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.

The confusion of weapons was as great as that of garments and peoples.  There was not a deadly invention that was not present—­from wooden daggers, stone hatchets and ivory tridents, to long sabres toothed like saws, slender, and formed of a yielding copper blade.  They handled cutlasses which were forked into several branches like antelopes’ horns, bills fastened to the ends of ropes, iron triangles, clubs and bodkins.  The Ethiopians from the Bambotus had little poisoned darts hidden in their hair.  Many had brought pebbles in bags.  Others, empty handed, chattered with their teeth.

This multitude was stirred with a ceaseless swell.  Dromedaries, smeared all over with tar-like streaks, knocked down the women, who carried their children on their hips.  The provisions in the baskets were pouring out; in walking, pieces of salt, parcels of gum, rotten dates, and gourou nuts were crushed underfoot; and sometimes on vermin-covered bosoms there would hang a slender cord supporting a diamond that the Satraps had sought, an almost fabulous stone, sufficient to purchase an empire.  Most of them did not even know what they desired.  They were impelled by fascination or curiosity; and nomads who had never seen a town were frightened by the shadows of the walls.

The isthmus was now hidden by men; and this long surface, whereon the tents were like huts amid an inundation, stretched as far as the first lines of the other Barbarians, which were streaming with steel and were posted symmetrically upon both sides of the aqueduct.