TIN WANA POOL
ROCK OF THE TWO SLAVES, AT THE JUNCTION OF THE TIN WANA AND EGHALGAWEN VALLEYS
After a few days at Tebehic we proceeded to cross the broad plain of the River of Agades, whither one of my companions had preceded me. Memories of that plain are unpleasant. A day’s march from the shelter of the Tebehic valley we were overtaken by a violent thunderstorm right out in the open just south of T’in Taboraq. As a convalescent cure for malaria, designed to make any reputable European doctor shudder, I recommend getting up after three days in bed, marching six hours on a camel in the sun, and then spending two more holding up a tent in company with four other men in an eighty-mile-an-hour storm with a rainfall of three-quarters of an inch in about half an hour. The exertions of five of us were successful in keeping the tent up and the baggage dry, but proved tiring. As soon as the wind was over the five human tentpoles were turned on to canalisation, which soon became necessary to drain away the deluge. When this passed, a search over the countryside had to be instituted for articles of equipment carried away by the storm. The camp stove, an unwieldy cube of sheet-iron some fifteen inches each way, and weighing nine pounds, was found 3000 yards from the camp. But the storm had been magnificent. It had commenced at about 3 p.m. as a black cloud hanging over the Air mountains in the north. The wind, before it acquired full force, bore along a cloud of orange sand gleaming in the sun, which was still uncovered by the blue-black storm above. Suddenly everything seemed to be going on at once, sunshine, sand-storm, wind, purple squalls and a white uniformity of tearing, sweeping rain. By six o’clock it was all over. The sun set in a pale yellow sky behind the T’in Wana range. The northern hills grew slate-coloured and then black, and the storm went rolling on into Damergu, illuminating the night with lightning. Hitherto my worst experience of rain had been at Guliski in Damergu, when myself, three natives and our baggage lay in a hut nine feet in diameter; it rained all night, and slowly flooded us out. One felt the water rising among the blankets in an atmosphere of damp clamminess and native humanity. Then had come a hopeless dawn, but the air soon dried everything. Yet I had still to learn what storms in the mountains could be like.
The north side of the River of Agades opposite Tebehic has no definite bank. The mountains of Air slope gradually down to the valley; they are intersected by larger and smaller valleys, forming a series of roughly parallel right bank tributaries all in close proximity to one another. The widest of them are the Azanzara, Tureyet, Amidera, Teghazar and Telwa, most of which start north of the Taruaji mountains—the Tureyet and Telwa, in fact, have their head-waters in the Bagezan and Todra groups in Central Air. Some small villages lie among the foothills by these valleys, but it is dull country. A few small ill-grown trees and a little grass are all the vegetation on the succession of gravel patches which constitute the plain. The sight of the mountains of Air in front makes one want to hurry on.
South of one of these villages the opening tragedy of the 1917 revolution took place. A platoon of French Camel Corps, after completing their duties as escort to the Bilma salt caravan, had supervised the dispersal of the camels in their various tribal groups at Tabello, east of Bagezan, and were returning to Agades for a rest. They had been away perhaps a month and now were within a day’s march of the city. They knew nought of what had happened in Air, suspected absolutely nothing of the unfriendly disposition of the Tuareg. Near T’in Taboraq a large force of Tuareg, which had been lying in ambush behind a little hill on the northern edge of the plain, fell on the column as it was beginning its last day’s march into Agades post. A running fight ensued, in the course of which nearly the whole platoon of Camel Corps were destroyed. One officer, who was returning to France on leave, escaped southward, and a few wounded Senegalese “tirailleurs” found their way with difficulty into the fort at Agades, which had been attacked early one morning a day or two before while the garrison was out on parade. The revolution had been prepared for some time, with the connivance of the Sultan of Agades, by a Tuareg noble named Kaossen, an inveterate enemy of the French since 1900. The outbreak had been proposed by Kaossen and aided by the Senussiya and hostile elements in the Fezzan and Tripolitania as part of the anti-French and -British activities which continued in North Africa throughout the European war. The development in Air, however, came as a surprise to the French. All the Tuareg in the plateau rose, and although the garrison at Agades held out for over three months in doubt and in complete isolation, the revolt spread into Damergu and fears were even entertained for the safety of Northern Nigeria. The defence of Agades and the arrival of a column from Zinder, acting in conjunction with another column from the Niger, eventually saved the situation. The heroic resistance of the garrison at Agades and the magnificent work of the military organisation of French West Africa, over these huge expanses of country at the end of 1917 and early in 1918, have probably never even been heard of, still less recognised, in England, where events nearer home at a most critical period of the war obscured the issue of “another minor incident in the Sahara.” The column from Zinder, in spite of a severe check on the way, was the largest single body of men ever successfully sent over a desert against a nomadic people. It is my privilege to record in England, I think for the first time, the courage of those gallant French soldiers who indirectly defended Nigeria. Their efforts in Air saved a British colony from facing a situation which might have become serious owing to the general depletion of forces there, as elsewhere during those tragic months of the Great War. I am happy to make this acknowledgment, both as tribute to the French soldiers whom I had the pleasure of meeting during the Great War and in 1922, and particularly because even in Nigeria the gravity of the 1917 revolution has never been sufficiently recognised.
My route over the plain of the River of Agades lay in sight of Mount Gadé, a flat-topped hill standing alone to the south. The track used by parties from Sokoto passes this conspicuous landmark after crossing the Azawagh on the way to the rendezvous of the annual salt caravan at Tabello, under the eastern slopes of Bagezan in Central Air. After cutting this track we joined the Agades-Tabello road somewhat west of T’in Taboraq. East of this village the road passes through the other settlements which lie on the southern spurs of the Taruaji massif before it turns north to Tabello.
The track now entered and wound along a valley called the Teghazar.[76] The small torrent bed was very sodden after the rain of the previous day. On either side were low hills of bare gravel with some rock outcrop beginning to appear here and there. On the low scarps or patches of loose stones a few ragged acacias had secured an existence, marking the foot of the Air hills along the River of Agades. Eventually the track rose up to the level of the highest undulations and we came in sight of Agades. Almost simultaneously two Tuareg on camels appeared on the road. They had been sent out from Agades with an accumulation of letters, months overdue, and a message to say that we were the guests of the French officers in the fort, about a mile north of the city. As the last fold of ground was crossed, by a steep bluff where Kaossen had constructed a military work during the siege of the French garrison in 1917, the whole length of the city came in sight on a low ridge to the south-west. The far end was marked by the stately tower of the Great Mosque, unchanged since Barth saw it more than seventy years ago. Straight ahead lay the French post, surrounded by a defensive wall flanked by blockhouses and containing the tall masts of a wireless station, near the wells of T’in Shaman in a diminutive plain where the Foureau-Lamy Expedition had camped over twenty years earlier. In 1917 there was no W/T station and scarcely any fort; the buildings were all disconnected and scarcely defensible.
PLATE 9
