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Maryland State Archives Jeffersonian, Towson, Maryland mdsa_sc3410_1_81-0981 Enlarge and print image (6M) |
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Maryland State Archives Jeffersonian, Towson, Maryland mdsa_sc3410_1_81-0981 Enlarge and print image (6M) |
| Newsgravure and Magazine Section, THE JEFFERSONIAN, Towson, Md., May 17, 1924. OUTWITTING DEATH IN THE RED DESERT—FRENCH EXPLORER FIRST WHITE MAN TO CROSS "Eaten By The Desert" Is Short Epitaph That Sons Of Hot Sands) Vouchsafe Skeletons Of White Men Who Have Tried To Precede Him. The first white' man to cross the Libyan- Desert—the dreaded ':Red Desert" of Egyptian legends, is Bruneau de Laborie. At least, so far as he knows, no European has preceded this French explorer in some parts of thai menacing waste. "Eaten by the Desert" is the short epitaph that the sons of the desert vouchsafe the skeletons of white men who have tried to precede him. And these skeletons, the explorer tells us, are much more noticeable in the Libyan waste than in any other. Possibly their white bones shine more distinctly against the brownish or reddish sand which gives it its distinctive name. How he outwitted the desert, and why he did so, Mr. de Laborie explains in a series of accounts which, have just ended in L'Illustration, the French illustrated weekly. His mission, it seems, was twofold. In the first place, under the official orders of the French Minister for the Colonies, he had certain work which took him from the Cameroons on the Atlantic clear up to the borders of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. This was bound up with a mission for the Museum of Natural History which included such interesting jobs as the securing of an embryo rhinoceros and extracting samples of the venom of certain species of snakes. In the sescond place he had a much broader mission on behalf of the French Geographical Society. This seems to have been a sort of investigation on the possibilities of travel (commercial or otherwise) from Lake Chad, in the heart of Equatorial Africa, up to Egypt. Interesting enough is this account of big-game hunting, exploration and colonial life in the Camerons, the equatorial country about Lake Chad, and the grassy uplands where big game roamed. But it is when, having penetrated a thousand miles northeast from the Guff of Guinea, that the great' adventure begins on the sinister edge of the Red Desert. This isl the Libyan Desert shown on the map, which separatess Egyptj from Tripoli and stretches a thousand miles south into the heart of Africa, farther even than the Sahara. "That is a bad road to travel," said one desert-dweller with whom he talked at the last wells. "The desert is an enemy. If you go fast—very fast; if you travel all day and part of the night, it may be all right. But if y©u delay," he ended with a Bedouin's smile, "you will be eaten by the desert." As if this were not discouraging enough, Mr. de Laborie began to realize that he was planning to go diagonally from one end to the other of the homeland of the fanatical Senyussis. The Senyussis, Mr. de Laborie tells us, are a religious sect of the Mohammedans which has been made by force of circumstances a very important political body, dominating the hinterland of Italian Libya. They are distinguished by a fanatical purity in matters of religious doctrine, arid have continuously displayed the most violent animosity toward all Christians. Founded at the commencement of the last century, they established their first "zaouias" or religious centers in Northern Africa, at El Beida. From here their influence extended rapidly into the desert to the south and they gained wide control in Central Africa, at the same time that they increased the number of their adherents, their wealth, and their prestige. Reverses during and since the war have noticeably weakened them of recent years. But it would be most imprudent, says he, to ignore the fact that aside from their military importance their religious propaganda has tremendous influence throughout all the regions where the British, Italian and French zones of influence meet. They call themselves Krouans (brothers), and like a wide-spread secret society they are still formidable opponents for any of these European nations. At the beginning of the last war, they had penetrated clear south of French Equatorial Africa, and it was only by the severest fighting they were driven back into the desert. At present there is a sort of armed truce, but white men who penetrate their country take their lives in their hands. The stronghold of the Senyussis is the Oasis of Kufra, surrounded on all sides by hundreds of miles of the Red Desert. It was this stronghold which bestrode the way which de Laborie proposed to take. The head chief was the Sheikh Sidi Mohamed el Bbid, a man notorious, for the blind fury with which he had slaughtered