The _gh_ (or Arabic غ, _ghen_) sound is, as in other Berber languages, very common in the speech of the Tuareg. The letter is so strongly _grasseyé_ as to be indistinguishable, in many cases, from _r_. The French with greater logic write this sound _r_ or _r’_. Doubtless many names which have been spelled with _r_ in the succeeding pages should more correctly have been spelled with _gh_: such mistakes are due to the difficulties both of distinguishing the sound in speech, and of transcribing French transliterations. No attempt has been made to indicate the occurrence of the third _g_ which exists in the Tuareg alphabet, in addition to the hard _g_ and the soft _g_ (written _j_). The Arabic letter ع (_’ain_) does not exist in the speech of the Tuareg; where they use an Arabic word containing this letter, they substitute for it the sound _gh_. No signs have been used to distinguish between the hard and soft varieties of the letters _d_, _t_ and _z_. The “kef” (Iek) and “qaf” (Iaq) sounds are written _k_ and _q_. =PEOPLE OF THE VEIL= CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Sahara is the name given in modern geography to the whole of the interior of North Africa between the Nile Valley and the Atlantic littoral, south of the Mediterranean coastlands and north of the Equatorial belt. The word “Sahara” is derived from the Arabic, and its meaning refers to a certain type of stony desert in one particular area. There is no native name for the whole of this vast land surface: it is far too large to fall wholly within the cognisance of any one group of its diverse inhabitants. The fact that it is a Moslem area and sharply distinguished from the rest of Africa has made it desirable to find a better name than “Sahara” to include both the interior and the littoral, for even “Sahara,” unsatisfactory as it is, can only be used of the former. “Africa Minor” has been proposed, but the reception accorded to this name has not been so cordial as to warrant its use. The clumsy term “North Africa” must therefore serve in the following pages to describe all the northern part of the continent; specifically it refers to the parts west of the Nile Valley and north of the Sudan.[1] It is an area which is now no longer permanently inhabited by negro races, and which is not covered by the dense vegetation of Equatoria.