"In 1880, the French government ordered a surveying expedition for a railway that would bring the fabulous wealth of Timbuktu in French Sudan to Paris. This trek should have heralded a new era of French prosperity. Instead it was a deadly fiasco. Under-armed in hostile territory and foolishly employing the enemy as guides, the one-hundred-man expedition was ambushed and stranded without camels or supplies in the deserts of southern Algeria. Many men were killed outright, and for four months the survivors were menaced by the vicious Tuareg, the "lords of the desert," who robbed and starved them and tricked them into eating poisoned fruit. To escape, they hid in the wastelands of the Sahara with little hope of finding food or water. Desperation drove them to eat their own dead, or, worse, the weakest members of their group. Only a dozen malnourished men lived to tell their tale."--Dust jacket flap.
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