A moment later there emerged from the enveloping dust-cloud a long line of grim fantastic figures, mounted not upon the lumbering dromedaries of commerce but astride the lean gray racing-camels called _méhari_ by the desert folk. At the head of the column rode a slim, sun-bronzed young Frenchman in the uniform of a captain of _chasseurs d’Afrique_. As the cavalcade swept by us at a brisk trot, saddles creaking, accoutrements clanking, carbines thudding in their buckets, I noted that the riders were veiled like women, their faces muffled to the eyes with dark blue scarfs. By these I knew them for masked Touareg; raiders and robbers no longer, however, but camel cavalry, _méharistes_, in the service of the republic. Unlike the ordinary Arab, who invariably wears white, their _gandourahs_ were somber in color—dark blue or black—and girt about with broad belts of camel’s-hair. The black _lithams_, or face-cloths—which, by the way, are worn not for purposes of disguise but in order to protect the throat and nose from the sand—permitted nothing save the fierce smoldering eyes of their wearers to be seen. Perhaps it was their reputation for cruelty, perhaps it was their black masks and somber apparel, but there was something awesome and impressive about these veiled riders and the stealthy, quiet tread of the great beasts they bestrode, as they sped southward into the infinite spaces of the desert. Possessed of a skill in desert-craft and tracking equaled only by the American Indian, mounted on their wonderful running-camels, capable of covering enormous distances in a day, these “People of the Veil,” some of them at least, have accepted the pay of France and are bringing security to the caravan-routes and the desert towns which they terrorized so long. They have not yet beaten their long, two-edged swords into plowshares, it is true, but they have turned them into policemen’s batons; and a policeman is a sure indication that civilization is not far away. CHAPTER XII DOWN TO THE LAND OF THE MOZABITES Linked to Biskra and civilization by the slender thread of steel which the French have thrown across some two hundred kilometers of dusty desert, Touggourt, the dark-green mass of its palm-groves floating betwixt the sky and the tossing dunes, suggested a boat moored to the shore by a long hawser. Cut that hawser, and Touggourt would, you feel, drift away upon the sea of sand, for it is the southernmost rail-head in the Algerine Sahara.