A rough rendering is given below of the _Song of R’Otman_, quoted by Duveyrier, who justly calls it the Tuareg _Marseillaise_, which is chanted in defiance of the Chambas by the Azgueurs, who are their hereditary enemies. Death to thy mother! Ma’atalla the devil is in thee! Call’st thou the Tuaregs traitors, the men of the plain? Ha! but they know how to travel, to fight in the battle, Sally at morn and return in the evening again! Aye, and they know how to fall on the enemy sleeping— Sleeping at ease in the tent with his flocks at his side, Lapped in his fine woollen garments, his curtains and carpets Spreading full length in the shade of the canopy wide. What though with milk newly-drawn from the udders of camels, What though with meat and with butter his paunch he has filled, Straight as a nail to the ground pins the lance of the victor, Out with a shriek and a yell flies the soul of the killed! Sunk in despair lies the heart-broken wife of the victim, Scattered and vanished their goods like as water o’erspilled! Wild manners truly do these lines describe, but they also express proud and heroic sentiments. What will the Tuaregs gain by their transformation into civilized people? In a few centuries, where the tents of the Amezzar are pitched there will be permanent towns. The descendants of the Ihaggaren of the present day will be citizens. There will be nothing about them to remind their contemporaries of the wild knights of the desert. No more will they go to war; no more will they lead _razzis_ to ravage the camps of their neighbours, for they will have given up pillage altogether; but perhaps in a bank, which will take the place of the tent of their Amenokal, they will try to float rotten companies, and mines which exist nowhere but in the imagination of their chiefs. What will they be then? Not pillagers but thieves! Truth to tell, I think I prefer my marauders, who fall on their prey like the lion Ahar! [Illustration: AN AFRICAN CAMEL.] [Illustration: AN ISOLATED TREE AT FAFA.] CHAPTER VI FROM FAFA TO SAY Our dread of the passage of the river at Fafa may have seemed almost childish, and we have since had experience of many another like it, but for a first attempt it must be admitted it was rather a teaser. Narrow and much encumbered, made more difficult by a violent current, such is the pass of Fafa.