Iberian Conquest : 137 



Africa. Here, over the years, his navigators were destined to learn 

 something about the character of the ocean. As far as the Canaries, 

 and even as far as Cape Verde, in most seasons of the year both the 

 tide and the currents would be favorable to his vessels on the out- 

 ward passage. The difficulty would be encountered on their return. 

 Between the Canaries and Cape Verde there would be the handicap 

 and the hazard of the "harmattan." This whole strip of coast forms the 

 western boundary of the Sahara desert and is one long succession of 

 sand banks interrupted only where the Senegal River enters the sea 

 and where the present French port of St. Louis is located. The har- 

 mattan is a wind that blows to sea having crossed the Sahara from 

 the northeast or east. When it is well established it carries with it the 

 dust and the sand of the Sahara. In its extreme form it is a seagoing 

 sandstorm. 



There are excellent technical descriptions of the harmattan but they 

 sound overdrawn until one has had the actual experience of taking a 

 sailing vessel through such a wind as I did when I took Kin\ajou 

 from the Canaries to Dakar in 1929. This coast is notoriously difficult 

 at any time. There are no satisfactory harbors, even for a small ves- 

 sel. There are occasionally periods when enormous swells, technically 

 known as "breakers," sweep in from the ocean upon the coast. Should 

 a vessel happen to come to grief along the coast, there are no facilities 

 and not even water. The coast is largely deserted and the tribesmen, 

 even in our day, have proved inordinately hostile. We were told at 

 Dakar of a number of cases of European travelers — both by sea and 

 by air — having been killed or tortured. When the harmattan is blow- 

 ing operating a vessel along the coast is something like being caught 

 in an English Channel fog except that, in this case, the wind is dry 

 and not wet and the obscuring particles are dust and not vapor. Natu- 

 rally, we kept far ofifshore to give ourselves as much sea room as 

 possible but even there the harmattan pursued us. There was a murky 

 half-light and even at high noon the sun was nothing but a blurred 

 redness in the sky and it was impossible to take an accurate observa- 

 tion. Everything dried out and filled with grit and sand. Even 

 though the sand was of a very fine texture, it kept accumulating on 

 deck and every few hours we would have to sweep it up and shovel 

 it overboard. 



Charles Darwin when he was sailing in the Beagle encountered 

 one form of harmattan. He found in it material for scientific observa- 

 tion and left in his journal an interesting account of this strange 

 phenomenon. 



