THE MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLES—FISCHER. 505 
and Medjez el Bab are Arabs. Tunis being an open and accessible 
country is especially fitted to encourage a mixture of the two races 
and to allow the Arabicizing of the Berbers to progress most rapidly, 
although the Berber is ethnically predominant. It is a fact that, ex- 
cept in the island of Djerba and the mountains of Arad in south 
Tunis, the Berber language is left only in a few villages of northern 
Tunis in the region of Enfida (Tacruna, Djerada, Zriba). The 
dialect of these villages is like that of the Shauia of the Aures Moun- 
tains. The physical type of the majority of the inhabitants, however, 
and their customs are just the same as Sallust and Pomponius de- 
scribed. The Gurbi (huts made of twigs) are Sallust’s “ mapalia.” 
In Algeria, where the French have neglected to establish the relation 
in numbers between the Arabs and Berbers, an authority has stated 
that their number is so small that they will entirely disappear in the 
near future. The same is true of Morocco. These facts are less ap- 
parent because many Berber tribes are so far Arabicized that they 
have not only given up their language and, in many cases, adopted 
Arabian customs, but consider themselves Arabs and announce this as 
a fact. I observed this state of affairs among the Freshish, a semi- 
nomadic tribe of central Tunis, descendants of the Frexes, who have 
lived in the same place for two thousand years. Their neighbors, the 
Majer, the Matmata, and the Urghemma, really a league of tribes, are 
also Berbers. The people of the Kerkenah Islands and of Jerba seem 
to have maintained themselves in a very pure state. Among them- 
selves they speak only Berber. The well-known Krumir and the 
Mogod in the mountains along the northern boundary of Tunis are 
likewise Berbers. The former number 6,500, the latter 5,900. 
The Rhiata, known for their wild freedom of life, who are the 
guardians of the most important route of commerce which runs along 
the geologic and orologic boundary line between the Rif Mountains 
and the Moroccan Atlas region from Fez toward the east, and con- 
nects the river country of Muluya with the Atlas foreland of Morocco, 
consider themselves Arabs, although they are pure and typical Ber- 
bers and still speak Tamazirt to some extent. 
How this Arabicizing is accomplished may be very well observed 
around Tangier. All the environs of Tangier and all the villages in 
sight of the city were settled during the last two centuries by military 
colonies of the government, the people of which came from the Rif 
region and almost all of whom even yet recognize the fact that they 
originated there. These colonists have now formed a new tribe, the 
Faheya, but since they are economically entirely dependent on Tan- 
gier, for whose protection their colonies were established, they have 
acquired the Arabic speech more and more. The villages on the 
southerly slope of the small mountain range to the westward of Tan- 
gier, on whose western end stands the light-house of Cape Spartel, 
