off him and made him put on
others of their own make. Then they took him up the country, which was
very scantily clothed with grass, with a sandy and stony soil, growing
hardly any trees. A few thorns and palms were the only relief to the
barren monotony of this African prairie, over which wandered a few
nomade shepherds in search of pasture for their flocks. There were no
flowers, no running streams to light up the waste, so Fernandez thought
at first, till he found one or two exceptions that proved the rule. The
natives got their water from wells, spoke a tongue and wrote a writing
that was different from that of the other Moors, though all these
people, in the upland, were Moslems, like the Berbers nearer home. For
they themselves were a tribe, the Azaneguy tribe, of the great Berber
family, who had four times--in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries--come over to help the Moslem power in Spain.

Yet, said Fernandez, these Moors of the west are quite barbarous: they
have neither law nor lordship; their food is milk and the seeds of wild
mountain herbs and roots; meat and bread are both rare luxuries; and so
is fish for those on the upland, but the Moors of the coast eat nothing
else, and for months together I have seen those I lived among, their
horses and their dogs, eating and drinking only milk, like infants. 'T
is no wonder they are weaker than the negroes of the south with whom
they are ever at war, fighting with treachery and not with strength.
They dress in leather--leather breeches and jackets, but some of the
richer wear a native mantle over their shoulders--such rich men as keep
good swift horses and brood mares. It was about the trade and religion
of the country that Fernandez was specially questioned, and his answers
were not encouraging on either point. The people were bigoted, ignorant
worshippers of the abominations of Mahumet, he said, and their traffic
in slaves and gold was a small matter after all. The only gold he saw in
their country was in ankle rings on the women of the chiefs; the gold
dust and black bodies they got from the negroes they took to Tunis and
the Mediterranean coast on camels. Their salt, on which they set great
store, was from the Tagazza salt quarries, far inland. The chief, Ahude
Meymam, who had been so kind to Fernandez, lived in the upland; the
Christian stranger had been induced to ride up from the coast, and had
reached the Court only after tortures of