There is not at present a single permanently flowing river in the whole of the Sahara. But wadys, or dried-up river-beds, of such length, breadth, and depth as the Wady Igharghar and the Wady Mia, show that at some remote period the climate must have been very different and the rainfall excessively heavy to have supplied the enormous amount of water necessary to form and fill these great channels, which now scarcely ever have any surface water. No less wonderful is the number of beds of lakes, and even lakes themselves, in the Sahara. These are met with most frequently where depressions exist, but they also occur in other more elevated places, as is the case in Fezzan; and we may well imagine how copious must be the underground springs that feed these lakes, in order to keep them constantly supplied with water, in spite of the enormous evaporation to which they are exposed. 1 1 The hot winds and sandstorms of the Sahara are proverbial, but their horrors have been greatly exaggerated, and "it is rare," says Reclus, "that the violent and burning simoom rolls its winding-sheet of dust around the traveller in the desert-more die there of thirst than perish by hot winds or sandstorms. In fact, the physical obstacles to the passage across the desert are much less formidable than the difficulty of dealing with the fierce, fanatical, and treacherous tribes, whose jealously-guarded wells and oases are the only possible resting places en route." The two great natural products of the Sahara are the date palm, which furnishes the staple food of the people, and salt, which is extensively produced at Bilma, on the route from Tripoli to Bornu, and at Taodeni, on the route from Morocco to Timbuktu. Dates and salt, with ostrich feathers, gold dust, and slaves, are, in fact, the only commercial products of this vast region. The north-eastern portion of the desert, with the Oasis of Siwah, forms part of Egypt; a much larger portion falls within the limits of Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco; but by far the larger portion of the Sahara is more or less "occupied" by a number of independent Berber and Arab tribes. The Tiris coast region, in the extreme west, is inhabited by Moorish nomads, and the Moors are also dominant in the hilly country of Adrar. The central belt of the Sahara includes the Tuareg plateau and oases of Twat, Tidikelt, Tassili, Ahaggar, and Ahir or Asben-the tall and fierce tribesmen of which form the "horse-guards" of the caravans on their passage between the Barbary States and the Central Sudan. These Tuaregs are Berbers, with perhaps some Moorish or Arab elements; but the Tibbus, a pastoral people who dwell in the eastern part of the desert, are nearly allied in race to the negroes of the south. The commerce of the Sahara, where there are neither roads nor waterways, is carried on by camel-caravans which cross the desert by certain routes, the directions of which are determined by the positions of the wells and oases. The trade consists chiefly in the transport of ostrich feathers, gold dust, and ivory to the Mediterranean ports from the Sudan-the caravans returning with cotton goods and other textile fabrics, cutlery, arms, and trinkets of all sorts. The most frequented route passes from Tripoli through Murzuk in Fezzan, and by the salt mines of Bilma (which furnish an article of considerable trade) to Kuka on Lake Chad. Another route from Tripoli passes more to the westward through Ghat, which has been Turkish since 1874, and Agades, the capital of the Tuareg Sultanate of Ahir or Asben, to Sokoto. Several routes from Tripoli, Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco converge at Insalah, in the oasis-land of Twat (which is equi-distant from Algiers, Morocco, and Timbuktu, and which will 1. Keith Johnston. eventually form part of the Algerian Sahara), and lead thence across the desert to Timbuktu-the terminus also of a minor route from Mogador through the great salt market of Taodeni. Tafilet and Figuig in Morocco, Ain Sefra, Laghouat, and Biskra in Algeria, and Ghadames on the borders of Tripoli, are well-known centres or termini of the caravan traffic between the Sudan and the Mediterranean ports. THE SUDAN. The name "Blas es Sudan," or "Country of the Blacks" of the old Arab geographers, was applied to the vast region to the south of, and almost co-extensive with, the Sahara, and the term is still used to indicate the belt of fertile and well-watered countries which lie within the zone of tropical rains, and form a startling contrast to the sterile desert which stretches between them and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Instead of the waterless desert, with its dried-up river beds, scanty vegetation, wide uninhabited plains, and scattered nomad tribes, the Sudan presents the picture of a richly-watered, diversified, fertile, and highly-cultivated land, with a varied fauna and a tropical flora, wherein dwell many populous and settled nations who have arrived at a certain degree of civilization. In its widest application, the Sudan includes the entire region between the Sahara on the north and the Guinea Coast and the northern watershed of the Congo on the south, thus extending right across the continent, from the Atlantic on the west to the Red Sea and Abyssinia on the east, a distance of considerably over 3,000 miles. The whole of this vast region has within recent years been partitioned off between the European Powers. The great natural features of the Sudan are the Senegal and the Gambia in the Western Sudan or Senegambia, the