I protested that even during the worst famines they had never tasted a scrap of the flesh of a fellow creature.
“But at least they are cruel? They thieve and plunder, do they not? They have neither religion nor laws?”
I really do not feel sure of having convinced a single person that even if the Tuaregs have their faults, that they are not wanting in good qualities, and that their social condition, different though it may be from ours, is nevertheless an established one, that it would be alike humane and politic to turn to account the undoubtedly good qualities of the race, and to endeavour to develop those qualities. It would surely be better to extenuate their faults, and if possible correct them, than to propose—which, by the way, is of course impossible—the extermination en masse of a great branch of the human race, occupying a district peculiarly suitable to it, and where, as a matter of fact, the Tuaregs alone can live.
So-called truisms and ready-made opinions are of course very convenient. By adopting them one is saved the trouble of thinking about, still more of going to see, a place for oneself. It is far less fatiguing, and within the power of everybody. It would certainly be perfectly safe to wager ten to one that the habit of taking things for granted is not likely to go out in France in a hurry, or indeed for that matter anywhere else.
Maybe I shall only in my turn be lifting up my voice in the desert. But I should like first to try and make those who are willing to eschew foregone conclusions better acquainted with the truth.
I will avoid exaggeration, and also too much generalization from isolated experiences. On the one hand, as I have already said, the Tuaregs have very serious faults—serious for us, because they are such as to make it difficult for them to accommodate themselves to European civilization, and as a result we in our turn find influencing them a very hard task.
Moreover, when I have proved that the Tuaregs have noble qualities, when I have shown them actuated by elevated motives, those who read what I say must beware of thinking that all members of the race are cut on the same pattern.
My idea is, that to begin with we have only to inquire whether in their natural condition the Tuaregs are or are not inferior in morality to the other native races, such as the Ammanites of Cochin-China and the Kabyles of Algeria, with whom by hook or by crook the French have managed to find a modus vivendi?
To a question of that kind I can reply at once, “No, no, the Tuaregs are certainly not more barbarous than other native races!” and as proof I can quote our own journey. My readers will have seen how the Tuaregs behaved to us. I have described how they were won over from hostility to friendship; and the chapter succeeding this I shall tell how they protected—even saved us. And what happened to us might, it seems to me, very well happen to others.
Am I alone in my opinion? Did not Barth owe his very existence to the active protection of the Tademeket at Timbuktu and the Awellimiden at Tosaye?