55^ 



NA TURE 



{April 1 6, 1885 



be a task of truly national importance, and one which 

 must sooner or later be undertaken. It is a task befitting 

 the ambition of an enlightened statesman. The Minister 

 who shall succeed in the task will leave behind him in 

 the memories of the nation a monument more enduring 

 than marble. 



TIMBUKTU 

 Timbuktu : Rcisc durch Marokko, die Sahara und den 



Sudan. Von Dr. Oskar Lenz. 2 vols. (Leipzig, 



1884.) 

 A S we have already intimated, Dr. Lenz is about to 

 set out on a new expedition, the purpose of which 

 is to explore the unknown region lying between the upper 

 waters of the Nile and the northern bend of the Congo. 

 The reputation of a scientific explorer already earned 

 by Dr. Lenz through his researches in the Ogoway 

 basin will be much enhanced by the present work, em- 

 bodying the results of a very successful expedition to 

 North-West Africa, undertaken in the years 1879-S0 on 

 behalf of the German African Society. His original 

 commission was restricted to a visit to Marokko, chiefly 

 with a view to a more thorough survey of the Atlas high- 

 lands than had hitherto been effected by recent travellers 

 in that still little known region. But the sanction of the 

 Society was easily obtained to extend the field of his 

 operations, so as, if possible, to embrace the still less 

 known section of the Sahara lying between Marokko and 

 the Niger. Timbuktu, the southern terminus of the 

 caravan routes across this part of the desert, thus became 

 the main goal of the expedition. The famous " Queen 

 of the Wilderness " had been reached during the present 

 century only by three European travellers — Major Laing 

 in 1S26, Rent? CaiHe" in 1828, and Barth in 1853. To 

 these illustrious names must now be added that of Oskar 

 Lenz, who not only entered the place on July 1, 1880, 

 mainly by a new route from the north, but also for the 

 first time made his way thence westwards through the 

 Fulah and Negro States of Moassina (Massina) and 

 Bambara down the Senegal river to the Atlantic coast at 

 St. Louis, capital of the French possessions in Sene- 

 gambia. Hence the most important result of the journey 

 has been to show that Timbuktu, hitherto regarded as 

 practically inaccessible to Europeans, may be reached 

 both through Marokko from the north and through the 

 Senegal basin from the west. 



It will be thus seen that the expedition naturally com- 

 prises two distinct sections — Marokko and the Atlas 

 ranges as far as the Draa basin, which are exhaustively 

 dealt with in the first volume ; the western Sahara and 

 Sudan described in the second volume, which moreover 

 contains some valuable supplementary matter on the 

 French settlements in Senegambia and on the physical 

 constitution of the Sahara, besides an extremely interest- 

 ing account of the present political and social relations in 

 Timbuktu. Dr. Lenz travelled with a very small suite, 

 limited to his interpreters, Haj Ali Butaleb and Christobal 

 Benitez, and his trusty Marokkan attendant Kaddur. But, 

 thanks partly to a letter of recommendation from Muley 

 Hassan, Sultan of Marokko, partly to the character 

 which he assumed of a Mussulman physician, he managed 

 to pass without much serious risk through the turbulent 



and fanatical Arab, Berber, Fulah, and Negro tribes 

 encountered along the route. Hence his conclusion, 

 shared in by some other experienced explorers, that single 

 travellers hampered by a minimum of impedimenta are 

 like])- to prove more successful in Africa than elaborately 

 equipped expeditions, at least where the object is mere 

 raphical discovery rather than extensive biological 

 and ethnographic collections. 



From the observations made at various points in recent 

 times it has become more and more evident that the 

 Sahara can no longer be regarded as having been a 

 marine basin at least since the early Tertiary epoch. The 

 theory may be said to have received its coup de grfi.ee 

 from Dr. Lenz, who plainly shows that the whole of the 

 western section traversed by him is not a depression, as 

 has been assumed, but an irregular plateau standing in 

 the north at a mean elevation of from 800 to 1000 feet, 

 and even at Taudeni, its lowest level, still maintaining an 

 altitude of 400 or 500 feet above the Atlantic. The sur- 

 face is varied with stony and sandy tracts, the so-called 

 "areg" or " igidi," which have nothing in common with 

 marine sedimentary deposits, but have, in fact, been pro- 

 duced by the weathering of sandstone, quartz, and car- 

 boniferous limestones, which appear to be the prevailing 

 formations. It is thus evident that this part of the desert 

 has been dry land for vast ages, and the same conclusion 

 must be inferred from the numerous dried-up water- 

 courses, whose deep channels are distinctly the effect of 

 erosion. These wadies, many of which seem to have 

 been flooded within the last few thousand years, radiate 

 from the central highlands north and north-east to the 

 Mediterranean, east to the Nile, south to the Tsad and 

 Niger, west to the Atlantic. Hence down to compara- 

 tively recent times the Sahara was a well-watered and 

 wooded region thickly inhabited by agricultural and pas- 

 toral communities, themselves the descendants or suc- 

 cessors of still more primitive peoples, the contemporaries 

 of Palaeolithic and Neolithic man in other parts of the 

 globe. In the Taudeni district, about 20° N., under the 

 meridian of Timbuktu, Dr. Lenz discovered some imple- 

 ments of hard greenstone well worked and polished, and 

 similar objects have also been found by Gerhard Rohlfs 

 as far west as the Kufara oasis south of Tripolitana. 

 The Asiatic camel is here a comparatively recent in- 

 truder, preceded by the Garamantian war-horse and by 

 the elephant, trained also to war by the native Numidians 

 and Phoenician Carthaginians. The crocodile even still 

 survives in many of the pools and lakelets here and there 

 marking the course of mighty streams, which formerly 

 sent their perennial floods down to the surrounding 

 marine basins. 



Apart from possible cosmic influences, our author at- 

 tributes the great change that has taken place within the 

 historic period, not with Peschel to the dry north-east 

 Polar winds, which in the Sahara yield to the prevailing 

 northern and north-western atmospheric currents, but 

 largely to the reckless destruction of the woodlands which 

 at one time covered vast tracts in this now arid and 

 treeless region. With the vegetation disappeared the 

 moisture ; all the large fauna became extinct, and the 

 settled populations were succeeded by nomad tribes of 

 Berber (Hamitic) stock, joined later on by Semites from 

 the Arabian Peninsula. 



