THE "CITIES" OF KUFARA 213 



leather; but smuggling of slaves had been difficult since 

 the stringent French law had decreed that the whole 

 caravan should be confiscated if one slave were found in it. 

 As a matter of fact, we had been thirtj^-seven days on the 

 route from Jedabia and we had not met a single caravan 

 from Wadai, nor did any arrive while we were in Kufara; 

 but this may have been partly due to the fact that the 

 Beduins prefer travelhng in summer, when they march 

 all night and sleep most of the day. They can go farther 

 this way, without suffering from the intense cold of the 

 winter dawn. Also the winter is the foaling time for 

 camels in Libya, which makes travelling precarious. 



There is a large market in Jof twice a week, to which 

 people come from as far off as Hawari and Tolab to 

 barter pigeons, eggs, fowls, girbas and foodstuffs. Slaves 

 are not now sold in the public square on Mondays and 

 Thursdays, but many a human bargain is arranged in the 

 shuttered houses around it. For 100 mejidies one can 

 buy a man and for 200 a woman, but young girls of 

 fourteen and fifteen fetch up to 250 mejidies (nearly 

 .£50). "These be high prices," said the Zouia despond- 

 ently. "But the people in Barca have bought many 

 slaves lately and there are fewer caravans." We learned 

 that the Tuaregs of the west had regular slave farms, 

 where they bred and sold human beings as we do cattle. 

 "You can see sixty slaves in one farm," said our guardian 

 sheikh. As an instance of how uncivilised were the Zouias 

 before the coming of the Senussi, he told us that a certain 

 Sheikh Mohammed Sherif went to Benghazi, the end of 

 the world, and came back with an oil lamp which was 

 looked upon as a miracle by the tribesmen of Kufara. 

 By the power of a little kerosene he ruled them for years, 

 giving judgments and discovering malefactors by inter- 

 preting its light. 



Deep in conversation we skirted the rough, rocky 



