Part 3
Having ascertained the site, depth, and value of the Sarra wells, Lieutenant Fouché, in accordance with his instructions, set himself to march back to Ounianga, but the return journey was particularly dramatic. For from the very first day his guide led him directly south, instead of marching south-south-west. One is justified in supposing that he meant to lead astray in the desert the detachment whose camels were so exhausted that everybody went on foot, and whose store of water was limited to a little less than a gallon a day per man. Astonished at this unaccustomed deviation, the lieutenant drew the guide’s attention to it, but the latter answered: “Do not be uneasy, we are on the right road.” But when he judged that the column was far enough from the tracks left by the outward journey, he replied to a fresh observation made by the lieutenant: “You are probably right, for I no longer see my usual landmarks; but if you would lend me a camel and a skin of water, I would go and find our tracks of the other day, and as soon as I had found them I would come back to look for you.” The lieutenant thought it wiser to turn guide himself, and, compass in hand, he put himself at the head of the caravan, with what anxiety may be guessed! An error of direction of a few degrees—quite a usual thing in marching by the compass with no natural landmarks—might work out at a matter of 15 miles in a distance of 180, that being the distance to Tekro. And the well had to be found, in the immensity of the desert, before the detachment’s scanty water- supply gave out! The black soldiers’ thirst was aggravated by the crushing heat; reduced to a daily ration of a little less than 4 quarts of water, they no longer ate any solid food. The camels, grown weak, slackened their pace. The men, uneasy at not coming across their traces of the outward journey, thought themselves hopelessly lost. Their feet, swollen with weariness and made painful by the burning sands, seemed incapable of carrying them to the end of that interminable plain, torrid and unchanging, where the air vibrated as it vibrates above an overheated stove, creating all along the route deceptive mirages, ceaselessly dissolving and reappearing. After a while some of them lost heart and wanted to stop, preferring to wait for death where they were rather than go on with an aimless march. The lieutenant tried to cheer them up by singing the praises of his compass, and promising them that on the morning of the seventh day the three familiar rocks near the well of Tekro should appear before them on the horizon. Incredulous, but respectful, they betook themselves again to their journey, advancing automatically behind the camels as exhausted as themselves, and by some miracle, on the promised day and at the promised hour, they saw faintly outlined against the far horizon the rocks of their salvation! A few hours later, bivouacked round the well of Tekro, the brave fellows who had just covered 350 miles on foot in fourteen days in conditions of the utmost hardship, had forgotten their weariness and were contemplating with respect, on the lieutenant’s table, the “good little iron” that had saved them from the most horrible death.
As for the guide, he was left unmolested, his criminal intention not being susceptible of absolute proof. It was the wisest course to take, for by punishing him without proofs, all we should have gained would have been to terrify men whom we might need later on! In the desert, the best guides may have their weak moments!
_From Tekro to Ounianga._—From Tekro I came back to Ounianga, and continuing eastwards by the lakes of Little Ounianga and N’Tegdey I reached the salt-pits of Dimi, after crossing a chain of little sand- dunes about 50 feet high, stretching from north-east to south-west, and extending from 5 to 6 miles in breadth. This salt-pit lies in a sort of huge circle of rock, in the middle of which rises an isolated conical peak 500 or 600 feet high. It seems to me more extensive than that of Arouelli, but the salt from it does not seem to be so much in demand, on account of the very large proportion of sand it contains. The result is that it is hardly used by any one except the natives of Ennedi, who have only three days’ journey to go in order to get a supply of it. The grazing, though by no means abundant, was less scanty than in the regions I had just come through, and my skeleton-like camels could eat their fill, for the first time in a whole month.
From the top of the rocks of Dimi my Ounia guide, Sougou, pointed out to me in the east the almost horizontal lines of cliffs forming the most westerly point of the mysterious plateaux of Erdi. The word “Erdi” means in the language of the Toubous “expedition, razzia,” and would appear to have been applied to that region from time immemorial because it served as a meeting-place for the bands of raiders who put the caravans to ransom and pushed their raids as far as northern Dar Four and Kordofan, and sometimes even to the valley of the Nile in its middle reaches. According to the guide, rocky tablelands were to be found there, of an altitude comparable with that of Ennedi; the rains were less rare than in Borkou, the grazing-grounds for camels abundant, and the points where water could be found were hidden away in gorges difficult of access, little known, and hard to find the way to. For his own part, he hardly knew any except those of Erdi-Dji and Erdi-Ma, separated by a distance of 70 or 80 miles.
