Various
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452
SNOW-STORM IN THE SAHARA
NOTES FROM THE JOURNAL OF A MILITARY SURGEON
When it was determined by the French government in the spring of 1847, to undertake several military expeditions simultaneously into the deserts to the south of Algeria, it was my lot to accompany the column of General Cavaignac, both in a medical and scientific capacity. The western route, being the most difficult and dangerous, was that assigned to him. He was to penetrate the hitherto unexplored regions traversed by the Hamian-garabas—a powerful tribe, who could bring 2000 horsemen into the field, and among whom the various tribes that had at different times sworn allegiance to the French government always found willing allies whenever they chose to break their treaties and throw off the yoke. He was to destroy every village throughout this region that refused submission; and thus it was hoped that the retreats of Abd-el-Kader might be cut off, and that by a speedy termination of the war, the country might become settled, and its commerce be restored.
We were a motley and grotesque-enough-looking caravan; for our six battalions of infantry and four squadrons of cavalry were accompanied by 3000 camels laden with provisions and attended by Arab drivers, besides 500 mules carrying water-barrels, and cacolets—jointed arm-chairs—for the sick. It was not deemed desirable to observe the strictest military regularity in our march; so that French uniforms and Arab burnooses, military chargers, camels of the desert, and pack-saddled mules travelled side by side, pretty much as fancy dictated.
It was nearly three weeks before we reached the enemy's country. We had meanwhile met with the usual adventures incident to these regions. We had set fire to the forests of the Little Atlas Mountains, and been obliged to raise our camp, and fly in terror from the conflagration. We had crossed the dreary solitudes of Goor and Shott, through which our daily march had been enlivened by songs, or beguiled by listening to the wild legends of our Arab guides; and night after night we had encamped, like the vagabond tribes of Sahara, either round the mouths of wells, or without water in the open plains, each man receiving a scanty supply from the barrels, while the beasts were left to bear their thirst as they could. But now, after passing the basins of the Shott, and gaining the slight elevation beyond, we entered on a tract of desert as yet untrodden by European feet, and met with trials of a nature the least of all expected.
The wide wastes which lay before us appeared uniform and level as far as the eye could reach, but somewhat diversified by verdant patches of halfa (coarse grass of the desert), and by deceitful appearances of sheets of water, produced by the reflection of the light in the undulating vapours rising from the burning sand. In the distance, something like blue waves appeared: it was part of the great Atlas chain; but close at hand, to our right, was a long line of dunes. These eminences, smooth and sterile as marble domes, were apparently as solid too; but we knew that, if the desert wind should blow, they would be shaken into moving clouds of sand, overwhelming all before them.
Our column proceeded in silence. The soft sand yielded no echo to the tread. Every one appeared thoughtful and abstracted. This place has terrors even for the Arabs; they tell a thousand stories of the Pass of Sidi-Mohammed-el-Aoori: it was there, in times remote, that great armies were overpowered and slain by hostile bands, or destroyed by the scarcely less merciless elements; there many travellers have disappeared in the storm, or fallen under the hand of the murderer. It is the 'gate' of the desert; and the tutelar genii have placed the terrific dunes as a hieroglyphic warning to those who rashly approach. They seem to say, 'here begins the empire of Sterility and Death; enter if thou darest!' Doubtless the Arab tales had some influence on our minds, increasing the well-grounded fears inspired by the natural features of these arid wastes. Several of us mentally repeated that melancholy line from Dante—
Lasciate ogni speranza voi che entrate;2
and not a few pictured to themselves a body of troops visiting these sands half a century later, and finding the bones of Cavaignac's army scattered here and there over the plains.
Hitherto the atmosphere had always been perfectly clear, but now it was thick and cold, the horizon wearing that gray, heavy aspect which in Europe precedes a fall of snow. No one, however, ventured to pronounce this word; it appeared an occurrence so unlikely in the plain, at such a season and under such a latitude. What, then, was our surprise, on awaking on the morning of the 19th of April, to find the tents covered with a thick sheet of snow, and to see the vast expanse of the desert white to the verge of the horizon, like the frozen steppes of Siberia! The general ordered the camp to be raised immediately, for the bivouac afforded very scanty materials for fire, and he hoped there might be wood in the mountains if he could reach them. The snow continued to fall in large flakes; the troops, anxious and sorrowful, described a thousand circuits and made a thousand useless turnings, for our Arab guides were utterly at fault. During three or four months previous to the expedition, Cavaignac had been selecting and retaining as guides whatever Saharians he could find acquainted with that part of the desert he intended to traverse. The Arabs are gifted with remarkable dexterity in steering without compass, recognising a footstep imperceptible to the common eye, scenting the water at a distance, and finding their way by marks which would escape the most observant European. A Saharian once affirmed to Colonel Daumas: 'I am not considered remarkably sharp-sighted, but I can distinguish a goat from a sheep at the distance of a day's journey; and I know some who smell the smoke of a pipe, or of broiled meat, at thirty miles! We all know each other by the track of our feet in the sand, for no one tribe walks like another, nor does a wife leave the same footprint as an unmarried woman. If a hare has passed, we know by its footprint whether it is male or female, and, in the latter case, whether it is with young. If we see the stone of a date, we know the particular tree that produced it.'
