512 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
Transylvanian Germans, or the so-called Saxons, which were built 
for similar reasons. 
These forts are encountered throughout the whole territory in- 
habited by the Berbers. In the Aures Mountains these joint fortified 
storehouses are known as Gelaa or Thagqelet (fort). The village, 
which consists of low cubical houses of stone or air-dried brick, is 
generally built on the slopes around the Gelaa. Many a Gelaa can 
be entered only with the help of a rope ladder. 
In the interior of central Tunis there are numerous flat-topped 
peaks which form natural fortifications and have invited settlement. 
These have there the same name, Kelaaé. The one best known is 
Kalaat-es-Senam, which dates from the Roman period, and in the 
later history of Tunis has been the center of the resistance to the Bey. 
It is accessible only by a stairway hewn in the rock. These fortified 
storehouses are met with in the greatest numbers in the southern 
Tunisian region of Arad on the serried mountainous cliff walls of 
the great desert plateau which runs eastward from the lesser Syrtis. 
Here are found real fortified cities like El Mudenin and Metamer, 
which form the storehouses of entire tribes and even confederations. 
El Mudenin, the storehouse of 20,000 nomads of the pure Berber 
tribes of Urghemma, is inhabited in winter only by the guards and a 
few traders and innkeepers, when all the Berbers have led their herds 
far into the desert. From the inside, the six or seven storied houses 
seem like open honeycombs. They are nothing more than small 
arched rooms one above the other entered by pushing away a stone. 
Where possible these great storehouses are placed still higher on the 
cliffs and have a door only on the steepest side. The Berbers of this 
region, especially those of the tribe of Matmata, besides living in 
these mountain nests, also inhabit caves artificially excavated in the 
inclines of the valleys in the clayey mar! which is sufficiently hard for 
the purpose. Quite a number of villages are made up entirely of 
these cave dwellings, so that they may almost be called Troglodyte 
mountains. <A tunnel leads into a large, generally rectangular, court 
which is open at the top, and the dwellings and storerooms open into 
this like stalls. These regions, therefore, were practically independ- 
ent of Tunis and were only conquered by the French in 1882. The 
Tunisian army with its cannon, which visited the region in 1876, had 
to withdraw from one of these mountain fortresses, Ksar Beni 
Knezer, as they found it impregnable. There are also cave villages in 
the Aures Mountains. 
According to French statistics, of the 138,000 dwellings in Tunis 
in 1890, 57,000 were houses and 81,000 tents. I do not think, how- 
ever, that in Algeria and still less in Morocco the number of tent 
dwellers is comparatively as great as in the open and generally level 
country of Tunis. The tent dwellers need not be all accounted as 
