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THE ROAD TO TIMBUKTU LADY DOROTHY MILLS Frontispiece 55~3 1924 THE/ROAD TO TIMBUKTU/ BY IAAY DOROTHY MILLS .#T Author of" The Tent of Blue," "The Road," etc., etc. I JUN14 1985 LONDON: DUCKWORTH AND CO., 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2. First Published - March, 1924 Second Impression - September, 1924 (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED) Made and Printed in Great Britain by Southampton Times Limited, Southampton I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO ALL FRIENDS, WHITE AND BLACK WHO IN VARIOUS WAYS HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE MAKING OF IT PREFACE FIRST of all I want to express my gratitude to all those whose very great kindness and sympathy helped, and indeed made possible, one of the most interesting trips I have ever undertaken. Their name is legion, and where so much gratitude is due it would be invidious to particularise, though their names and the memories of them are with me as I write. Secondly, a word to those who, if they read it, may blame the superficiality of this book, who asked me to tell people of the inner rather than of the outer aspects of their colony. The reason is a due sense of my own limitations. Naturally, travelling in the colonies of a race other than my own, I found much that was new and interesting to me in their problems, and in their manner of solving those problems. But though I found very much to admire and even to love, I do not feel qualified to generalise, to make comparisons, or to air my personal opinions in print. I spent just three months in the A.O.F., travelling as fast as local conditions would permit. Except at Dakar, the landing-place, Bamako, the jumping-off place, and Timbuktu itself, which in all account for three weeks, much of that time spent ill in bed, I never passed more than fortyeight hours in the same place. Obviously my knowledge cannot be profound I These very rough impressions were jotted down at all sorts of incongruous moments; in 7 PREFACE trains, in boats, laid up in bed with a temperature of 1040, in a Niger barge in the intervals of slave-driving a crew of negroes, and very rarely with the thermometer below iIo° in the shade. All this is my explanation of, and excuse for, any inaccuracies that may have crept in. For the rest, hard-bitten travellers doubtless will say that much of what I have written is, to use the vernacular, " unmitigated rot "! I can only answer that I do not flatter myself on having contributed another document to African bibliography, but merely to have given my own impressions of my own trip. And if nobody reads them I shall break my heart, for no one but myself and the Dark God of Africa knows under what trying conditions they grew, or what an effort it cost me to write them. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE PREFACE . .7 INTRODUCTION . II I.DAKAR. .15 II. SENEGAL . 22 III. MAURITANIA . 33 IV. DAKAR TO BAMAKO * * * 43 V. BAMAKO TO SEGOU . 58 VI. SEGOU TO SANSANDING . * . 68 VII. SANSANDING TO MOPTI . * . 88 VIII. MOPTI TO TIMBUKTU . * 102 IX. THE VOICE OF TIMBUKTU . 116 X. TIMBUKTU TO-DAY . 124 XI. THE PAST OF TIMBUKTU . 138 XII. BLACKAND WHITEINTIMBUKTU .152 XIII. THE ROADS TO TIMBUKTU . 166 XIV. THE TOUAREGS . 181 XV.TURNINGBACK . .198 XVI.DIENNE . .218 XVII. IN ANSWER TO QUESTIONS . 2 232 XVIII.THEENDOFTHEROAD. *246 INDEXOFPLACES. .261 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LADY DOROTHY MILLS PALACE OF THE FAMA MADEMBA, OF SANSANDING A VILLAGE ON THE BANKS OF THE NIGER WOMAN POUNDING MILLET, KOUAKOUROU. " TIN LIZZIE, SENIOR FRIENDS WITH CUB, MOPTI SOUDANESE STREET VENDORS THE MARKET PLACE, TIMBUKTU THE OLD MOSQUE, TIMBUKTU A TYPICAL SOUDANESE MOSQUE ARRIVAL OF THE NEW ADMINISTRATOR, MONSIEUR LPEONCE JACQUIER . TOUAREG CHIEF, OUTSIDE THE RESIDENCE, TIMBUKTU TOUAREGS AT TIMBUKTU. GIRLS WASHING CLOTHES IN THE NIGER - Frontispiece Face p. 90 ,, 90 92 92 100 I00 126 ,, 134 ,, 134 ,, 162 162 ,, 182 182 INTRODUCTION If I were a cassowary On the plains of Timbuktu, I would eat the missionary, Bible, prayer-book, hymn-buk, too. WHEN reading the travel books of other people I always feel a sneaking curiosity to know the things they have not told one; the purely personal things, the little jokes and mistakes and tiny tragedies of every day; what they did when not actively seeking " copy " for their book; whether they were ever frightened, and of what; all the little trivial things that help to bring the writer before one as a live human being, instead of a splendid impersonal superbeing in a picturesque stage setting. In fact, I want what the trade calls "sob stuff," and plenty of it, for accounts of other people's travels in unfamiliar countries are so apt to be boring unless one can actually visualise all the variety of elements that have gone to their making. And, most of all, I