FROM TIMBUKTU TO TOSAYE 129 independent and to obey no laws but its own, and partly from contact with the foreigner, has lost all the virtues of the Tuaregs and retained all their defects.

The tribe to which I allude is that known as the Igwadaren, from which sprang the loraghen, who form so large an element in French Algeria, and for a long time they were the allies, or rather were subject to the Awellimiden.

Just at the time of Earth's voyage they had tried to separate from the rest of their tribe, and relying upon the aid of the Fulahs, who had invaded Massina, to get the upper hand. From Barth's narrative we know that the great desire of his protector El Beckay was to prevent the division, and his greatest grief the fact that he failed to do so.

The Awellimiden repulsed the Fulahs, and since then the Igwadaren, traitors to their fellow-countrymen, have been looked upon by them as enemies whom they were justified in raiding whenever they got the chance, and really I cannot blame them, for it serves the Igwadaren right.

When for the second time El Hadj Omar and his Toucouleurs tried by force of arms to restore the supremacy of an intolerant and barbarous Islamism, EI Beckay, as we have already said, rose up against him in the cause of tolerance and a more humane interpretation of the doctrines of Mahomet. The Awellimiden, with the Iregnaten of the right bank of the Niger, were his auxiliaries. The great leader, as we have seen, died before his work was done, but he had broken the shock of the storm. A last wave of the tempest of revolt which had arisen in the west surged up to the walls of Timbuktu, which had been reached by an army of Toucouleurs, but they were surprised and massacred near Gundam. Once more the Tuaregs were saved, and all the prudent measures of Tidiani, the politic successor of El Hadj, could not advance