Our conductors, though not pretending to all this sagacity, were nevertheless far in advance of some of us who proudly called ourselves 'old Africans,' and considered ourselves wonderfully expert in tracking the desert paths. But now the landmarks on which they depended had disappeared beneath the snow; and the atmosphere was so surcharged with it, that the mountain summits could no longer be descried. At length the guides abandoned the hopeless effort, and declared that they had entirely lost the way, and knew not in what direction to proceed. At this juncture, Cavaignac, remembering that the mountains had appeared due south on the preceding evening, seized his compass, and boldly ordered the troops in that direction. It was the only hope; but the march became so fatiguing, and the natives gave so little encouragement to the expectation of finding the mountains wooded, that a halt was ordered, and a bivouac on the snowy plain.
Many were the miseries that attended this encampment. The rattling of arms was heard on every side, for the soldiers were shivering to such a degree that they could not hold their guns steadily. What would they not now have given for some of the wood they had so wantonly destroyed in the forests of the Tell! But the bivouac was not even supplied with chiah—one of the commonest plants in Sahara, having a ligneous root, which had hitherto served us for fuel when everything else failed. Nothing was to be found but halfa, green, and steeped in snow; and the most skilful kindlers succeeded only in amusing themselves for a time with poor, little fires, that emitted more smoke than flame. The men, of course, could not make their soup; but the general ordered them rations of biscuit and coffee. For my own part, not being able to make a fire of wet halfa, I was looking disconsolately at a bit of biscuit, and a little morsel of cheese, which was to compose my dinner, when Lieutenant N– sent word that his fire-makers had been more successful, and that they offered me a corner. In a few minutes, I sat down to two boiled eggs, which appeared delicious. Meanwhile, the night drew on. The soldier's bed out-of-doors is a sheepskin laid on the bare ground, under a tent so small that he cannot stand upright in it. Now, as the earth was very damp, those who did not take the precaution of choosing a little mound, and removing a portion of the wet soil, soon found themselves literally in the mud, and were obliged to get up, and walk about all night.
The snow continued to fall thick and fast, the thermometer marking 7 degrees below the freezing-point during the night. Some days before, it had been 125 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun; so that we were doomed, as in the Purgatory of Dante—
A sofferir tormenti caldi e geli;
from which, by the way, Milton has obviously borrowed his idea of infernal torment:
—– And feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infixed, and frozen round,
Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.
At the sound of the morning watch-gun, the camp presented a most distressing spectacle. The Arabs and negroes of the convoy were lying motionless in the open air, rolled in their burnooses. Many of these poor creatures were but lightly clad, and had the lower limbs entirely naked. They were so benumbed and stupified with cold, that they refused to rise and load the camels; they begged to be allowed to lie still and die in peace. The cattle also were in a sad condition, not only from cold, but hunger; for the snow-covered ground afforded them no pasture. As part of the provisions had been damaged, it was now asked in dismay, what would become of the army if the beasts should perish? The recollection of the disaster at Boo-Taleb, where the column of General Levasseur left so many men in the snow, occurred to the stoutest hearts. But even darker shades mingled in the prospects of our troops; for 'General Levasseur,' said they, 'was only thirty miles from a post occupied by French troops, and the neighbouring tribes raised and reanimated those whom they found alive, though benumbed on the plain; but we, in the midst of the desert, far from any human dwelling, what will become of us? Hunger, thirst, and the enemy, will soon finish the remains of our unfortunate army.'
But the officers are on foot, setting the example of vigorous exertion, and striving to comfort and encourage the men; while the calm and quiet prudence of the general inspires every one with confidence in endeavouring to obey his orders, as the only hope of deliverance. We begin our march: the snow is now falling only at intervals; it lies two feet deep in the hollow plains, and above a foot on the level and rising ground.
Some of the men, however, remained as if nailed to the soil—not only their limbs benumbed, but their mental energies so paralysed as to be incapable of acting on the physical; the mind inaccessible to moral incentives, and the body insensible to the influence of outward stimulants. By and by they found energy to beg that they might be hoisted on the arm-chairs; but this was peremptorily refused. Since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, and the recent work of Dr Shrimpton on the disaster at Boo-Taleb, every one knows the consequence of indulging this deceitful stupor.
