Apart from deaths due to eating poisonous plants, which are far more numerous in the Southland than in Air, the highest mortality among camels in Air comes from a disease known locally as “blood in the head.” It is a form of pernicious apoplexy or congestion of blood in the head. The early symptoms are hard to observe unless one happens to be born a Tuareg. As the attack develops the camel becomes dazed and lies in the sun with rather a glassy stare, instead of feeding. Later it runs about, hitting its head against trees, and finally falls to the ground in contortions, dying very rapidly of a stroke. The disease is especially common after the rains, when the pasture is rich or when the animals are idle, recovering condition. If they are left in the Southland for the whole year, the rich feeding there aggravates the incidence of the disease. An attack may be staved off by the remedy, which is also used for dealing with refractory animals, namely, of putting tobacco snuff in their eyes. This apparently cruel treatment is singularly efficacious, and I can only suppose that the irritation or smarting has the effect of a stimulant which draws or dispels the blood pressure. When the disease is more advanced, resort has to be had to blood-letting; the jugular artery is cut a span below the left ear and blood is drawn to an amount which will fill three cup-shaped hollows in the ground made by removing a double handful of sand or earth from each. The blood is seen at first to flow very dark in colour; as it gradually resumes its normal hue, the hæmorrhage is stopped by taking a tuft of hair, dipping it into the coagulated blood and inserting it in the cut. As soon as a clot is formed the incision is covered with sand. The whole proceeding sounds a fantastically imprudent and septic way of dealing with an arterial hæmorrhage, but it works most successfully. If camels are sickening for disease, and especially for “blood in the head,” which may sometimes be recognised by the premonitory symptom of very hard, dry droppings, they are dosed with a mixture made of tobacco leaf, onion, and the seed of grain called “Araruf,” containing a pungent oil apparently of the mustard variety. These ingredients are pounded up, mixed with about a gallon of water and poured down the camel’s throat.
Firing is resorted to for various ills, especially around bad sores to prevent them from spreading and to induce healing. A cow is very often fired across the flanks after calving, when she is also given a goatskin-full of millet and water “to fill up the empty space in her belly.” Firing round the breast pad is carried out when the animal is suffering from the disease which causes the pad to split. Mange is fairly frequent, and is treated with a mixture of oil and ashes. The worst disease of all is called “Tara,” for which there is said to be no cure: the symptoms are a wasting of the legs, and eventual death from debility and breakage of the bones: luckily I had no experience of the malady, which is said to be infectious or contagious. The Tuareg say that there is no reason for its coming, but that Allah sometimes unaccountably sends it.
The Tuareg empiric remedies, other than those described, are not interesting except in their treatment of gangrenous wounds. When they have washed the wound with a lotion of female camel urine or brewed from one of several plants which seem to have remarkably little effect, they cover the exposed flesh with a powder of crumbled donkey droppings dried in the sun. I was appalled at the danger of septic infection when I first saw the practice, but soon discovered that the powder, which had, I supposed, become sterilised in the sun, was a really effectual method of preventing the great harm caused by flies settling on the wound. I can now confidently recommend this practice.
Camels, of course, are branded with tribal marks, a complete study of which would be worth making. Each mark has its own name, and many of them are derived from certain known symbols or perhaps letters, all of which call for investigation in connection with marks from other parts of Africa. Some of the principal brands in Air are given in [Plate 21,] the most interesting being the mark of the Ghati Tuareg (Azger); it is called the Hatita, after the name of the famous leader of Barth’s day.
This necessarily brief note on the animal which is so intimately bound up with the life of the People of the Veil, not to say their very existence, may be supplemented by some mention of the other domestic animals of Air.
