Damergu begins and ends abruptly: as soon as the belt of bush which surrounds it on all sides is crossed, the ground lies open to the sky and visibility becomes good. There is no more suffocating feeling in the world than marching through Central African bush. The discomforts and disabilities of travelling are not compensated for by any advantage except a ready supply of firewood. The bushland around Damergu is particularly unpleasant. It is never so tall that one may not hope to see over the top of the ugly stunted trees at the next low rise, and never in reality low enough to allow one to satisfy one’s passionate longing. Visibility is limited to a few yards and one’s sense of direction is confounded. It is infernally hot, because the undergrowth effectively shelters one from any breeze. The country is uniformly rolling and unbeautiful. A high proportion of the trees are of the virulently thorny variety which arch over the rare paths and make life on camel or horseback intolerable. Walking is equally distasteful, as the ground is strewn with burr grass which enters every fold of clothing and mortifies the flesh like hot needles. Camels get lost pasturing, game appears in vast quantities and disappears before a shot can be fired. There are scorpions, snakes, centipedes and tarantulas, not to speak of bush folk who have an uncanny sense of their own whereabouts, and of yours as well. They are armed with poisoned arrows, and though I did not suffer from their unkind attentions, the bush through which I passed north of Daura has a bad reputation. There are vast areas with no accessible water in the dry season, but when it rains the trees drip their moisture down your neck. I know the particular and private hell which is in store for me one day for the many misdemeanours I have committed. It will be to wander eternally through Sudan bush in search of the desert, where one may see what will bring happiness or oblivion at a distance and where one may at least face Destiny in the open.
On each separate occasion when I entered Damergu, in the east returning from Termit, in the west going north from Tessawa, and in the north returning home by way of Nigeria, I experienced such a sense of relief and pleasure at emerging from the bush as to dull my perception of the really somewhat monotonous nature of the country. The winding hollows flow more or less aimlessly east or west, except in the Gangara area, where the drainage is definitely westwards into the Gulbi n’Kaba basin. The general level of the country is about 1700 feet above the sea. Except in the hollows around the rain pools the country is devoid of trees or scrub. Every here and there small groups of hills rise 300-400 feet above the surrounding country. They are so far apart that the next system only appears on the horizon. The black ferruginous outcrop forms conical peaks or stretches of pebbly surface, which break the round contours of the prairie. These little hills, set on a rolling golden prairie of very wide prospect, are the great characteristics of Damergu. The land is vast and generous in its proportions.
The hills of Gangara in the west mark the site of a group of four villages called Zungu and Gangara close under the principal peak, Malam Chidam to the east and Karawa to the south. The hills are a series of cones rising a few hundred feet from the plain and are connected at their bases; a series of gullies or ravines clothed with little bushes descends from them; there are no cliffs or great masses of bare rock; the slopes are covered with low scrub. The Gangara hills divide the Gulbi n’Kaba basin from a wide depression on the east which sweeps south towards the cone of Zawzawa near the large village of Kallilua, with Dambida and Mazia not far to the north. North and east of Gangara are the low hills of Dambansa, Birjintoro and Ollelua, while further east again in a confused medley of aimless valleys are Mount Ginea and the triple peaks of Akri. The Akritan[48] hills are a landmark for the towns of Jajiduna, Tanut and Gamram. These various groups are the signposts of Damergu; even a raw traveller can learn them in a short time. Between the more important villages and towns the scattered hamlets are of such frequent occurrence that, once the general lie of the land has been observed, travelling is easy.
