In the absence of any indication of the intrusion of a conquering race that can be supposed to have imposed its language on the previous population, it seems most probable that the native races of North Africa, between the Libyan Desert and the Atlantic coast, including also the Canary Islands, all belong to a single stock, which may best be called Bereber. The two main branches are both mountain peoples. To the north we have the tribes of the Lesser Atlas, extending from the gates of Tetuan to the hill country of Tunis, who may best bear the common name of Kabyles—to the south-west the population of the Great Atlas, from the neighbourhood of Fez to the coast between Agadir and Oued Noun, broken up into numerous tribes, but all speaking some dialect of the same language, and thence called generically Shelluhs. Of the scattered fragments of the Bereber stock that have spread far through the oases of the Great Desert, till they have come into contact with the Negro tribes from the south of that barrier, our information is still most imperfect. In constant conflict with each other, and with the Arab and Negro tribes who dispute with them the scanty means of subsistence that Nature here provides, they appear on the whole to predominate over their competitors. The Touarecks, scattered over a territory as large as half of Europe, from Algeria to Soudan, form a separate branch of the same stock; while we learn from Gerhard Rohlfs that the predatory tribes of the desert south of Marocco are merely Shelluhs who have changed their habits and manner of life to suit altered conditions of existence. The character of the Bereber has scarcely received justice at the hands either of ancient or modern writers. They have been inconvenient neighbours for those who have sought to encroach on their territory, and they are justly dreaded by the traveller through the Great Desert as the most active and enterprising of the human enemies he must confront or evade. Comparing them with the Moor and Arab population of South Marocco, our report agrees with that of Jackson, who probably knew them better than any other European has done. They are decidedly superior in intelligence, in industry, and general activity to their neighbours. Two of our retinue, selected by Mr. Carstensen among the mountaineers who resort to Mogador to pick up a living about the port, distinguished themselves over all the rest both in physical and mental qualities; and one of these especially, who became Hooker’s personal attendant, showed an amount of general intelligence and unfailing cheerfulness that made him a favourite with the entire party.