Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/584

 480 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. on our maps, are mere encampments of tents set up in the glens where flourish a few mimosas. The nomads of these districts belong to various races. The Ulad Bu-Sba, or " Sons of the Lion," Arabs by extraction, are slave-dealers and much dreaded marauders. The Sherguins, of Berber stock, are distinguished from all their neighbours by their round short features, small nose, prominent ears, high forehead, and small stature. The Tidrarins, also Berbers, keep generallj'^ near the seacoast, where they traffic with the fishermen from the Canary Islands, exchanging milk for fish and other produce. The Tidrarins fish only with the line or net, and have no skin boats, as had been stated by some travellers before Panet's expedition. They belong to the powerful Ulad-Delim confederation, whose tribes are scattered over the coastlands from the Wed Draa estuary to the plains bordering on the Adrar uplands. The Adrar Nomads. These nomads, allied to the Trarza and Brakna tribes on the right bank of the Senegal, are like them a branch of the Zenagas, largely intermingled with the Arabs, but much less so with Negroes. They also speak a Berber dialect, differ- ing little from the Taraazight language. Their women are remarkably handsome, and owing to the roving habits of the tribes, show less tendency to obesity, a feature so highly esteemed amongst the other peoples of the Western Sahara. The Ulad-Delim are always on the alert for attack or retreat, and when the order is given to strike their tents, half an hour suffices to collect the herds, pack all movables, and start for the next camping-ground. The Ulad-Delim, Ulad Bu-Sba, and Yahia Ben-Othman tribes are also met on the margin of the great saline of Ijil (Ishil), although the produce of the sebkha belongs not to them, but to the Kounta people, whose territory lies to the south- cast of Adrar. They require payment in cameb for permission to extract the salt and an export duty. No town has been founded on the shores of the sebkha, although a considerable traffic is carried on in the camps about the salt-works, especially after the rainy season, when the depression is flooded and all operations arrested. The salt is cut in slabs, the same size as those of Taudeni, the total annual quantity forwarded from Ijil to the Sudan being, according to Vincent, twenty thousand camel-loads, or about four thousand tons. . The chief market for the produce is in the Tishit oasis amongst the owners of the saline. Here the people of Sudan bring gangs of slaves, who are bartered for the salt, three slabs of which represent the average price of a man. Although rulers of Adrar, the Yahia Ben-Othraans do not reside in thij* district, but keep moving about from place to .place collecting the taxes imposed on the subject tribes. The settled populations, comprising altogether about seven thousand persons, besides the slaves, are of Berber extraction, far less mingled with foreign elements than the neighbouring "Moors." The current speech is also usually the Zenaga Berber dialect. They dwell for the most part on the banks of the streams that take their rise in the interior of Adrar. El-Guedim, or