Everyone, it has been said, has his own Sahara. For many of us perhaps the geography lessons of childhood left an impression of an ocean of shifting sand, sometimes separated from the sea by a narrow strip of cultivated land, sometimes extending to the very shore, from which majestic lions, appropriate lords of the inhospitable desert, gaze pensively at the setting sun. If we had the misfortune to be born half a century or more ago, the maps of Africa of the period, with their vast interior emptiness, suggested to our youthful imagination that this unpleasant region extended over the greater part of the continent, the elephant taking the place of the lion in the more southern portions.

The last generation has seen these mediÆval ideas considerably modified. Travel and war have been the means of filling much of the blank space; the arts of peace have followed in their wake; African railways would occupy quite a respectable page in a world-wide Bradshaw; and the Stock Exchange in a searching for economy of syllables has irreverently shortened the poetical Tanganyika to the practical Tank. The great flat plain is last to go;—the millions of acres of rather light soil which the French have been so unaccountably anxious to daub with their colour on the map. We have given up the lions; we know that such carnivorous beasts can only live in a fairly fertile country which supplies sufficient food to their prey. But we have clung to the plain and the sand. Nevertheless it seems that they must go too. We read that you may travel for days in the Sahara on rocky hills and not find enough sand to dry your signature. So perish the beliefs of youth.

Yet to any picture of Algeria the Sahara supplies a romantic background. The sight of a caravan arriving from some distant oasis still has power to stir the imagination. Even in face of our information as to the Sahara’s only partial sterility, we cherish some shreds of wonder at the men who can wring a livelihood and find the means of travel under such inhospitable conditions.

The Sahara has been defined as the region which receives only as an exception any rainfall, whether of Mediterranean origin, or from the tropical regions of West Africa. It is only relatively a desert in the strict sense of the word; no part of it is absolutely without rain, and even in the districts which are reputed the most dry the traveller may meet with violent storms. The generally arid nature of the soil is due to the fact that water circulates not on the surface, but underground. Where it comes to light either by natural or artificial means, a focus of intense cultivation, an oasis, is produced.

The Algerian Sahara is only a portion of the great desert of Northern Africa. Yet it is ten times the size of Algeria itself. It consists roughly of two great depressions separated by an isthmus of calcareous hills. Each of these basins contains a great expanse of dunes, and the two chief groups of oases occur in their lower levels. A generation ago it was commonly believed that the Sahara was the bed of a sea which had disappeared at no very distant date; and projects were formed of admitting the Mediterranean by means of a canal. But more precise knowledge has shown that its sterility is due to other causes; that like the rest of the continent it has its ancient conformation of mountain and plain; that it has distinctive flora and fauna long established; and that the portion which lies below the level of the Mediterranean is of very small extent.

Between eighty and ninety per cent of the surface is of rock, slightly undulating and broken occasionally by perpendicular ravines and large crevasses. Here, as a rule, no water can be found, and the only vegetation is an occasional thorny shrub. With the regions of the sand dunes it is different. Their sterility is by no means absolute. They have a vigorous vegetation of their own, which will support camels, and even sheep at a favourable season. They absorb eagerly the rainfall which runs off the rocky plateaux, and acting as a sponge retain it for a long period. Their comparative barrenness is due only to the dryness of the climate; wherever they can be irrigated they become fertile.

Of the underground rivers the best known is the Oued Rir, which is met with about fifty miles to the south of Biskra, and extends as far as Temacin, fourteen miles south-west of Touggourt. Its course is marked by a number of oases, some of which have been created, and others much improved by the Artesian wells of the French engineers. The first experiment of this sort was tried as early as 1856 at the oasis of Tamerna. After twenty-two days of work, in the presence of a crowd of incredulous and scarcely friendly natives the bore produced a veritable river of a thousand gallons a minute.

