AS AMKl MIKI'UKKI).

CHAPTER V THE TUAREGS After I got back to France I often came in contact with people who, as the expression goes, were interested in geographical and colonial questions, and sometimes I was subjected to a most extraordinary cross-examination. The following is a true account of a conversation I once had:— " So you have really been amongst the Tuaregs ? They are savages, are they not ? Are they cannibals ? " I protested that even during the worst famines they had never tasted a scrap of the flesh of a fellow creature.

" But at least they are cruel ? They thieve and plunder, do they not ? They have neither religion nor laws ? " I really do not feel sure of having convinced a single person that even if the Tuaregs have their faults, that they are not wanting in good* qualities, and that their social condition, different though it may be from ours, is nevertheless an established one, that it would be alike humane 199