The ground was very rocky and rugged, and looked bare and desolate in the extreme. Several high peaks, which characterise this volcanic region, rose on either side.
The whole caravan consisted of about two thousand camels, of whom two hundred were laden with salt. At night their camp presented many lively and merry scenes, ranging as it did over a wide district illuminated by large fires. Dancing was going forward and the drummers were vying with each other, one especially rivalling their drummer Assam, and performing his work with great skill, caused general enthusiasm among the dancing people.
On their journey on the 29th of December, they found the ground covered with had, a plant regarded by the Arabs as the most nutritious of all the herbs of the desert for the camel. Numerous footprints of the giraffe were seen, besides those of gazelles and ostriches, and also of the large and beautiful antelope (Leucoryx). Here, too, was seen the magaria, a tree which bears a fruit of the size of a cherry, of a light brown colour. When dry it is pounded and formed into little cakes, and is thus eaten.
On the 1st of January, 1851, they fell in with a tribe of the Tagana, whose morality is of the lowest order. Hunting, together with cattle-breeding, is their chief occupation, and on their little swift horses they catch the large antelope as well as the giraffe.
A steep descent of a hundred feet conducted the caravan off the high region of the Hammada to a level plain.
On the 7th they came in sight of a village, where they saw for the first time that style of architecture which extends over the whole of central Africa. The huts are composed entirely of the stalk of the Indian corn, with only a slight support from the branches of trees. They are somewhat low, curved
over at the top. Amid them were seen small stacks of corn, raised on scaffolds of wood about two feet high, to protect them from the white ant and mouse, as also from the jerboa, which is so pretty an object to look at as it jumps about the fields, but is an especial foe to the natives. The people came forth from the villages to offer cheese and Indian corn. They were black pagans and slaves, meanly and scantily dressed, but far more civilised in reality than the fanatical people among whom Barth and his companions had hitherto been travelling.
On the 9th of January the travellers reached Tagelel. From this place there was little danger in their proceeding singly, and it was agreed, in consequence of the low state of their finances, that they should separate, in order to try what each might be able to accomplish single-handed and without ostentation, till new supplies should arrive from home.