Europeans in the war, and whose present frame of mind was the subject of very contradictory reports. Taking the bull by the horns, de Laborie had written him some months before, requesting safe-conduct. Just ^vvJhVVK^MhKh^Mh^K^-^^X-K^ SERVICE OF UNSURPASSED EXCELLENCE STEWART & MOWEN COMPANY (W.'F. WOODEN, Successor). Funeral Directors 108 WEST NORTH AVENUE BALTIMORE, MD TELEPHONE, VERNON 1342 ESPECIALLY EQUIPPED TO RENDER IMMEDIATE ATTENTION TO SUBURBAN AND COUNTRY CALLS — •jgjEj^j^- r'lrfflmm^' :: •? %«.??? *:: BRING YOUR REAL ESTATE PROBLEMS TO THE MONAGHAN MORTGAGE AND REALTY COMPANY Charles at Lexington Street, Baltimore, Md. Central Savings Bank Building. PLaza 6753 about the time he reached Tekro at the edge of the desert, on his northern swing from Lake Chad, the Frenchman received a camel-runner from the Sheikh with a, letter. The letter was polite— but absolutely non-commital. Thereupon every one, French colonial officials, native chiefs, and desert guides, warned de Laborie to leave the Senyussis alone. One man only, the chief of the Fez-zanese of Borku, gave him any encouragement. It was then that de Laborie showed his real nerve. "I determined," says he, "to go ahead, anyway, and carry out the original plan. I would present myself frankly at Kufra, for the purpose of asking Mohamed el Abdi for the permission which he had failed to send me. Then he would be in the presence of something which had already happened. There wasn't anything else to do." That this idea was not wholly insane is shown by the fact that it worked. The reason probably lies partly in the character and equipment of de Laborie himself. He had spent many months studying the Koran and the Khalil, their book of laws, in order to get at Mussulman psychology. He had memorized scores and scores of Arabian proverbs, believing that here the mentality of any people is syn-thetized. He had gone over carefully all accounts of the few Europeans who had gotten into the Senyussi country, either as prisoners of war or as envoys during temporary truces, like Mrs. Rosita Forbes, and seems to have felt fairrly sure of his ability to avoid false steps in dealing with the ''subtle and circuitous Islamic soul." This, then, was the situation the Frenchman found when he came to Tekro on the edge of the desert and prepared to push on beyond the protecting edges of the French tricolor. Says he in his account: Three days after having left the wells of Tekro, I had to give up my escort of Tirailleurs. We had arrived at the limit of the French sphere of influence and the last international understanding prevented French soldiers from penetrating any further. I kept with me two servants, Ahmed and Denis. The first was an Arab of Kanem, the other a negro of Brazzaville, (from far down on the Kongo). Then I had two guides picked up at Ounyanga, two Fezzanese from Kanem, and four Goranes whom I had enlisted at Faya with the help of Lieutenant Dufail. That made ten men. There was a camel for each of us; five camels to. carry baggage, water, and provisions; three camels loaded with fodder, dates and wood; and two spare camels to eventually replace" any losses. Fortunately I lost only one on the whole journey. The question of armanent was very hard to solve. I ended by providing myself with a dozen of the necessary rifles. They were, it must be admitted, very bad guns, and the ammunition, what is more, was obviously defective. Nevertheless, this gave our little troop a good appearance, and we were after all not without some defense. A journey such as this has a great deal of monotony in it. Every evening you have the impression of going to sleep in exactly the same place as the evening before. It is a sort of labor without end. However, in the west and in the east far off there began to appear faint lines in relief, first sand dunes and then rocks. This uniformity of the country is interrupted only' by* the skeletons of camels. As a matter of fact even these become monotonous after a while, since one hardly goes a thousand yards without seeing one. You will find, as well, all too many human skeletons. This is the only one of the great deserts in which I have seen anything like this. 1 passed seven or eight and since the trails spread themselves out over a width of several miles it is Hauling—Here, There And Everywhere. NO LOAD TOO SMALL=NONE TOO LARGE HOPWOOD'S EXPRESS 306 S. Paca Street Baltimore Phones Caliert 0119-0988 ' reasonable to believe that there were a great many more. These were the poor chaps who were, according to the expression of my guides, "eaten by the desert." There they lie- dead. Their bones dry out and grow white in the great silence of the desert, enveloped by the winding sheet of the blazing sunlight, and watched in turn by the sun and by the stars of the southern night. Truly it is a tomb worth many others. All my camels, strong beasts Lightly loaded as they were, had a very rapid gait. I