From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

The remarkable features of Timbuktu are, then, its situation and its trade. We have only to take a look at the map to perceive that this town stands like a spider in its web. The web is composed of all the routes which start from the coast and converge on Timbuktu. They come from Tripoli and Tunis, from Algeria and Morocco, from Senegal and Sierra Leone, from the Pepper Coast, the Ivory Coast, and Slave Coast, the Gold Coast, and from the countries round the Gulf of Guinea, which have been annexed by France, England, and Germany. They come also from the heart of the Sahara, where savage and warlike nomad tribes still to this day maintain their freedom against foreign interference.

In Timbuktu meet Arabs and negroes, Mohammedans and heathens from the deserts and fruitful lands of the Sahara and Sudan. Timbuktu stands on the threshold of the great wastes, and at the same time on the third in rank of the rivers of Africa. At the town the Niger is two and a half miles broad, and from its mouth it discharges more water than the Nile, but much less than the Congo. Like the Congo, the Niger makes a curve to the north, bidding defiance to the Sahara; but the desert wins in the end, and the river turns off towards the south.

It is a struggle between life and death. The life-giving water washes the choking sand, and just where the strife is fiercest lies Timbuktu. From the north goods come on dromedaries to be transported farther in canoes or long, narrow boats with arched awnings of matting, or, where the river is not navigable, on oxen and asses or the backs of men. Dromedaries cannot endure the damp climate near the Niger, which especially in winter overflows its banks for a long distance. Therefore they are led back through the Sahara. They thrive on the dry deserts. The constantly blowing north-east trade-wind dries up the Sahara, and in certain regions years may pass without a drop of rain.

The name Timbuktu has a singular sound. It stands for all the mystery and fascination connected with the Sahara It leads the thoughts to the greatest expanse of desert in the world, to long and lonely roads, to bloody feuds and treacherous ambushes, to the ring of caravan bells and the clank of the stirrups of the Beduins (Plate XXXI.). There seems to be a ring in the name itself, and we seem to hear the splash of the turbid waters of the Niger in its vowels. We seem to hear the plaintive howl of the jackal, the moan of the desert wind, the squealing of dromedaries outside the northern gateway, and the boatmen splashing with oars and poles in the creeks of the river.

PLATE XXXI. A GROUP OF BEDUINS.

Caravans from the northern coast bring cloth, arms, powder, paper, tools, hardware, sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco, and a quantity of other articles to Timbuktu. But when they begin their journey through the Sahara, only half the camels are laden. The other half are loaded with blocks of salt on the way, for salt is in great demand at Timbuktu. Caravans may be glad if they come safely through the country of the Tuaregs, and at best they can only obtain an unmolested passage by the payment of a heavy toll. On the return journey northwards the dromedaries are laden with wares from the Sudan, rice, manioc, honey, nuts, monkey breadfruit, dried fish, ivory, ostrich feathers, india-rubber, leather, and many other things. A small number of black slaves also accompany them. The largest caravans contain five hundred or a thousand dromedaries and five hundred men at most. The goods they can transport may be worth twenty-eight thousand pounds or more. Five great caravan roads cross the Sahara from north to south.

Let us set out on a journey from Timbuktu, and let us go first eastwards to the singular Lake Chad, which is half filled with islands, is shallow and swampy, choked with reeds, rises and falls with the discharge of the great rivers which flow into it, and has a certain similarity to Lop-nor in Central Asia. Nearly 17 cubic miles of water are estimated to enter Lake Chad in the year, and when we know that the lake on the whole remains much about the same size, we can conceive how great the evaporation must be.

We have our own dromedaries and our own Arab guide on whom we can rely. We can therefore go where we like, and we steer our course from Lake Chad towards the eastern Sudan, where we have already been in the company of General Gordon. But before we come to the Nile we turn off northwards to cross the Libyan desert, the most inaccessible and desolate, and therefore the least known, part of the Sahara. On our way northwards we notice that animal and vegetation life becomes more scanty. Even in the Sudan the grasslands are more thinly clothed and the steppes more desert-like the farther we travel, and at last blown sand predominates. We must follow a well-known road which has been used for thousands of years by Arabs and Egyptians.

We are in the midst of the sea of sand. Here lie at certain places dunes of reddish-yellow drift sand as high as the tower of St. Paul's Cathedral. We see no path, for it has been swept away by the last storm; but the guide has his landmarks and does not lose his way. The sand becomes lower and the country more open. Then the guide points to a bare and barren ridge which rises out of the sand like a rock out of the sea, and says that he can find his way by this landmark, which remains in sight for several days, and is then replaced by another elevation.