As to trees, we have still the eternal tholukh, or mimosa. What an omnipresent tree is this in Africa! The mimosa is found at the Cape, with the ethel; it is found in all the northern Sahara, and the ethel with it, wherever there is some water, as in the wadys of Fezzan. In all the western Sahara it abounds, producing the finest gums. Consider also the gum-trade at Mogador and Senegal! In the plain of Timbuctoo, the mimosa is found in scattered forests. Our people pretend, however, that the tholukh does not occur in Soudan, its place being filled up by various thorny trees, much resembling the mimosa. We have around us some other stunted shrubs. All trees are dwarfish in these plateaux.
Various distinguished characters are amongst the servants and slaves of En-Noor. One fellow is called the "King of the Donkeys," another wench is styled the "Queen of the Goats;" Zumzug is properly named Proban berau, "a great thief," from his thievish propensities. Then there is the "Lad of the Arrows," the fellow who is always boasting of how many people he has killed with arrows, &c. &c.; but Zumzug requires especial notice from me, on account of his having run off to Aghadez with a caftan of mine; and also from the curious circumstance that En-Noor keeps such a thief amongst his slaves, so confounding the honest with the thievish servants.
January 1, 1851.—A strong, bleak, north-east wind ushers in the New Year. It began yesterday, and is likely to continue for some time. Most comfortless and disagreeable weather is this for the caravan. The people do not like to move, and show a decided tendency to hibernation. Some camels are also lost—escaped from the numbed fingers of their drivers. I, too, feel it cold; and yet there is so much of home in this weather—this keen, bracing air—that I cannot complain.
Our people caught the camels at length, and we proceeded still southwards. After three hours' travelling we appeared to have passed the most barren portion of the plateau, and came upon a new species of tree, called in Haussa, tadana. We have this day had a splendid sight of ostriches—eleven feeding in a troop near us, quietly like so many sheep—eccentric birds of their species, showing no tendency to scud away. Perhaps I shall never see so many again together. They were all black, with maybe a white feather or two underneath the sombre plumage.
The small tholukh-trees are full of birds' nests. In the Northern Sahara a bird's nest was not to be seen, but here the trees are all covered with them. Amongst the various smaller ones, we came upon a huge vulture's nest on a very small tholukh, which seemed to bend and look unhappy beneath the weight of this den of rapacity and violence. There are hereabouts no rocks for the eagles to build upon. We halted amidst abundance of herbage and small trees, which afforded a little shelter from the wind.
It is, perhaps, as well that we begin the year with this most bleak and unlovely day. We may have a better one to terminate 1851. I was obliged to increase my travelling clothes, and put on an extra holi on account of the cold wind; and yet the temperature was not very low, it being only 46° at sunrise. The wind evidently comes over an immense extent of plain towards the east, perhaps some forty or fifty days' journey. We made six hours and a-half.
2d.—We started early, and moved at first to the beat of the drum. Already yesterday we had seen symptoms that the desert was drawing to a close. To-day we fairly got out of it, and entered upon a wilderness of small trees. The vegetation has not, however, yet improved in proportion to our nearness to Soudan; for this dwarf forest of tholukh and various other trees cannot be compared to the splendid desert vegetation in the Aheer valleys; these are pigmy mimosas in comparison with those of Aheer. The surface of the ground is now undulating sand and red earth, and every trace of stone has almost disappeared; the soil is also covered with karengia and other herbs, all dry and sapless. We seem to be traversing a limitless stubble-field, covered over or sprinkled with small trees. Few animals enliven the scene; a crow here and there struts or flies. All the small birds seem to have sought covert from the cold. The same north-east wind as yesterday blows with remorseless strength.
I observed great numbers of ant-hills, and very large ones, too. Some of the paths from these hills are straighter than the roads made by man over the Sahara. So, also, the birds in Aheer, and on this route, build better houses for themselves than men do. We halted amidst karengia, and had great difficulty in finding a place clear of them. En-Noor suffers dreadfully from the cold, and we help to keep him alive by our coffee, which he drinks shivering, and then admits to have given him renovated heat and strength. This coffee keeps the old fellow in a good humour, and he is extremely civil to us.
3d.—We started early, and made four hours and a-half, when we stopped at the village Inasamet, or Unwessemet. The weather is still the same, and the route continues to wind through a scattered wilderness of small trees, amongst which Overweg thought he had discovered a species of wild orange.