Francis Rennell Rodd

“ Being the son of a concubine or slave, the king, according to the rules of descent of all the Tuareg, was himself of slave caste, nor could he ever achieve the distinction of being ranked among the nobles. As it is the law among the People of the Veil that the child must follow the caste of the mother and not the father, whatever the latter’s claims, only the offspring of a noble Tuareg woman can be noble. ”

“ In more ways than one the advent of the white man in Central Africa has been disastrous for the Tuareg. Camel-borne trade on a large scale is doomed; caravan broking and long-distance desert transport are gone, never to return; even a trans-Saharan railway, whose commercial value must be as unreal as the dream of its advocates among French Colonial authorities, can never hope to compete with sea-borne traffic. Aircraft alone may one day revive the old camel roads, for they provide lines of watering-points along the shortest north and south routes. ”

“ The path turned west along the foot of Bagezan, past a scree of enormous boulders, ranging from five to twenty-five feet across, on which numerous families of red monkeys were playing. There we turned, T’ekhmedin, Atagoom and myself, and wound up the side of the mountain by a path so steep and rough that a self-respecting mule would have walked warily. The camels went up and up over loose stones. The left side dropped away precipitately into the deep valley which divides massifs of Bagezan and Todra. ”

“ He prides himself on the distinction which he draws between murder by stealth and killing in a fight or raid. He may be a liar and not live up to his vaunt; but to have the ideal at all is remarkable; it must be said to his honour that on the whole he has proved that he can live up to his self-set standard. In all the bitter fighting with the French during the last two generations I am only aware of one instance in which the Tuareg have stooped to what in their own view was treachery, and that was when they tried to poison the survivors of the Flatters Mission after the attack at Bir Gharama. ”

“ The People of the Veil have one most especial vaunt, which is that they fight [236] with the armes blanches and disdain insidious weapons like arrows. The advent of civilisation has brought them the rifle, which they are as proud to possess as any fighting man must be, but they have never been seduced from the sword, spear and knife which are their old allegiances. It is common to hear a Tuareg say that he would be ashamed to stoop to the infamy of the Tebu: he will explain that whatever happens the Tuareg will never creep up to a camp at night and cut his enemy’s throat in the dark. ”

“ It is with something of a thrill that the tourist in Tunis or Algiers learns from a mendacious guide that a poor Arab half-caste sitting muffled in a cloak is one of the fabled People of the Veil. It is long, in fact, since any of them have visited the Mediterranean coast, for they do not care for Europeans very much. Before the Italo-Turkish War, occasional Tuareg used to reach the coast at Tripoli at the end of the long caravan road from Central Africa; even then they more usually stopped at Ghadames or Murzuk. ”

“ It may only be when that characteristic of the Englishman displays itself and he seeks to extol the virtues, charm and history of some obscure race, that such a people assumes, in his eyes at least, an importance which to the rest of the world may seem unjustified. There is probably no race so vile, so dull or so unimpressive but that some Briton will arise as its defender, and aver that if properly treated it is the salt of the earth. ”

“ As a division of Tuareg the people of Air cannot be said to have achieved great deeds in the history of the world as did the Sanhaja; but as a part of the race they can justly claim to share in its glory. That they brought culture and the amenities of civilisation from the Mediterranean to Central Africa has been mentioned several times. This progress in the past was responsible for the prosperity of Nigeria to-day.
The People of Air are a small and insignificant group of human beings considered by themselves alone. ”

“ He is famous all over the Central Sahara, among the hardest travellers of the world, as the surest and toughest guide alive. His birth is noble, his spirit uncompromising. He has fought against the French on many occasions: his activities at Ghat in connection with the capture of the French post of Janet are known to all who followed events in North Africa during the war. He continued to fight against the French when Kaossen came to Air, and was imprisoned after the termination of that revolution; the fetter-marks round his ankles will endure until he dies. ”

