everyone has to fight for himself against these people. The Bedouin
love their animals, especially their camels and their horses. It is
quite natural that they should do so, because often a man would die in
the desert if his horse or camel would not work well and carry him
faithfully until they reached water. Sometimes when the people lose
their way in the pathless sand, the horses and camels can find it.

5. The Desert Peoples (_c_) Traders

The third kind of people who are found in the Sahara are the traders.
These, like the Bedouin, are Arabs, but often their homes are in some
town, either on the edge of the desert or in Egypt. They travel from
the great North African towns and from Egypt, across the desert to the
rich countries south of it, where the dark-skinned people live.
There, south of the Sahara, they buy ivory and dyed goat-skins and
other things in exchange for cloth and beads, and return with their
merchandise to the northern towns again. Many years ago they used to
capture slaves, but they cannot often do so now, because the Christian
Europeans try to stop trading in slaves. The journeys of the traders
take many months, because often they have to go by a long road in
order to find water. So they travel from oasis to oasis seeking shade
and water. Sometimes they have to ride three or four days to reach
the next drinking-place. Then they have to carry water for themselves
in goat-skins. The camels can live for a few days without water,
though they get very weak. For this reason, everyone who makes long
journeys in the Sahara has to ride on a camel. A horse can travel
more quickly, but he, like a man, must have water every day. So the
camel is sometimes called the "Ship of the Desert," because he, best
of all, can carry men across the waterless sand. When traders travel
across the desert with their merchandise, they are very much afraid of