The ring of colonies, regencies, protectorates, spheres of influence, military districts, and mandated territories which comprise France’s colonial empire on the continent of Africa have the Sahara for their core. Their front windows overlook the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the Senegal, the Niger, and the Congo, but in every case their back doors open upon the desert. The linking of these distant and disconnected possessions, which have so long beckoned to each other across the enormous gulf, is, then, the ultimate aim of the French empire-builders; and every move which France has made on the checker-board of Africa during the last half-century or more has had in view such a consolidation. In other words, it has long since been realized by the government at Paris that the Sahara must be made a means of communication rather than of obstruction if the republic’s vast holdings in the Dark Continent are to be an empire in anything save name.

No nation was ever confronted with a task of such titanic dimensions nor one calling for such patience, energy, and courage; not England in India, nor Russia in Siberia, nor the United States beyond the Mississippi. But the reward is commensurate with the task, for if France succeeds in subjugating the Sahara, and thereby bringing into easy communication with each other those of her possessions which abut upon it, she will have created a continuous and homogeneous overseas domain, approximately equivalent in area to the continent of Europe, sweeping almost without a break from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Guinea and the Congo, from the Atlantic to the valley of the Nile.

Though the French had established themselves at the mouth of the Senegal about the same time that the Dutch founded their colony of New Netherland at the mouth of the Hudson, it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that they awoke to a realization of the opportunities which awaited them across the Middle Sea. The first step on the road to empire was the conquest of Algeria, which may be said to have been concluded by the submission of Abd-el-Kader in 1847. But even then France did not become alive to her imperial destiny, the colonization of the newly acquired territory across the Mediterranean at first appearing as little more than a means toward the extinction of pauperism in the mother-country. Not until the tribes of the Oued Rir rose in revolt was France introduced to the desert. Laghouat was seized by a flying column in 1852. The tricolor was raised over Ourgla the following year. In 1854 the victory of Meggarine brought about the submission of Touggourt. As the frontier had now been pushed nearly four hundred miles south of the Mediterranean, the work of sinking wells to revive certain of the decaying oases was immediately undertaken and met with conspicuous success. France was beginning to get acquainted with the desert, which was found to be not quite the utter void that had been supposed. In some parts oases dotted its surface, and its surface was crisscrossed by the routes of caravans, which in the old days had carried on a thriving trade between the Sudan and the cities of the Barbary Coast. Frenchmen of enterprise and vision began to see that the Sahara offered possibilities after all, and steps were taken toward a still wider occupation.

This movement was temporarily halted by the disastrous war with Prussia and the collapse of the Second Empire, but the echoes of the Commune had scarcely died away before the empire-builders were again at work, building up in Africa a new and greater France. In 1873 General Gallifet entered El Golea. And in 1881 the proclamation of a protectorate over Tunisia, which Italy had earmarked for her own, gave the world its first hint of the scope of France’s African ambitions.

Meantime a similar spirit of expansion was manifesting itself along the southern borders of the future colonial empire. Guinea and the Ivory Coast had been annexed in 1843. The expeditions of Savargnan de Brazza in the late seventies and early eighties won for France the vast territory which is now known as French Equatorial Africa. In 1887 the Binger expedition gave a decided stimulus to French enterprise in West Africa by linking together the hinterlands of Senegambia and the Ivory Coast. French gunboats were a-prowl up the Niger and the Senegal seeking further opportunities to plant the tricolor. Thenceforward the occupation of the interior was swift and uninterrupted, a long series of expeditions pushing the French frontiers northward and eastward until they occupied the whole bend of the Niger and flowed around the British colony of Nigeria to join, at Lake Tchad, with the French Congo advancing from the south. From all sides the French colonies, north, west, and south, were pushing forward in a simultaneous advance. The foundations of this vast colonial structure having thus been completed, the corner-stone was officially laid in 1890, when, by the signing of the Anglo-French Convention, England formally recognized France’s claim to all that portion of the Sahara lying between the Algerian-Tunisian frontiers on the north and a line drawn from Say, a town on the Niger, to Lake Tchad on the south. When, by this treaty, France secured her claim to the Sahara, Lord Salisbury remarked dryly that “the French cock seems to enjoy scratching in the sand.”