“ He had suffered intense discomfort in the waste called Azawagh, intervening between Damergu and the Sudan, but when he came to Gamram, the rains had filled the lake which laps the feet of some immense acacias that are perpetually green. Their roots live in water, and when the pool dries up, wells only a few feet deep are dug under their shade. The trees are filled with the song of many birds and the sound of running lizards. The gardens around the edge of the basin produce vegetables and luxuries rarely encountered in the Sahara. There are eggs and chickens and milk and cheese in the market. ”

“ There is contrast everywhere, but nothing is perhaps more striking than the black patina which the red rocks have assumed. The wind-borne sand has polished them till they shine with a dark metallic gleam, while the sheltered rifts and ravines retain their pink and red surfaces. It is a land of lurid colour, except at midday, when the African sun dominates everything in one blinding glare. ”

“ The Bororoji are a darker section of the Fulani than many of the purer divisions in the south. In Northern Damergu they can be seen stalking through the bush with their herds of black kine, naked except for a loin skin and a peaked cap of liberty of embroidered cloth, but patently conscious of their birth. They come and go as they please, and no one interferes with them. Some may settle in towns or villages, living for a time on the produce of sales of cattle, in which they are rich. Most of them have no permanent habitation. ”

“ Poetry is sung, chanted or recited with or without music. The themes cover the whole field of humanity, from songs of love or thanksgiving to long ballads of war and travel. The Tuareg are in some measure all poets, but the women are most famous among them. They make verses impromptu or recite the traditional poems of their race which are so old that their origin has been forgotten. One hears of women famous throughout the Sahara as the greatest poets of their time. ”

“ But when he eventually gave up the idea of going on to the Sudan, Belkho treated him well. Although von Bary’s opinion of the Tuareg of Air is not favourable, in reality he owed them a great debt of gratitude. No other people who dislike foreigners so much as they do would have protected him and helped him as they finally did. His quarrels with Belkho seem to have been in part due to his own tactlessness and discourtesy, and in part to his inability to realise that the chief, for political reasons, did not desire him to go to the Sudan. ”

“ Their bones are small. They have wrists and ankles as slender as a woman’s; it is noteworthy that whatever the degree of negro admixture this sign of high breeding is the last to disappear. It is a most infallible mark of pure Tuareg parentage. With it, of course, go slenderness and refinement of hands and fingers. The men never grow fat: they are hard and fit and dry like the nerve of a bow, or a spring in tension. Of all their characteristics the one I have most vividly in mind is their grace of carriage. ”

“ The Tuareg of Air differentiate the colouring of people somewhat arbitrarily: they call the pure negro “blue,” [155] but the dark-brown Hausa, “black”; the Arab is always “white,” whatever shade of bronze he happens to be; the Tuareg himself is “red,” [156] which is the most complimentary epithet he can apply to others. Fairness of complexion is much prized and is a social distinction, though when carried to such extremes as among Europeans it is apt to be regarded as strange and odd. Certain tribes in Air are reputed, even among the Tuareg, to be more than usually fair. ”

“ Where the script of the Tuareg is still known [174] and freely used, it is the women who are more versed in it than the men. It is they who teach the children. When families have slaves, the noble woman does as little work as she can: her occupation among the poorer people is confined to the household work or to herding goats and sheep. They make cheese and butter and sort dates, but they do not as a rule work in the gardens. They are never beasts of burden. They have never learnt to weave or spin, but they plait mats and make articles of leather. ”

“ Language always remained a source of difficulty. An interpreter is never satisfactory, more especially if he belongs to a people whom the Tuareg at heart really despise, while real proficiency in a language cannot be attained in so short a time as I had at my disposal. By the end of my stay in Air I had acquired a sufficient knowledge of Temajegh to be able to travel comfortably with a guide speaking only that language, and to collect a considerable amount of vicarious information, but never at any time was I able to discuss really abstruse questions. ”

