They stopped at
the foot of the Catacombs among the first pools of the Lagoon.
But when the Libyans had moved away, the multitude of the Negroes
appeared like a cloud on a level with the ground, in the place which the
others had occupied. They were there from the White Harousch, the Black
Harousch, the desert of Augila, and even from the great country of
Agazymba, which is four months' journey south of the Garamantians, and
from regions further still! In spite of their red wooden jewels, the
filth of their black skin made them look like mulberries that had been
long rolling in the dust. They had bark-thread drawers, dried-grass
tunics, fallow-deer muzzles on their heads; they shook rods furnished
with rings, and brandished cows' tails at the end of sticks, after the
fashion of standards, howling the while like wolves.
Then behind the Numidians, Marusians, and Gaetulians pressed the
yellowish men, who are spread through the cedar forests beyond Taggir.
They had cat-skin quivers flapping against their shoulders, and they led
in leashes enormous dogs, which were as high as asses, and did not bark.
Finally, as though Africa had not been sufficiently emptied, and it had
been necessary to seek further fury in the very dregs of the races, men
might be seen behind the rest, with beast-like profiles and grinning
with idiotic laughter--wretches ravaged by hideous diseases, deformed
pigmies, mulattoes of doubtful sex, albinos whose red eyes blinked in
the sun; stammering out unintelligible sounds, they put a finger into
their mouths to show that they were hungry.
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