Wheels Across Africa (c 1936)

[Music] [Music] e [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] we were planning once more another Voyage of Adventure this time Africa from anworth Belgium to Paris through France and Spain through the Straits of jalta and then down across the vast continent of Africa to the Indian Ocean we had received the necessary permits from the British French and Belgian governments we were awaiting in anworth the arrival of our trucks Byer from New York for 18 months these trucks were to be our living quarters loaded with supplies they weighed six tons a piece a few hours later we had the honor of being received in the Royal Palace in Brussels by the king queen of Belgium King Leopold himself a keen photographer minutely inspected our trucks and especially our photographic equipment Queen astd talked graciously to Mrs Dennis little we knew that barely a few weeks later we were to hear in the center of Africa the tragic news of Queen AR's death the hour of our official departure had come the last interviews were given the last photographs taken and we were on our way the plard in Paris gray on this February morning bitterly cold on the Wind swep mountains of Spain and now the famous rock of gibralta faced us across the bay we were on the docks of Al and again our TR short crossing of the streets which would take us to Spanish Morocco a week after leaving Brussels we wear on African soil sua where we land has modern docks and a modern on ramp to leave into the ancient city but soon we strike Inland and enter another world we are approaching the Sacred City of mle it is the time of the grand mus a famous yearly muhammadan Festival the wealthy Arabs have come on magnificent Arabian horses pilgrims flock into the city in thousands and already the fantasias have begun see them go finest hes and the finest Horsemen in the world within the city the crowd overflows everywhere the rooftops are crowded thousands p through the narrow archways into the marketplace it is with difficulty that we make our way through the crowd and that Roy Phelps takes his pictures entertainers have come to the city from all over Morocco the solemn fire dancers who hold burning coals in their hands and produce lighted tortures from their flowing sleeves the fire eaters who Breathe In Flames and smoke and assure the credulous pilgrims that fire is their only diet and see this fellow he's only breaking bottles but wait he does not break them as you and I this is a bed he's making he's very tired and wants to take a beauty rest nap and see this one he's not tired but hungry no fire for him nothing will satisfy him but well Blended broken bubble what an idea for a breakfast food and here is its next charma as daring as those of India this is the African black cobra as vicious and as deadly as the Indian cobra drums and fluke provide the hypnotic [Music] music [Music] and now we are approaching the long forbidden city of Fe everyday is Market Day at the gates of the city and for centuries these walls have witnessed the age-old bargaining of the East today is the Sheep market and hundreds of sheep tied in neat bundles neck to neck patiently await their fate buying and selling is thirsty work but there comes the ever Pleasant water carrier and there the ever Pleasant [Music] beggar through the ancient Gates we enter into the city after 30 years of French occupation old Fe has not changed much and it has not lost its medieval aspect and traditions its gills of Artisans still do their painstaking work by hand in small and dimly lighted workshops this is a copper workers shop one of many [Music] hundreds in everyone is a crude lathe turned without electric power and artists who have a deep pride in their craft patiently fashioned objects of beauty the medieval tradition of The Apprentice ship still survives it takes many years to graduate from the spinning wheel to the big looms on which the famed intricate Moroccan lugs and blankets are woven in a Taylor's shop the Taylor sits cross-legged this complicated blading is necessary to the making of the Arab bernus and these children will spend their whole youth in learning its hundreds of fible patterns see the Potter at work out of the shapeless lump of clay his hands can produce any graceful shape they need far more skill than the of his Apprentice who has only learned to decorate his master's work someday no doubt the narrow streets Will Make Way for wide arteres with clanging street cars and motor buses power lines will run everywhere the children will be taken out of the dark little workshops and sent to school but much of the charm of Fez will be gone as well as its squala they will remain only its gorgeous Mosaic Gates and its lovely minerettes to Bear witness to its colorful and fascinating past a formidable barrier of mountains separates the fertile Plains of Morocco from the barren WTS of the Sahara Desert here in Africa are huge Cedars and Pines and often heavy snow we had left Europe in Winter and had had bitterly cold nights in the mountains of Spain we were back again in snow and ice and in our first camp in the atlas the water in our radiators froze and we had to chip ice off the windshields [Music] after guys a country of contrast look at this hooded figure passing in his setting so unfamiliar look at the telephone lines for we are still on a Thoroughly Modern Road the Military Road across the Atlas Mountains superbly engineered and built by the French Foreign Legion for the opening up of France's huge African Empire away once more we are now swiftly going down the southern side of the mountain range we learn to appreciate good