But we found we must do more than talk; so we set the drums and trumpets about the ears of the sleepers, and made their comrades shake them with all their might. It was not till after an hour's march, in which coaxing, scolding, and pushing, stimulants to laughter and provocatives to anger, had been incessantly employed in turn, that the vital powers appeared to be in tolerably full play. There was one man more obstinate than the rest, who, in order to get a place on one of the cacolets, threatened every minute to lie down on the ground. I slid among the ranks, and began telling one of his comrades all the horrible stories I knew of those who, yielding to sleep in the cold, had awaked no more; adding, with affected indifference: 'I am afraid we shall have to leave some of our poor men as a supper for the hyenas to-night. There are two or three of them so benumbed and stupified, that they will perish if they halt for a single instant.' In a few minutes, I learned that the soldier had done begging to be carried; he said his strength was returning.
In the midst of so much human distress, it seems almost like trifling to advert to the poor swallows. On awaking in the morning, I had found two under my bed-cover. They allowed themselves to be taken, and either could not, or would not fly away when I tried to banish them. So I put them in the hood of my cloak, and allowed it to fall down my back, while I raised over my head that of the ample burnoose which I wear in the cold above all my other garments. The swallows travelled thus for several hours, and gradually recovered in their warm nest. When the sun emitted some genial rays, I took them out, and set them free. They fluttered for some time round my horse, uttering a little cry, which I took for an expression of gratitude before taking flight into the mountains.
Other companies of them had taken shelter under the matted hair which hangs from the flanks of the camel; and when the pitiless driver persisted in dislodging them, they departed with a plaintive cry, to seek an asylum with a camel whose driver was more hospitable. A sentinel had found one in his pocket during the night, but it paid dearly for its lodging—he roasted it for his supper! These poor birds had fled from the rigours of a European winter, to find cold as severe in the heart of Africa. Alas! how many of us felt that, like the swallows, we had exiled ourselves to improve our fortunes, and were now in danger of perishing. How gladly would we have resigned all our hopes of glory and advantage for the fireside of the modest paternal dwelling!
But before night we encamped in the shelter of the mountains; the chiah, which grew in abundance around us, enabled us to kindle fires, and a salutary reaction took place in the spirits of the troops. According to a common practice of mine, I invited to supper the man whose life I had saved by frightening him into exertion. After swallowing a glass of warm wine, well sugared, and spiced with tincture of cinnamon, he licked his lips, sucked the edges of his glass, and said: 'Thank ye, doctor; but for you I should have been dead,' with a naïveté which I can never forget, and which even now mingles pleasing associations with the thoughts of those days of suffering.
The next day nearly 200 of the men were affected with partial or total blindness. Some had merely a sensation like fatigue of the visual organs, with heaviness, watering, and inflammation of the conjunctive membrane. But with others the pain was acute, the eye much inflamed, and the cornea covered with minute ulcerations. Those who were more slightly affected, marched like persons enveloped in a cloud of smoke, and trying to see their way out of it; they took a few steps with their eyes shut, then half opened them with evident pain to reconnoitre the ground before them, and quickly closed them again. But many had for the time wholly lost their sight; they stumbled on the tufts of halfa, and rolled on the ground, so that we were obliged to hoist them on the cacolets. The general, in a state of much uneasiness, called a council of such members of the military corps of health as were found in his column. Some were of opinion that this epidemic was occasioned by the sudden cold, others that it was attributable to the smoke of the chiah; but the truth is, that, both before and after this period, we had experienced nearly as great extremes of heat by day and cold by night without any such consequences, and that some, who had not approached the chiah fires were as severely affected as those who had. It was concluded, with every appearance of reason, that the real cause was the dazzling light reflected from the snow during our march on the 20th of April. I recollect one artilleryman, who was conducting his gun, when suddenly, as the sun broke out afresh, he stopped, rubbed his eyes, turned his head in every direction, and exclaimed: 'I cannot see; I am quite blind!' Although we had not expected snow in the plains of Sahara, the general had anticipated the effects of the reflection of light from the sand, and the possibility of small particles of it getting into the eyes; and with this view each man had been provided with a green gauze veil. But the soldier dislikes anything out of his regular routine as much as the most ignorant peasant; so when the order was given that these veils should be worn,3 the soldiers wore them to be sure—in their pockets. I insisted that each man should fasten his on his helmet, and this, too, was done; but it was allowed to fly like a streamer behind, instead of being drawn over the eyes. Happily the epidemic was but temporary, and none permanently suffered the loss of sight as the punishment of his folly.