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It crossed the Sahara, skirting the strongholds of the Senussia Brotherhood, penetrating the wastes patrolled by the Tuaregs, ferocious camel riders whose mouths were always muffled in black bandages. It went north to the steppes of the Ziban, from which the tribe of the Ouled Nail scattered their feather-crowned dancing girls from Ceuta to Suez.
In 1868 Miss Tinné, nothing-daunted, started for Lake Chad from Tripoli, with the intention of closing in upon the Nile from the eastern sources of the affluents of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. On reaching Wadi-Aberjong, however, this brave-hearted woman was waylaid by the fierce Tuaregs, and was beheaded August 1, 1868.
Further, we have ample evidence of its presence, until displaced by Moorish invaders, all along northern Africa as far as Tunis; and we come across it again amongst the living races in the Mediterranean isles, in Sardinia, Sicily and Southern Italy. Finally, the Tuaregs of the Central Sahara belong to the same type.
The native people of the desert are mainly of the race to which the Arabs also belong, although there are many Arabs and negroes. The Tuaregs and Bedouin Arabs are the best known. The Tuaregs are thought to be the descendants of the Berbers and of the same race as the Carthaginians, whom the Romans many times defeated but never conquered.
We have already noticed in Timbuktu this small, sturdy desert people, easily recognised by the veil which hides the lower part of the face. All Tuaregs wear such a veil, and call those who do not "fly-mouths." They are powerfully built, and of dark complexion, being of mixed negro blood from all the slaves they have kidnapped in the Sudan.
The Tuaregs are not born to be slaves, and we cannot but admire their thirst for freedom, their pride, and their courage. The desert here exhibits the difficult art of living. Even animals and plants which are assigned to the desert are provided with special faculties. Some of the animals, snakes and lizards for instance, can live without water. Dromedaries can go for many days without drinking.
We directed all our energies to the creation of artificial wants in that previously happy and contented community, and flooded the whole adjacent country with articles that were of no more use to the poor natives than ice-boats and mouse-traps would be to the Tuaregs of the Saharan desert. In short, we dispensed the blessings of civilisation with a free hand.
If we travelled, as we have lately imagined, on swift-footed dromedaries in a huge circuit from Timbuktu through the Sudan, the Libyan desert, and the land of the Tuaregs, we should at last come to Morocco, "The Uttermost West," as this last independent Sultanate in Africa is called.
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 garments usually worn by a Tuareg man consist of white trousers, a gray tunic with white sleeves, sandals of ornamented leather, and a white turban. When away from home the Tuareg covers the lower half of the face by a cloth mask. The usual occupation of the Tuaregs is twofold to guard caravans or to rob them. The average Tuareg is perfectly indifferent as to which he does.
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