In Nigeria the best horses are described as Asben horses; yet in Air there is hardly a horse to be seen. The explanation is presumably that the Tuareg bring, or used to bring, the best horses for sale in Hausaland; but they were not necessarily bred in Air. The supposition is reasonable, for the Tuareg north of Sokoto, and especially the Aulimmiden, west of Air, possess a number of horses which are renowned for their hardiness, and of course all Tuareg in the Southland are called Asbenawa. In Air the best of the few horses are, with an even lesser show of logic, described as Bagezan horses; but there are no horses in the mountains. The tracks are far too rough for there ever at any time to have been a considerable number of horses in the hills. I can offer no explanation of the name. Air is not a horse-breeding country. The pasture is too rough even after the rains, while during the dry season the only green stuff is on the trees, which, even if it were good fodder for horses, could only be reached by animals of the build of camels. The few horses which I saw in Air belonged to the Sultan at Agades and to the Añastafidet. They were small and wiry but rather nondescript, a variable cross of Arab and Sudanese blood; in no case could they be said to represent an “Air breed.” The Tuareg say the horse came to Air from the north, and in point of fact all those I saw bore a certain resemblance to the little animals of Tripolitania. There are probably not more than 100 horses in Air altogether to-day. Water is far too scarce a commodity for horses to be much used for travelling. Those in the mountains are never watered more than once a day, and can easily do three days between drinking without undue fatigue.
The other domestic animals are donkeys, cattle, sheep, goats, dogs and a few Hausa cats. Falconry is not a pastime in Air. The cattle come from the south; they are of the humped and ordinary varieties. The bulls are used for drawing water from the garden irrigation wells; cows are more scarce. Before the war the Tuareg used to carry on an active trade in cattle, buying from the Fulani in Damergu and selling to the people of Ghat and the Fezzan. Incredible as it may seem, cattle used to be driven over the roads to Ghat after the rains, and do as much as four and five days without water. The mortality must have been considerable, but their cheapness in the Southland made the trade profitable. It is curious how all the animals in Air, including man, seem to get used to going without water for long periods. Oxen are used to a certain extent as pack animals both in Air and Damergu; Barth started his journey from Northern Air to Agades on an ox; he considered this mount indifferent as a means of transport, for he fell off and nearly broke his compass. The association of cattle with a well-watered country where they can drink every day must be dismissed in the Sahara, and this disposes of one of the difficulties surrounding the problem of the ox-drawn chariots of the Garamantes which so exercised Duveyrier;[181] loaded oxen can march comfortably with water only every third day.
The donkey is very nearly as good a performer in the desert as the camel. In austerity of diet he is better, being less fastidious about pasture and quite as capable of doing four and five days in cold weather, between wells. But his pace is even slower than that of the camel, and his maximum load should not exceed 100 lbs. Curiously enough, donkeys suffer from the same disease as camels after the rains: they get “blood in the head,” but in their case a treatment of snuff in the eyes is said to be useless. They have to be bled by making an incision with a curious bent iron instrument in the roof of the mouth above the lower molars. The operation looks ridiculous, but the donkey is always a humorous beast. The ones in Air and nearly all those in the Southland are small grey animals, standing not more than four feet from the ground, with straight knife-edged backs. I saw none of the large white donkeys of Egypt. Near T’imia and in the north-eastern parts of Air there are a number of wild donkeys, roaming unbroken and unherded. They are the descendants of domestic donkeys driven out to propagate and find their own livelihood by certain tribes who claim them when captured in their own areas. These animals, like the gazelle of the country, exist on pasture alone, for they often encounter no open water to drink for ten months of the year.
The commonest domestic animals are the sheep and goats. Every village and tribe has large herds. After the camels they constitute the principal wealth of the people and do exceedingly well. The sheep are all of the gaunt wire-haired variety without woollen fleeces, resembling goats. The latter provide most of the milk in the villages, and vary in colour from white to black, with every intermediate shade of brown and type of marking. Curiously enough, none of the Tuareg of Air, and, I believe, none of the other groups, either spin the hair of goats or the wool of their own camels. A good sheep in 1922 could be bought for six to seven and a goat for four to five silver francs. Camels ranged between £5 and £12 a head.
The number of domestic animals in Air, hard and barren as the country seems to be, is surprisingly large. In a rough classifying census of the Tuareg of Air, including only a few tribes in the Southland and not counting either the Kel Geres or Aulimmiden, Jean[182] in 1904 estimated (Column I) the numbers as follows: