Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/142

132 the most desolate wastes on the face of the earth. The result has been that while the Tawareks still retain the physical characteristics and intellectual qualities of the race from which they have sprung, their method of life, owing to the nature of the country which they inhabit, is entirely different from that of their more civilized cousins. They are educated to the extent that they almost all can write and read in their own tongue—Tamahak—and a considerable percentage of them in Arabic in addition; some of them can speak a Sudanese language, and as a race they seem to have a considerable linguistic capacity.

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The barren character of the Sahara compels them to lead the life of restless nomads, pasturing their herds and flocks on the desert scrub, and condemned to perpetually flit from place to place in search of the scanty supply of water and pasture upon which the flocks to which they mainly look for a livelihood subsist. Being as a race miserably poor, they supplement the scanty living which their beasts afford by preying upon their neighbors or acting as guides and guardians to those caravans that traverse the country of the tribe to which they belong.

The rich caravans—consisting sometimes of thousands of laden camels—which cross the Sahara offer, when passing through the country of a rival tribe, an irresistible bait to these lawless nomads, and it is seldom that one succeeds in traversing this desert without having at least one serious encounter with these redoubtable robbers. The Arab camel-drivers—who, though capable of the most reckless bravery at times, are by nature a very cautious race—go in fear of their lives of these dreaded marauders, and no power on earth will induce them to venture into the Tawarek country until they have come to terms with the chiefs of those tribes through which their road lies and