always want to know why the author travelled; whether it was the wanderlust that drove him or her forth, or the Call of the Wild, or cold- blooded and intelligent desire for information, or merely the search for an objective to write a book about. There must be some strong reason that can impel a normal being to leave home and comfortable habits, good food and baths, work and play, family and friends, and to set forth to most uncomfortable and dubiously safe places, to endure seasickness, 31 INTRODUCTION fatigue, heat, cold, and privation, and fear, to sleep in places that an area cat would turn up its whiskers at, to go unwashed and unkempt, to eat mysterious horrors, to look at doubtfully fine scenery, and to smell all manner of unexpurgated smells. Some voice, only varying in timbre, must call, whether the journey be through an unknown corner of one's own town, or to the frozen immensities of the Poles, or the fastnesses of Thibet, or the plains of Timbuktu. I think it was through the verse at the heading of this chapter that I first became conscious of Timbuktu; that it was this verse that made Timbuktu a real place to me, and not the myth, the joke even, that it still is to many people. To the childish mind it had a spacious and a pleasantly cynical sound. And many years later-not longer ago than last year and the year before that-it came to spell Romance for me. On the northern stretches of the Sahara, on burning days and steely nights, round camp-fires, in barracks, in nomad tents, from the lips of traders, officers of the French Colonial Army, heterogeneous civilians, whining Arab guides and home-sick coal-black Soudanese, "Tombouctou" was again made real to me. All the old caravan routes go there; the great cruel roads of the ages, along whose blazing trails, century after century, have toiled long trains of men and animals, bearing gold-dust and spices, ivory and cotton, gum, ostrich feathers, and the skins of strange beasts; roads on which men have died in their thousands and animals in their tens of thousands to gratify the whims of long-dead Emperors and strange Queens, of Faustine and Semiramis and Cleopatra and their wicked sisters. Timbuktu was a centre of the INTRODUCTION slave trade, and slim maidens, ebony black, with a bloom like that of rich dark grapes, were added to the precious merchandise to serve as foils to golden-haired Circassians in the palaces of the north. Curious things in leather, smelling strongly and strangely, were thrust into my hands, and generally bought by me at ridiculous prices! Thrilling tales were told me by soldiers of the old days before the French occupation filched most of the romance from the Sahara; of razzias and guerilla warfare, of ambuscades and the taking of villages, of curious tribes and customs, of the sluggish, fever-laden rivers of the south, of the " Country of Fear" that lies between where the caravans still travel, of the predatory Touaregs, people of veiled men and free women, of utter desolation and thirst, of the madness of the sun, of forced marches and punitive expeditions, when the sunburnt men who light-heartedly told me the tales faced death a hundred times from hunger and thirst and exhaustion and treachery. And they told me, too, of the men who have made French Colonial history; of le Boeuf, de Mores, le Fouquot, Laperrine, and many another gallant gentleman whose bones, bleached and polished, have made landmarks for passing caravans. Often in the north I have stood and looked down the great invisible roads that lead south, the never-ending roads that each in their turn seemed to lead to Timbuktu or another of her great sister sentinels of the Southern Sahara, and I longed to travel those roads, those fiery roads that lead into the arms of the sun, that bruise the feet and heal the souls of their pilgrims, where one's travel mates are the jackal, the scorpion, and the vulture-grim undertakers. And one day, Inshallah, I will, for it is His INTRODUCTION country, and He calls His pilgrims in due season But all roads lead to Timbuktu. There is the southern road, the easiest one, the road of the great waterways, of the Senegal and Niger rivers, whose first tracks lay faintly before me on a wet nightmare of an afternoon in late December last at the Liverpool docks. The first landmarks slipped by imperceptibly -the grey blight of the Mersey as the S.S. Prahsu chugged her way to the open sea; the buffeting round the Bay; the long, lazy days, growing warmer and bluer, as we slipped down the African coast, past the Canaries, looking in at Las Palmas and Teneriffe-whose Casino has reason to rise up and call me blessed-into the Tropic of Capricorn, where everyone suddenly blossomed out white as the snowdrops just beginning to show their heads in England, while the days grew more relentlessly blue and golden, till on the bluest and hottest afternoon of all we sighted Dakar.