Though the territory lying within the great bend of the Niger, embraced in what is now the French Sudan, was occupied in 1893, and though two years later the tricolor was hoisted over the mud-walled citadel of Timbuktu, the great caravan-center and trade-mart of the south, it was not until the very close of the nineteenth century that the central Sahara was crossed by Europeans. This remarkable journey was made by Fernand Foureau, the greatest of all the long line of French African explorers, who, setting out from Algeria with a small military escort, succeeded in reaching Zinder, an important trade center on the Nigerian frontier, in November, 1899.

Foureau’s achievement was of immense value to France, not merely because it demonstrated that the desert could be crossed from one edge to the other, but because it proved the truth of the explorer’s oft-repeated assertion that the first step in the conquest and pacification of the Sahara was to break the power of the great Touareg confederation. These robber tribes occupying the oases which stretch from Ghadames in the east to Tuat in the west, formed a cordon which stretched right across the desert south of Algeria, completely masking the southern frontiers of that colony. The Touareg were to the central Sahara what the Sioux and the Apaches were to our Western plains. From their inaccessible strongholds amid the hills and oases of the mid-desert, they kept watch upon the trade-routes, levied blackmail upon or plundered caravans, murdered explorers and pioneers, sacked frontier towns, and preyed on the trans-Saharan trade as the Barbary corsairs had preyed on the Mediterranean merchantmen. Consequently the Sahara was in a constant state of turmoil and insecurity; theft, pillage, and massacre were so common as scarcely to evoke comment. Armed to the teeth, mounted on their swift méhari, bands of these masked riders would wipe out a whole caravan or swoop down upon some defenseless oasis-town, regaining their distant desert strongholds long before a force could be organized to pursue them. Fearless, arrogant, treacherous, and inhumanly cruel, the only law they recognized was that of superior force. Until the great robber confederation was smashed France could not hope to solve the Saharan question. “You will never traverse the Touareg country,” Foureau said in one of his reports, “with any kind of security except by depending on force and by establishing all along the route well-manned positions, the garrisons of which will police the road throughout. This you will have to do if you wish to open up communications between the Sudan and Algeria.”

The government at Paris accepted his advice and proceeded to the task with the utmost energy. A battalion of the Foreign Legion, transformed into mounted infantry by mounting the men on mules, formed one of the flying columns. Other punitive expeditions were composed of native troops, who were provided with méhari as speedy as the racing dromedaries ridden by the Touareg themselves, and accompanied by batteries of light mountain-guns. For, when the French once determine to do a thing, they usually do it well. From the outposts in Algeria, in Senegal, in the Sudan, the columns pressed forward relentlessly into the sandy wastes. The attacking hordes of tribesmen were mowed down by the withering fire of rifles and machine-guns; the strongholds which the Touareg had deemed impregnable hastily capitulated when they heard the terrifying whine and crash of the French shells. Soon the redoubtable Touareg confederacy was completely subjugated, its principal centers were occupied in force, a highly efficient police force was recruited from the tribesmen themselves—just as Porfirio Díaz recruited his famous rurales nacionales from outlaws and bandits—and travel was made possible, if not altogether safe, from one border of the Sahara to the other.

Shortly after France’s African empire had been completely reorganized in 1902, the effective area of French control in the western Sahara was increased to the extent of some 150,000 square miles by inducing the Moorish emirs of the Adrar, a fertile but sparsely inhabited region lying to the north of the Senegal, between the sand-wastes of El Juf and the Atlantic, to place themselves under the direct supervision of French officials. In the following year these regions were consolidated into a single territory to which was given the historic name of Mauretania.