must insist upon this point lest another man should take as mean traveled time the exceptionally short time in which we made the journey. We traveled five and a half hours the first day, twelve hours the second, thirteen hours ¦ the third, fourteen hours the fourth, nine hours the fifth, and an hour and fifteen minutes the sixth. After having left the station of Sufta to the east of us on the 11th, we arrived at the Wells of Sarra the 12th of October, one hour after dawn. The level surface of the sand was marked in several places by very slight eminences of the ground. The guides stopped and pointed one out to me straight ahead at the distance of several hundred yards from us. It. was a little conical tent. I sent two men forward to reconnoiter. It turned out to be some Fezzanese merchants who had arrived that morning. Near this tent a little mound three or four yards high could be seen, covered with sand and marked at the top with stones. That was the well quite near. But it was sos close to the ground without any well-curb and concealed by a covering that it was necessary to be within a few yards in order to make it out at all. We stopped near by. The arrival of any one in such a situation is always a happy hour. All travelers in the desert have felt the impression of delight which one experience in seeing safe and sure before one that humble little orifice which dispenses the most necessary element of life, and whose neighborhood alone permits repose in security. Except for a four-inch layer of sand, the well is hollowed out entirely from rock. The day of my sojourn there the water was fifty-nine yards down. The drilling of this well is due to the Senyussis. On the promise of Mohamed, the Mahdi, their beloved leader, who marked the place and • told them that their labor would be crowned with success, they started digging with their primitive tools, drilled without ceasing and found water. The miracle is a child of faith. As we were going about the setting up of our primitive camp, my two old guides, Toroe and Sidia, came up to me and remained standing before me motionless. I understood that they wanted to speak to me, and I. called one of the Fezzanese named Suleyman who understood the Gorane dialect. Solemnly Toroe, the older of the two, started in to speak. "We have come straight upon the well," said he. "We have not passed it. We did not have to search for it. It is neither in the east nor in the west. We found it right away. SAND Bank Building Concrete Paving WASHED GRAVEL In Car, Scow and Barge Lots The Arundel Corporation Baltimore, Md. Main Office: Pier 2 Pratt St. Wharves: Pier 2 Pratt St., Foot Fell St. Bush Street, Arlington and Canton Phone, St. Paul 7120 Telephone CAlvert 4416 Nig-ht and Holidays, . WOlfe 5734-J GEO. W. LAYFIELD, Jr. Awnings Tents Wagon Covers Anything Made of Canvas Estimates Submitted 208-210 E. Pratt Street STONE GRAVEL SAND E. F. MURRAY Allegany Ave. TOWSON, MD. Hauling of All Kinds Telephone, Towson 247 It is because your heart is white. On this road only those who have white hearts can find the well." He continued for some time in this vein, and then obviously quite satisfied, stopped. I thought it was all over, but Sidia wanted to speak in his turn. More briefly, since Toreo had expended all the resources of eloquence, he repeated the same thing to me. Then they went away side by side, very slowly, very solemnly, and rejoined the others. For my part I followed after them. "How do you follow this trail," I asked them. "What are your landmarks?" "You must search ahead," they replied, "watching ever with your left eye the star which never sets." As a matter of fact the trail is just about north by northeast. They are talking, of course, about the North Star. We were able to stay here two days, for we had gone ahead of our schedule by the rapidity of our pace and it was necessary to give the camels a rest. On the 14th of October we left Sarra.behind us to plunge into the really unexplored part of the desert of Libra. The route which we were now about to take had so far as I know never been seen before by any European. In his account Mr. de Laborie tells how clay after day they pushed on through this monotonous landscape. Here and there a low rocky eminence, or a line of sand dunes would appear on the horizon and then disappear as they plodded along. Having found and left behind them another little well three days farther on, the same performance was repeated by the explorer's two faithful servants, Toroe and Sidia. Obviously, he chuckles, his heart must have appeared to them to be of even more perfect "whiteness." It was no doubt just as well, for now they were getting close to real trouble] The account continues: After two more days of journey, in the course of which we had either crossed or seen in the distance, a goodly number of hills ROBBINS-BUICK, INC., 21 E. 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