The upper part of the Anu Maqaran valley where the Bagezan and the Agalak mountains at the western side of the T’imia massif approach one another is called Abarakan. The road passes a large cemetery and the valley narrows between high hills with bare sides until a big fork is reached: one valley goes north to T’imia village, the other south, emerging on the central plateau east of the Bagezan mountains.
T’imia village is a veritable mountain fastness. The Agalak-T’imia massif was evidently highly volcanic, for a great flow of basalt overlying pink granite boulders has taken place along the valley towards Abarakan. The track climbs steadily over the broken lava stream. The going is rough. Then suddenly the track seems to end altogether below an overhanging cliff of lava some 30 feet high lying right across the bed of the ravine. We reached this point and found the men of T’imia had come down to meet us in order to help our camels to negotiate the path which follows a narrow crevasse in one side of the cliff. The cleft is so narrow that a camel with a bulky load cannot pass at all; it is so steep that the poor animals were forced to proceed in a series of ungainly lurches or jumps. Above the cliff the valley broadens out again, and where two small side valleys enter it lies the modern village of T’imia.
PLATE 23
TIMIA GORGE
TIMIA GORGE: PINK GRANITE TO LEFT, BLACK BASALT TO RIGHT
This settlement of Kel Owi nobles is very different from the servile Auderas. The parentage of these Kel Owi may be obscure and mixed, but their physique, the general cleanliness of the place and the neatness of their domed huts stamp them as nobles. The dwellings stand grouped in compounds, or sometimes as single huts, scattered between a row of gardens with irrigation wells, and the slope of a hill covered with huge boulders. In one of the smaller side valleys is a large grove of date palms with most of the gardens, near the site of the older village, a collection of rectangular masonry houses in ruins, and round hut sites marked by a ring of stones and a hearth. The little mosque of stone and mud construction lies between the old and new villages, but it was desecrated by the French soldiers and is no longer used. A matting shelter and compound in the new settlement serve to-day both for a place of prayer and a school, presided over by the ’alim ’Umbellu. Though over sixty he still works daily in his garden in the intervals of teaching the children of the village. Fugda, chief of T’imia, is one of the cleverest men in Air. Under the guidance of these two men the community has prospered. The villagers are enterprising. In the changing conditions of things they are an exception to the usual rule, for the men combine caravaning and trading on a large scale with gardening and date cultivation, without the help of any Imghad. When we came this way some of their camels were fattening in Abarakan ready to go to Bilma with the annual salt caravan in charge of a selected party of men. Another herd of some 100 head was going to Damergu to fetch millet for sale to the French post at Agades, and later I met yet another drove in Assada going south from Iferuan by way of Auderas to fetch more grain for sale in Northern Air after working on transport duties in Nigeria for the winter.
The life of the camel-owning Tuareg may be said to centre round the autumn salt caravan, which all the best camels accompany. It usually leaves in October, starting from Tabello[208] in the upper Beughqot valley, where parties from all over Air, Damergu and the Southland rendezvous in order to start together. Since the war these caravans have been comparatively small, but even during the last few years they have numbered 5000 camels. Ever since the occupation of Agades by the French, the Camel Corps has been turned out to guard the concentration and escort the caravan across the desert, for so valuable a congregation of camels might any year, as it sometimes did in the past, prove an irresistible temptation for raiders. The largest caravan ever escorted reached the fantastic total of over 30,000 camels. The caravan marches for five days to the oasis of Fashi, where it is joined by a smaller caravan from Damagarim via Termit. There, a halt is made for a short time to water and feed on whatever scanty pasture is available, and in some three more days Bilma is reached. The animals go out empty except for a little grain or live meat in the form of goats and sheep, and some trade goods for the Tebu and Kanuri inhabitants of Fashi and Kawar and Tibesti. They bring back salt and dates both from Fashi and Bilma. The latter place has perhaps the finest salt deposits in Africa. It costs nothing to get except the labour at the pans of making it up into loaves and loading it wrapped in matting bales. The outlay may be threepence to fivepence a load, in addition to an export tax of two francs per camel levied by the French authorities. The salt is sold in Hausaland for anything up to 7s. or more a loaf according to the time of year. As a fully-grown camel can carry four to six loaves of salt, the trade is extremely lucrative.
Both Fashi, or Agram as the place is also called, and Kawar have practically no pasture, and the few camels which live permanently there eat dates. The desert for five and a half days between Tabello and Fashi and three days between Fashi and Bilma is not only waterless but also nearly pastureless as well. The camels start out loaded with a sufficient supply of fodder for the outward and return journeys; the huge bales of grass are dropped en route at the end of each day’s march to provide for the equivalent return stage. Since the practice of escorting caravans has been instituted the French authorities quite rightly forbid isolated parties crossing the desert and attracting raiders to the neighbourhood. The route now chosen for the caravan runs from Tabello to Tazizilet on the edge of the Air mountains, and then straight across to Fashi in an almost due easterly direction. Formerly another road, which was more convenient for the northern tribes of Air, was also in use. It left the mountains at Agamgam pool in North-east Air and went to Ashegur well, north of Fashi; this way the distances between watering-points was shortened, and there was also rather more pasture.