I have constituted myself the defender of the Tuaregs. I have shown them to be less cruel, less traitorous, less hostile to progress than they are generally said to be. It is for the reader to judge whether the adventures I have related do or do not prove my impressions to have been correct. One thing, however, I must stipulate, and that is: if we let months or years slip by without improving the relations opened with the Tuaregs of the Niger by further contact with them, we shall find them more difficult to deal with, more suspicious, altogether less accessible than we did during our stay in their country. As I have already said, the Azgueurs were in our hands after the journey of Duveyrier. Ikhenukhen, their great chief, who was honoured and obeyed by them, was our friend. When the treaty of Rhâdames was made, we said to them, “We want to go to the Sudan by way of Aïr: you will guide us, you will protect our traders, you will hire your camels to us, and you will find it to your profit to do so.” A Tuareg proverb says, “You should never promise more than half what you mean to perform.” The Azgueurs of course expected our caravans to arrive, and they are still expecting them. Gradually, however, they are beginning to doubt us. “What,” they are saying, “did those Frenchmen, who seemed so anxious to trade in our country, come to do here?” When this question is put to a Tuareg, he will answer immediately, “They came to spy; they were the spies of a great army, which will come to take away our liberty and our independence.” [Illustration: MEDAL OF THE LYONS GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.] In the English of Tripoli and their agent, the Kaimakhan of Rhâdames, they would have advisers, who would increase their suspicions of us. Little by little the sympathy the Tuaregs had felt for us would give way to dread of us. Ikhenukhen is dead now, the Sahara is closed to us, more completely closed than when Duveyrier visited it, or when Barth and Richardson crossed it. If we are equally negligent with the Awellimiden, we shall obtain equally melancholy results. If only an opposite policy could be pursued, how different everything would be! Whilst waiting for that iron road, and alas! its completion is very far off! the only means of transit—bearing in mind the impossibility of navigating the second section of the river—is to employ the comparatively cheap and easily obtained ships of the desert, the ugly but useful camels. Now the camels all belong to the Tuaregs, generally to their Imrad tribes.