I had already attracted some attention by two excursions, one to
Agadès, and the other to Bilma, and was considered by the staff
officers to be one of the best informed on the Senoussis question. I
was therefore selected to assume this new task.

I then suggested that it would be of interest to kill two birds with
one stone, and to get, in passing, an idea of the northern Ahaggar, so
as to make sure whether the Tuaregs of Ahitarhen had continued to have
as cordial relations with the Senoussis as they had had when they
combined to massacre the Flatters' mission. I was immediately accorded
the permission. The change in my first plan was as follows: After
reaching Ighelaschem, six hundred kilometers south of Temassinin,
instead of taking the direct road to Touat via Rhât, I would,
penetrating between the high land of Mouydir and Ahaggar, strike off
to the southwest as far as Shikh-Salah. Here I would turn again
northwards, towards In-Salah, by the road to the Soudan and Agadès. In
all hardly eight kilometers additional in a trip of about seven
hundred leagues, with the certainty of making as complete an
examination as possible of the roads which our enemies, the Senoussis
of Tibesti and the Tuareg of the Ahaggar, must follow to arrive at
Touat. On the way, for every explorer has his pet fancy, I was not at
all displeased to think that I would have a chance to examine the
geological formation of the plateau of Egere, about which Duveyrier
and the others are so disappointingly indefinite.

Everything was ready for my departure from Wargla. Everything, which
is to say, very little. Three mehara: mine, my companion Bou-Djema's
(a faithful Chaamba, whom I had had with me in my wanderings through
the Air, less of a guide in the country I was familiar with than a