426 THE HOME OF THE TROGLODYTES, 
Pomponius Mela and by Pliny, a certain village of Beni-Abbas, deeply 
hollowed out of the sandy clay or caleareous rock. The French Consul 
Delaporte, the Egyptian Sheik, Mohammed-Ibn-Omar-el-Tounsy, and 
others, in confirming this discovery have generalized it to the entire 
region of Gharian. 
In 1869, Nachtigal found hidden in the valley of Tao, in the heart of 
Thibet, the caves of the Toubous, direct descendants of the Ethiopian 
Troglodytes, whom Herodotus represented as the victims of the Gara- 
mantes, the ancient inhabitants of Fezzan. Thirty years later our 
soldiers, penetrating into the massive mountains which rise to the > 
southwest of Gabes, and at Douirat and Nefouga are connected with 
Gharian, came upon a dozen villages excavated from the ancient allu- 
viun of the plateaus of Matmata and Toujane, containing as many as 
4,000 inhabitants. Distinguished officers, such as the commander, 
Rébillet; learned naturalists, like Letourneux, have since that time 
visited this country, and I, in my turn, have traversed it in the course 
of a voyage of inquiry.* If I saw few serpents and lizards, and still 
fewer carbuncles in the dark dwellings of Matmata, of Hadeje, or of 
Beni-Zelten; if I did not hear proceed from the mouth of the Caliphs, 
who received me so cordially, the strident tones which the historians 
and classical geographers have ascribed to their ancestors, I have at 
least been able to make some observations which are of a nature to 
throw light upon the interpretations of certain passages in the writers 
of antiquity. I gathered at the same time new data for the study of 
those ethical survivals, which day by day are playing a more important 
part in history and anthropology. 
i 
The journey from the coast of Syria to the interior valleys peopled 
by the Troglodytes is a short but rough one. It is necessary to cross 
the arid and stony desert of Araad, then to make the painful ascent 
of the bed of one of the dried-up torrents, which has worn its way 
through the steep cliff of Mount Demer. 
The approach to these subterranean villages is most accessible from 
the west. Inascending the acropolises of Zenatia, the contrast between 
the characteristics of these two neighboring tribes is strikingly evident. 
They belong to the same ethnic group, but each is faithfully devoted to 
its own traditional customs. The Zenati construct their villages accord- 
ing to the architectural rules which governed the builders of the ancient 
Berber cities, ruins of which I have found in central Tunis, between 
Dar-el-Bey and Kairouan. They are in reality intrenched camps, 
formed by walls of bare stones, with occasional openings, surmounted 
in the rear by other walls, parallel and strengthened by semi-circular 
turns, which protect the entrance to the lanes. The Matmati, on the 
*T had for a travelling companion the engineer, Monsieur J. E. de la Croix, who 
was studying the geology of the region. 
