ABSTRACT
Abdu entertained me along the route with stories of massacres and single murders done by rival tribes and robbers. He showed me a spot where stains certainly showed on the ground, prompting him to invent the murder of three men who had left the village after taking their master's flock to sell at the market. "This is the Kabile country," said Abdu. "These towns hold no allegiance to the Sultan, humouring only themselves; and often the villages are besieged." One or two of these villages were connected by long passages, theoretically ideal, but useless in practice, for they could be used only while the tribes concerned were on peaceable terms. So far as I could gather the original idea of these tunnels was to enable the tribes to carryon an exchange of goods without risk of being exposed to the enemy in the open ground above.
