Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/124

 100 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. in the country, and four centuries later the great movement of migration, whence are descended most of the Arab nomads at present encamped in the Barbary states. Then the stream of migration was reversed, and many tribes that had reached the Atlantic retraced their steps eastwards. Throughout Mauritania, Tripolitana, and the eastern oases, the tribes who show the longest genealogies and claim the title of Shorfa, or descendants of the Prophet, are precisely those that for a time sojourned in ^larocco before starting on the return journey towards Arabia. Another reaction was that of the so-called " Arabs," who had overrun the Iberian peninsula ; but those conquerors were mainly Berbers, who during their long resi- dence in Spain had become intermingled with Ligurians, Iberians, Kelts, Visigoths, and other local populations. Most of these fugitives, known in Mauritania as Andalus (Andalusians), settled in the towns, where they blended with the Moors, thus adding a new factor to the tangled web of local interminglings. In a region peopled b}'^ such diverse elements, not yet fused in a single nation- ality, it would be vain to look for a spirit of patriotism such as prevails in longer- settled and more homogeneous European communities. Amongst Berbers and Arabs the sentiment of solidarity is restricted to the family or the tribe, so that the consciousness of forming a single people, with common interests and aspirations, is entirely absent. As Mohammedans rather than kinsmen, the Mauritanian Arabs combine against the Christian, who has hitherto always been able to rely on intes- tine quarrels and tribal feuds to hasten the work of conquest. Nevertheless it was a slow process, in Algeria especially, because the country remained long exposed to the incursions of the southern tribes. Even after its reduction, the seaboard continued to be threatened by the neighbouring highland peoples ; and when these were subdued, the inhabitants of the plateaux had still to be conquered. Until the parallel geographic zones were all defended by fortified towns, agri- cultural settlements, and military outposts, the new conquest, destitute of a solid southern frontier, presented a thousand weak pc)ints to the restless border tribes. But the situation was different in Tunisia, which being enclosed on two sides by the sea and on a third by a cham of fortified stations, was limited southwards by lagoons and the desert. It was, moreover, already traversed east and west by a line of railway, so that a protracted resistance was nowhere possible, even if the French invasion had been preceded by a formal declaration of war. But on the pretext of frontier tribal disturbances in the west, the country was suddenly invaded east and west by overwhelming forces, all strategical points rapidly seized, and the capital occupied even before diplomatic relations were interrupted between the two states. Thus the Bey had no option except to sign a treaty presented at the point of the bayonet, which practically converted Tunisia into a French province. The limits of Tunisia being still undetermined towards Tripolitana and Algeria, its superficial extent can only be approximately estimated. According to the planimetric calculations of recent geographers, it has a total area of from 46,000 to 47,000 square miles, including the lagoons and sebkhas, which occupy extensive tracts in the central and southern districts. But the triangulation now in progress must soon reduce the discrepancies still existing between the extreme estimates.