The Tuareg, who belong to the Berber race, used to live in Icham, the area bounded by Touat to the north (a vast oasis in the Sahara five hundred kilometers southeast of Morocco), Timbuktu to the south, the Niger to the west, and the Fezzan to the east. But at the time of our story, they had been obliged to move to the more easterly regions of the Sahara. At the beginning of the twentieth century, their many tribes, some almost sedentary and others completely nomadic, were to be found in the middle of the flat, sandy plains known in Arabic as outtâ, stretching from the Sudan to the area where the Algerian and Tunisian deserts meet.
For a number of years, after work was abandoned on Captain Roudaire’s project of creating an inland sea in Arad,1 the region extending westward from Gabès, the resident-general and the bey2 of Tunis had persuaded some Tuareg to settle in the oases around the chotts, hoping their warlike nature might make them in a sense the gendarmes of the desert. It was a vain hope. The Imohagh still deserved the insulting nickname of “Tuareg,” or “night bandits,” which had made them feared throughout the Sudan. Furthermore, if work on the Sahara Sea were to be resumed, there was no doubt that they would be in the forefront of the tribes most hostile to the idea of flooding the chotts.
But while any individual Targui might work, ostensibly at least, as a caravan guide and even as its guard, he was nevertheless a thief by instinct and pirate by nature, and his reputation was too well established not to inspire profound distrust. Several years earlier, Major Laing, while traveling through these dangerous lands of the Dark Continent, ran the risk of being massacred in an attack by these fearsome natives.3 And in 1881, during an expedition that left Ouargla under the command of Major Flatters, that brave officer and his comrades lost their lives at Bir-el-Gharama.4 The military authorities in Algeria and Tunisia had to be constantly on their guard, relentlessly pushing back those populous tribes.
Of all the Tuareg tribes, the Ahaggar were considered one of the most warlike. Their leading chieftains were involved in all the attempted uprisings that made it so difficult to maintain French influence over the wide expanse of the desert. The governor of Algeria and the resident-general of Tunisia, always on the alert, had to keep a particularly close watch on the region of sebkha and chotts. This was especially important because of a project that was nearing completion, the flooding of the inland sea, which is the theme of this story. It was an undertaking that would create extreme hardship for the Tuareg tribes and deprive them of their source of livelihood by reducing the volume of caravan traffic. By making it easier to quell them, it would also reduce the number of their attacks and the growing list of names that were still being added to African obituaries.
It was to this Ahaggar tribe, one of the most influential, that Hadjar’s family belonged. Enterprising, bold, and ruthless, Djemma’s son had always been known as one of the most redoubtable chieftains in the whole region to the south of the Aurès Mountains. During the past few years he had led many attacks against caravans and isolated detachments. His fame grew among the tribes who were gradually drifting back toward the east of the Sahara, as the vast lifeless plain in that part of Africa is called. He moved with disconcerting rapidity, and, although the authorities had ordered the military leaders to capture him at any cost, he had always been able to elude the expeditions sent out after him. When he was reported to be near one oasis, he would suddenly appear in the neighborhood of another. At the head of a band of Tuareg no less fierce than their leader, he scoured the whole country between the Algerian chotts and the Gulf of Gabès. The kafila, or caravans, no longer dared to set out across the desert without the protection of a large escort, and the heavy traffic bound for the markets of Tripolitania suffered greatly from this state of affairs.
True, there were several military posts at Nefta, Gafsa, and Tozeur, which is the political center of that region, but the expeditions mounted against Hadjar and his band had never had any success. The daring warrior had always managed to escape from them until the day, a few weeks earlier, when he had fallen into the hands of a French detachment.
Gafsa, the kasbah, and the termil. (Photos by Dr. Tersen)
This part of northern Africa had been the scene of one of those catastrophes that unfortunately are all too common on the Dark Continent. The passion, dedication, and bravery of explorers, successors to Burton, Speke, Livingstone, and Stanley, as they set out over the years across this vast field of discovery, are well known. They number in the hundreds, and many more will be added to the list before the day (far in the future, no doubt) when this third part of the ancient world will give up its secrets. And how many of these perilous expeditions will end in disaster!
The most recent expedition was led by a brave Belgian who ventured out into the least frequented and least known regions of the Touat.
Carl Steinx had organized a caravan in Constantine and headed south. It was not a large caravan, about a dozen men in all, Arabs who had been recruited locally. They used horses and méharis, or dromedaries, as mounts and as draft animals to pull the two wagons that carried the expedition’s supplies.
The first leg of their journey brought them to Ouargla by way of Biskra, Touggourt, and Negoussia, where Steinx had no difficulty replenishing his supplies. The French authorities living in those towns promptly came to the explorer’s assistance.
At Ouargla, which lies on the thirty-second parallel, he was, so to speak, in the very heart of the Sahara.
Until then, the expedition’s ordeals had not been too onerous. They had suffered fatigue, even exhaustion, but had encountered no serious dangers. Even in those far-off lands the French influence made itself felt. The Tuareg, outwardly at least, proved to be docile, and the caravans satisfied all the needs of inland commerce without undue risk.
At Ouargla Steinx had to make some changes to his personnel. Some of the Arabs accompanying him refused to go any farther, and he had to pay them off—no easy matter, in view of their insolent demands and ill-tempered squabbles. It was better to get rid of these overtly uncooperative people whom it would have been dangerous to keep as part of the escort.
On the other hand, he could not start out again without hiring replacements, and under the circumstances he clearly had no choice. He thought he had solved this problem by accepting the services of some Tuareg, who offered, for a high price, to accompany his expedition as far as its destination, whether at the west or the east coast of Africa.
Steinx had some reservations about the Tuareg as a people, but how could he have suspected that he was bringing traitors into his caravan, that it had been watched by Hadjar’s band ever since it left Biskra, and that the formidable chieftain was only waiting for the right moment to attack? His followers, who were now part of the expedition because they had been hired to guide the caravan through those unknown regions, would be able to lead the explorer to the point where Hadjar was waiting for him.
That is exactly what happened. From Ouargla the caravan headed south, crossed the Tropic of Cancer, and reached the territory of the Ahaggar. From there it veered southeast, intending to head for Lake Chad. But from the fifteenth day after his departure there had been no news of Carl Steinx or his companions. What had happened? Had the kafila been able to get as far as Chad? Was it now on its way back by the eastern or the western route?
Steinx’s expedition had aroused keen interest among the many geographical societies whose special area of concern was travel to the African interior. They had been kept informed of its itinerary as far as Ouargla. For the next hundred kilometers or so beyond Ouargla, a few scraps of information had still come through, picked up by desert nomads and passed on to the French authorities. It was thought that within a few weeks, under favorable conditions, the expedition would reach the vicinity of Lake Chad.
But weeks went by, and then months, and no news could be obtained about the daring Belgian explorer. Messengers were sent to the far south and French outposts lent a hand in the search, which spread out in every direction. All efforts proved fruitless, and there was reason to believe that the entire caravan had perished, either in an attack by the nomads of the Touat, or from exhaustion and disease in the