Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/582

 478 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. mineral salt, which supply a large part of Western Sudan. The miners hew out blocks over three feet long weighing about seventy pounds, and of these four make a camel-load. In the vicinity are seen the remains of some former cultivated lands, and even abandoned villages. But the present inhabitants of Taudoni, a half-caste Arab and Negro people, occupy themselves exclusively with the salt-works. They call themselves Drawi, implying that they came originally from the Wed Draa district. But having ceased to keep up their relations with the mother-country, they depend now on the Berabish Arabs and on the merchants of Timbuktu. They lead a miserable existence, drinking a brackish water, which they endeavour to correct with curdled milk and other ingredients. Those engaged in the salt- quarries live part of their time as troglodytes. When the heat becomes excessive, they take refuge in the artificial caves excavated in the tufa hills skirting the Wed Teli. Till recently they still used instruments of serpentine in the salt- works, and these stone implements have become an article of export to Timbuktu, the Sudanese women employing them for grinding the corn. Arawan, lying near the southern margin of the desert, is the outpost of Timbuktu. It forms a converging point for caravans, corresponding to Tenduf at the other side of the Sahara. Although lying at a short distance to the north of the grassy steppes and mimosa forests, and abounding in water, which flows in an under- ground channel under the very houses, Arawan is one of the most wretched-looking places in the whole of the Sahara. Nothing is anywhere to be seen except dunes, unrelieved by a single tree, or a patch of verdure for the camels. The houses, scattered about irregularly to the number of about a hundred, form quadrangular masses with only a ground floor. The beaten-earth walls are pierced with a single opening for a low door enframed in ornamental work, occupying the whole height of the wall. Clay mouldings also embellish tlie edge of the terraced roof. The house is built round an inner court, which however is seldom occupied, owing to the sand filling the atmosphere, and the dense swarms of flies brought with every fresh convoy. Being an exclusively commercial town, troubling itself little with the religion of its visitors, Arawan is inhabited only by traders from Timbuktu, their retainers, and the Haratin, or free Negroes, who attend to the caravans, watering, loading, and harnessing the camels. The Barabish tribe, who act as escorts, defending the convoys from their here- ditary Tuareg enemies, levy a tax on all travellers passing through their territory. Notwithstanding their name, which would appear to be of Berber origin, the Berabish are, according to Lenz, of genuine Arab extraction. At the time of Lenz's visit, the tribal chief had in his possession most of the objects found on the body of Laing, when that explorer was killed in the desert in the year 1826. According to native report, his death was due to the failure of his medicines. Two patients whom he had treated died one after the other; so it was feared that he was distributing poison or had the evil eye. In the same region of the Sahara, ten days' march to the north of Taudeni, is situated Suhaya, where the English traveller was murdered by the Haribs ten years after the assassination of Laing. *