Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/558

 460 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. large herds, which graze freely on the surrounding steppes and dunes, the animals marked as the property of the order being respected by all. The confraternity also derives large profits from trade, its members being the chief agents in main- taining the commercial relations between Algeria and Twat. Nearly all the Karzas marabuts marry before the age of fifteen. The direction of the community is not a hereditary office, as in all other monastic establishments. The dignity is not transmitted from father to son, but passes by right to the doyen, or oldest member of the establishment. TJlad-Raffa, Tsabit, and Tamentit. Amongst the centres of population which follow in succession beyond Karzas in the Saura basin, one of the most important is TJlad-Raffa, which is quite as populous as the marabut town. It is inhabited by a branch of the Ghenenma, or Ghenauema tribe, the Rlnema of Rohlfs, a Mussulman community noted for its indifferent observance of the prescribed rites. The Rhamadan fast is kept by them not in their own persons, but by proxy, the custom being to hire substitutes willing to mortify the flesh on their behalf for a consideration. Most of them are wretchedly poor, largely supporting themselves by plunder, for nearly all the cultivated tracts in this valley are in the hands of a few opulent owners. The absorption of the land in great domains is the curse of these oases, as of so many more civilised regions. The area of arable land might here be greatly enlarged, for although little water is visible in the channel of the Saura, the central parts are at least always moist, and the underground reservoirs might easily be tapped by sinking wells a few feet deep along its bed. Even below Ulad-Raffa, the sandstone hills hemming in the stream, and whose base forms a sort of barrage, drive the water to the surface. In this defile, says Fum-el-Khink, are situated some gueltas, or permanent meres, always flooded with a fluid, which although somewhat brackish is nevertheless drinkable. South of the gorge some fogarats, fed by the subterranean waters, have been successfully sunk in several places, and vast marshy tracts occupy the depressions between the sandhills lying to the west of the Wed Saura. One of these sebkhas is commanded by the fortress of El- JJgwarta, peopled by branches of the Beraber and Zenata tribes. Farther west, about midway between Wed Saura and Tafilelt, another sebkha is skirted by an oasis containing five or six thousand palms, dotted with the hamlets of Tahelbelt. South of the great Gurara sebkha, the oases are grouped more closely together between the western escarpments of the .plateau and course of the Wed Saura, which here takes the name of Messaud. Here the Augwerut (Wagwerut, Ugwerut) oasis, inhabited by the Kenafra and the Ulad Abd-el-Mulat tribes, stretches for about 18 miles along the foot of a range of heights pieroed with underground galleries and wells. The chief town comprises two distinct quarters, <S//flr<?/and the zaw^'a of Sidi Aomar.