The Tuaregs have been accused of being cruel, but this is another grave error. They alone perhaps of all African races do not kill their prisoners after a battle. One must have been present at the taking of a village by negroes to realize the awful butchery with which the victory ends. Everybody not fit to be sold as a slave is put to the sword. The throats of the old men are cut, and little children too young to walk have their heads smashed against stones. Tuaregs, on the other hand, are quite incapable of such atrocities. When we passed Sinder, Boker Wandieïdu, chief of the Logamaten, had more than two hundred Toucouleur prisoners in his camp, who had been taken in war two years before, and he was feeding and looking after them all. After the fatal battle with the Tacubaos, in which Colonel Bonnier was killed, the two officers who alone escaped from the scene of the combat, Captains Regard and Nigotte, fled in different directions. Nigotte reached Timbuktu, and was saved, but Regard went westwards, and was taken prisoner by the negroes of the Dongoi villages, who took him to the Tenguereguif Tuaregs. In spite, however, of the fact that the excitement of the battle had scarcely subsided, these Tuaregs would not themselves slay the unfortunate Frenchman. “Do with him what you will,” they said; and the negroes killed him. Moreover, it has been said that the Tuaregs are fanatics, but I have never seen them prostrate themselves or fast. It is, however, unfortunately quite true that the marabouts exercise a great influence over them; but it is the kind of ascendency that clever people always obtain over big children, such as the Tuaregs are, and such as sorcerers get over the superstitious. “You are Christians, and we ought not to have anything to do with infidels,” Yunes said to us at Tosaye. A good excuse, and one that he could not help laughing at himself. Yunes, I am glad to say, never really followed the precepts of Islam any more than did any of his fellow-countrymen.