The Press., 1916-08-10
MASKED TUAREGS
Ruthless Buccaneers of the Mid-
 dIe Sahara Desert.
AT WAR WITH ALL MANKIND.

These Nomads of the Traekless Sands of Northern Africa Levy Tribute Upon All Caravans They Meet and Live In Mystery and Exelusiveness. sIn northern Africa there lies a truce
 less country, inhabited by a people, the masked Tuaregs, fascinating for the mystery and exclusiveness with which they have surrounded their life. These people, natives and rulers of the middle desert, are the allies of no one, but wage furtive guerrilla warfare with all who invade the inhOspitable Sahara sands of their domain. They are the buccaneers of the trackless sand, forever at war with all civiliza- ton and its restraints" says an article issued by the National Geographic so- ciety at Washington, which describes the people always willing to fight for the maintenance of their power to levy tribute upon the ancient transsaharan caravan routes.
 Masked Tuaregs are Berber mo-
 mads, a white desert people, whose country is probably the most tnaccessi- ! ble on earth. Even before Egyptian civilization began to leave coherent records of it's history the Tuaregs, or Berbers, were long established along northern Africa. The great Arab in vasion of the eleventh century dis placed them from their possessions upon the seacoast and drove them into the savage area of the interior desert, where, with their hands raised against
 all who came into their painless coun- try, they have maintained themselves
 through the intervening centuries de-
 spite lack of water, sandstorms and
 lack of farming land, reQuisitioning by
 force of arms from the Arabs and
 Egyptians, to the north and east, and
 from the blacks of the Sudan, in the
 south, such necessities and luxuries as their cheerless portion of Mother Earth
 cannot supply them.
 There are five main tribes in the
 Tuareg confederation, and they inhabit
 the desert from Tuat to Timbuktu
 and from Fezzan to Binder. Their
 homes are reared in the heart of arid
 wastes. where vast solitudes, unnat-
 ural heats and unmarked distances shroud everything in uncanny mys-
 tery. They are masters of an area
 half that of the United States in ex-
 tent Of this 1.5OO,OOO square miles of
 territory scarcely 5000 acres. or less
 than the area of New York city, is cul- tivated land. This scanty farm land
 is only maintained by an enduring struggle with the drifting sands. These fierce adventures who have forced the great desolation to yield
 them a support number 100000 or more, according to estimate, and they have made themselves feared by the natives from the Mediterranean to the
 jungles of central Africa.
 "The Tuaregs wear the end of their , turban cloth drawn around the face, allowing nothing but the eyes to be seen. It is worn for the purpose of protecting the throat and lungs from the cutting blasts of fine desert sand and also probably as an element en- hancing the mystery of their life, for they seldom or never remove these masks, whether rowing over the desert or visiting in the cities on the coast. Due to these cloths they are called masked Tuaregs. while the Arabs call them people of the veil.' The masks are dark blue and white, the former being worn by Tuareg nobles and the latter by the serfs and slaves.
 "Some centers for trade, Tuareg towns, are situated in the middle des- ert. These are Wargla, Timbuktu, Chat, Ghadames, Murzuk and Insalah. However, the Tuareg has little care for trade and industry. He is fear less, enduring. hard fighting adventur- CT along the merchandise trails that cross the desert. Two important trails leave Triron. on the coast. and trav erse 5000 miles of sands and barren was: es to the Sudan, where rich car goes of skins. gold, ivory and other interior African products are loaded upon camels and brought northward. Sometimes a single caravan consists of thousands of .camels and merchan- disc to the value of hundreds of thou sands of dollars. When passing thro lgh the Tuareg country the leaders of such caravans have had to pay a tribute to the chieftains by the way for safe escort or run the risk of losing all their goods.
 Prom Morocco to Tripoli the relent less ferocity, the cunning and the dar- ing of the Tuareg are mingled in all the trad .tions unpleasant to the more peat eful natives along the coast. The Tuaregs meanwhile openly spy upon the caravans in course of outffting in the coast cities and thrive upon the tribute they are able to exact.
 "The Tuaregs are of the purest Der Der stock, the noble families unmixed with other blood, and in their own lan- guaee they call themselves the noble peop'e.' Nominally they are Moham- medans, and some of their number conn ose the most intolerant and war like sect in Islam. the Senussite sect. Their hatred for the foreigner is great CT even than that bred by their re- ligion. and So tAnv arc more cxclu iv, than ever were the Chinese or Japa- nese. Their social organization di- vides them into five classes-the no- bles. the priests. the serfs. the cross breeds and the slaves. All of these classes have this that is demo ara tic they form together the Tuareg family, which holds itself superior to all the other peoples of the earth"