It is certainly remarkable to see people from five places separated from each other by immense tracts, and united only by the bond of commerce and interest, founding a large colony far away from their homes, and on the very border of the desert. For, according to all that I could learn by the most sedulous inquiries in Ágades, those tribes belonged to the Gurára of Tawát, to the Tafimáta, to the Beni Wazít, and the Tésko of Ghadámes, to the once powerful and numerous tribe of the Masráta, and finally to the Aújila; and as the names of almost all these different tribes, and of their divisions, are still attached to localities of the town, we can scarcely doubt the correctness of this information, and must suppose that Sultan Bello was mistaken in referring the five tribes (settled in Ágades) to Aújila alone.[171] Though nothing is related about the manner in which Háj Mohammed Áskiá took possession of the town[172], except that it is stated distinctly that he drove out the five tribes, it seems, from the traditions current in Ágades, that a considerable number of the Berbers, with five hundred “jákhfa” (cages mounted on camels, such as only wealthy people can afford to keep for carrying their wives), left the town, but were all massacred. But no one who regards with the least attention the character of the present population of the town, can doubt for a moment that a considerable number of the Berber population remained behind, and in course of time mixed with the Sónghay colonists; for, even if we set aside the consideration of the language (which is greatly intermixed with Berber words), there is evidently much Berber blood in the population even at the present day,—a fact which is more evident in the females than in the males.