108 THE SECRET OF SAHARA: KUFARA 



attempt to joke, much time must have been spent 

 "fadhling." 



One by one the important merchants and sheikhs 

 came to visit us. Gradually the circle seated upon our 

 one carpet under the palm leaf roof widened. Grave, 

 bearded faces peered from the hoods of dark blue 

 burnuses, braided, lined with red. Sunburnt hands flicked 

 away the myriad flies with whisks of palm fronds. There 

 was the plump kaimakaan, with pallid, intelligent face 

 and stubble of black beard round thick, smiling hps, and 

 Garboah Effendi, with humorous expression on a face 

 which might hail from Europe — firm lips, square jaw, pale 

 skin, wide, quizzical smile. I think stray Vandal blood 

 must run in his veins. His mother lived in Benghazi, 

 and he was interested in the ways of Europe. There was 

 the white-faced sheikli el zawia, ^lohammed es Senussi, 

 with dreamy eyes and dropping jaw, and dear, fat, old 

 Sheikh Mohammed Maghruf, with round, hneless face as 

 brown as a nut, a succession of circles fi-om his little 

 pm'sed mouth to his round brown eyes, and Sheikh 

 Ibrahim Bishari, the traveller, who had taken his laden 

 caravan from Wadai to Egypt, from Kufara to Lake 

 Chad. 



We discovered, after much sweet tea had been drunk 

 with loud sucking noises and our best coffee was perfum- 

 ing the air, that Jalo is a community of merchants. 

 The date palms are a minor thing. The village lives by 

 its trade, for it is on the main caravan route between 

 the Sudan and the Cyrenaican ports. Sidi Mohammed, 

 the Mahdi, founded this great desert highway through 

 Kufara. Before his day all caravans passed by way of 

 Tripoli and the Fezzan. We learned that ivory was 

 bought at Wadai for five or ten francs the pound and 

 that when the expenses of the long journey were deducted, 

 the Beduins counted on making a profit of fifty per cent. 



