From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

We encamp at a deep well, drink and water our camels. Next day we are out in the sandy sea again. The sky has assumed an unusual hue. It is yellow, and soon changes into bluish grey. The sun is a red disc. It is calm and sultry. The guide looks serious, and says in a low tone "samum." The hot, devastating desert storm which is the scourge of Arabia and Egypt is approaching.

The guide stops and turns round. He is uncertain. But he goes on again when he sees that we cannot get back to the well before the storm is upon us. It is useless to look for shelter, for the dunes are too flat to protect us from the wind. And now the storm sweeps down, and it becomes suffocatingly close and hot. The dromedaries seem uneasy, halt, and turn away from the wind. We dismount. The dromedaries lie down and bury their muzzles in the sand. We wrap up our heads in cloths and lie on our faces beside our animals to get some shelter between them and the ground. And so we may lie by the hour panting for breath, and we may be glad if we get off with our lives from a samum when we are out in the desert. Even in the oases it causes a feeling of anxiety and trouble, for the burning heat is most harmful to palms and crops. The temperature may rise to 120° in this dangerous storm, which justifies its name of "poison wind."

The storm passes off, the air becomes clear and is quiet and calm, and the sun has again its golden yellow brilliance. It is warm, but not suffocating as it was. The heated air vibrates above the sand. Beside our road appears a row of palms and before them a silver streak of water. The guide, however, goes on in quite a different direction, and when we ask him why, he answers that what we see is a mirage, and that there is no oasis for many days' journey in the direction in which we see the palms.

In the evening we come to a real oasis, and there we are glad to rest a couple of days. Here are a hundred wells, here the ground is cultivated in the shade of the palms, here we can enjoy to the full the moist coolness above the swards of juicy grass. The oasis is like an island in the desert sea, and between the palm trunks is seen the yellow level horizon, the dry, heated desert with its boundless sun-bathed wastes.

If we now turn off towards the north-west, Fezzan is the next country which our route touches. It is a paradise of date palms. They occur in such profusion that even dromedaries, horses, and dogs are fed with the fruits. The surface of the ground also has undergone a great change, and is not so sterile and choked with sand as in the Libyan desert. Here and farther to the west the country becomes more hilly. Ridges and bosses of granite and sandstone, weathered and scorched by the sun, stand up here and there. Extensive plateaus covered with gravel are called hammada; they are ruins of former mountains which have burst asunder. In the Sahara the differences of temperature between day and night are very great. The dark, bare hill-slopes may be heated up to 140° or more when the sun bathes them, while during the night the radiation out to space is so intense that the temperature sinks to freezing-point. Through these continual alternations the rocks expand and contract repeatedly, fissures are formed and fragments are detached and fall down. The hardest rocks resist longest, and therefore they stand up like strange walls and towers amidst the great desolation.

If we go another step westwards we come to the land of the Tuaregs. There, too, we find hilly tracts and hammadas, sandy deserts and oases, and in favourable spots excellent pastures. We have already noticed in Timbuktu this small, sturdy desert people, easily recognised by the veil which hides the lower part of the face. All Tuaregs wear such a veil, and call those who do not "fly-mouths." They are powerfully built, and of dark complexion, being of mixed negro blood from all the slaves they have kidnapped in the Sudan. They are as dry and lean as the ground on which they live, and nature in their country obliges them to lead a nomad life. Wide, simple, and dreary is the desert, and simple and free is the nomad's life. The hard struggle for existence has sharpened their senses. They are acute observers, clever, crafty, and artful. Distance is of no account to them, for they do not know what it is to be tired. They fly on their swift dromedaries over half the Sahara, and are a terror to their settled neighbours and to caravans. On their raids they cover immense distances in a short time. To ride from the heart of their country to the Sudan after booty is child's play to them. They have made existence in many oases quite unendurable. What use is it to till fields and rear palms when the Tuaregs always reap the harvest? The French have had many fights with the Tuaregs, and the railway which was to pass through their country and connect Algiers with Timbuktu is still only a cherished project. Yet this tribe which has so bravely defended its freedom against the stranger does not number more than half a million people. The Tuaregs are not born to be slaves, and we cannot but admire their thirst for freedom, their pride, and their courage.

The desert here exhibits the difficult art of living. Even animals and plants which are assigned to the desert are provided with special faculties. Some of the animals, snakes and lizards for instance, can live without water. Dromedaries can go for many days without drinking. Ostriches cover great distances to reach water before it is too late. Plants are provided with huge roots that they may suck up as much moisture as possible, and many of them bear thorns and spikes instead of leaves so that the evaporation may be insignificant. Many of them are called to life by a single fall of rain, develop in a few weeks, and die when long drought sets in again. Then the seeds are left, waiting patiently for the next rain. Some desert plants seem quite dead, grey, dried-up, and buried in dust, but when rain comes they send out green shoots again.

Every river bed is called in the Sahara a wadi. Very seldom does a trickle of water run down it after rain, but in these beds the vegetation is richer than elsewhere, for here moisture lingers longer than in other spots. Many caravans march along them, and gazelles and antelopes find pasture here.

A European leaves Algeria to make his way into the Sahara with an incomprehensible feeling of fascination. In the French towns on the Mediterranean coast he has lived just as in Europe. He has been able to cross by train the forest-clad heights of the Atlas Mountains, where clear brooks murmur among the trees. He leaves the railway behind, and finds the hills barer the farther he travels south. At last the monotonous, slightly undulating desert stretches before him, and he feels the magical attraction of the Sahara drawing him deeper and deeper into its great silence and solitude. All the colours become subdued and greyish-yellow, like the lion's hide. Everything is yellow and grey, even the dromedaries which carry him, his tent and baggage, from well to well. He can hardly tell why he finds this country pleasanter than the forests and streams on the slopes of the Atlas Mountains; perhaps owing to the immense distances, the mysterious horizon afar off, the blood-red sunsets, the grand silence which prevails everywhere so that he hardly dares speak aloud. It is the magic of the desert that has got hold of him.

Thirty years ago a large French expedition, under the command of Colonel Flatters, marched along this route from Algeria southwards through the Sahara. It consisted of a hundred men, including seven French officers and some non-commissioned officers, and its equipment and provisions were carried by three hundred dromedaries. The French Government had sent out the expedition to examine the Tuaregs' country, and to mark out a suitable route for a railway through the Sahara to connect the French possessions in the north and south. It was not the first time that the Colonel had travelled in the Sahara, and he knew the Tuaregs well. Therefore he was on his guard. Everything seemed most promising. The Frenchmen mapped parts of the Sahara which no European had ever succeeded in reaching before—even the great German traveller, who had crossed the Sahara in all directions, had not been there. The most dangerous tracts were left behind, and the Tuaregs had offered no resistance: indeed some of their chiefs had been friendly. In the last letters which reached France, Flatters expressed a hope that he would be able to complete his task without further trouble, and to advance even to the Sudan.