“He was wounded in fighting at Achegur (north-west of Bilma) on 1st July 1909, and died at Bilma on 5th September of the same year, after being carried for two weeks on the shoulders of his faithful native followers.”
AT WORK IN THE SALT-PITS OF BILMA
The whole depression of Kowar, stretching north and south from Jado to the Chad basin, in which the oasis of Bilma is situated, has a population of about 3,000 natives. About 700 of those are in Bilma; chiefly Beri-Beri, and a certain number of Tebu. But absolute purity of race is dying out owing to much intermingling of the two races. Like the den-dwellers of Fachi, these natives are hard-featured, cold-eyed, and barbarous.
Of other small oases along the line of the Kowar depression, Dirku has a few families of Beri-Beri and the remainder are occupied by Tebu. But here, as elsewhere in the Sahara, the natives are declining in numbers and most of the outlying places are almost deserted; among them the once important centre of Jado, which is completely abandoned.
The following quaint traditions and history of Kowar were collected at Bilma:
“The first people of Kowar were Sos (giants) from the Fezzan. Legend declares they were a very big race, while it is still claimed by the natives that the skeletons of these giants, and the great houses where they lived, are even yet to be seen in the Fezzan near Tedjerri. These giants were tall as twenty elbows.
“In due course the Sultan of the Beri-Beri came to Bilma and asked the Sultan of the Sos for permission to settle there with his people. Where upon the giant King, answering nothing, took a wand and, extending it, turned slowly round so that he formed a mighty circle, the edge of which extended to Yeggeba, in northern Kowar, and to Dibbela in the south (a diameter of 100 miles or more); and within that area the Beri-Beri were permitted to live.
“The Sos were at that time settled in the oasis in the valley of Bilma, the rainfall of which was coming from Jado, and going to Fachi and Termitt.”[11]
After this legendary time it is said that: