The Saint of the Desert
Prorok, Byron Khun De
458 THE COMMONWEAL March 3, 1926 THE SAINT OF THE DESERT By BYRON KHUN De PROROK IT was in Rene Bazin's Charles de Foucauld that I first read Pere de Foucauld's reproach to Dr. Herrison for...
...At the head were also discovered three ostrich quills...
...Naturally, my conversation with them often turned on the "marabout," and always the response was in penitent love and veneration...
...The indications were sufficiently marked to justify further exploration, so the spring of 1925 saw me planning and ordering special cars and equipment to transport an expedition to the Hoggar...
...He built a hermitage on the summit of Mount Asekrem, a little hut nearly three thousand metres above the sea level, and he climbed down 1,500 feet for drinking water...
...we had had to chart our course by stars and sun and compass...
...De Foucauld had just terminated his Tuareg grammar and dictionary before his death...
...Working the debris through a sieve revealed pieces of silver and beads of cornelian, and on November 18 we reached the first funeral stones...
...They were both soldiers during the great war, and it was Belaid who buried the missionary, with his hands still tied behind him, carrying out the dead man's wish that he be buried where he fell...
...In our later work, we discovered among the freed slaves the negro Paul, who was Pere de Foucauld's only disciple...
...P. de Foucauld...
...The wind of the desert blinded us with sand and dust, and the heat of the day and the hordes of flies drove us nearly mad, but we felt we were on the verge of a considerable discovery...
...The "hermit of the Hoggar" many times expressed himself on this subject...
...With the sense of a great historian and explorer he appreciated the need for research in the heart of the Sahara and the study of the origin of the mysterious white race of the Tuaregs...
...The variation between night and day, even in the most favorable of seasons, averages more than seventy-five degrees, and the temperature at night is uncomfortably close to zero...
...The historians Gautier and Chudeau had mentioned the existence of a great tomb at Abelessa...
...After a lifetime of exploration in the wilds of Morocco and a heroic existence in the Hoggar, the man who completes the canon of the saints of the Sahara fell a victim to the fanatical Tuaregs, inflamed by the insidious propaganda of the enemies of France who saw in him the very heart of French authority and progress in the Sahara...
...Pere de Foucauld's chapel still stands erect, with the little cross he placed above the door still plainly outlined against the Saharan skies, and his spirit still persists in the midst of desolation...
...Under the seat of my car was a large bronze wreath dedicated to Pere de Foucauld and General Laperrine...
...Preliminary investigation revealed eight rooms, and I determined to excavate the most imposing of the series...
...King Amenokal Akhamouk told us that the Tuareg women to this day visit the tomb of the martyr, and, according to their ancient manner, lie across his grave, calling on the dead...
...Amenokal Akhamouk, sultan of the Hoggar, had referred to her as "the mother of all the Tuaregs, from whom we are all descended," many times while we talked...
...Had the Tuaregs been opposed to our work it would probably have fared ill with us, but, fortunately, they believe that the great tumuli-tombs of the Hoggar were built by giants and not by their ancestors, so they did not seek to hinder us, and were willing to allow us to employ members of the various slave castes as laborers...
...Pere de Foucauld was right—great civilizations lie buried in the heart of the Sahara...
...Their names have become legendary...
...How rich his territory was in the field of archaeology we soon learned, for near Tamanrasset we discovered a great tomb...
...The sun was just setting across the towering needlelike peaks as we arrived, and the silence of the desert lay heavily on the dreary scene...
...For many days we worked, removing thousands of worked stones, some of which bore inscriptions in Tifinar...
...His next field was to have been the archaeological exploration of the desert...
...Our supply caravans were three weeks late, and for five days we subsisted on dried beans...
...Following weeks of bitter fighting against all the obstacles the Sahara can place in the way of explorers, we reached Tamanrasset, about 1,800 kilometres from Algiers...
...All these items are significant, as the position of the body, the fringed leather garments, the anklets, bracelets, plumes, and vermilion-painted vestments, and other details correspond to the record given by Herodotus of the ancient Libyan method of burial, upon which Stephane Gsell, member of the French Institute, presented an informative report to the Academy on the return of the expedition...
...For two weeks I made discreet inquiries as to the position of this tomb, and its history...
...At Tamanrasset he slept on the floor of his tiny chapel, subsisting on two meals a day, the plainest of food, suffering the nightly terror of Saharan cold...
...Herrison for not having continued and persevered in an anthropological study of the Tuaregs...
...and on the way had passed the sad remains of expeditions which had gone before us with inadequate equipment...
...The little you could have done," declared de Foucauld, "would have been a heritage for your successors...