“ The deep narrow valley with its sandy bed and immense trees growing in the thick vegetation on both banks was magnificent. Towering up on either side the red mountains framed, in a cleft towards the east, the cone of Dogam seated on a pedestal of black lava and basalt. Most of the Dogam massif is so rough as to be impassable. It seems to be a volcanic intrusion in the Todra group, to which it really belongs. I suspect that the basalt boulders covering the plain north and south of Auderas, and perhaps certain features of Todra itself, owe their origin to the Dogam activity. ”

“ An oasis is not necessarily a patch of ground with two or three palm trees and a well in the desert. It is simply an indefinite area of fertility in a barren land; it may or may not happen to have a well. There are oases in Southern Algeria and the Fezzan with hundreds of thousands of palm trees, containing many villages and a permanent population. There are others where the pasture is good but where there is neither population nor water. ”

“ The origin of the confederation, which carries with it more moral than material obligations, is to be explained by the entry of the Kel Owi tribes into Air as a mass of people confronted by an already established hostile or at least jealous population of the same race as themselves. It followed that the new arrivals would tend to hold together and act with one another. The conditions of the confederation nevertheless have been such that the representative is only an administrative head and not a ruler. He is there to embody a common policy and to dictate one. ”

“ The wind was driving the sand so hard that it stung the naked calves of my legs as I stood at the well with Ishnegga the guide, drawing water for the thirsty camels. Camels in hot weather drink a great deal, and hauling water in a two-gallon leather bucket from a seventy-foot well is hard work in a temperature of over 150° F. in the sun. The camels drank interminably. The last and best camel was still thirsty and remained to be watered. The beast was rather weak. It had a bad saddle sore, a hole about the size of a large man’s hand, in its back, and it was festering and full of maggots. ”

“ The commonest domestic animals are the sheep and goats. Every village and tribe has large herds. After the camels they constitute the principal wealth of the people and do exceedingly well. The sheep are all of the gaunt wire-haired variety without woollen fleeces, resembling goats. The latter provide most of the milk in the villages, and vary in colour from white to black, with every intermediate shade of brown and type of marking. Curiously enough, none of the Tuareg of Air, and, I believe, none of the other groups, either spin the hair of goats or the wool of their own camels. ”

“ Until the advent of the French it was considered the legitimate playground for the only international sport known in the desert, the gentle occupation of raid and counter-raid. The flat-topped hills, with scarcely a path worthy of the name to ascend the cliffs, were the citadels of the villages which nestle under their slopes. The huts in the villages are built of straw with conical roofs: neither mud buildings nor walled settlements exist. The inhabitants are Kanuri, sedentary Tuareg, and both nomadic and settled Tebu. ”

“ But none of these theories are really tenable: the Tuareg recognise each other, and foreigners can do the same in a short time, as easily in the veil as a man of another race without the veil. The Tuareg are not the Amazons of the classics, at least in the form in which popular beliefs have conceived the latter; nor is there, as a matter of fact, any reason to suppose that the Amazons, either male or female, veiled themselves. There is no logic in only the men veiling their faces and the women going unveiled if the veil were really intended for hygienic purposes ”

“ A day before reaching Milen well you feel very strongly that the Sudan lies behind. The last bush has been left near Taberghit. In front is an open depression perhaps five miles wide and not more than fifty feet deep: it contains no stream bed, but here and there patches of dry cracked mud indicate the formation of short-lived rain pools. East and west the same stark valley runs as far as eye can see. Its course is clearly defined and it is without intersecting basins or tributaries or curves. On the far crest are loose buff-coloured sand dunes and then a few small acacias. ”

“ As the ground level rose and became an alluvial plain from which practically only Mount Gadé and the island off Akaraq emerge, the rain floods began to wash along the cliff and eroded the sandstone into the fantastic forms which are now seen. Wind-borne sand from the eastern desert completed the process of shaping the rocks. The accretion of alluvium diminished with a decreasing rainfall in Air, and the surface deposit of wind-borne sand formed what is now in dry weather a hard gravel-covered plain which, in the rainy season, turns into mud-flats and becomes almost impassable. ”