It is a country of considerable potential wealth. It was known in the past as the granary of Air; even now great quantities of grain are exported to the north and to the more densely populated Hausa countries of the south. The long, broad downs, usually well fed by the summer rains, are admirably suited for growing millet and guinea corn. The surrounding margin of bush, especially on the northern side within reasonable distances of the plentiful water holes in open places, is full of the cattle of nomad Fulani and the camels of the Damergu Tuareg. The cultivable area to-day is limited only by the scarcity of population and some lack of enthusiasm for work. A periodic cycle of dry years with the inevitable sequels of drought and famine can only be guarded against by administrative measures, which have not been enforced since the fall of the Central African Empires. One after another they dominated this part of the world, but whether Melle, Songhai, Bornu or Sokoto was pre-eminent in the Central Sudan, Damergu remained an appanage of Air, whose destinies it followed and of which it is economically a part. After the first arrival of the Tuareg from the east, a progressive descent of other tribes from the north led to the establishment of a reigning class in the country, recruited among the People of Air. To them the sedentary Kanuri people, who then and since have constituted the majority of the population, were subjected. The Tuareg Sultans of Damergu in the early period of modern history ruled in Jajiduna, Gamram, Tademari and Demmili. Even when they fell under the political influence of Tessawa or of Damagarim or were conquered by Melle, Songhai or Sokoto in turn, they remained in close touch with their relations in the north. The economic necessity of keeping open the great caravan road to Tripoli, which was a source of wealth to the Tuareg and to the south alike, was realised by everyone.
The more intense cultivation and thicker population of earlier days are proved by the profusion of deserted sites all over the country, where the passing of the villages has left no more tangible, if unmistakable, evidence than acres of cleared and levelled ground strewn with potsherds and heaps of stones. The greater population of those days and the administrative ability of the empires of the Sudan combined to counteract the effects of dry years by creating proportionately larger reserves of grain, which were so conspicuously absent just before the late war that a severe drought brought about wholesale emigration to the Southland.
The present-day villages in Damergu are all of the grass hut variety of the usual African type. In the past a few towns appear to have been built of mud. The ruins of old Dambiri show a walled mud-built town, although Demmili, once the seat of a Sultan who probably moved to Gangara when his village fell into decay, must have been wholly built of grass, for it has entirely disappeared. A lonely tree on a barren patch of ground marks its passing. The Gangara villages are all straw built, as are, among the larger settlements which have survived, Mazia and Kallilua. There are mud buildings, I believe, at Tademari and Jajiduna, and certainly at Tanut. The latter is the French centre of the country. It has an important grain market and a fort containing a small garrison of Senegalese troops. The principal native place was Jajiduna, where the first French post was established; but the town has rather declined since the move of the official capital to Tanut, where the water supply for caravans is better. At Jajiduna there is a Senussi “zawia,” one of the few points where the influence of this sect has taken root in Tuareg countries. The principal Senussi “zawia” in the Southland is at Kano, with another smaller one reported at Zinder.
PLATE 5
GAMRAM
North of Jajiduna and north-east of Tanut is Gamram,[49] a town of some importance in the past for the Tuareg, and the seat of one of their rulers of Damergu. Now a small collection of straw huts is surrounded by the ruins of mud walls like any of the towns of Hausaland. Gamram was the Warden of the South on the marches of the desert. As the most northerly permanent settlement of the Sudan on the Tripoli road it became a point of vital strategic importance for the caravan traffic. The town has occupied many sites on the edge of a basin that becomes a lake in the rainy season. The present site is on the north side, but the most important settlement was probably to the south-west. The beauty of Gamram struck Barth very forcibly. It was the first definitely Sudanese settlement to which he had come after the inhospitable deserts and the mountains of the Sahara. He had suffered intense discomfort in the waste called Azawagh, intervening between Damergu and the Sudan, but when he came to Gamram, the rains had filled the lake which laps the feet of some immense acacias that are perpetually green. Their roots live in water, and when the pool dries up, wells only a few feet deep are dug under their shade. The trees are filled with the song of many birds and the sound of running lizards. The gardens around the edge of the basin produce vegetables and luxuries rarely encountered in the Sahara. There are eggs and chickens and milk and cheese in the market. All these things are found at Gamram, not in plenty but in just sufficient quantities to delight the traveller in barren lands. I came to Gamram a day after leaving the impenetrable bush of Elakkos and found it as good as Barth had described.