France set the capstone to her African empire on March 30, 1912, when His Shereefian Majesty the Sultan Mulai Yusef, in his palace at Fez, set his signature to the document which formally accepted a French protectorate over Morocco. By that single stroke of the pen was added to the overseas dominions under the tricolor a territory larger than France itself. Be it clearly understood, that the control of Morocco was as vital a fact in the French scheme for acquiring the hegemony of Northwest Africa as the annexation of California was to the dominance of the North American continent by the United States. France’s style was cramped, to make use of a popular expression, as long as Morocco remained independent. Had the Shereefian Empire been a strong, well-governed country, the situation would have been different; but it was, on the contrary, a hotbed of disorder, unrest, intrigue, and corruption. To have attempted the pacification of the Sahara and the reëstablishment of the old trade-routes, with the hinterland of Morocco offering a secure refuge and recruiting-ground for all the lawless and unruly elements of desert life, would have been to court endless difficulties if not to invite complete disaster. For centuries Morocco had been a thorn in the flesh of all those European nations having political interest in Africa; this source of irritation and infection must be got rid of if France’s elaborate and carefully worked out plans for the consolidation of her African possessions were to succeed. That her action was justified has been proved beyond cavil by the striking success which has marked her administration of Morocco during the past dozen years.

The most recent additions to France’s African domain were acquired at the close of the World War, when Germany unconditionally surrendered her overseas possessions to the Allies. When the spoils of war came to be apportioned, France obtained control of about two thirds of the former German colony of Togo, and nearly the whole of Cameroon (both of which adjoined her possessions on the Gulf of Guinea), under mandates granted by the League of Nations.

Omitting the little enclave of French Somaliland on the East Coast and the great island colony of Madagascar, France’s African empire to-day consists of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, French West Africa (comprising the colonies of Senegal, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, the French Sudan, and the Upper Volta, and the civil territories of Mauretania and the Niger), French Equatorial Africa (in which are embraced the colonies of Gabun, Middle Congo, Ubanghi-Shari, and Tchad), and the mandated territories of Togo and Cameroon.

Every step in France’s African policy during the last half-century has been as carefully considered as the moves in a championship chess-game. The ultimate effect on the grand plan of every military movement, every expedition, every rectification of a frontier, every treaty, has been meticulously weighed and pondered in advance. They have all been parts of a sagacious and brilliantly executed scheme; nothing has been left to chance. There has been none of the “muddling through” which characterized the British policy in South Africa; little of the stupidity and blundering which marked our winning of the West. The French conquest has been marred by no petty or selfish or contradictory aims; it has been hampered by no irresolution, no moving forward and then turning back; energy in one quarter has not been counteracted by indifference in another; patriotism has not been subordinated to politics.

Since the conquest of Algeria, moreover, France’s course of empire in Africa has been obstructed by no great colonial wars and few wars of any kind; she has had no Indian Mutinies, no Adowas, no Omdurmans, no Modder Rivers. Wherever possible she has employed a process of pacific penetration—winning the confidence of the tribes instead of threatening them, granting broad measures of autonomy to the great sheikhs and the grand caïds, flattering their vanity with salutes, rewards, and decorations. The social gulf which separates the British officials in Egypt, the Sudan, and India from the native chieftains is unknown in French Africa, for the French tolerate neither racial discrimination nor the color-line.

Everywhere—north, south, and west—the advance has been gradual and general. The black-coated cabinet ministers in Paris, the administrators in the various colonial capitals, and the helmeted pioneers scattered along the frontiers have worked toward a common end, the pioneers keeping their superiors constantly informed of every fluctuation in local conditions and native sentiment, just as the intelligence officers of an army in the field relay the information they have gathered to the high command. Let it be added that no nation has been more faithfully served by its explorers and pioneers than France. Henri Duveyrier, the first of the French explorers, whose great journey into the Sahara dates from 1859; Victor Largeau, who reached Ghadames in 1875; Savargnan de Brazza, whose name will always be linked with the creation of the French Congo; General Faidherbe, founder of the French Sudan; General Dodds, conqueror of Dahomey; Montiel, who won for France the great country around Lake Tchad; Fernand Foureau, the hero of the march to Zinder—these, and many like them, were to French Africa what Lewis, Clarke, Boone, Crockett, and Frémont were to our own frontier. But of the intrepid company of French explorers who have carried the tricolor into the darkest corners of the Dark Continent, Africa has taken a heavy toll. Joubert and Dourneaux-Duperré were assassinated near Ghadames; Lieutenant Palet was murdered at Gurara; Camille Douls laid down his life for France at Tidikelt; the expedition led by Colonel Flatters was ambushed by Touareg in the central Sahara and wiped out to the last man; Louis Say, Lieutenant Lamy, Brière de l’Isle all died by Touareg spear; Coppolani was killed by tribesmen in the conquest of Mauretania; Colonel Bonnier was slain at the taking of Timbuktu. Such is the price of empire.

