When I use the terms "Men of the Desert," "Populations of the Desert," evidently I must not be understood to employ them in their absolute sense. Man, no more than that other so-called "lord of animals"--the lion, makes a voluntary sojourn in countries where game, verdure, and fresh water are wanting. The peoples whom we entitle "Inhabitants of the Desert" are then, in reality, those who dwell upon its borders or in its oases, but whom the necessity of traversing and frequently abiding in it has familiarized with its gloom and its peril, as a similar necessity has familiarized the mariner with the ocean. We have seen, however, that some pastoral tribes pitch their tents and pasture their flocks in those districts where vegetation is favoured and cherished by a supply of rain or subterranean waters, and which should more accurately be designated as Steppes than Deserts. Some authorities have, indeed, affixed the name of "the Saharan Steppe" to the region of high table-lands which lies at the base of the Atlas range. Other groups, who are partly shepherds and partly hunters, inhabit, in the Southern and Western Sahara, those plateaux where ostriches, gazelles, and hares abound. The more peaceful and industrious tribes occupy the oases. As for those who encamp or habitually wander in the Sandy Desert--where all cultivation is impossible, where the herds can obtain but an insufficient pasture, where game very seldom shows itself-the reader will suppose that they can only subsist by plundering or ransoming the caravans. These are the rovers, the pirates of the Sea of Sand. There are "land-rats," Shakspeare tells us, as well as "water-rats." Others, again, there are who seem convinced that "honesty is the best policy," who give themselves up exclusively to commercial transactions, and act as agents and intermediaries between nations separated from one another by leagues of rock and sand, for the exchange of their respective products. It might be said of these that they discharged a useful and honourable function, if the purchase and sale of slaves were not the most ordinary, and unfortunately the most lucrative, of their operations.