It is surprising to find that there are a great many people living in
this desert region of North Africa. There are three kinds of people
there. Firstly, there are the Berbers, who live always in a little
town or village on a big oasis, and grow their own food. Secondly,
there are the Bedouin, who live in large wandering tribes. These keep
sheep and goats and camels, and stay on a small oasis until their
herds have eaten all the grass on it, and then move on to another
place. Thirdly, there are the Arab traders, whose business is to go
south of the desert to get ivory and gold, and to take these back to
Egypt and to the great cities north of the desert to sell. All these
people speak Arabic and are Mohammedans.
The Berbers who live in the towns on the great oasis, where there is a
large spring of water, are a different race from the Arabs, the
Egyptians, or the dark-skinned people of farther south. They are much
darker-skinned than the Egyptians and the Bedouin. In the past many
different races of South Europe, as well as the Arabs, have conquered
them and intermarried with them, but they still remain a distinct
race, though their customs are like those of other Moslems. They make
their houses of bricks dried in the sun, and build them so close
together that people can step from one roof to another across the
street. The roofs are flat, so that they can sit or sleep on them at
night when it is very hot inside the house. All round the outside of
the towns are brick walls with gates that are shut at night for fear
of robbers.
These people live very much like the town-people in Egypt, only they
are much poorer. They can buy things from the traders in the caravans
which stop at their village for the night, but as they cannot grow or
make many things to give in exchange, most people have to be content
with the earthenware cooking-pots and the cloth they can make
themselves. The women draw water and prepare the food and look after
the children. Then they weave flax and wool into cloth. Their dress
is something like that of the poor Egyptians. The children have to
herd the sheep and goats, which at night sleep in the house with their
owners. The men hoe the gardens and grow the millet and barley for
food, and the flax for cloth. The chief food of these people is bread
made of millet-flour kneaded with milk and baked in a hole in the
ground. The flour is ground between two stones placed one on the top
of the other, the upper one having one or two handles by which it can
be moved round. The people in these small, crowded towns in the
middle of the desert must live very narrow lives, and they do not know
much about anything outside their own village. Journeys in the desert
are very dangerous because of sandstorms and the difficulty of finding
the way where there are no roads, and more especially because of
robbers. So people never go on journeys unless they can join a big
company with plenty of men ready to fight if the robbers attack them.