202 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER what the Tuaregs mean by pillage.) In the Tamschenk dialect the word ahar also signifies lion.

If we go back to the days of antiquity, and read our Herodotus, we shall find that he speaks of the Mazique tribe as dwelling in Libya. There are Numidians of Jugurtha and of Maussinissa, and the last word is translated almost literally into the dialect now employed, mess riesen meaning their master, or the master of the people, whilst the word Mazique is evidently the Greek form, from which is derived the present name of Imazighen.

If this etymological proof is not sufficient, there exists another, this one absolutely irrefragable, viz. the Tuareg writing.

Here, there, and everywhere in their country, now cut with a knife on the trunks of trees, now engraved on the rocks, we meet with inscriptions in peculiar characters known as the tifinar; and at this very day every Tuareg who has to wait, or who suffers from ennui for any reason, always wiles away the time, whether on the banks of the Niger, on the tablelands of Air, or on the summits of the volcanic Atakor n'Ahaggar, by writing according to the best of his skill his name and that of his sweetheart on a rock or on the trunk of some tree, now and then adding a sentence or two, or in rarer cases a complete poem.

Now the letters employed in these tifinar ancient or modern, are the same, or very nearly the same, and are therefore identical with those used in the celebrated Tugga inscription, dating from the time when Carthage was still a thriving city.

Imochar, of which the singular form is Amacher, is the name by which the Tuaregs of the Niger districts generally speak of themselves. They are, say the Arabs, Tuaregs (singular Targui); Surgu, say the Songhay ; Burdane, say the Fulahs.