2i6 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER about Timbuktu between the French and the various tribes who resisted the foreign occupation, Bellates were often taken prisoners, but however kind our treatment of them, in spite of promises of complete Hberty on the one condition that they would remain with us, we were not able to keep a single one. They all ran away to rejoin their old masters. In warlike expeditions they form a very useful supplement to the Tuareg infantry, and they are quite as brave as are the free soldiers.

One peculiar fact which speaks well for the Tuareg character is, that though these warriors own hereditary slaves they never sell or buy them. Before the French arrived at Timbuktu that town was the centre of the slave trade, whence captives were sent to Tripoli on the one hand and to Morocco on the other. The convoys with the melancholy processions of slaves were generally under the leadership of traders from Mosi, who brought the unhappy captives to the town and sold them to merchants from Morocco or Tuat.

We have already seen, and we shall have again occasion to remark, that the whole negro population of the Niger districts is in a similar state of servitude with regard to the Tuaregs, a fact which will explain how it is that no Songhay or Arma would dream of disputing the orders of the chiefs, or offering the very slightest resistance to their demands.

There would therefore be absolutely nothing to prevent a Tuareg who should chance to be in want of money or of clothes to go and seize one or more of the Gabibi, as the negroes of the villages are called, and sell him or them for slaves at Timbuktu. In fact, it would be quite as simple a matter as to choose an ox out of his own herds and send it to market. Yet never has a Tuareg been known to do such a thing. I have made sure of this by cross-questioning