The salt is secured from wide open bottoms that are of no great depth. It is in large pure crystals ranging from the size of sugar-grains to cubes as large as ¼-inch. When a pit is being worked the bottom of it is flooded with water of a rich dark claret colour, stained by the natron, or native carbonate of sodium[13] that is put in as a chemical that settles and separates the sandy sediment and other foreign matter from the desired crystals. Bare-limbed men, in dirty ragged garb, work in this discoloured water up to their knees, and delve underneath with short-handled hoes to loosen the crystals, which they tread down with their naked feet to cleanse of sediment, before thrusting a shallow scoop below the surface, to bring it up piled with glistening salt. So rich is the deposit that quantity is rapidly secured. The wet salt is at once carried from the pit and mixed, with about an equal portion of dry salt, into a concrete-like consistency which is emptied into pyramid moulds, constructed for the purpose out of palm staves and bound with camel-hide. The whole process entails very little labour, and an abundance of cones of salt is produced with astonishing rapidity and ease.
The caravans that go to Bilma for salt secure it chiefly by barter, trading food and clothing to the value of their purchases. To gauge its actual value in coin, one block or cone of salt, weighing about 35 lbs., is worth two pennies in Bilma; but, when carried away south to Hausaland,[14] it is resold, or rebartered, at an entirely different value. At Tessawa it realises as much as eight shillings, or the equivalent, and at Kano ten shillings.
In considering values, however, the long period spent on the journey to and from Bilma, and the loss of camels through hunger and fatigue, should be reckoned in favour of the man who brings the salt to the markets of the south, for on that account, when all is said and done, his profits at best are but little; which is all that the best type of native expects or asks.
Tigguida n’Tisem is very different from Bilma, though both are renowned salt centres, and both of a character that would have assuredly made them central figures in the history of the Sahara, had the races who have come and gone through the dark ages of Africa’s existence kept comprehensive records of their country.
This salt centre is not so remote as Bilma, and is easier of access from Hausaland. It lies west of Agades, and north of In-Gall, in black desert beyond the mountains of Aïr. Its actual position happens to be in a region wherein tend the main lines of drainage of the rare storm-rains of western Aïr; drainage that, at the present time, seeps eventually into the desert, but that, doubtless, once ran much further on its course, which heads, even to-day, in the direction of the Niger Basin. At Tigguida n’Tisem this watercourse, remarkable because of its size, takes the form of immense flats of clayey soil, resembling the sediment of an estuary, and the salt, which is the mainstay of the town, is located in a low hill in the very centre of this strange arid bottom. Indeed, on account of its position in the watercourse, when rains do happen to occur, which is, perhaps, once a year, or once in three years, according to chance, Tigguida n’Tisem is entirely surrounded by water, and at such times the population are in the habit of trekking south to take refuge in In-Gall.
But for the most part the hot sun-smitten land lies ever barren and petrified, while the wind-swept, dust-covered, diminutive town crouches, like the dens of fearful creatures, in a lost land of featureless flatness and terrible desolation. Why anyone should live there at all is beyond comprehension, until one halts at the significant word, Salt! which constitutes the main occupation at present, though early geographers believed the settlement was concerned with copper.
Tigguida n’Tisem is very remarkable for two reasons: the rare race of people who occupy it, and its extremely picturesque salt-pans.
The whole locality is essentially Tuareg, and it is an astonishing fact that the natives of the town are not of that race, nor yet sedentary vassals of Beri-Beri, or Hausa slave caste from the south, who are invariably the workers of the Tuareg camps. They are known as Azawaren, and so completely separate are they in race that their language is unintelligible to the true natives of the region.
They are without written history, but the tribe was referred to by early geographers as a relic of the Sonrhay race, and, if that should come to be indisputably proved,[15] then at Tigguida n’Tisem, in the Sahara, the language of that once great Empire of the Niger still survives.
