Part 10

Sir HARRY JOHNSTON: I had the honour some years ago, just after the war had started, of showing you a somewhat similar map of Africa with railways designed on it partly by my own fancy, and I may say to a great extent by following French fancies too; for about that time I had been in the north of Africa, and had been allowed to pursue for a certain distance the tracing of the projected trans-Saharan railway, the progress of which was only stopped by the war. I conceived then the idea that it was of the highest importance to Western Europe that that line should be made, though I, like most of you, did not appreciate the influence on affairs that the submarine would have; but of course that conviction has been strengthened by the events of the war. Had we had the trans-Saharan railway in existence during the war we should not have suffered as much as we did from the loss of some of the most important materials for our industries caused by the interruptions of the sea routes, the destruction of steamers, etc. It is a matter of absolute necessity, I consider, that that trans-Saharan line should be made to link up the valley of the Niger with French North Africa, and further with Western Europe; because, as Colonel Tilho has pointed out, the channel between Tangier and the Spanish coast could be easily patrolled and kept free of submarines, and even crossed by train ferries. Then another point I should like to raise is as to the further exploration of those Tibesti highlands and the lofty plateaus that are connected with them on the north-west and south-east. Colonel Tilho did not mention in his discourse what he said to me privately, that he had found in some parts of that region, possibly Borku, fossilized bones of elephants. He has referred to the native legends and to the drawings on the rocks which point to the existence of hippopotami in regions now entirely devoid of surface water. He showed some of these engravings. They are very similar to rock drawings which can be traced right across the Sahara desert, exhibiting a fauna now completely passed away. One reason why Tibesti should be explored is, that we might find there the fossil and semi-fossil remains of a very extensive tropical African fauna, because that isthmus of high land between the south of Tunis on the north, and Darfur and the regions round Lake Chad on the south, seems to have been the principal route by which the fauna of Miocene and Pliocene Europe and the Mediterranean basin reached Tropical Africa. There are more and more indications that the Sahara desert to the west and the Libyan and Nubian deserts to the east were formerly under water, and therefore checked the progress of beasts and man across the Sahara into Central Africa; but this high ridge always remained well above the limits of such lakes, marshes, or inland seas. Tibesti was a well- watered region with at one time quite a heavy rainfall down to about twenty thousand years ago.

Before the war suspended such enterprises, the savants of France were exploring the wonderful sub-fossil remains of Algeria which revealed to us the existence there of a mammalian fauna resembling that of modern tropical Africa, of the region south of the Sahara. With that fauna were mingled in a very interesting degree creatures which at the present time are restricted to India. For instance, there was something so like an Indian elephant that it might be called the Indian elephant, existing almost down to the human period in Algeria. There was a wild camel, an equine resembling a zebra; there were gnus, hartebeests, oryxes, and other types of modern African antelopes; and there was a Tragelaph allied to the Nilghai; there was a huge buffalo with almost incredible horns—14 feet long—incredible were it not that its existence is proved not only by its fossil remains but by the drawings of primitive man. The Foureau-Lamy Expedition, I believe, found many of the dry torrent-beds of the elevated Ahaggar region choked with hippopotamus bones. There is everything to point to quite a recent and rapid change in the climate of the Sahara, which, well within the human period, was a region abounding in water derived from a heavy rainfall, and richly endowed with forest areas, as we may see from the remains of petrified trees. This will bring home to you what gains might come to science and to our knowledge of the evolution of life on this planet if we could only thoroughly explore the Sahara, and above all such regions as the Tibesti highlands.

Major HANNS VISCHER: Just after I had crossed the Sahara, some years ago, I had the great pleasure to meet Colonel Tilho in Nigeria; and last time we met—I think in 1909—to celebrate our homecoming in Paris, we spoke of the work in Africa of our two respective countries. During my journey, and whenever I met the French in those regions, I was particularly impressed by the difficulties and privations these officers suffered so cheerfully. In Nigeria we had our railway, and we got frequent leave. As I remembered those isolated posts in the heart of the Sahara, while looking at the pictures we saw to-night, separated by hundreds of miles, rarely getting a mail or any provisions from the coast during those long years of war, when few boats went to the West Coast of Africa, I was filled with admiration for the work done by Colonel Tilho and his comrades. In the course of his lecture the Colonel showed clearly how necessary it is for us to co-operate in Africa, not only for the welfare of the native people but also for the very existence of our respective colonies. He has shown to us to-night how well we can complement each other. When that German-Turkish column advanced south across the desert, at a moment when we had sent most of our troops from Nigeria to East Africa, it would have been a hard thing for the people in our colony if the officers under Colonel Tilho’s orders, assisted by some native troops sent north from Nigeria, had not been able to arrest the enemy’s progress.

The PRESIDENT: I know you will all want me to congratulate Colonel Tilho on your behalf on the lucid, graceful, and humorous lecture he has given us this evening. There has been great talk about the co-operation between us and the French, and I think we might go a little deeper even than that. When we can get a French officer like Colonel Tilho over here in the flesh, and can hear from his own lips what he has done, when he shows us pictures of the kind of country he has had to make his way through, the kind of people he has had to make friends with: when we see all that, certainly we who have had to do similar work in other parts of the world—and probably you at home, even though you have not had that great pleasure and honour, must have a very deep fellow-feeling with him and his compatriots—we feel that there is something deep and common between us when we realize so vividly the work that they are doing, the difficulties that they have had to encounter, and the great work of civilization and humanization which they are carrying on in these far remote recesses of Central Africa. We have had to do the same things ourselves in other parts of the world. We see the results of our own efforts, and Colonel Tilho this evening has shown us what the French have done in opening out the great arid wastes of the Sahara desert and the French Sudan. What they have done and what we have done is good for the world as a whole. It has all been opened out gradually in the course of years, not only for the French and not only for the British, but for all nations. Therefore we here in England, we in this Society, will send forth a very hearty word of congratulation to the French, and especially to Colonel Tilho, for the great work which they are doing in Central Africa. He has made very important geographical discoveries, and has referred to new methods of geographical observation. Wireless telegraphy for the purpose of determining longitude is a comparatively new method, but one which is vastly valuable, because, as we who have tried to determine longitudes in far-away places know, in old days it was impossible to get the longitude at all exactly. We could get the latitude fairly accurately, within a few hundred yards, but longitude we could never get to within a few miles. Now by means of wireless telegraphy we are able to get longitude with almost complete exactitude, even in the heart of the French Sudan. Colonel Tilho has also made a slight allusion to another modern invention which I think in future will prove of great service, and that is the aeroplane. We shall hear more of that at our next meeting; but when you see those vast waterless regions, when you hear from Colonel Tilho of the enormous difficulty in getting across them with camels, then we see of what use the aeroplane might have been made for preliminary geographical reconnaissance. Those two inventions, I am certain, will be of enormous service to geography. I now wish on your behalf to tender to Colonel Tilho a most hearty vote of thanks for his lecture this evening, and also for his great kindness, at considerable personal inconvenience, in coming across from Paris to give us this paper.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: A sort of camp-followers whose business in life is warfare in all its branches except that of fighting: experts in all manner of desert craft, scouts, flank-guards, finders of strayed camels or sorely needed wells. Swift to detect the incompetence or bad faith of local guides, they form the necessary complement to the fighting strength of any expedition in Central Africa.]

[Footnote 2: This account will be published in the next number of the _Journal._—ED. _G.J._]