To feed such an enormous caravan, even but for a brief day or two, is a tremendous consideration, and Tabello had been chosen for this very reason because it offered the best conditions to be found in a region where drear poverty of growth is the general rule.
Sharp-thorned acacias, shrubs, prickly ground plants, coarse grass tussocks—all make a camel’s meal; for they will tackle most things, and they eat heavily when the chance offers. The skill with which they strip the leaves from cruel-barbed trees and plants is truly astonishing when one remembers that their lips and noses are soft as velvet and sensitive in the extreme.
Acacias are the chief trees at Tabello; low, insignificant, and far removed from the tall, leafy plants that one usually associates with the name. They are nowhere in forests, and grow in an irregular line along the dry river-bed banks, or in scattered, scraggy groups in hollows where they happen to have found a bare footing. There are a number of varieties, chief of which are: tashrar, tamat, and tigar—thorny, squat-branched, lean and small-leafed; yet all splendid camel food. Among them, particularly where bushes grow together, is aborer, a densely branched tree with long green thorns and sappy wood. A choice tree to the camel is agar, which seeks the solitudes and often grows alone in the open. It is a pale-coloured evergreen with thick twisting branches closely covered with tiny leaves. Then there is abisgee, which is not an acacia. It grows, willow-like, in clumps, and is very green, and has a pungent smell not unlike skunk. Camels eat it—and, as a consequence, smell foully—but only sparingly, unless no other food offers.
Underfoot, on the sand, in scanty patches, grow tussocks of coarse grass and prickly plants; among them tasmir, taruma, thelult, tatite, afazo, and alwat.[8] These plants were essential to the life of the camp, for they meant food and contentment to the camels, whose huge numbers roamed the country-side, rapidly eating down whatever growth could be found within reach.
As to the food of the future: no camel had trekked into camp without a big load of dry, harsh tussock-grass on either side, gathered from the most favourable places en route: and those bales, which every animal will carry at the start, are the camel-food that must serve throughout the journey on the desert.
The departure for Bilma was delayed. On the day appointed to start news reached camp that a lot of Kel-Ferouan Tuaregs, on the way back from Hausaland, were not yet in. It was also known that there were some stragglers on the way. So that during the few days of camp-life that followed our arrival at Tabello others trekked in, as we had done, with their lines of fodder-loaded camels swelling the numbers, until 7,000 animals were the total on the eve of departure—a mighty cavalcade, and one of the largest caravans of modern times.
It represented, massed into one narrow area, the greater part of the wealth of a land that has no wealth if reckoned to the square mile of its vastness and general desolation. At a fair valuation each animal is worth £15 per head, making the total value of the Taralum £105,000.
Owing to this value, which, besides being monetary, represents the cream of the transport stock of the whole region, whose loss would be irreparable, precautions to protect the caravan are taken, each year, by the French Administration of the Territoire du Niger.
Wherefore a force of Meharists had been sent from the south to join the Taralum at Tabello and act as an escort while crossing the desert. In addition, every native with the caravan is armed with weapons of war of some sort—rifle, sword, or lance; while some even carried the remarkable oryx-hide battle-shield that is peculiar to the Tuaregs. All are familiar with the danger of raids in the Sahara, and many have experienced them and fought before.
The date of departure of the Taralum is an event in the Sahara as notable as Christmas Day in civilised countries. It is fixed by tribes who know nothing of printed calendars, and the appointed date is: “Two days after the new moon Ganni Wazuwirin (the October-November moon). On this occasion, because of the delay already referred to, the great caravan started two days late.