Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/211

Rh help of their sorceresses, these kahinas whose sisters of long ago were beloved by the Roman dignitaries.

All this disappeared behind the mountains, yet the vivid impression remained and gave birth to fecund thoughts. The story of the young Arab had laid bare for me some of the workings of the native mind in its attitude toward the primitive gods and spirits that still retained their dominion over the minds of peasant and sage alike. If the soul of the people is so guided, how dangerous would be the liberty that men seek to bring to them! What would these tribes do except indulge in a whirlpool of civil strife? When years of bad harvest, of cattle epidemics or of disease come upon them, would their sorcerers and clairvoyants help them, would their quacks and magi heal them?

I am firmly convinced that the liberty and freedom for these tribes ought to be of another character from that about which agitators are preaching; otherwise to the ruins of Volubilis, Blida and Timgad we may soon be obliged to add El-Zerhun, Fez, Rabat, Biskra and hundreds of other towns and villages that would be engulfed by the storm, carried away by the natural desire for an independence for which they are not prepared and for which, as their history points out, they are not temperamentally fitted.