...near the head were a crystal vase and a beautiful platter inlaid in silver...
...During the last five years, which I have spent in excavation in Carthage and Utica, I have often wondered where the gold, silver, ivory, and precious stones came from, how they found their way across the intervening earth from the Sudan and into the tombs of the rich Carthaginians...
...At night I wore three suits of underclothing, thick pajamas, two sweaters, a fur coat, and a sleeping bag, the whole covered by three blankets, yet was not protected from cold, a cold that could be agonizing at times...
...For many months camel caravans had been crossing the desert, carrying our food and gasoline, oil and stores, and when we were ready to start, the Algerian government detailed 120 soldiers (mehari) to be our escort and safeguard...
...Since 1922, when I first read Bazin's account of the work of de Foucauld, I have steadily approached the fulfilment of an ambition to carry out that work, at least in some small measure, and to reach and explore the mighty mountain massif known as the Hoggar...
...His influence grew rapidly...
...At Tamanrasset we found the little fortress-chapel which Pere de Foucauld erected in the heart of the wild volcanic peaks, where he chose to lead his solitary, hermit life in an attempt to evangelize the warlike Tuaregs...
...It was the tomb of Tin-Hinan, however, that intrigued me most during our stay among the Tuaregs...
...Herodotus, taken with due caution, gives considerable suggestion, and Pliny supplies details of the "mountain of precious stones, in the land of the Garamantes...
...Seven massive gold bracelets were on the right arm, and eight bracelets of silver on the left...
...On the head was a diadem of golden stars...
...He had made the responses day by day with the hermit, before the altar of a little chapel made of boxes and tins...
...On October 6, with fourteen companions, I started in automobiles, on a quest to excavate lost civilizations in the heart of the most desolate region the world can oHer...
...The skulls were identical with those of the modern Tuaregs, and I am convinced that here we have a definite link between the Libyans and the Tuaregs...
...De Foucauld's lifelong friend was General Laperrine, who died in a disastrous attempt to fly across the 4} A Sahara...
...That was all...
...Consequently, on November 10, we left Tamanrasset on our journey south to Abelessa...
...This was the sight that met our sand-tortured eyes: In a room sculptured from living rock, lay a skeleton, on a canopy of delicately carved wood...
...It looked incredibly vast, surmounting a hill overlooking two dried-up river beds...
...It was referred to as the tomb of the legendary queen...
...The Tuaregs have repented their aberration, and now it does not matter in what part of the desert one travels, de Foucauld's memory is sacred among the people...
...My objectives, however, were not only the study of the origin and history of the Tuaregs, but also the tracing of ancient Carthaginian and Roman trade routes across the desert...
...When, finally, we located the tomb, we were surprised by its dimensions...
...and Belaid, the Kabyle-Tuareg interpreter...
...It is possible that this tomb may confirm the connection of the Libyans and the Tuaregs...
...on the ankles were other bracelets and quantities of bronze and gold ornaments...
...A small stone idol or fetish was near the skull— it resembled prehistoric statuettes of Laussel, in Belgium...
...His humility was infinite...
...Like Augustine, of the same mysterious continent of Africa, he passed a turbulent youth, and, after enlightenment, chose the life of self-sacrifice and reparation, a life not paralleled in our present age...
...hundreds of semi-precious stones lay under and around the skull...
...The grave of the martyr lay in the shadow of crumbling ruins, marked by a little wooden cross in the white sands on which were simply engraved the words, "R...
...Pere de Foucauld is the last great martyr of the Sahara, the man who did so much to pacify the inner reaches of the desert, and add it to the territory of France...
...Our first tomb revealed two skeletons, buried in the Libyan fashion, the body crouching, with the knees brought up to the chin...
...We had had to build our own roads in places...
...Our food supplies ran out at this time...
...On the arms of the skeletons were bronze bracelets, and on the necks, collars of perforated ostrich-egg shell, while in the right hand were polished stone implements...
...Decayed garments lay across the whitened bones...
...Two men of our expedition knew the hermit well— Chapuis, our guide...
...To those who dream of the Sahara as a place of tremendous heat only, it will, perhaps, be interesting to know that our own expedition suffered far more from the cold than from the heat, although the heat can reach a degree of 136 Fahrenheit...
...It devolved on us to "carry on" from the point where death interrupted the work of the holy man...
...They lie side by side in the waste of this wilderness, the soldier-conquerer and the patriotic priest...
...On many a hundred-mile-long expedition into the Tuareg fastnesses, de Foucauld would walk behind the General's camel...
...I heard many stories of these two while I was in the Hoggar...
Vol. 3 • March 1926 • No. 17
