Roughly speaking, therefore, it can be said that the groups of pure Berbers are located in the high mountains, in the Mzab and in the Hoggar; that the Berber influence is predominant among the people who inhabit the country immediately south of Algiers, as far as the southern slopes of the Atlas, the department of Constantine, and an arm of the southern territories running from Biskra down to Ouargla and the great belt of desert running right across the Sahara from the Atlantic to Tripoli on a latitude just south of El Golea. The whole of the rest of the country—that is, the department of Oran, the whole of the southern tracts of the department of Alger, and the rest of the southern territories other than the belt named above— is decidedly Arab. The Berber is there, but the influence is almost entirely that of the nomad invader. If you ask an intelligent native what his nationality is, he will reply that he is an Arab who has been slightly Berberized or else he will say that he is a noble Arab—that is to say, a claimant to direct descent from Mohammed. While on this subject it is interesting to note what the conception of nobility is among these people. Outwardly, before the European, it is the title of _bash agha_ or _agha_ or _caïd_, but in reality this does not count with the people any more than Lord-Lieutenant of a county in England. To them it is merely a title imposed by the French, which they must respect just as they must respect the Colonel or the _Administrateur_. Aristocracy to them is the descent from the Prophet, or as one wise old gentleman once said: [Illustration: An Arab Beggar] [Illustration: Scene of Arab Life] “To many of us nobility can be achieved by much learning.” In other words, the scarlet burnous and the loud-sounding title would carry no weight if it were not enforced by the French authority.