Like The Roving Arabs, The Moors Frequently Remove From One Place To
Another, According To The Season Of The Year, Or The Convenience Of
Pasturage.
In the month of February, when the heat of the sun scorches up
every sort of vegetation in the Desert, they strike their tents, and
approach the Negro country to the south, where they reside until the
rains commence in the month of July.
At this time, having purchased corn
and other necessaries from the Negroes, in exchange for salt, they again
depart to the northward, and continue in the Desert until the rains are
over, and that part of the country becomes burnt up and barren.
This wandering and restless way of life, while it inures them to
hardships, strengthens at the same time the bonds of their little
society, and creates in them an aversion towards strangers, which is
almost insurmountable. Cut off from all intercourse with civilized
nations, and boasting an advantage over the Negroes, by possessing,
though in a very limited degree, the knowledge of letters, they are at
once the vainest and proudest, and perhaps the most bigotted, ferocious,
and intolerant of all the nations on the earth, combining in their
character the blind superstition of the Negro, with the savage cruelty
and treachery of the Arab.
It is probable that many of them had never beheld a white man before my
arrival at Benowm; but they had all been taught to regard the Christian
name with inconceivable abhorrence, and to consider it nearly as lawful
to murder a European as it would be to kill a dog.
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