At this welcome spectacle, the ingrained distrust of and smothered hostility towards the stranger and his methods vanished; all gave way to a transport of joy and enthusiasm. The work thus begun has been continued with great success, chiefly by French companies; new wells have been sunk and old wells repaired; and it is estimated that the value of the oases of the Rir has increased fivefold, and their population more than doubled.

Similar results have been attained elsewhere. But while they increase the productiveness of the oases, and at the same time improve the routes and the condition of the nomads, they do not warrant any hopes of extensive cultivation in the Sahara. The conditions of life continue difficult. The oases are very unhealthy; their sedentary inhabitants are the prey of malignant fevers and chronic diseases. The summer climate is appalling; a variation between freezing-point and 120° Fahrenheit in the twenty-four hours is not unknown. Those of the inhabitants, Arabs or Berbers, who have an admixture of the blood of the Soudanese negroes, are best fitted to support such trying conditions. As a place of residence for Europeans the Sahara cannot be recommended with any confidence.

Of the sedentary peoples of the Sahara the most interesting are the Mozabites; of the nomads the Touaregs, who range over the vast region to the extreme south. Both are considered to be of Berber origin. The Mozabites have already been mentioned as traders in Algiers. Their country, the Mzab, is situate in one of the most sterile parts of the Sahara, on the rocky promontory which separates the eastern and western depressions. It lies about 400 miles due south of Algiers. Here with amazing toil they have created a fertile region. They have dug wells and found water, and have built dams to intercept and retain the occasional rainfall. The contrast of their fertile gardens with the bare and fantastic rocks which surround them, a land of exaggerated sterility where Nature herself seems dead, is described by travellers as very striking. The industry and commercial aptitude of the Mozabites is very remarkable. They excel as money-lenders and in small banking business. It is said that among them a Jew must work with his hands.

During the last few years, without attracting much attention from the outer world, France has quietly conquered the Sahara, or at all events brought its nomad tribes under effective control. The Touaregs, neither very numerous nor very well armed, have succumbed to persistent pressure and a few trifling defeats. Some are settling on the fringe of the oases; others drifting into the service of the State. The systematic brigands of centuries will pass, it has been said, in a few years from the Stone Age to the age of aviation. They recognize, not without humour, that their rÔle of levying contributions has fallen into other hands. A captain of spahis in garrison at Timbuctoo, was ordered to pursue a caravan which had made off in the night without paying the market dues. “We also,” said the Touaregs, “when we stop a caravan, do so to collect le droit de passage.”

The conquest of the desert, long delayed, has only been achieved by the regular employment of the camel. For nearly a century, since Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, the French had made spasmodic efforts to utilize this animal, but with little success. The camel corps were regarded with ridicule and contempt, and the peculiarities of the beast were little understood. A common belief in fabulous stories of its powers of speed and endurance, its capacity for doing without food and water, occasioned much suffering and immense loss. In fact it requires, year in year out, as much sustenance as other herbivorous beasts of its bulk; where it differs from others is in its power to support extreme irregularity in its meals. This quality, and especially its ability to take in at one drink enough water for several days, render it of unequalled value for desert journeyings. The camel can work for six months in the year on the meagre diet which the sparse vegetation of the Sahara affords; it is necessary for his existence that he should spend the remaining six in complete rest at pasture, where he feeds voraciously from morning to night without losing a minute. “But it must not be believed,” says M. Gautier, “that the camel on active service does not eat; he feeds when he has the opportunity, and the opportunities must not be rare. For a caravan of camels traversing the desert, the stomach of the beasts is the sovereign lord of marches and halts, the director of the daily programme; day and night, the fatigue and hunger and sleep of the men do not enter into the account; everything is subordinated to the single necessity of nourishment for the herd. Whenever a little edible vegetation is met with, at whatever point of the itinerary, a halt is made for several hours or several days; in the intervals, even as happens sometimes, of two or three hundred kilometres or of five or six days, progress, slow and regular, is made without truce, almost without sleep, beneath sun and stars alike. One can only stop at a pasturage; a voyage in the Sahara is a hunt for a blade of grass.”

