"You see," said Captain Morhange to me fifteen days later, "you are
much better informed about the ancient routes through the Sahara than
you have been willing to let me suppose, since you know of the
existence of the two Tadekkas. But the one of which you have just
spoken is the Tadekka of Ibn-Batoutah, located by this historian
seventy days from Touat, and placed by Schirmer, very plausibly, in
the unexplored territory of the Aouelimmiden. This is the Tadekka by
which the Sonrhaï caravans passed every year, travelling by Egypt.
"My Tadekka is different, the capital of the veiled people, placed by
Ibn-Khaldoun twenty days south of Wargla, which he calls Tadmekka. It
is towards this Tadmekka that I am headed. I must establish Tadmekka
in the ruins of Es-Souk. The commercial trade route, which in the
ninth century bound the Tunisian Djerid to the bend the Niger makes at
Bourroum, passed by Es-Souk. It is to study the possibility of
reestablishing this ancient thoroughfare that the Ministries gave me
this mission, which has given me the pleasure of your companionship."
"You are probably in for a disappointment," I said. "Everything
indicates that the commerce there is very slight."
"Well, I shall see," he answered composedly.
This was while we were following the unicolored banks of a salt lake.
The great saline stretch shone pale-blue, under the rising sun. The
legs of our five mehara cast on it their moving shadows of a darker
blue. For a moment the only inhabitant of these solitudes, a bird, a
kind of indeterminate heron, rose and hung in the air, as if
suspended from a thread, only to sink back to rest as soon as we had
passed.
I led the way, selecting the route, Morhange followed. Enveloped in a
bernous, his head covered with the straight chechia of the Spahis, a
great chaplet of alternate red and white beads, ending in a cross,
around his neck, he realized perfectly the ideal of Father Lavigerie's
White Fathers.
After a two-days' halt at Temassinin we had just left the road
followed by Flatters, and taken an oblique course to the south. I have
the honor of having antedated Fourcau in demonstrating the importance
of Temassinin as a geometrical point for the passage of caravans, and
of selecting the place where Captain Pein has just now constructed a
fort. The junction for the roads that lead to Touat from Fezzan and
Tibesti, Temassinin is the future seat of a marvellous Intelligence
Department. What I had collected there in two days about the
disposition of our Senoussis enemies was of importance. I noticed that
Morhange let me proceed with my inquiries with complete indifference.