Niger and Lake Chad in the Central Sudan, and the Upper Nile and its tributaries in the Eastern Sudan. The Senegal, the Gambia, and the Niger or Joliba, all take their rise near each other in the Futa Jallon Highlands in the Western Sudan. The Senegal and Gambia flow westwards into the Atlantic; the Niger bends to the eastward and then flows south into the Gulf of Guinea. Unlike the other great rivers of Africa, these three rivers are navigable for considerable distances inland, unobstructed by either rapids or falls, and form, therefore, excellent channels of communication with the interior. Lake Chad is a shallow expanse of much greater extent when the Shari and cther streams which flow into it are in flood than during the dry season. The Upper Nile and its affluents in the Eastern Sudan have been already described. The climate of the Sudan is thoroughly tropical, and portions of the interior are probably among the hottest on the globe. But the inland countries of the Sudan do not appear to be unhealthy, and are at any rate free from the pestilential malaria which prove so deadly to Europeans on the coast. The rains and the season of drought succeed one another with undeviating regularity, the rainy season coinciding with the position of the sun to the north of the Equator. The inhabitants of the Sudan are not exclusively of Negro race. A large proportion of them are of mixed descent, partly of Arab or Berber origin. The latter are known as Fulahs or Fellatahs, and are most numerous in the neighbourhood of Lake Chad and to the eastward of the Niger; the pure Negro race is found to the west of that river. The Fulahs occupy a position which is politically and socially in advance of that of the pure Negro races, and have carried with them into the heart of the African continent the rites of the Mohammedan worship and the precepts of the Koran. The Negroes themselves, when not converted to Mohammedanism, are uniformly heathens, given up to a degrading fetishism, that is, the adoration of particular objects invested by them with a sacred character, and known as fetishes. It is in the Mohammedan countries of the Sudan that the African race has reached its highest stage of development independent of European influence, and even the least advanced of these Negroid Mohammedans are not barbarians at any rate not in the worst sense of the term. The Sudanese people, generally, have settled habits of life, they cultivate their fields, weave cotton cloth with some skill and dye it of bright colours. Many of their towns are of considerable size, and the courts of their native monarchs display various attempts at a rude kind of splendour and dignity. The great obstacle to the advancement of the Negro has been the slave trade. The numerous divisions, into which Negro Africa has always been divided, formerly engaged in frequent warfare with one another, for the express purpose of taking captives to be sold to the slave dealer; slave-hunting expeditions are still, unhappily, fitted out by the most powerful chiefs against their weaker neighbours, the villages of the latter are burned, the children and the aged slaughtered, and the able-bodied marched in gangs across the desert, or down to the coast, to be sold into slavery. The slave-trade has always been the bane of the Negro population of Africa, and the substitution of a more legitimate commerce, therefore, the only means of suppressing this cruel and iniquitous traffic. The commercial productions of the Sudan are chiefly gold-dust, ivory, and ostrich-feathers-besides slaves, who formerly constituted a much more important item of trade than at present. A great deal of trade is carried on between the Sudan and the countries on the Mediterranean coast by means of caravans which cross the Sahara. The merchants engaged in this trade are principally Moors. Articles of European manufacture are thus introduced into the heart of the African continent. The French, from their splendid "base" in Senegambia, are making strenu ous endeavours to open up a great trade-route between the Senegal and the Upper Niger, and have already built a railway from Kayes on the Senegal to Bamako on the Niger. Another line is in course of construction from Konakrig on the French gunboats now patrol the coast to Kurussa on the Upper Niger. Upper Niger as far as Kabara, the port of Timbuktu, and the great river is within the French sphere of influence beyond Say, but, in spite of all efforts to divert the trade of the Central Sudan westwards and of the actual trade which goes northward across the desert, the current of trade from this richly-endowed region naturally flows southwards along the magnificient waterways of the Niger and the Benue, through to exclusively British territory. A comparatively short line of railway from Yola or from Ribago, at the head of navigation on the Benue, to Kuka, the great trading town on the borders of Lake Chad, would result in a great expansion of British trade in the Central Sudan. Except in the Gambia and in Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, France is supreme in the Western Sudan, and, now that the "hinterland" of the British possessions on the coast is entirely enclosed by French territory, no great expansion of British trade with the interior through these colonies need be expected. THE EASTERN SUDAN, The Egyptian Sudan has been already described, and we need only add here a brief account of the geographical divisions of Kordofan and Darfur, which were only incidentally referred to in the section on "The Nile