THE TUAREGS 249 Wild manners truly do these lines describe, but they also express proud and heroic sentiments. What will the Tuaregs gain by their transformation into civilized people ?

In a few centuries, where the tents of the Amezzar are pitched there will be permanent towns. The descendants of the Ihaggaren of the present day will be citizens. There will be nothing about them to remind their contemporaries of the wild knights of the desert.

No more will they go to war ; no more will they lead razzis to ravage the camps of their neighbours, for they will have given up pillage altogether ; but perhaps in a bank, which will take the place of the tent of their Amenokal, they will try to float rotten companies, and mines which exist nowhere but in the imagination of their chiefs.

What will they be then ? Not pillagers but thieves !

Truth to tell, I think I prefer my marauders, who fall on their prey like the lion Ahar !

|k ! f * H c i AN AFRICAN CAMEL.