Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/185

Rh jumps, looking, with its long, thin tail, quite like a miniature kangaroo.

At a distance of some twenty-five miles we turned away from the river and crossed a large plain that brought us into foot-hills which were dotted with Berber villages and farms. Though the lands were rich and fertile, the people were most miserably clad, among them well-to-do villagers in such rags as would have put to shame a meskin of Fez. Flocks of sheep, guarded by biblical-looking shepherds in white robes and with long curved staffs in their hands, were grazing on the prairie grass.

After leaving the two officers at the camp of Aïn Aïcha, we crossed the Sbu on a pontoon-bridge and entered upon the last twenty-five miles of our journey over a road that was just in course of construction. Everywhere we passed large gangs of native workers, occupied in gathering and breaking stones and in shaping the roadbed. Hundreds of these Berber laborers were directed by a single overseer, unarmed and without any guard. I have seen much work done by Russians in Central Asia, Manchuria and even in their own country of Siberia and have always found each engineer and technical assistant armed and accompanied by a Cossack guard, without which they have very often been afraid to enter the workarea. In contrast to this, in North Africa I visited many towns with small French administrative staffs having a guard of only ten or twenty spahis, Berbers or Arabs. In the upper Atlas, in the mountains of Algeria among the Kabyles, on the borders of the Sahara and here on the edge of the revolted Rif I met solitary overseers, state