The most gallant and dramatic figure in all this company of courageous men is, however, the least known to fame. I refer to Vicomte Charles de Foucauld—“de Foucauld of the Sahara” as he was known—who left among the wild tribes of the desert a name which has already passed into tradition. A son of the nobility, he lost his parents when he was six and was brought up by his uncle, an old colonel of engineers, from whom he got a taste for the classics. When he left school, while still in his teens, young de Foucauld was a confirmed atheist, a fact which is of special significance in view of his end. Joining a hussar regiment, he saw active service in Algeria, an experience which left him with a deep affection for the common soldier, an affection which his troopers warmly returned. Fighting against the Arabs had imbued him with a keen desire to make a study of the race, and with this in view he obtained leave of absence for the purpose of making a journey into the interior of Morocco, which was then a forbidden country to Europeans. Disguise of some sort was imperative, so, deciding to go as a Jew, he applied himself to the study of Hebrew as well as Arabic. He went in rags and barefoot, apparently the poorest of the poor, and was often insulted and stoned; but he always carried in the palm of his left hand a tiny writing-tablet on which he surreptitiously noted all the features of the country or took compass bearings. When he returned to civilization after nearly a year spent in the unknown he had more than doubled the length of routes known and surveyed in the Shereefian Empire and brought back other topographical data of immense military value.

Some years after his return from Morocco de Foucauld embraced Christianity and became a devout Catholic, eventually resigning from the army in order to become a Trappist monk, a member of that sternly penitential missionary order which devotes itself to the salvation of the heathen. As a monk he lived for a time in Asia Minor, two days’ march from Alexandretta. After spending two years in the study of theology at Rome, he resolved, while in Nazareth, to become a hermit priest. For the field of his labors he chose the Moroccan Sahara, one of the most savage regions in all Africa, as it was one of the least known. His first post was at Beni Abbés, a desert town in the edge of the Grand Erg Occidental, four hundred miles to the southeast of Fez. Here he purchased a few acres of palm-sprinkled sand and built a mud-walled chapel in which he slept. He lived on coarse barley bread, a few dried dates, and “desert tea,” a beverage made from an herb. No European willingly ate twice at his board, and even the negroes whom he redeemed from slavery, though eager to work for him, found his fare too slim. He made no formal conversions, but both French soldiers and natives swarmed about him, knowing that he always stood ready to aid them with money or advice. On one occasion his little church was attended by General (afterward Marshal) Lyautey, who wrote: “A plank was the altar. The decorations were a calico sheet with the picture of Christ on it; two candlesticks on the altar. Very well. I never heard Mass as Father de Foucauld said it. I could have believed myself in the Thebaid. It is one of the things in my life which have moved me most.”

In the spring of 1905 de Foucauld set out on a still more extended journey among the Touareg, eventually establishing himself at Tamanrasset, a village of twenty hearths in the very heart of the Sahara, midway between In Salah and Timbuktu. Here he was alone among the veiled Touareg, “the Forgotten of God,” hundreds of miles from the nearest white man. The place he chose for himself was perhaps the loneliest and most dangerous ever occupied for any length of time by a European. Though the Touareg are suspicious and savagely intolerant of others, the lone priest so completely won their confidence and friendship that in 1913 he took with him to Paris the son of their sheikh.