hydraulic breaks on roads like these in less than 4 hours we will pass from a temperature well below freezing to the almost intolerable heat of the desert at 6 in the morning we were struggling in snow and ice at 11: we are in the Z Valley and the temperature has reached 110 we're carrying over 800 gallons of gas in lean in our tanks filled to capacity and even in pins on the roof of the [Music] trucks a brilliantly Green carpet of dead Palms is laid in the bottom of the valley and towards this cool and lovely Garden the road gradually takes us down its series of Rocky and baron escarpments the Mountain Streams have made the Z Valley one of the most fertile in the world and it is dotted with picturesque Villages the rivers on the southern side of the Atlas Mountains never never reach the ocean they lose themselves and disappear in the Sahara Desert we cross them on the foreign Legions Bridges with an inch to spare on either side and we enter the [Music] Sahara reject from your mind all you ever heard about the Sahara being just one huge ocean of sand there is in the Sahara every kind of barren and forbidding landscape huge Rocky Cliffs mountain ranges tumbled masses of rock in the deepest valleys along its northern as well as its Southern Edge Lighty oases graceful Palms the Vivid green of which contrasts almost violently with the orange red of the sand dunes and the deep blue of the sky for several hundreds of miles before we enter the absolutely Barren desert they will dot our course and rough tracks hard on tires but easy enough going for our powerful Dodgers connect them with [Music] civilization The Oasis Villages still cling to the sides of the mountains in the coolness of the morning there is busy activity on the roofs even the goats live on the roofs there is the MK the muin appears summoning the faithful to prayer [Music] the sun soon beats down unmercifully on the narrow streets but there is cool shade along the mud walls and in the dark and crooked [Music] passages and there is little hard work to do at least for the men the men don't even walk when they can help it but there is one work which the women do do and which goes on all day long the whole life of the Oasis depends on the water of its Wells there are lovely biblical sces at the Wells of the women filling and loading their water jars every drop of the precious water must be carried up the Steep stairways to the [Music] Village [Music] throughout the midday hour the camels chew watch this far one bring up its C there and now watch the near one up desert food is pretty tough and takes a lot of thoughtful [Music] showing [Music] late in the afternoon with a good deal of grumbling and cursing in a weird camel's tongue the Caravans prepare to start camels are still the desert's only regular means of communication and transport and the camel should by now be pretty well resigned to it but who never grumbles at the beginning of a day's work their knees have been hobbled all day and it probably hurts to stretch the leg often these Caravans slowly plooding their way across the Sands make a scene of breaking [Music] Beauty the Sands are never still the slightest Breeze lifts and carries a fine golden powder which comes Rippling down the sides of the dunes and slowly in the course of centuries Alters their outline old saharian tell you the dunes are smoking and they refer to the light Fringe of sand which the wind is blowing off the top of the dunes too often a forerunner of terrifying and disastrous sandstorms in every one of these oases outposts the French heavy Garrison of colonial trops it is a marvelous sight to see these Horsemen Galloping by in their brilliant uniforms mounted on Arabian horses especially trained to the South sand of the [Music] desert their officers are the finest men of the French army inured as hard as their menant to the long marches under a burning Sun into the thirst of the desert it is not many years since the desert was infested with Lawless bands of tegg pillagers and these lonely outposts were in constant danger of attack this very one stood a heroic and bloody Siege as strict discipline as that of the finest Cavalry schools of Europe prevails here many hundreds of miles from France among these hard-bitten desert men [Music] and we are now leaving the last of the roads behind us before us stretches the desert hundreds of miles of sand and gravel sometimes firm and smooth so that we can make good time sometimes perfectly hard under a thin covering of soft sand sometimes soft and without bottom under a thin hard crust which suddenly gives way under the wheels there is in the Sahara every kind of sand and weeks of experience will not teach you where a surface which is to all appearances hard will unexpectedly give way the dreaded rotten Earth is the worst as fluid and slippery as talum powder sometimes as we shoveled and sweated a camel Caravan would pass and how scornfully the camels would look at us they had no six-ton load to carry however and no fouron trailer to pull we had been many times assured that the attempt to pull a four trailer across the Sahara with lunacy and I came close to believing it with their terrible overload the Dodge trucks took almost unbelievable punishment remember that they did this day after today for hundreds of miles in a temperature of 120 to 130 our progress was at time disheartening little on our work day we did life in 12 hours less than 100 yards and then sometimes when we least expected it the wheels would suddenly bite pull out we would change into second into high creep up to 35 and 40 The Secret of Sahara driving is at all cost creep up speed on Tire