Countries" Kordofan lies between (and partly within) the valley of the Nile and Darfur. It has an area of about 100,000 square miles, and a population of not more than 300,000. For 60 years (that is, since its conquest by Mehemet Ali in 1821 until the Mahdi revolt in 1882) Kordofan formed part of the Egyptian dominions, and the recent Anglo-French treaty of 1899 again assigns Kordofan to the Egyptian Sudan. From the Nile, which forms its eastern frontier, to the capital, EL OBEID, the country consists of undulating plains, fairly well-grassed and dotted here and there with mimosa groves. The chief drawback, both to agricultural and pastoral industry, is the scarcity of water, but the dhurra sown in the rainy season yields heavy crops. Gum is an important product, Kordofan was the great strongand there are extensive deposits of iron ore. hold of Mahdism, and it was from El Obeid that the Mahdi led his fanatical followers against Khartoum in 1885. "Darfur, situated between Kordofan and Wadai, has twice the area and five times the population of Kordofan. From the Marra Mountains (6,000 feet), in the centre of the country, numerous streams flow during the rainy season through the surrounding plains, which stretch away on the north to the desert and on the south to the Bahr el Ghazal. The capital, EL FASHER, is on the great caravan route from Wadai to Egypt, along which for many centuries an annual caravan conveyed ivory and gum, ostrich feathers and slaves to Egypt, returning thence with valuable woven fabrics, arms, and metal wares. During the Mahdi revolt all communications with Egypt were temporarily stopped. Darfur is now within the limits of the Egyptian Sudan, and pays an annual tribute, though its internal affairs are left in the management of the native Sultan. THE CENTRAL SUDAN. THE CENTRAL SUDAN, a purely conventional term, is applied to the region lying to the south of the Sahara, and extending between the French or Western Sudan and the Eastern Sudan. The Central Sudan is divided into a number of Mohammedan Negroid States, the limits of which are undefined, except where they are marked by natural features such as Lake Chad, the Shari, and the Niger. Wadai and its tributary States lie to the east of Lake Chad; Bornu and Sokoto are between Lake Chad and the Niger. By the Anglo-French agreements of 1898, 1899, 1904, and 1906, the greater part of this region has been divided between France and Great Britain. The boundary of Nigeria has been definitely fixed so as to secure Gando and Borgu to France, which thus obtains an outlet through French territory to the Gulf of Guinea, while Sokoto and Bornu remain within the British sphere; and further, in return for the renouncement by France of all claim to the Nile Valley, England recognises her suzerainty of Wadai and its dependencies. WADAI-KANEM-BAGIRMI. The Sultanate of Wadai, with the tributary States of Kanem and Bagirmi, occupies the entire region between Darfur and Lake Chad, and extends from the Sahara on the north to the ShariMobangi water-parting on the south. By the convention of March, 1899, England recognises Wadai and its dependencies as being within the French sphere. The mountains, steppes, savannahs, and deserts of Wadai are occupied by some 5 millions of Arabs and Negroes. The Arabs of Wadai are traders, sending their caravans with ivory, slaves, ostrich feathers, copper, and salt north across the desert to Benghazi on the coast of the Mediterranean, and west to Bornu and the Niger. The masters of the country, however, are the Maba Negroes,' fierce and fanatical Mohammedans, and the leaders of the Senussi "revivalists"-the rivals and deadly enemies of the Mahdists. The Maba Sultan, who resides at ABESHR, rules Negro and Arab alike with relentless severity. His army, about 7,000 strong, is chiefly employed in levying tribute in kind (slaves, horses, cattle, honey, corn) from the provinces and vassal states. 2 Kanem, formerly a vassal State of Wadai, is on the northern side of Lake Chad, and is divided from Wadai proper by the fertile valley of the Bahr el Ghazal.3 The people of Kanem, who are allied to the Tibbus, were held in subjection by the fiercest marauders in the whole of Northern Africa-the Aulad-Slimân Arabs. In 1903, France subdued the country, and it now forms a district of the Shari Territory. Nijmi was the former capital, but MAO, to the south-east, is the present chief town. Bagirmi, also a tributary State of Wadai, lies to the south-east of Lake Chad, and includes the low-lying plains and marshes of the Lower Shari. The handsome and warlike, but also bloodthirsty and cruel, people of Bagirmi are Mohammedan Negroes. They cultivate the soil and raise large crops of dhurra and millet, which they barter for tobacco. &c. They are also inveterata clave hunters, and make frequent raids on the pagan tribes to the south. In 1897, the French signed a treaty with the Sultan of Bagirmi, and a French Resident was appointed to MASSENA, the capital of the region. Shortly after, the Resident and Sultan were expelled by Rabah, the usurper of Bornu, but in 1900, Rabab was defeated, and fell in a battle with the French, and the country was subjugated. 1.The Maba preponderate to such an extent that the country is called Dar Maba, or Dwelling pace of the Maba,' as well as Dar Wadai. The Mila are bronzed rather than black, and have been Mussulmans for over 50 years. In character, D they are hang ty, imperious, and aggressive, and 3. This Bhr el Ghazal must not be confounded with the Bahr el Ghazal in the Fastern Sudan. |