Then came 1914—“l’année terrible.” The outbreak of the Great War found de Foucauld back among the veiled tribesmen, and although he burned to go to the front as a chaplain or stretcher-bearer, his ecclesiastical superiors urged him to stay at his post, advice which was strongly seconded by the French military authorities, who were well aware that German emissaries were at work stirring up discontent among the tribes of the hinterland. In December, 1916, a Touareg war-party, whooped on by the enemy, decided that de Foucauld would be a valuable hostage and laid plans to attack the mission station, which had been transformed into a rude fort. A traitor gave them the password, the gate was opened, and the Blue-Veiled Ones poured in. The hermit was overpowered, bound hand and foot, and propped against a wall while the place was looted of such poor things as it contained. While the plundering was in progress two natives whom de Foucauld had befriended approached to offer him a word of cheer. Whereupon a blood-drunk Touareg put the muzzle of his rifle to the priest’s head and pulled the trigger. In the words of Mr. Stephen Gwynn, his biographer: “There was no cry or word; gradually the corpse sank down. He had had his will; for many passages in his journals and his letters prove that he aspired to death by violence. That he should have been betrayed would undoubtedly to his strange nature have been welcome; it completed that imitation of Christ which was his life’s work. Soldier and Frenchman, he died uncertain of the war’s issue; Christian priest among the unbelievers, he died without converts made. Yet assuredly he was in his heart convinced that by such means he might make ready the way for others, and he asked no more, he refused to desire more.”

He was buried beneath the shadow of the little church which he had built, in the heart of that Sahara which he knew and loved so well. To paraphrase the lines of Matthew Arnold:

To those observers who may have thought that France’s policy in North Africa is inspired solely by the hope of adding to the military power of the republic, one of de Foucauld’s letters, as quoted by Mr. Gwynn, cannot fail to be of extraordinary interest. It was written only six months before his murder at Tamanrasset.

It would be interesting to know to what extent this strange, wonderful son of France represented the feelings of France as a whole.

After perusing the long list of those who have paid the price of empire with their lives, the thoughtful man may ask whether the reward has justified the sacrifice. The atlas gives the answer. Glance at a map of, say, 1880, and you will find the extent of French occupation marked by a few wedges driven into the coast-line of Northwest Africa, while as for the Sahara, it is merely an expanse of speckled yellow labeled “Unexplored.” But unfold a map of to-day and we find that, barring Libya, Liberia, and a few British and Spanish enclaves along the West Coast, the whole of that portion of Africa lying between the Mediterranean and the Congo, between the Atlantic and the valley of the Nile, is tinted the same color, is overshadowed by the same flag, is ruled by the same nation—and that nation is France. It is one of the most astounding achievements in the history of the world, this building of a colossal empire from savagery and sand.

Were a map of Africa to be superimposed on a map of North America it would be found that in area and dimensions the Sahara Desert very closely corresponds to the United States. Yet it is a singular fact that more misconceptions exist in regard to this vast region, the fringes of which are visited annually by thousands of tourists, than about almost any area on the face of the globe. Doubtless because the makers of maps were so long accustomed to painting the Sahara a speckled yellow, ninety-nine persons out of every hundred visualize it as an illimitable stretch of sun-scorched sand, flat as a floor, quite incapable of supporting life, and utterly destitute of vegetation. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The impression of flatness is an optical illusion. Were a region that is as rugged as, say, New England to be completely stripped of its cities, villages, and farmsteads, its forests, lakes, and streams, its trees and grass, I imagine that, despite the pronounced irregularity of its surface, it would appear to one traveling across it to be a dead flat plain. So it is with the Sahara. In reality it is not flat at all. It has its mountains, its valleys, and its plains. Topographically speaking, it is a region of the most varied surface and irregular relief, broken by lofty table-lands and deep depressions, massive buttes and fantastic crags, vast steppes covered with water-worn pebbles and loose stones, cañons winding between precipitous walls, seas of shifting yellow sand and oases green with forests of date-palms and other fruit-trees. Its surface is still further diversified by numerous and extensive mountain ranges, at least one of which, the Ahaggar, has an area greater than the Alps and several peaks higher than any in the United States east of the Rockies. Yet the children in our public schools are still taught that the Sahara is nothing but a waste of sand, flat as a school-room floor!

From this it will be seen that the Sahara has the makings of much picturesque and interesting scenery if it were properly upholstered. Its deadly monotony is due to a lack of diversity in color rather than to a lack of diversity in surface. The mountains, the plateaus, the crags, and the cañons are all there, but there is nothing to bring them out, to emphasize their presence. Since there is in that vast spaciousness nothing with which to compare them, they appear insignificant, hardly noticeable. Another thing. We of more favored lands are accustomed to what might be described as vertical scenery—trees, crops, church-spires, houses, fences—whereas the scenery of the desert is wholly horizontal. This still further makes for monotony, so, instead of examining the physical features of the country, the eye becomes wearied and is always looking off toward the horizon.

