At the time of my visit, there remained in the Ksar only about a couple of hundred men, who were merely left to guard the houses.
The place looks quite different in the month of July, when some one thousand five hundred or two thousand men arrive and pitch their tents above the Ksar; they depart again in October, after they have stored the barley, wheat, maize, “sorghum,” beans, and millet.
The inhabitants belong to the Berber tribe of “Tuasin,” and number some fifty thousand souls, dwellers in the Ksar and on the plain. They possess at least the same number of camels, a couple of thousand asses and twenty thousand sheep, from which it may be gathered that the greater portion are nomads, rather than dwellers in the oasis. In fact, they care little for their plantations.
In the groves near the Ksar grow palm, olive, and fig trees, also a few pomegranates, peaches, and apricots; but they are ill tended, and produce but poor crops.
The mode of life of the inhabitants and their perpetual feuds with the tribes on their frontier have caused them to develop into a brave and warlike people. Every man owns a firearm, which he does not hesitate to use on the slightest pretext. If hardly pushed, he flies to his fortress with all his possessions and cattle—there he is in safety.
It is natural that the Turks in Tripoli should regard with mistrust the French occupation of Tunisia, which they have never consented to recognise; and on that account have never been disposed to have the frontier defined. To this day it remains undetermined, perpetual frontier conflicts being the result; for the tribes on either side still look on the country, as they have always done, as their own to dispose of according to their will and pleasure; and, as hitherto, prefer to settle disputes in their own way. But the French occupation of Metamer, Medinin, and Tatuin has been of no small service in bringing about peace and quiet in these regions.
The northern side of the frontier is especially desert and barren, consisting only of interminable sandhills destitute of vegetation. South of this are far-stretching steppes, seldom trodden by human foot, and over which a deathlike silence reigns. No paths are traced through these deserts to guide the lonely traveller who may venture to penetrate them. Even the natives fear to enter a territory where any man they may meet must be regarded as an enemy.
To the south the steppes form a junction with the Matmata mountains, and are frequented only by the Tripolitan tribe of Nuail and the Tunisian Urghamma. These alone, therefore, would be capable of defining the boundary of this desert region, as their wanderings have made them well acquainted with its limits.
The Urghamma tribe—from which this continent apparently takes its name—the “Aurigha” of the ancients having become Africa—numbers some thirty thousand souls. At one time they mustered some four or five thousand soldiers, and were exempted by the Bey from payment of taxes, as they had bound themselves to defend the frontier.
The fact was, that they would not pay taxes. They took advantage of their peculiar position to make armed forays to rob and plunder far and wide; and gloried in deeds of bloodshed, engraving a mark on their guns for each man they slew. Guns covered from stock to muzzle with such marks are still to be met with.