CH. IV. BEREBEE STOCK. 85 



than those who preserve in sacred books or popular poetry 

 fixed standards of correct speech ; add to this, the chances 

 of error ■when a traveller, communicating with a native 

 through an interpreter, and contending with sounds un- 

 usual to his ear, attempts to form a vocabulary. These 

 causes, acting together, tend to increase the difficulty of 

 recognizing linguistic affinities that really exist. 



In the absence of any indication of the intrusion of a 

 conquering race that can be supposed to have imposed its 

 language on the previous population, it seems most pro- 

 bable that the native races of North Africa, between the 

 Libyan Desert and the Atlantic coast, including also the 

 Canary Islands, all belong to a single stock, which may 

 best be called Bereber. The two main branches are both 

 mountain peoples. To the north we have the tribes of 

 the Lesser Atlas, extending from the gates of Tetuan to 

 the hill country of Tunis, who may best bear the common 

 name of Kabyles — to the south-west the population of the 

 Great Atlas, from the neighbourhood of Fez to the coast 

 between Agadir and Oued Noun, broken up into numerous 

 tribes, but all speaking some dialect of the same language, 

 and thence called generically Shelluhs. Of the scattered 

 fragments of the Bereber stock that have spread far 

 through the oases of the Great Desert, till they have 

 come into contact with the Negro tribes from the south 

 of that barrier, our information is still most imperfect. 

 In constant conflict with each other, and with the Arab 

 and NegTO tribes who dispute with them the scanty means 

 of subsistence that Nature here provides, they appear on 

 the whole to predominate over their competitors. The 

 Touarecks, scattered over a territory as large as half of 

 Europe, from Algeria to Soudan, form a separate branch 

 of the same stock ; while we learn from Gerhard Eohlfs 

 that the predatory tribes of the desert south of Marocco 

 are merely Shelluhs who have changed their habits and 

 manner of life to suit altered conditions of existence. 



The character of the Bereber has scarcely received 



