People of the Mirage

In 1951, the author (an artist) set out to drive from London to Dakar with two companions - Douglas Pirie, who had been appointed Colonial Consul, and Ivor Bulmer-Thomas. Pirie was to travel there to take up his post, the other two were seeking adventure and in Ross's case, looking for subject matter for his artwork.

On the topic of his artwork, there is much to be found in this book - his ink sketches, carried out quickly are excellent, but his collotype sketches (I had to look this up - it is a printing process that allows half tones) of which there are 15 taking a full page each are really fantastic. They are almost exclusively of people, and this book is worth seeking out for these portrait studies alone.

And so with only a short description of travel through Europe, the travel proper starts in Morocco. A well written but succinct history of each country flows well with the travel and the people met, as they progress from Morocco to Algiers, where the lions share of the book takes place.

While there is a map provided in the front (and back) endpapers it is a fairly general, and covers almost all of north Africa, but at least locates each major town visited. In the narrative, the reader is treated to a good description of the ever-changing Saharan scenery, the many different people and towns, and of course the inevitable car problems. I enjoyed the mixture and balance, which for me the author got right. As noted above the artwork was the making of the book.

A couple of excepts:
P18, Tangier

That same afternoon I made my way to the Kasbah with my sketchbook. It was not easy to draw in the crowded, narrow streets. A mass of strollers, idlers and hucksters churn round and round. Jewish shoe-shine boys solicit your custom by dragging at your foot; curio-vendors interrupt you to display their tawdy wares; pastry cooks shove their trays under your nose; a pimp in European clothes, with slicked down hair, whispers in your ear of illicit delights; whining beggars pester you; donkeys with enormous panniers slung on their flanks force you against the walls.
But if you climb up the hill towards the Citadel, the crowd diminishes and a refreshing sea breeze greets you as you step into the Kasbah Square.

One hundred and fifty miles of this barren calciferous limestone, and then we were suddenly to find ourselves in a landscape so different that we might has been transported into another continent. We were in the reg. The reg is an absolutely flat region, covered with small pebbles or fine gravel, altogether without vegetation and entirely desolate. Nothing in the desert made such an impression on me as these desolations within desolations: tanzrouft as the Touareg call them. These regions are the most feared by the caravans, for perhaps the reg is the only region in the desert where the camel finds no sustenance whatsoever and even the native desert traveller becomes maddened by the ever-receding horizon and the monotony of the flat, grey-pebbled plain. There are apparently no landmarks to differentiate one spot from another, only endless miles of flat, grey sand and gravel, and constant mirages accentuate the immensity of this horrid desert.
Then the country changed once again...