deflated to less than half normal pressure every 100 miles or so I would look for a hard patch on which it would be safe to stop and I would signal the trucks for a quick inspection of motors and tires and refueling aside from spare tires we used 60 tires on the whole trip and half a ton of spare parts which we never needed and never used the trailer carried 400 gallons of gasoline for the first leg of the desert Crossing and we plan to abandon it after this first leg there was little to vary the monotony of the trip tracks in the sand of a previous French military Expedition told us we were on the right road we drank water 2 and A2 gallons of water per day per person the regulation allowance in the desert and yet a consuming thirst parched our throats which no amount of drinking could satisfy I had been in dread of sandstorms and one day it was upon us we were 200 M from shelter but we felt our sealed engines with their air and oil filters would get us through we went on for 4 days a burning wind carried millions of tons of sand across the face of the desert for 4 days we choked breathed sand eight sand rubbed at our inflamed eyes driving in the choking atmosphere of the trucks filled with Ines of fine dust which every bump would raise in a blinding Cloud became Agony the mechanism of our cameras filled with sand and they refused to work but our Dodge engines carried on Mile after mile until at last we reached shelter we opened the motors to see if they had suffered from the sandstorm and we found that they hadn't for two more days the scorching wind blew changing the face of the desert and obliterating all trace of our passage we were now picking up our supplies for the second leg of the trip from now on we were to give up our comfortable pman installations in a truck the trailer discarded we were filling the trucks to the roof with cases of gasoline long ago sent here for us by camel Caravan every item was to be checked over and over food and water for 20 days 300 gallons of water the greater part of the desert still lay before us but we felt we were Veterans of the Sahara and that nothing would stop us one and A4 tons of gasoline in each truck from now on we would sleep on the ground we had given the little boys cigarettes and pennies and they hated to see us go but the town was preparing to give us a send off in the manner of the Sahara as we drove the CR around us grew soon the sand and gravel kicked up by the flying hoofs of the horses made me fear for our [Music] windshields in the heavy sand we tried vainly to overtake the furiously galloping [Music] horses [Music] la [Music] we were again alone bu number two was freed at last from its heavy trailer the motors hummed cheerfully the road was straight level and without turnings traic was too scarce to bother us no speed limit and no cups I want to show you one of our camps this is breakfast time just at sunrise the temperature is not 120 now it is around 40 and has been well below freezing during the night we have slept on Cuts with all available blankets but in the cold air and before the thermometer begins to climb the sand is appreciably firmer than it will be during the day and the start at Sunrise will give us several hours of easier going the Temptation was always strong to drive at night but each time we attempted it being unable to gauge the thir of the surface we got hopelessly bogged in sand and lost much more time than we gained but vegetation is again beginning to appear in the distance we see Nomads they herds of goats and camels we are approaching one of the wells we have been warned against having anything to do with the TW EGS at the Wells because an epidemic of small pox is Raging among them but our drinking water has been put in gasoline drums and after a week of drinking gasoline water gasoline tea gasoline coffee and gasoline soup we long for fresh water also the herbs of goats and donkeys the colorful desert people make two pictures exci to [Music] resist we have two made friends with the T EGS I group two of the prettiest girls for a picture here in the desert they do not insist on hiding their faces as they would in the [Music] towns our cleanest cans are filled with water it is cloudy and it has a strong alkaline taste and theas as we soon find it has strong medicinal properties but it is a lovely change after gasoline the camels like it and each take their normal wheat Supply 40 to 50 gallons it takes many ref fillings of a goat skin to water a herd of camels the babies have to start very young this one was born this morning but already he has to be taught to take his fill of water so that on the Long March he will not be too much of a drain on the mother baby camels are lovely white woolly things but they are all wrists and elbows and seem terribly ill at ease and unable to cope with this complicated [Music] [Applause] [Music] World another 200 miles done easily in 2 days we are now in a teg stronghold in a hugger we are guests at the court of King menal the king of the T this massive man rules over a territory almost as large as the United States for us the court Orchestra [Music] plays for us the king's followers dance the traditional thick Dance of the T no reputable woman would thus unveil her face and I am told in Whispers that these women are [Music] Shameless [Music] [Music] [Applause] to do us greater honor the king also displays his camels they are seless animals and they are made to Pace before it gorgeously saddled their heads held high their legs moving in an odd Rhythm stiff and St and now we are on the last leg of the desert fling candy yellow begin to appear we are approaching M on