Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/146

136 himself beside the grave, enters into conversation with her. Should she succeed in winning his approbation, he gives her the information that she requires. Should she, however, be so unfortunate as to fail in so doing or to offend him in the slightest degree, the spirit immediately strangles her and carries her bodily off into the gloomy recesses of the unseen world which he inhabits. That at least is what is supposed to happen when a Tawarek woman does not return after invoking the Idebni; but as the missing damsel is sometimes afterwards discovered as the wife of a Tawarek belonging to some distant camp, it may be assumed that these mysterious ceremonies are sometimes intended merely to afford an opportunity for a faithless maiden to escape from her paternal custody to elope, in the absence of her betrothed, with some more favored swain. In any case, when a woman disappears in this way, it is not considered etiquette to refer to her again in the presence of her relations.

The Tawarek warriors return at intervals to the family circle from their forays in order to lay at the feet of their beloved the spoil that they have collected. On these occasions the women of the camp come out to meet them, chanting to the accompaniment of a guitar songs of victory and extemporary odes in praise of their exploits and valor. If the raid has been unusually successful, the whole community gives itself up for several days to festivities, in which huge feasts, sham fights, and performances after the nature of "Punch and Judy" shows, with clay puppets dressed in rags, take a prominent part.

During two visits to Algeria I had heard much of these curious Tawareks and of their romantic predatory method of life, and what I had learned had so aroused my curiosity that when, on a subsequent visit to that country, I was told that a camp of these people had been seen near one of the oases in the northern part of the Sahara, I could not resist the temptation to go in search of them to see for myself what manner of men they were. Owing, however, to their frequent migrations, I found them extremely hard to come up with. Like the mirage, they seemed to perpetually retreat from before me, and though I continually heard rumors that they were in my neighborhood, it was only after a protracted hunt that I found their camp.

The wayfarers to be met with in the desert show an endless variety. A day seldom passes without encountering at least one or two groups of human beings. Nomads watering their herds at the wells; Arab shepherds changing their pasture; whole tribes migrating northward to their quarters for the summer months; native hunters and falconers; squat, bandy-legged merchants from the Mzab oases with their strings of camels or mules; and caravans of lithe, wiry Arabs bringing dates into the market-towns—are frequently to be met with upon these roads. Nor are the oases less interesting and varied. Each little Saharan city has, as a rule, a character peculiar to itself, and is totally different in the nature of its buildings from its neighbor some two or three days' march distant. Often, too, the races inhabiting adjacent oases are entirely distinct from each other, and speak, if not different languages, at all events distinctive dialects. The markets in these towns are always full of quaint and picturesque scenes and figures, and afford an artist or photographer endless opportunities of exercising his art.

In spite of the bad character which the Tawareks bear, my own dealings with them, so far as they went, were, with one exception, of an entirely amicable nature. The exception was in the case of a grizzled, scarred, and battered veteran of a hundred desert fights, who, if his history could only have been discovered, would probably have proved to have been as hoary an old sinner as ever lifted a herd of camels or swooped down like a hawk in the windy dusk before the dawn upon a defenceless caravan. We met him riding, accompanied by a servant mounted upon a mule, into one of the desert towns. His steed was a huge white camel some eight feet at the hump. The Tawarek himself, like nearly all the men of his race, was extremely tall. He had apparently injured his leg, for he sat his beast in a curious sidelong manner, which, however, did not seem to interfere in any way with the firmness of his seat. In addition to his crippled leg, he had lost the little finger of his left hand, and even the mask which only partly covered his