HALT AT GEBEL AGADl 137 least thirty-two miles had to be covered to bring us halfway between the two sources of watersupply by next evening. Gebel Agadi provided the first. It is strange that these lonely heaps of granite, erupted pimples on the face of an otherwise dead-level earth, should so often mark water.

Sometimes, indeed, the spring issues in places on the height of the gebel itself, to the convenience of leopards and baboons which haunt the rocks.

But Gebel Agadi, or the collection of heaps known by that name, is also tenanted by man—to me a new form. Perched on and amongst the great boulders of the hill were scores of their grasscovered tulds, or huts, much resembling those seen in Rhodesia, but minus the centre support which exists in the latter, and which robs them of some of their spaciousness.

It was raw man, savage, barbarian, causing my camel-men to appear, as they felt, high in the scale of civilization. My Berberi servants seemed on nearly a plane with Europeans, and all scornfully called the villagers " Arabs." The negro in America insults his brother by calling him a "nigger" or *' black man "; here the same principle entered, for all were supposed, more or less incorrectly, to be Arabs of different degree, though strictly, in this case, a probable aboriginal ancestry renders the villagers' right to the classification doubtful.

The tribe is the Ingassana, and possesses distinct characteristics, being more substantial in build and darker in colour. The men are faddists in hair-