French enterprise in Africa

by Hourst

During this time of struggle and trouble Timbuktu, standing as it did between the two contending parties, passed first to one and then to the other, and pillaged by both sides, she rapidly declined in prosperity, and was in danger of complete ruin.

Under these trying circumstances, the merchants of the city, eager to obtain some sort of security for their lives, their goods, and their trade, sent to Tuat an earnest petition that some venerated Kunta marabout should come and live near Timbuktu, hoping that the respect felt for his piety might put a stop to the depredations of which their town was the victim.

Sidi Moktar responded to this appeal. He came, and took up his abode with his family and a few of his more distant relations near Timbuktu. Of these relations the most celebrated were his brothers Sidi Aluatta and Sidi Hamet Beckay with his nephew Amadi.

Barth has told us much about them all, but we have now specially to deal with Hamet Beckay, the doctor’s chief protector.

Imbued through reading Barth’s travels with a belief that the very fate of my expedition might depend on finding, as he did, some man universally loved and respected to take me and my followers under his protection, I earnestly hoped to find such a man amongst the Tuaregs, with whom I had become well acquainted during my two years’ residence in the Sudan.

As will be borne out by my further narrative, these Tuaregs seemed to me far less black than they were painted in Europe. At the same time, I recognized that certain peculiarities of their character might involve me in great difficulties. If they were not exactly instinctively ferocious, I knew that they were quick to take offence, defiant, full of dread of innovation, and ready to look on every stranger as a spy. To them a traveller is but the harbinger of some warlike expedition, which will wrest from them their greatest treasure, their independence.

But I had to get some one to go bail for me, some one to take me under his patronage and protection, and I had resolved, if it could possibly be done, to find that some one amongst the Kuntas. Surely, I thought, the traditions of tolerance of which Hamet Beckay had given such striking proof, must have been handed down to some of his descendants.

I did not, however, disguise from myself that in the very nature of things, since other marabouts had, since Beckay’s death, come to preach a holy war, and to inculcate hatred of the infidel, that the Kuntas would necessarily be forced—if they did not wish to lose their prestige—to howl with the rest of the wolves. But I reflected there is still time to appeal to the example of their grandfather, and experience proved that I was right.

I put out all my eloquence and powers of persuasion to win over young Habibulaye, and I succeeded. From him I learned that the Kuntas were now divided into several groups. He and his brother Hamadi, the sons of Sidi Aluatti, the brother of Hamet Beckay, had, however, remained at Timbuktu when the French occupied that town, and had all espoused our cause.

Aluatti, the son of Amadi, was in authority on the southern side of the river, and he looked on our expedition with a favourable eye. Further on, Baye and Baba Hamet, the sons of Hamet Beckay, would, I expected, be useful auxiliaries to us if only for the sake of their father’s memory.