page_title: Gaston Méry (explorer)
section_title: Attanoux expedition (1893–94)
hierarchical_section_title: Gaston Méry (explorer) / Attanoux expedition (1893–94)
caption_attribution_description: English: The French explorer Gaston Méry (1844–1896), from his obituary in the Revue tunisienne.
context_page_description: Gaston Méry was a French explorer. He was born in Algeria, son of one of the early settlers. After serving as a sailor and in the army, he assisted in surveys in Tunisia, then undertook three major expeditions into the Sahara in southern Algeria. He established friendly contact with the Tuareg people of the Kel Ajjer confederation, at the time considered unfriendly to the French, and mapped part of the route for a projected trans-Sahara railway to link Algeria to the Sudan. In the last years of his life he became a prosperous trader and real estate developer in Timbuktu.
context_section_description: In October 1893 Méry again travelled south with Albert Bonnel de Mézières, Antoine Bernard d'Attanoux, a former officer who had become editor of Le Temps, and two White Fathers, Augustin Hacquard and François Ménoret.
  The Attanoux expedition lasted from October 1893 to April 1894. It went south from Biskra past Touggourt and Ouargla, past Aïn Taïba, El Biodh and Temassinin, and along the Ighargharen valley to Lake Menghough.
  The leadership of the mission had not been well defined, and the members quarrelled.
  Méry was emotionally unstable and had a violent temper.
  He shot a guide in the arm during an argument, and killed his interpreter's dog after it refused a command to attack a gazelle.
  At one point he threatened to blow everyone up with boxes of blasting powder.
  Méry suffered the relapse from an illness he had contracted earlier in the year, left the expedition and returned to France.
  At Toulouse Méry decided to return to the desert once more, at his own expense.
  He left Toulouse in January 1894 with 1,000 francs, soon used up in purchasing merchandise and provisions for the journey.
  With a companion named Moulai, from Rhadamès, and two camels he followed the trail of the Attanoux mission which he rejoined at Ain-Taieba.
  The black servant who was his only companion had been closely attached to him for several years.
  Without instruments, they retraced the path of the previous journey and rejoined the Attanoux mission at Ain Talba.
  The two explorers fell out again, and Méry was repatriated a second time with the help of the governor of Algeria.
caption: Gaston Méry from his obituary in the Revue tunisienne
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