A great deal of sentimental nonsense has been written about the camel, which, as a matter of fact, is the stupidest, the most ungrateful, and the most ill-tempered of all domesticated animals. “If,” says Sir Francis Palgrave, “docile means stupid, well and good; in such a case the camel is the very model of docility. But if the epithet is intended to designate an animal that takes an interest in its rider so far as a beast can, that in some way understands his intentions, or shares them in a subordinate fashion, that obeys from a sort of submissive or half-fellow-feeling with his master, like the horse or the elephant, then I say that the camel is by no means docile—very much the contrary. He takes no heed of his rider, pays no attention whether he be on his back or not, walks straight on when once set a-going, merely because he is too stupid to turn aside, and then should some tempting thorn or green branch allure him out of the path, continues to walk on in the new direction simply because he is too dull to turn back into the right road. In a word, he is from first to last an undomesticated and savage animal rendered serviceable by stupidity alone, without much skill on his master’s part, or any coöperation on his own, save that of an extreme passiveness. Neither attachment nor even habit impresses him; never tame, though not wide-awake enough to be exactly wild.” * * * * * In the desert, about two hundred and fifty kilometers east-southeast of Touggourt, lies a group of seven small oases, the largest of which is Ghardaia. This archipelago is the home of a confederation of Berber tribes known as Mozabites, or the Beni-M’zab, to give them their proper name. The Mozabites, who number only about forty thousand, are not Arabs, but one of the ancient Berber races which lived in North Africa long before the Arabs came. Nearly all of them read and write Arabic, but in conversing among themselves they employ the Zenata dialect of the Berber tongue, for which, in common with the other branches of the old Berber stock, such as the Riffi and the Kabyles, there survives no written form. Though Moslems they belong to a sect of extreme dissenters, branches of which are also found in Oman and Zanzibar, being shunned by orthodox Mohammedans as the worst of heretics. Their creed is based on the precepts of Abdallah-ibn-Ibad, the assassin of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and hence the traditional hatred in which they are held by the conventional followers of the faith, who refer to them as _Khammes_, “the Fifth,” because they are outside the four great branches of Islam. In their form of government, their extreme austerity of life, and their intolerance of other beliefs, as well as in their energy, industry, and commercial integrity, they strongly resemble the Puritans who settled on the shores of New England three hundred years ago. Like the Puritans,