Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/380



The Ruagha (Rurha, Ruara), or inhabitants of the Righ, numbering about thirteen thousand, belong to the Zenata Berber family ; but their dark colour and Negroid features betray a large intermixture

of black blood. Of late years their material condition has greatly improved. They now raise large crops of barley; most of them have become independent proprietors of palm groves, and fac have paid off the claims of the usurers, by whom they had formerly been reduced almost to the condition of serfs.

Tugurt, with its hundred and seventy thousand palm-trees, is the natural capital of the Wed Righ, and the oldest oasis in this region. It lies below the under- ground confluence of the Wed Miya and Igharghar, 230 feet above the sea, at the eastern foot of a plateau rising several hundred fect higher. Its form is that of an oval enclosed by a broad but now dricd-up ditch, beyond which it is protected by a mound from the ever-encroaching sands. Since the French occupation, in 1854 the population has doubled, and many of the old earthen or adobe houses have been replaced by dwellings constructed with blocks of gypsum, with galleries and upper stories. Suburbs have sprung up beyond the enclosures, and its trade and industries have been greatly developed. About 8 miles to the south is the religious metropolis of Temassin, containing the zawya of Tamelhat, a branch of the Ain-Mahdi confraternity, but now enjoying more authority than the mother-house, its influence being felt as far as Senegal.

Sûf, the most isolated of all the Algerian oases, lies about 60 miles east of Tugurt, on the route to Jerid. Here the Wed Sûf, whose waters are nowhere visible on the surface, maintains a group of ten oases, with a hundred and eighty