THE TUAREGS 217 many negroes, and their answers have always been the same.

At the very bottom rung of the social ladder we find the negroes of the riverside districts, the Songhay and the Armas. They cultivate millet, rice, and tobacco. When their masters are at daggers drawn with each other, as was the case when we were amongst the Igwadaren, they have a good deal to complain of, for they are, as it were, between two fires, and their position is anything but enviable. Amongst the Awellimiden, however, their condition seems to be much happier, and when they have once paid their dues they are left in peace, great chiefs such as Madidu protecting them against the exactions of the less powerful Tuaregs.

I confess I do not feel any very special pity for them. They are quite as numerous as the Tuaregs, quite as well armed, and all they need to recover their independence is a little courage. If, moreover, they cared to study the history of the past, they would not fail to remark that their Songhay ancestors brought their doom upon them when they destroyed Es Suk, and forced the Tuaregs to lead their present wandering life.

As for the project of pressing the negroes into the service for the suppression of the Tuaregs, it is but a Utopian idea, and that a very dangerous one, for the Songhay race is too debased by its three centuries of servitude to have any real stamina left.

I need scarcely point out the great mistake implied in the suggestion : We ought to favour the black at the expense of the Tuaregs, because the former are producers as tillers of the soil, and the latter are useless idlers, for the Tuareg is as hard a worker as the negro ; he works in a different direction, that is all — breeding flocks and herds instead of growing cereals. When the means of transport