I hesitated some time before continuing my journey towards this region, whose very name was unknown till now; my water-barrels only gave me a reserve of some thirty gallons, and my men’s skin bottles were so corroded by the salts of sodium they had transported that they were empty after twenty-four or thirty-six hours’ march. My camels, thin, worn out, and more and more mangy, could not do more than 20 miles a day, and I only had at my disposal ten days’ supplies for my detachment, so that any error on my guide’s part might put me into a critical position.
_Erdi._—In spite of everything I resolved to make the attempt, trusting in fortune to ensure its success. In two marches we succeeded in reaching the foot of the cliffs of Erdi-Dji, 750 feet high and about 2000 feet above the sea. We found there good grazing for the camels, and from that day onward we had abundant fodder at each successive stage, so that I was delivered from the dread of seeing my indispensable beasts of burden waste away from inanition. The water was no less abundant, and was found in natural cisterns hollowed out by waterfalls in the beds of dried-up torrents that came down from the plateau. Some of these cisterns contained nothing but sand; but it was enough to bore a hole 1 or 2 feet deep in the sand to obtain a sufficient store of water.
From the top of the cliffs all that could be seen was an immense plateau, slightly undulating, and rising gradually towards the north- east. Beyond the line of the horizon some dozen miles away, there rose, as our guide told me, other cliffs; but all I could do was to take note of that information without being able to verify it.
Continuing our route eastwards along the foot of the cliffs, we reached five days later the region of Erdi-Ma, decidedly higher than that of Erdi-Dji: the highest altitude I had the opportunity of measuring exceeded 3000 feet. Our bivouac was installed at the entrance of the gorges of Dourdouro, where very picturesque natural cisterns are to be found containing abundant quantities of water withdrawn by the positions of the enclosing rocks from the drying action of sun and wind. During the whole of the way thither we did not see a living soul, any more than in the neighbourhood of Dourdouro.
My guide never having gone beyond that point, it was impossible to push my investigations further. Besides, I had now only four days’ supplies left, a fact which obliged me to change my direction and make for Wad Mourdi, on the northern border of Ennedi, where I was to receive fresh supplies. I had eventually to be satisfied with determining the position of this point and measuring a few heights while we were renewing our store of water before starting again after a day’s rest.
This expedition, though limited to the south-western border of the massif of Erdi, revealed some interesting facts about the configuration of the country towards the 18th degree of latitude north and the 23rd degree of longitude east of Greenwich; the altitudes increased from west to east, and it seemed likely that the massif of Erdi was connected in one direction with the mountains of Tibesti by the plateau of Jef-Jef, and in another with the still unknown massif of El Aouinat, situated approximately between the 22nd and 23rd degrees of latitude north and the 24th and 25th degrees of longitude east.
Later information gave me a few further indications about western Erdi, where two water-points were found; one Bini-Erdi, about 80 miles north- east of Dourdouro, and the other, Erdi-Fouchini, some 60 miles north of Dourdouro, at the foot of a line of tall cliffs. The deduction may be allowed, for the time being, that the central tableland of Erdi offers altitudes presumably superior to 4000 feet, and that it slopes gently down on the east to the great sandy plain, without vegetation or water, across which passes the route from El Aouinat to Merga, a route that establishes direct but very difficult communication between Koufra and Dar Four, to the east of the 24th degree of longitude.
_Between Erdi and Ennedi._—In leaving Dourdouro to march southwards I was going into the unknown. I could, no doubt, see in front of me, 40 miles away, the crests of northern Ennedi, at the foot of which I was to find the water-points of Aga and Diona; but to seek the said points without guide in the chaos of rocks was a risky undertaking, and might have been held unreasonable if the way our supplies were running short had not obliged me to go forward.
A vast depression, stretching from south-south-west to north-north-east and of an average breadth of some 30 miles, separated Erdi from Ennedi; it was the depression I heard spoken of earlier as a prolongation of that of the Bahr El Ghazal, through which Lake Chad once poured its waters into the lakes of Toro and Djourab, and consequently that by which the basins of the Chad and the Nile might in ancient times have entered into communication. That being so, I took the utmost care in examining the region and determining the altitudes. The lowest point was found about 30 kilometres from Dourdouro. Its altitude was 1750 feet, or 1000 feet higher than that of Bokalia at the north-eastern extremity of the Djourab. The slope was therefore from north-east to south-west, as was confirmed by the shape of the ground and the general direction of the valleys running into that depression, and I was able to conclude that if an ancient river once flowed in the bottom of that broad valley, which is hardly likely, it ran, not towards the Nile, but towards the lowlands of the Chad. By this evidence, one of the most important items of my geographical programme was fully elucidated: the basin of Lake Chad constitutes in the centre of Africa a closed basin which has never been connected with the basin of the Nile. The lake zone, now dried up, consisting of Kanem, the lowlands of Lake Chad, and Borkou, was once the outlet for the affluents of Lake Chad and for many great rivers coming down from the mountain mass of Ennedi, Erdi, and Tibesti. Its outline at successive periods—an outline in all probability very irregular—might be indicated by the hypsometric curves 270—260—250 metres, adopting for the Lake Chad of to-day the altitude of 240 metres. Its extent at that period must have been comparable with that of the Caspian Sea at the present day, and its greatest depth some hundred metres.
