The Tuaregs

The Tuaregs of Africa occupy a tract of country about the size of Europe with Russia left out. Roughly speaking, it extends from Fezzan west to the Atlantic, and from Algeria to the Haussas, but is practically unknown, as the Tuaregs decline to allow anyone to enter. The few trading caravans that traverse it are heavily armed and pay tribute. These veiled pirates of the Desert are real savages, and look like a cross between Red Indians and Negroes. They are tall in stature, thin, crafty, treacherous, shifty-eyed, their long bodies having the litheness of ferrets, while their word is never to be trusted, and their hand is against every man's. They bind their foreheads with black or indigo cotton, crossed behind and brought round the face below the cunning eyes, and above this there is a strip of white cotton, leaving a shock of fuzzy black hair about a foot long. Their clothing and habits are most unclean, and the children are unclothed. The Tuareg is too much of a gentleman to work, and lives, when not on the warpath, at home in ease. He has no visible means of subsistence, but indulges in a little hunting; antelopes and gazelles are his usual prey, but at other times he catches locusts for his daily food. Some ivory and ostrich feathers pass through the hands of the various tribes, and they tan leather well, dyeing it blue, red, brown or yellow. In contradiction to their wild appearance they have the softest, sweetest voices imaginable, and they speak a musical language in liquid, low-pitched voices. They dwell in red-leather tents, pitched among small sand-hills of this wide, arid waste.