Here, there, and everywhere in their country, now cut with a knife on the trunks of trees, now engraved on the rocks, we meet with inscriptions in peculiar characters known as the _tifinar_; and at this very day every Tuareg who has to wait, or who suffers from _ennui_ for any reason, always wiles away the time, whether on the banks of the Niger, on the tablelands of Air, or on the summits of the volcanic Atakor n’Ahaggar, by writing according to the best of his skill his name and that of his sweetheart on a rock or on the trunk of some tree, now and then adding a sentence or two, or in rarer cases a complete poem. Now the letters employed in these _tifinar_, ancient or modern, are the same, or very nearly the same, and are therefore identical with those used in the celebrated Tugga inscription, dating from the time when Carthage was still a thriving city. Imochar, of which the singular form is Amacher, is the name by which the Tuaregs of the Niger districts generally speak of themselves. They are, say the Arabs, Tuaregs (singular Targui); Surgu, say the Songhay; Burdane, say the Fulahs. Now not one of these various appellations comes from a root signifying anything evil, and a Tuareg would be sure to use one or the other according to the dialect he speaks in referring to his people. Some have pretended that Tuareg means abandoned by God, for Arabs are very fond of explaining everything by puns and plays upon words. Yet another Arab root from which the word might possibly be derived is one signifying nomads or wanderers. [Illustration: TUAREGS.] Without attempting to throw fresh light, or perhaps to add further obscurity to the question, I may remark here, that a certain Berber tribe (we shall see that the Tuaregs are Berbers) calls itself Tarka, whilst a small section of the Awellimiden is known as Tarkai-Tamut, whilst the great Berber conqueror of Spain was named Tarik. It seems most reasonable to suppose that the Arabs gave to the whole race the name of one of its tribes, probably that with which they were brought into close contact. Does not the very name of Berber, characterizing the whole great race, including not only the Tuaregs, but the Kabyles, the Chambas, and others, itself come from that of but one fraction—the Berbers or Barbers of Morocco? During the Roman decadence the Berbers, including the Tuaregs, joined the flocks of Saint Augustine and his successors as converts, very half-hearted ones probably, and then after a time of considerable obscurity in their history came the Mohammedan conquest. Rebellious at first, the Berbers ended by accepting the religion of Islam, without feeling any more enthusiasm for the new faith than they had done for the old. As for the Tuaregs, it is said it was not necessary to convert them more than fourteen times!