Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/43

Rh a most unprepossessing Oran den, where a painted and tattooed daughter of the mysterious Mlaina tribe performed a native dance.

This riddle, however, gave me no peace and I searched everywhere for something that could help to explain it. Now, when I look back upon the past, and I study my notes of travel and the works of specialists in this subject, I am struck by the more distinctive characteristics of the magic art current among these North African tribes. I refer especially to magic strength, which, according to their general belief, is derived from blood, from all sorts of human and animal refuse, from corpses and from parts of the body; as well as to superstitions which run parallel with this belief in magic, such, for instance, as the possession of the ability to remain invisible and unheard, the union of the souls, hearts and thoughts of two men, the influence of colors on the spiritual side of man's nature, et cetera. Whence come these magical practices? No nation has independently developed them. In those where they have become current they have been borrowed from Gipsies, Andalusians, Moors, Chaldeans and Egyptians, all of whom had relations with North Africa and, therefore, with these Berbers, who, having accepted Islam, carried with them their practices to Mecca during their sacred pilgrimages. Thence they spread to Asia Minor and western Asia, then further on to India and even to China, if we recall that Arabian followers of the Prophet built a mosque in Canton a long time before the discovery of the Chinese shores by the Portuguese. But all this is only supposition, a feeble effort to find some plausible answer to the anthropological riddle of North Africa.