I trust that I have now made it amply clear that the popular conception of the Sahara as an expanse of sand—a conception which motion-pictures and novels of desert life, as well as the illustrations in the popular magazines, have done much to foster—is quite erroneous. There are broad stretches of sand, it is true, the most extensive being the Igidi of Mauretania, the Grand Erg Occidental to the south of Algeria, and the Grand Erg Oriental to the south of Tunisia; but the actual area of pure sand is relatively small, covering only about one tenth of the Sahara’s surface.

The remaining nine tenths of the desert consist of stony, wind-swept plateaus, known as hammada, vast tracts strewn with water-worn pebbles, called serir, and scattered highland regions. Of the latter the most extensive is the Ahaggar, or Hoggar Plateau, which lies in the center of the Sahara, nine hundred miles due south from Algiers. Covering an area considerably greater than that of the Swiss, French, Italian, and Austrian Alps put together, this mass of mountains is dominated by two great peaks, Hikena and Watellen, whose summits during five months of the year are covered with snow. To the northeast of the Ahaggar is the Tasili Plateau, and directly to the east, forming the southwestern boundary of Italian Libya, stretch the Tummo or War Mountains. In the extreme east, near the frontier of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, is the great table-land of Tibesti, with an average height of nearly a mile and a half above sea-level, the volcanic cone of Tussid rising eighty-eight hundred feet into the African blue. On the east and south the highlands of Tibesti run down to connect with the lower ranges of Ennedi and Borku, which merge, in turn, into the rich plains of Darfur and Wadai. In addition to the plateaus and ranges mentioned, there are several disconnected mountain masses, such as the rugged region in Mauretania known as the Adrar of the Iforas, and, to the north of the Nigerian frontier, the Hills of Air.

The country of the sand-dunes, which has provided so many fiction writers and motion-picture directors with highly romantic settings, consists of a broad belt which, starting on the Atlantic seaboard, in the vicinity of Cape Blanco, sweeps in a great arc northward and eastward, completely masking the southern frontiers of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, to the shores of the Gulf of Gabés. That portion of this sand-belt which stretches from the Senegal River to the Moroccan Atlas is generally referred to as the Igidi (the Berber word for sand-dunes); then, to the south of Algeria, comes the region known as the Grand Erg Occidental, separated by a narrow valley at El Golea from the Grand Erg Oriental, which sweeps right across the southern end of Tunisia. The Igidi and the Ergs can best be described as sandy oceans—the simile has been used many times before but I cannot think of a better—with waves of sand instead of water. The dunes of the Eastern Erg, which range in height from sixty to three hundred feet or more, lie in long parallel rows, with a gradual slope to windward and an abrupt descent to leeward, so that, particularly in the gray mists of early morning or at nightfall, they present a striking resemblance to a stormy sea. Generally speaking, the dunes maintain a state of comparative permanency, certain of the larger ones having been given names of their own, though it is by no means unusual for their contours to change almost beyond recognition in a single night under the influence of the wind. The oft-told tales of caravans and armies engulfed in the moving sands may be set down as imaginary, however, save, perhaps, in some instances in the Libyan Desert, where such tragic episodes are known to have occurred.

The investigations of French geologists have completely disproved the theory that the Sahara represents the dried-up bed of what was once a vast inland sea and that its dunes are composed of sand left there at that period. It appears, on the contrary, that the sand, instead of having been deposited by the sea, comes from the stony plateaus of the hammada. The soft Cretaceous sandstone, heated by the sun until it is as hot as the top of a stove, is suddenly chilled at night by rapid radiation. The rock, fractured by the abrupt change from heat to cold, disintegrates; and the sand thus produced, sifted and drifted by the wind, takes the form of dunes. The slightest breeze is enough to make the desert smoke with dust, while a strong wind produces a weird singing of the sands, a peculiarly eery sound which indicates that the dunes themselves are shifting.