In the evening of the second day’s march, when we were drawing near the foothills of Ennedi, we had not yet found any well, and our tiny store of water was used up. But spying in the west a notable gap in the line of hills, I thought we should be likely to find a water-point there, and profited by the coolness of the night to try to reach it. At dawn we came out on a fine river, dried up, where we got a little water by digging holes in the sand. By good luck our guide, Sougou, recognized that we had reached Oued Mourdi, where he had come by another route some six months earlier; thanks to which discovery, after a little search we were able to bivouac beside the well of Diona.
If I had had time and means, it would have been extremely interesting to explore up to its starting-point the great depression I had just crossed, a depression which perhaps comes down from the region of Merga in the heart of the Libyan Desert, where the natives agree in declaring that there exists a little lake surrounded by a palm plantation. The probable position of Merga is between the 25th and 26th degrees of longitude east and 18th and 19th degrees of latitude north. This oasis is situated on the direct route from Ennedi to Dongola, about 200 miles from the last water-point of Ennedi (Gourgouro).
[Illustration: FRENCH SUDAN
Map to illustrate the WORK OF THE MISSION TILHO in TIBESTI, BORKU, ERDI AND ENNEDI
THE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, AUG 1920.
_Modified Polyconic (1/M. International Map) Projection._
_Published by the Royal Geographical Society._
TIBESTI Tilho]
=6. Exploration of Ennedi.=
Having reached the well of Diona on 11 November 1914 in the morning, I was joined next day by the camel-corps section of Borkou and Ennedi, which brought me fresh supplies and were charged with the mission of getting into touch with the nomads of eastern and central Ennedi, who refused to acknowledge our authority and committed acts of brigandage on our lines of communication. A few patrols in the neighbourhood having made it clear that the rebels had decamped before us and taken refuge on the high plateaux, the camel corps under the command of Captain Châteauvieux climbed the heights of Erdébé, where they began an active pursuit of the rebels. At the same time I reconnoitred the water-point of Aga, 30 miles further east on the route from Erdi to Dar Four, a route followed at that period by a certain number of Senoussist emissaries on their way to exhort the Sultan Ali-Dinar to join in the Holy War! For it will be remembered that Turkey had just at that date entered into the war against us, and that the plan of the German general staff included a vast Musulman rising destined to drive the French and British out of their African possessions.
_Eastern Ennedi._—Finding no traces of the rebels at Aga, I rejoined the camel corps in their occupation of the cisterns of Keïta on the plateau of Erdébé, and until the end of November our reconnoitring columns explored the labyrinth of gorges and rocky valleys over which the refractory natives had scattered, without offering serious resistance anywhere. The cold was beginning to be rather unpleasant, especially when the north-east wind blew, but the thermometer did not fall as low as zero. The water-points were extremely numerous, a fact which favoured the break-up into small fractions of the rebel bands, whose chief anxiety appeared to be the getting of their herds of camels and oxen and their flocks of goats into a safe place. They did not seem to worry much about their women and children, and let us capture them with the serenest unconcern, being well aware that we should do them no harm, and that their sustenance would be assured for the time being by our black troops, always glad to leave the preparation of the daily cousscouss to the other sex. To conclude this series of operations we had to fix the limits of eastern Ennedi. An expedition was sent to Bao, 60 miles southwards, the last water-point in the region, and thence to Kapterko in the south-east, where a few rebels were captured. Another expedition fixed the position of the well of Koïnaména some 50 miles east, and went a stage further, to the beginning of the great plain without water or vegetation that stretches out of sight to the eastward.
The general physiognomy of the country was that of a rocky tableland intersected by a great number of valleys, more or less deep, and gorges, separated by many little jagged chains of sandstone running in all directions, and varying in height between about 200 and 500 feet. All those depressions are covered with grass and shrubs, affording excellent pasturage for the hillman’s flocks. Of plants useful for human food we found gramineæ such as the Kreb and Anselik; what is more, the soil of the valleys was literally covered in places with water-melons and colocynths. Though I found no traces of tillage anywhere, I even had the surprise of noticing from time to time hardy stalks of the wild cotton plant, some reaching 6 feet in height.
