[262]Ibn Khaldun, IV. p. 89.
[263]Corippus, Johannis, IV., passim.
CHAPTER X
NORTHERN AIR AND THE KEL OWI
When I returned to Auderas from Tabello I found the valley had dried up very much. The hamlets were already in great part deserted. The people had moved out of the settlements with their flocks in search of better pasture than could be found on the parched trees and straw of the little valleys. Ahodu, temporarily relieved of his authority pending an adjudication in Agades on a dispute regarding the possession of certain date palms, was living about two miles down the valley with a part of our camels and his own goats and sheep. I was now anxious to stay as short a time as possible in this part of the country, since I wanted to see the north during the time which remained before I was due to return to England. Ahodu himself was unable to come with me, but he provided as guide an Imajegh called Sidi from his own Kel Tadek people at Auderas. With a few camels, my servant and two other men I set forth once more on November 3rd by the now familiar road to the Assada valley. Camping there on the second day out, I met a large caravan of Kel T’imia bound for Damergu via Agades. They were ostensibly trading in dates but were in reality destined for the Southland to undertake transport work in Nigeria during the winter months.
The weather was very pleasant, but in the open country the temporary watering-places were fast disappearing. The maximum day temperatures varied between 90° and 95° F. in the shade; the nights were already fresh with temperatures as low as 42° F.
On the following day after leaving the Assada camp I did a thirty-mile march along the valley, past the site of Aureran well with a few ruined stone houses both there and on the way there, and then up a side valley under Mount Arwa Mellen. At the mouth of the Tegidda valley my track branched off from the road which I had followed earlier in the year with Buchanan to T’imia. I proceeded north into the Anu Maqaran basin over the low pass to which both Barth and Foureau refer. From the col a long sweep of grassy plain ran gently down to the great valley of Central Air. It is here called T’imilen after the mountains which lie on the north bank of the section higher up, where it is named Abarakan. The T’imilen mountains are a continuation of the small Agalak massif which was just visible to the north; its south-west face lying on my right was very imposing with steep and rugged sides. Straight in front of the pass, beyond the valley, a gap appeared between the broken mass of the Agalak and a small, bold mountain called Aggata on the left hand. The gap, wherein were framed the distant mountains of Northern Air, proved to be a basin containing the Agalak and Aggata tributaries of the main T’imilen valley. I camped within an hour of the pass, a few hundred yards from the north bank of the main bed at the deep well of Aggata, not far from the mountain which is also called by that name.
When the Bila and Bagezan massifs appear on the southern horizon, one may be said to have entered Northern Air. While the north-eastern part is more properly the country of the Kel Owi tribes, the whole area north of the central massifs, including the western plain and the towns of Agellal, Sidawet and Zilalet, was largely under their influence. This part of Air is a rugged plateau crossed by wide valleys and broken by only relatively small mountain groups. The most distinctive feature is the number of little peaks which rise abruptly into sharp points and ridges. But though small they are no mere conical hillocks, for they are crowned with the pinnacles and towers usually associated with the Dolomites. T’iriken, for instance, on the way to Assode, has a triple crest rising out of a crown, like the fangs of a tooth. T’imuru is a saddle-backed ridge with turrets along the crest like the spikes on a scaly reptilian back. Asnagho, near Agellal, is shaped like an axe; the one profile is sharp as a blade set on edge, the other flat and long. Most beautiful of all are Arwa and Aggata, soaring out of the plain like dream castles, with battlements and keeps and curtain walls perched high above the cliffs and screes of the lower glacis. The landscape is rather less coloured than in the centre or south, for until the edge of the northern mountains of Air is reached there are hardly any big trees or green vegetation in the valleys. But the same red and black of the rocks against a blue sky and straw-coloured ground prevail.
Aggata well proved copious but somewhat stagnant. Agalak well is also deep and similar. It is the country of deep wells, and they are ascribed to the first Tuareg, the Itesan. They are anything up to 100 feet or more deep and 10 to 12 feet broad. The sides are carefully dry-walled with rough basalt boulders. The well mouths are slightly raised above the level of the ground and surrounded by great logs of wood, scored with rope-marks. They are undoubtedly the work of highly-skilled diggers and may be pre-Tuareg. Many of them require cleaning out, but none of them seems to have fallen in.