The loose particles of sand which cover wide tracts of the Sahara are a cause of acute discomfort not only to the countries lying along the whole north coast of Africa but even to those on the opposite side of the Mediterranean, for the sand-laden wind from the Sahara, known in southern Europe as the sirocco and in Egypt as the khamsin (because during the spring it blows at intervals for about fifty days) frequently affects regions a thousand miles away, covering them with fine red dust.

Though to all intents and purposes waterless so far as rivers are concerned, the Sahara is thickly sprinkled with fertile spots, varying in area from a few acres to hundreds of square miles, where the water comes to the surface in the form of springs or is found in shallow wells. Thanks to the enterprise of the French government and the ability of French engineers, these oases have been greatly expanded during recent years, for experiments have proved that an unlimited supply of aërated water is obtainable from the great reservoirs which underlie the Sahara by the sinking of artesian wells, water generally being found at a maximum depth of two hundred feet. When one is in the midst of the desert, surrounded by blinding white sand-dunes which support no living thing, the very idea of water seems absurd and its existence impossibly remote, yet it is often only a few yards beneath one’s feet. In this fact of a secret water-supply lies the hope of the regeneration of parts at least of the Sahara, for, once it has been introduced to water, this seemingly hopeless region will blossom like the rose.

With the desert we are accustomed to associate the date-palm, of which there are upward of four million in the Algerian oases alone, and without which life in the Sahara would be virtually impossible; for they provide the natives not only with food, but with shelter, fuel, timber, building-materials, and even clothing. But do not get the idea that the soil of the oases is capable of supporting palms alone, for apples, peaches, oranges, lemons, figs, pomegranates, grapes, wheat, barley, and rice are all commonly and successfully grown. So comparatively limited are these areas of great richness and fertility, however, so precious is the land, that it is cultivated with almost pathetic care, the natives grudging even the narrow foot-paths which separate their holdings from those of their neighbors. Yet dates are, and always have been, so much the staple of food and commerce in the Sahara that, instead of computing the size of a village by the number of its inhabitants, it is always spoken of as having so many date-palms.

The eventual conquest of the desert depends not on the success of military expeditions, the establishment of trade-routes, and the building of railways, but rather on the expansion of the present oases and the creation of new ones. Pacification depends on fertilization. The Touareg and Arab nomads will be a source of trouble as long as they can find refuge in the desert, but, like the Indians of our own West, whom they so greatly resemble, they must eventually give way before the steadily advancing line of cultivation, either betaking themselves to remoter regions of the continent or becoming agriculturists themselves. What it comes to, as Mr. L. March Phillips has so aptly put it,⁠[2] is this: the tribes can only be subdued by subduing the desert; the desert can only be subdued by planting oases; and oases can only be planted by sinking wells. When all is said and done, it is not the soldiers but the well-drillers who are the real conquerors of the Sahara.

The French conquest of North Africa has shifted the southern frontier of Europe from the shores of the Mediterranean to the fringes of the Sahara. No longer is the sea a barrier between the continents; it has become a link. It may lash itself into a rage, but its rage is jeered at by the cable, the radio, the airplane, and the great steamers. The desert is now the true divide. And deeper and deeper into the desert the French outposts are being pushed, for the indomitable spirit of adventure—the spirit which led King Louis and his Crusaders to the Holy Land, Champlain to Canada and La Salle down the Mississippi, the armies of Napoleon to the Pyramids, which took Foureau down to Zinder, and de Brazza up the Congo, and Marchand to Fashoda—still runs hot and strong in the blood of France. Everywhere the Touareg raiders are being halted by the harsh “Qui vive?” of the French videttes. French well-drillers and agricultural experts are at work all the way from Libya to the Atlantic. The tribes of the far interior are becoming accustomed to the drone of the airplane and the panting of the motor-car. Twin lines of steel and festoons of copper wire have been flung far into the central wastes. The radio operators of Algeria gossip with their fellows at Lake Tchad and Timbuktu. France is striding southward in seven-league boots, carrying the frontier of civilization with her as she goes. In a much nearer future than most people dream of, her southern boundary will not be the Mediterranean, nor yet the Sahara, but the Equator.