Almost every year at the end of the rainy season temporary rivers flow through these depressions, some of them turning northwards (and consequently tributaries of the Chad basin), the others southwards, where they once used to feed some great tributary of the Nile basin. Numerous pools formed during the rains hold out for a longer or shorter time in the flats of the more considerable of these valleys, while in the narrower parts the water is stored in natural reservoirs, more or less hard to get at, hollowed in the sandstone by the falling waters as each torrent makes its way down from one ledge to the next.
The greatest altitude I noticed in the course of my surveys on the plateaux of Erdébé was found in the water-parting between the slope towards the Chad and the slope towards the Nile: it was of 3600 feet. The highest summits in the neighbourhood rising only from 250 to 400 feet above the general level of the country, it may be estimated that the chief altitudes of that region vary between 4000 and 4200 feet. Twenty miles east of Koïnaména, in the transition zone between the mountains and the plains, the altitudes of the bottom of the valley was still superior to 3000 feet. It is possible, moreover, that 40 miles away to the north-east certain summits of the water-parting rise to 5000 feet.
The natives who live a nomadic life on the plateaux of Erdébé amount in number to several hundred families. Their settlement, meagre in the extreme, usually consists of a few pieces of matting stretched on stakes in a corner of a ravine, round a thorn enclosure in which their flock of sheep and goats is shut up; at the slightest alarm men and beasts stampede among the rocks. If I had to seek in the animal kingdom a term of comparison for these tribes, I think I should choose their fellow- denizen the jackal: they possess its cunning, its audacity, its cowardice, its mischievousness, its endurance, its speed, and its predatory instincts.
The only other wild animals we saw were gazelles, antelopes, and ostriches; it is reported that as long as the above-mentioned pools remain, boars, panthers, and lions may be found, but we had no opportunity of testing the truth of this assertion.
On December 9, in the afternoon, having made preparations for our departure next morning, we set free our prisoners, imposing no conditions beyond that of telling their fellows our desire to see peace and quiet reign throughout the country. “Let the nomads devote themselves to the raising of their flocks and to trading in salt and millet,” I said; “let them give up raiding the peaceful tribes of the Sudan and the Nile, and the caravans that cross the desert, and I will leave them at liberty in their mountains.” Whereupon an old woman answered me, “We will carry your words faithfully to our husbands and sons, and we will bid them come and submit to your authority; we are all weary of our perpetual insecurity; we desire peace and justice. You have treated us well, you have given us millet and meat; we have eaten all we wanted to eat, and now we know that you are strong and generous. Allah reward you!”
Alas! my reward was that for two years longer these inveterate brigands did not cease raiding in every direction, and that the camel corps had a particularly difficult task in guarding convoys and putting down pillaging.
_Western Ennedi._—It only remained to me to cross the central part of Ennedi in order to have a clear outline of the general physiognomy of the country, thanks to the aid of surveys previously executed on its western borders by several officers who had taken part in military operations in Western Ennedi under the orders of Major Hilaire and Major Colonna de Léca. With this end in view, I marched in the direction of the military post of Fada by Boro and Archeï.
For a week our route lay through a maze of sandstone rocks where no track existed, and through which our guides zigzagged from crest to crest with remarkable sureness. Sometimes we made a long _détour_ to cross a wadi near its source; sometimes we marched straight for the obstacle, dropping down steep ledges that inspired little confidence in our animals, or crossing difficult ridges that the camels could only climb after being unloaded. Everywhere were narrow gorges and jagged crests, with here and there a few leagues of easy going in the neighbourhood of the temporary pools that usually marked the convergence of certain important ravines.
In this uneven ground with its narrow horizons one pasture-ground succeeded another, but we saw no trace of inhabitants. And yet water was not wanting, whether in natural cisterns or in great pools like that of Kossom Yasko. We skirted on the south the tableland of Basso, higher, according to our guides, and harder to climb than that of Erdébé, but, so far as I could judge at a guess, its height is not likely to be as much as 5000 feet.
We took a day’s rest in the excellent pastures of Boro before leaving the central plateau of Ennedi to drop down to the next level, 400 or 500 feet below. Then our way lay along a fine river of white sand, between banks 60 or 80 yards high, where the traces of the last flow of water could be seen 6 or 7 feet up the bank. The coming of the floods is so sudden, and the banks so steep and smooth, that it is dangerous to take that road in the rainy season. No winter passes without some heedless wayfarers being surprised and carried away by the rushing torrent that comes sweeping down the valley with the speed of a galloping horse.