Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/39

Rh Atlantis and Lemuria were still above the waves, those continents of which mention is made in the very oldest historic records, among them the earliest Chinese chronicles?

These questions thrust themselves up before me at the very beginning of my journey across North Africa. We know that the Arabs came from the east, were a warlike people that subdued the population of North Africa, which was then divided into hostile tribes, and penetrated to the shores of the Atlantic near Rabat in Morocco. History plainly gives us these facts; yet that was all but as of yesterday, after the death of Mahomet in the seventh century of our era. We know also that all the other tribes which were then indigenous to this vast stretch of territory between Egypt and the Atlantic, the Sahara, the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean are called Berbers or Kabyles; but that is not a satisfactory explanation. I traversed these expanses from west to east and from north to south and, during my journey, saw so many different types, judged from any standard, that I cannot accept such an artificial grouping together of these Berbers, even when one takes into consideration the crossing of races, anthropomorphic changes and other factors in assimilation.

Contemporary scientific sources do not afford decisive and conclusive evidence as to the first inhabitants of this country within the period of man's present speculation. They assume that a race, seeking to avoid the desert and separated by it from Central Africa, advanced