Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/44

xxviii sited the treasures of those kings. A drawing of this monument is still unpublished in my collection. Advancing still to the S.E. through broken ground and some very barren valleys, which produced nothing but game, I came to Jibbel Aurez, the Aurasius Mons of the middle age. This is not one mountain, but an assemblage of many of the most craggy steeps in Africa.

I met, to my great astonishment, a tribe, who, if I cannot say they were fair like English, were of a shade lighter than that of the inhabitants of any country to the southward of Britain. Their hair also was red, and their eyes blue. They are a savage and independent people; it required address to approach them with safety, which, however, I accomplished, (the particulars would take too much room for this place), was well received, and at perfect liberty to do whatever I pleased. This tribe is called Neardie. Each of the tribe, in the middle between their eyes, has a Greek cross marked with antimony. They are Kabyles. Though living in tribes, they have among the mountains huts, built with mud and straw, which they call Dashkras, whereas the Arabs live in tents on the plains. I imagine these to be a remnant of Vandals. Procopius mentions a defeat of an army of this nation here, after a desperate resistance, a remnant of which may be supposed to have maintained themselves in these mountains. They with great pleasure confessed their ancestors had been Christians, and seemed to rejoice much more in that relation than in any connection with the Moors, with whom they live in perpe-