SETTING OUT THE SALT OF TIGUIDDA TO HARDEN INTO CAKES
From the time of leaving the salt-pits the career of each block, or slab, is one continual round of exchange, until they end in eventual consumption.
Although tribal customs are changing in the Western Sudan, there are still instances of local taxes being paid in salt; and builders and contractors; while raw materials, such as hides, ground-nuts, and other produce desired for export to Europe are often bartered for the same commodity. Nevertheless, it is as a native medium of exchange for little purchases that salt has its chief use as a currency at the present time.
Lastly, the nearest approach to dramatic entertainment that the West African native enjoys is furnished by curious Punch and Judy shows. And in the manner that one pays sixpence or a shilling to gain admittance, say, to a cinema, so the actors, or puppet manipulators, of “Punch and Judy” are often rewarded by small admirers with merely a “pinch of salt.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE PEOPLE OF THE VEIL
CHAPTER VIII
THE PEOPLE OF THE VEIL
The outstanding inhabitants of the Great Desert are “The People of the Veil”; a term by which the Tuaregs are generally known, and one that is employed by themselves, collectively, in the designation Kel-Tagilmus, which in their language has exactly the same meaning. It is they who, in widely scattered tribes of small numbers, dominate the Sahara and the sedentary serfs, they who are pre-eminently a class unto themselves, and they who are responsible for much of the romance that has given to the Sahara a world-wide mystical fame.