People of Africa | Page 6

houses and temples. But digging in the desert is very hard work, because it is very hot, and there is very little water and food. Often, too, a great wind arises and brings a sandstorm. Then the sand drifts back again to the places already cleared.
3. The Desert Peoples (a) Berbers
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.
4. The Desert Peoples (b) Bedouin
The second kind of people who have their home in the desert are the Bedouin. These are Arabs who once lived in another desert in Arabia, but long, long ago many of them came to live in the Sahara. The Bedouin live in tents made of poles with dark cloth of goats' hair or camels' hair spread across them for walls and roof. They travel in large tribes, and put up their tents on a small oasis where there is no town. These people still live as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived long ago, before the Israelites built their towns. On the oasis their camels, horses, sheep, and goats can find water to drink and grass to eat. When all the food has been eaten they pack up the tents and everything they have and put it on the backs of the animals. Then the men and women and children all mount camels and horses and donkeys, and the whole tribe moves to another oasis. These people drink camels' milk and eat the dates and bananas and other fruit they find where they pitch their tents. They also bring these fruits