Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/118

102 of birds, small rodents, reptiles and insects spend long hours during the heat of the day, when the sun, like some broken cauldron filled with molten gold, pours out its withering stream.

From time to time we rushed past a native village or a neglected kasha which raised itself out of the fields, too broken and decrepit now to show more than the crumbling ruin of erstwhile powerful walls and towers. These kasbas were fortified enclosures within which native tribes found shelter for themselves, their herds and all their other possessions, sometimes passing their whole lives largely within these walls. At sunrise the single gate of the enceinte was opened and at sunset it was closed, after which no living being could enter. Should even a friend arrive after this hour, he could only pass the night in the open beside his horse or camel; if it were a stranger, he stood a fair chance of being shot by the inhabitant of the kasba who was that night on guard. Today these fortified settlements are empty and their former inhabitants live on separate farms or on the plains, cultivating the soil and guarding their herds, following the example of the Europeans. Many are at present used as night shelters for cattle, while others have gone down before the guns of the French during their struggles against warlike and undisciplined tribes. It is only in the higher regions of the Atlas that the natives continue to live within kasbas and to keep their walls and towers in proper repair.

At intervals, as oases through the desert, white military posts are set down with their buildings for the garrison and their watch-tower encircled with a protecting