God, says the proverb, having made the desert, repaired the mischief by creating the camel. Considered absolutely it is an inferior beast of burden to the horse and mule, considered relatively to the conditions of the Sahara it is invaluable. But it must be treated according to its necessities. In the mines of Algeria, for props in the galleries, pine is preferred to oak; oak breaks suddenly when the limit of its strength is reached, pine on the contrary cracks and creaks,—it gives warning. The camel is as the oak, he gives no warning. Exhausted, he stops abruptly like a motor-car which has run short of petrol; he crouches and dies, with plenty of dignity and with an air of thinking of something else. So have ended countless camels in the service of France. But since 1902 camel corps have been raised on a scientific basis; the animal used being almost invariably the mÉhari, a species of dromedary. A body of natives of the tribe of the Chaamba has been organized, each of whom in return for a definite sum of money supplies two or three camels, which are his own property, to exchange, to sell, to traffic with as he pleases. He is, in fact, a contractor. For a further sum he provides his own food, clothing and equipment. This system seems to be a reversion to an ancient custom, which the very word “soldier” recalls.

The effect has been magical. Almost without a blow the Touareg has recognized his master. The Chaamba patrol the desert and enforce French conceptions of law and order. Communications have been opened in all directions; the tremendous journey between Algeria and the West African possessions of France is now frequently made without danger and without exciting remark. The mÉharistes have solved the problem so long insoluble.

But a greater project is agitating the minds of the forward Colonial party, the linking of the French possessions by a Trans-Saharian railway. The scheme is not a new one. It was much discussed thirty years ago. The French Government appointed a scientific commission to study the matter, and the French public, ever ready to support a vast engineering scheme, was eager to subscribe the necessary capital. The murder by Touaregs of the Flatters mission administered a cold douche, and for the time being the subject dropped. It has been revived of late by M. Leroy Beaulieu and other writers. Two lines are projected, one to Lake Tchad, the other to Timbuctoo. The distance to be covered is enormous, in each case about 2700 miles, of which 2000 is desert. The engineering difficulties are not great, but the commercial prospects of such a line seem very poor. A train or two a year would deal with all the existing traffic, and there appears little scope for development. It is suggested that the Upper Niger may become another Nile, but even then its trade would seek an outlet rather to the Atlantic than to the Mediterranean and across the Great Sahara. The post route to South America might be shortened a little, but at what cost and inconvenience! The best hope for the would-be railway builders lies in the discovery of minerals. A mining industry would develop the Sahara as it has developed the bare uplands of the Transvaal and the icy wastes of Klondyke. But of this there is no present indication.

Meantime, in the extreme west, on the borders of Morocco, the railway has been extended as far as Colomb-BÉchar, a distance of 728 kilometres to the south-west of Oran. This is a strategic line. It is in the direction of Morocco that the eyes of the army of Africa are now turned. French writers are never tired of repeating that Barbary is one, and should be undivided, that the masters of Tunis and Algeria must be lords of Morocco too. The safety of Algeria itself is said to depend on the French control of Morocco. Such is ever the language of him who would go forward. We have said it ourselves often enough, and to fix the limits of empire is sometimes more difficult than to advance them.

It may be worth while to note what is the present military force of France in North Africa. According to the project for the Budget of 1911, the force in Algeria consists of 2134 officers and 52,927 men; in Tunisia of 698 officers and 17,007 men. The cavalry numbers in all 440 officers and 9074 men. The number of native troops is singularly small, about 15,000 infantry and 1800 spahis. Judging by our experience in India it would be possible to make a far larger use of native military talent, to the great advantage of the population, and to the consolidation of the French hold on the country. The native troops employed in the late Morocco campaign, especially the Tunisians, bore themselves with the greatest credit.

In the Sahara special companies have been recently raised. They contain a certain admixture of French troops:—24 officers and 123 men to 817 men. It would seem a special field for the raising of a force of natural cavalry and camel-men.