to such an extent that, almost tangibly, certainly sentiently, it enlarges its empty vastness.

Wherefore I am confident that it is in all such intriguing influences that we find the very essence of the desert’s desolation and magnitude of space.

That it has a very real vastness that intimidates is borne out, in our everyday life, by the accounts of tourists who have travelled in Algeria, or elsewhere, and who have been a few days south of, say, Biskra by camel, and who return to recount how they have seen the Sahara. How many such tourists have stood on this mere threshold of a mighty sandscape, beneath the Aurès Mountains, and conjectured on the immensity of the Great South Road that points the way to the heart and the mystery of another world, unyieldingly remote, and not as theirs.

And what happens then? Why is it that we do not have record that some of those tourists have got down from this doorstep of Biskra and set out into the Great Desert? If it was a fair land that lay before them most surely they would flock upon the way. But it is not so, and no foot makes the move. They have viewed an awe-inspiring immensity that casts a deadly spell of dread. And, one by one, year by year, they are repelled and go their way; back through the friendly mountains. After all, this is far from astonishing of strangers, for they but express something of the deep-rooted, superstitious dread of the desert which is found in the soul of every native who lives anywhere within reach of its borders, or in its interior.

Furthermore, it may be well to remember that the Sahara is a land of great antiquity, that takes one to realms of Biblical times. Steeped in the religion of Islam, it knows little perceptible change to-day, and is not on a plane with the modern world. Wherefore, even if we only set our minds back in keeping with a not very distant period of the past, it is not difficult thus to find another simile to the sea in picturing that it was only a little more than four centuries ago that the Atlantic Ocean probably held a similar dread of immensity before Columbus discovered America.

A NOOK IN THE MOUNTAINLAND OF AÏR

All those influences are important, for they can never be brought out on any map, and yet they are an intrinsic part of the land. Furthermore, they are a part of the poignant forces that teach the traveller wonderment and awe of the desert when he camps in the mighty company of its gigantic spaces; particularly if he catches a gently poised breath of the Moslem’s “Allah!” which is an indelible part of the mystic sadness it holds.