Nor are these dances the slow, gliding movements with which we generally associate Oriental dances. The women display very great activity, and fling themselves about in an astonishing manner. They begin by swaying their heads, arms, and bodies from side to side, but gradually work themselves up to a great pitch of excitement, leaping in the air, gnashing their teeth, whirling their arms about, and seeming to be in a perfect frenzy.
Some of the Tibboo settlements, or villages, are ingeniously placed on the tops of rocks with almost perpendicular sides. The situation is an inconvenient one, but it is useful in warding off the attacks of the Tuaricks, who make raids upon the unfortunate Tibboos, sweep off all the cattle and other property that they can find, and carry away the inhabitants to be sold as slaves, sparing neither age nor sex. Consequently, as soon as the Tibboos have warning of the approach of their enemies, they take refuge on the top of the rock, carrying with them all their portable property, draw up the ladders by which they ascend, and abandon the cattle to the invaders.
Partly on this account, and partly from natural carelessness, the Tibboos are almost regardless of personal appearance, and even their sultan, when he went to meet Major Denham, though he had donned in honor of his guests a new scarlet bernouse, wore it over a filthy checked shirt; and his cap and turban, which purported to be white, were nearly as black as the hair of the wearer.
One might have thought that the continual sufferings which they undergo at the hands of the Tuaricks would have taught the Tibboos kindness to their fellow creatures, whereas there are no people more reckless of inflicting pain. The Tibboo slave-dealers are notorious for the utter indifference to the sufferings of their captives whom they are conveying to the market, even though they lose many of them by their callous neglect. They often start on their journey with barely one quarter the proper amount of provisions or water, and then take their captives over wide deserts, where they fall from exhaustion, and are left to die. The skeletons of slaves strew the whole of the road. As the traveller passes along, he sometimes hears his horse’s feet crashing among the dried and brittle bones of the dead. Even round the wells lie hundreds of skeletons, the remains of those who had reached the water, but had been too much exhausted to be revived by it. In that hot climate the skin of the dead person dries and shrivels under the sun like so much horn, and in many cases the features of the dead are preserved. Careless even of the pecuniary loss which they had suffered, the men who accompanied Major Denham only laughed when they recognized the faces of the shrivelled skeletons, and knocked them about with the butts of their weapons, laughing the while, and making jokes upon their present value in the market.
The Tibboos are, from their slight and active figures, good travellers, and are employed as couriers to take messages from Bornu to Moorzuk, a task which none but a Tibboo will undertake. Two are sent in company, and so dangerous is the journey, that they do not expect that both will return in safety. They are mounted on the swiftest dromedaries, and are furnished with parched corn, a little brass basin, a wooden bowl, some dried meat, and two skins of water. Not only do they have to undergo the ordinary perils of travel, such as the hot winds, the sand-storms, and the chance of perishing by thirst, but they also run great risk of being killed by Arab robbers, who would not dare to attack a caravan, but are glad of the opportunity of robbing defenceless travellers.
Such events do frequently occur, and the consequence is that the Tibboos and the Arabs are in perpetual feuds, each murdering one of the enemy whenever he gets a chance, and reckoning each man killed as a point on his own side.
THE TUARICKS.
We ought, before leaving the Tibboos, to give a few words to their enemies the Tuaricks. These are emphatically a nation of thieves, never working themselves, and gaining the whole of their subsistence by robbing those who do labor. They do not even plant or sow, and their whole education consists in the art of robbery, in the management of the dromedary, and the handling of the spear. They live in tents, which are something like those of the ordinary Bedouin Arabs, and have, like our gipsies, a supreme contempt for all who are so degraded as to live in houses and congregate in cities. In the [engraving No. 2] on page 631, the artist has illustrated the characteristics of the Tuaricks and Tibboos.