Before sunrise we started, riding in the cool morning over mountain and vale to Tamezred. By a deep stony gorge we arrived at the foot of the mountain, where the road was so impracticable that we all three had to dismount and drag our horses along; it took us half an hour to cover a quarter of a mile.
This was certainly the most unapproachable eyrie I have seen in the south. From the mountain top the view extended for miles over hill and dale down to the plains to the south-west in the country of Bir Sultan, at least forty miles distant. There the herds were grazing, for no rain had fallen on the mountains.
Sheikh El-Hadj Abdallah received us amicably, and invited me to the guest-chamber—a stuffy room—where food was brought me. From thence I overlooked a wonderfully beautiful landscape.
The inhabitants spoke the Berber tongue, but also understood Arabic. I tried in vain to get some Berber manuscripts to examine, but none were to be had, the language being nowadays written in Arabic characters.
The Sheikh’s property—a square court with a low range of buildings outside it—I examined from end to end. Within were women spinning and cooking. In one enclosure stood a fine bull, in another I discovered a number of old flint-lock muskets hanging amongst keys, yarn, powder-horns, and pomegranates, all being spun over with spider webs. The guns had probably not been used since the French invasion.
FALCONERS.
This was the only occasion on which I saw firearms in any numbers, the Arabs generally concealing them—often under their beds so as to have them handy.
In the guest-room a camel’s-hair tent hung, rolled up under the roof. When the men wander forth after the rainfall to hunt or to sow, the tent is packed on a camel and taken with them.
The Sheikh informed me that the inhabitants of Tamezred number some five hundred souls. Of these about a hundred men can be armed; they mostly fight on foot, as horses are rare in these mountains; in Tamezred there are only seven, but there are many hundreds of camels, about a hundred cows, as many small donkeys, and large herds of sheep and goats. These graze on the plains, far away towards Bir Sultan and Bir Zuamitz, watched by the men of the village.