of sticks, after the
fashion of standards, howling the while like wolves.

Then behind the Numidians, Marusians, and Gaetulians pressed the
yellowish men, who are spread through the cedar forests beyond Taggir.
They had cat-skin quivers flapping against their shoulders, and they led
in leashes enormous dogs, which were as high as asses, and did not bark.

Finally, as though Africa had not been sufficiently emptied, and it had
been necessary to seek further fury in the very dregs of the races, men
might be seen behind the rest, with beast-like profiles and grinning
with idiotic laughter--wretches ravaged by hideous diseases, deformed
pigmies, mulattoes of doubtful sex, albinos whose red eyes blinked in
the sun; stammering out unintelligible sounds, they put a finger into
their mouths to show that they were hungry.

The confusion of weapons was as great as that of garments and peoples.
There was not a deadly invention that was not present--from wooden
daggers, stone hatchets and ivory tridents, to long sabres toothed
like saws, slender, and formed of a yielding copper blade. They handled
cutlasses which were forked into several branches like antelopes' horns,
bills fastened to the ends of ropes, iron triangles, clubs and bodkins.
The Ethiopians from the Bambotus had little poisoned darts hidden in
their hair. Many had brought pebbles in bags. Others, empty handed,
chattered with their teeth.

This multitude was stirred with a ceaseless swell. Dromedaries, smeared
all over with tar-like streaks, knocked down the women, who carried
their children on their hips. The provisions in the baskets were pouring
out; in walking, pieces of salt, parcels of gum, rotten dates, and
gourou nuts were crushed underfoot; and sometimes on vermin-covered
bosoms there would hang a slender cord supporting a diamond that the
Satraps had sought, an almost fabulous stone, sufficient to purchase
an empire. Most of them did not even know what they desired. They were
impelled by fascination or curiosity; and nomads who had never seen a
town were frightened by the shadows of the walls.

The isthmus was now hidden by men; and this long surface, whereon the
tents were like huts amid an inundation, stretched as far as the first
lines of the other Barbarians, which were streaming with steel and were
posted symmetrically upon both sides of the aqueduct.

The Carthaginians had not recovered from the terror caused by their
arrival when they perceived t