TICKETS FOR TRAVEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 937, 26 July 1957, Page 12

TICKETS FOR TRAVEL

JHE ROAD TO TIMBUCTOO, by John Skolle; Victor Gollancz, English price 18/-. CAPE COLD TO CAPE HOT, by Richard Pape; Odhams Press, through Whitcombe and Tombs, 18/-. THE CONQUEST OF FITZROY, by M.. A. Azema; André Deutsch, English price 21/-. THE DESERT MY DWELLING PLACE, by LieutenantColonel David Lloyd Owen; Cassell, English price 18/-.

(Reviewed by

D. W.

McKenzie

HE tradition of travel in the desert has a long roster of English names associated with it; John Skolle is an American, but he has the spirit of Burton behind him. His love of the Sahara led him to travel alone in the southwest of its arid wastes until he joined @ caravan from the salt mines of Taoudeni taking the bars of salt to Timbuctoo, and became just one of the camel drivers. His picture of their life from day to day is one of the most enthrallingly simple narratives of recent travel literature. Their equipment for living is stripped to a minimum in an environment which makes one understand why the Hell of the people of the desert is a hot one. A man who becomes ill is left behind in the blazing wilderness with a goatskin of water only. Another caravan, if one is coming, may

pick him up. Allah alone knows. Perhaps the most interesting of the sections in this book, whose fascination is quite out of proportion to its small size, deals with that most extraordinary desert people, the Tuareg, the people of the Blue Veil, a veil which covers the mouth of the men all their lives. These, the proudest, the fiercest, the most intractable of the desert nomads, to whom war and raiding are a man’s way of life, are shown as. coming into the sphere of French-controlled courts without -understanding fundamentally the differences in the two patterns of culture which here come into contact. What can be done Skolle does not suggest; he simply records the facts in a book it is difficult to put down. Richard Pape, in Cape Cold to Cape Hot, is the hero of his own book. With a reputation for boldness, and a couple of autobiographical books about it behind him, he looks around for something remarkable to do, and decides to drive a British car, an Austin A90, from the North Cape of Norway to the southern tip of Africa. That he begins in Norway means he must go there in summer, and thus reach the Sahara in summer also, when it is normally sealed to travellers. He then must cross Equatorial Africa in the northern rainy =

season. He does this in the face of troubles which will bring out any car-owner in a_e cold perspiration, at breakneck speed because he thinks a foreign car is on the "road" after him. From the pages emerges the picture of the bold extrovert getting himself out of difficulties which would defeat lesser men, emerging alive after having been lost without water in the Sahara, persuading qn R.A.F. man in North Africa to go A.W.O.L. with him, and then complaining about the shortsightedness of a country that wants him back. Pape’s personality one can admire for its ruthlessness without liking it. He records without comment that when an Arab sets a dog on to him he knocks the dog (continued on next page) a

out with a blow from a weapon, and is then so angry that before he drives away he leans out of the window of the car and shoots the dog as it lies on the ground. This also needs no comment from the reviewer. "Would you like a helicopter?" said Presicent Peron to the members of the French Expedition to climb the towering needle of Mount FitzRoy, in the Patagonian Andes, and this. phrase comes to mind time after time as one reads The Conquest of FitzRoy, by M. A. Azema, the leader and medical officer. This magnificent peak towers above a sparsely-settled and little-known land, offering almost vertical faces and overhangs which can only be climbed by the techniques of "artificial climbing," of pitons and wooden wedges, though not as artificial as the helicopter. This book is splendidly written and well translated, and takes us from the first thoughts of the men who grouped themselves to climb this distant monolith to the last forcing of the last vertical pitch on that incredible last face, in a way that makes us feel we are there with them. M. Azema drops many a perspicacious comment and observation, from the habits of the ranchers of Patagonia and the argumentative nature of French climbers to a slightly acid note as to why this- peak should be called such an unsuitable name (an incidental look at the name of Everest). Of the many books on warfare in the Western Desert none is more modest than The Desert is My Dwelling Place, by Lieutenant-Colonel Owen. The Long Range Desert Group fought in a way that was more like sea warfare than land, and Owen describes his part in it with vivid detail and good characterisation of his companions. His comments on the New Zealanders he met there are interesting: "The New Zealanders were tough, self-reliant individuals with an earthy sense of humour and an indomitable spirit. They could bear almost any hardship with a shrug of the shoulders and a determination to take more of it if it were necessary. I found them slightly aloof and a little suspicious of me at first, for they did not know what kind of a man I might turn out to be. They were wary of British officers, whom they sometimes suspected of being ignorant fops. But once they realised that you were prepared to muck in with them and did not wish to stand apart they were not only most entertaining company, but they became wonderful friends."