This book is in no sense a diary of day-to-day travel. Only a single chapter is devoted to the account of the extraordinary journey which Captain Buchanan and his cinematographer, Mr. Glover, made from Kano in Nigeria to Touggourt in Algiers—a journey of over 3,500 miles through the great desert of Africa. Some idea of the hardships which they encountered may be gathered from the fact that, while they started with a caravan of thirty-six camels and fifteen natives, they finished with a single camel and only two natives, after fifteen months of travel. The reader is never wearied by monotonous logs of distances covered day by day or of the countless difficulties overcome on the long long trail. Only the last few days, when victory was in sight, are briefly sketched. But in earlier chapters we have vivid pictures of the perils that are inseparable from travel over vast sandy wastes, where a burning sun beats down with relentless fury, and where the lives of men and beasts alike depend on their finding water at least every six or seven days. One chapter describes one of the sandstorms that all but engulfed the caravan in the shelterless plain—another, the rare experience of torrential rain which may be almost as devastating, but, unlike the sandstorm, is fraught with blessing, for it brings food to the starving mammals that haunt the fringe of the great desert.

The author’s knowledge of the Sahara is not based merely on the one long journey which took him across its widest part. The book is partly based on a previous lengthy visit to the Sahara, during which he studied the fauna of the district as it has never been studied before, and the weird and impoverished races which are found in its habitable areas. The Sahara is not a mere plain of sand—it embraces more than one mountainous and picturesque area as large as Wales, but, unlike that country, arid in the extreme; besides numerous oases where a scanty subsistence is yielded by palms for small communities, and which are largely dependent on the visits of travelling caravans in quest of that most precious of all commodities—water. In these places, isolated by vast seas of desert, dwell the remnants of tribes once more numerous, who migrated thither when conditions were more favourable, for alas! Captain Buchanan’s observations lead him to the conclusion that the constantly accumulating sand-drifts are gradually destroying the already scanty resources of the still inhabited portions. Readers will find interest in his description of the two oases of Bilma and Fachi, both of which derive their subsistence from salt-mines, and whose dwellings and the forts which protect them are built entirely of blocks of salt, now blackened by age.

The perils of the desert are illustrated by the striking story of Rali, which forms one of the most vivid and entrancing chapters of the book. One of the nomad tribe of Tuaregs who lead a roving life amongst the few areas where pasturage of a kind is obtainable for their flocks, he was the victim of a dastardly raid in which his young and beautiful wife was carried off by a band of raiders. His adventures in seeking to recover her and avenge himself on her captors are told with a rare insight into the character of the natives and their mastery of their environment. Strange to say, although the vast majority of the natives are predatory and cruel, the author came across one community of religious pacifists who have never organised any defence against persistent raids. As might be expected, these unhappy creatures live in the direst poverty, for, if they should by hard work accumulate any food or other commodities, they are promptly relieved of them by rapacious bands who live largely on the spoliation of their neighbours.

Naturalists will find ample evidence in the description of Saharan birds and mammals of the remarkable adaptation of the forms there existing to their arid environment. The appendices contain complete lists of the Saharan fauna.

It was in my dual capacity of President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and of the Zoological Society of Scotland that I had the privilege of making the author’s acquaintance by presiding at the first lecture which he delivered in Scotland on the result of his travels in the Sahara. This book, which embodies them in greater detail, should have a wide circle of readers if the appeal which it made to myself is any index of popular interest.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
Preparations[1]
CHAPTER II
The Caravan[9]
An Explanation[29]
CHAPTER III
A Ship of the Desert[31]
CHAPTER IV
The Great South Road[45]
CHAPTER V
The Taralum[69]
CHAPTER VI
A City of Shadows[98]
CHAPTER VII
Salt of the Earth[109]
CHAPTER VIII
The People of the Veil[129]
CHAPTER IX
The Hand of Doom[155]
CHAPTER X
Servitude[188]
CHAPTER XI
Strange Camp-fires[197]
CHAPTER XII
Feathers, and the Places they frequent[215]
CHAPTER XIII
Mammals of the Sahara[285]
CHAPTER XIV
The North Star[255]
CHAPTER XV
Civilisation[271]
APPENDIX I
Scientific Nomenclature of Saharan Bird Life[291]
APPENDIX II
Scientific Nomenclature of Saharan Animal Life[295]
Index[297]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Edge of the Unknown[Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
In Agades[4]
Native Food for the Long Trail[6]
An Ordinary Night Camp[12]
The Long, Exacting March[16]
Nomad and Camel-man[20]
Through to Water and Resting[28]
Branded[34]
All my Comrades carried Strange Boxes[36]
My New Master rode me all that Day—[38]
—And that was the Beginning of a GreatFriendship[38]
He stroked me often[42]
A Nook in the Mountainland of Aïr[50]
Salt-bush[52]
Disintegrating Rock[52]
A Deserted Stone-built Village[54]
Typical Tassili[58]
A Deep Ravine in Tassili[60]
A Saharan River-bed[62]
A Corner of the Camp at Tabello[72]
Food for Camels[78]
Glimpses of the Taralum[80]
Part of the Taralum camped[82]
Among Sand-dunes[86]
The Toll of the Desert[86]
Efali[90]
A Doorway in Fachi[96]
The “Seven Palms”[96]
The Ramparts[98]
A Town built of Salt[100]
Shadows at Every Turn[102]
Women of Fachi[104]
The Den of the Forty Thieves[106]
The Salt-pits of Bilma[114]
Setting the Salt[116]
Men of the Oasis[118]
From the Roof-tops they watched[122]
The Salt-pans of Tigguida N’Tisem[124]
Salt of Tigguida[126]
The Veil[132]
A Tuareg Woman[134]
A Maiden[138]
Tuareg Lads[140]
A Tuareg Home[144]
Eating from the One Dish[146]
A Tuareg Village[150]
The Well-head[150]
With Rifle and Equipment[152]
A Brief Halt[160]
A Scene in Aïr[166]
Spellbound in the Grip of Limitless Silence[170]
When the Day dawned[176]
Tombs on the Desert[180]
A Slave Woman[185]
A Tebu Woman[186]
A Tebu Man[186]
Semi-sedentary—an Egummi Native[188]
Water for Irrigation[190]
A Date Grove[192]
A Woman of the “Diarabba”[194]
A Halt at an Old Well[200]
A Saharan Well[202]
Sunk through Rock[206]
A Camp-fire[210]
The Wayfarer’s Possessions[212]
A Bird Disguise[220]
Two Male Ostriches[222]
Cattle Egrets[224]
Arab Bustards[226]
Carrion Vultures[230]
A Morning’s Bag[238]
Big Game[240]
Dorcas Gazelle[244]
Aardvark[248]
A Desert Fox[252]
Ever heading North[258]
In-Salah Market[260]
Scene in Ouargla[262]
Buchanan[264]
Glover, T. A.[266]
Together to the End[268]
Good-bye to Africa[276]
Back to Civilised Clothes[280]
Ali and Sakari in England[284]
Map[p.46]
Diagram of Rock Decay[p.65]