pass over to Tangier and Tetuan from the Spanish towns of Tarifa
and Algeziras. In the last chapter I have stated my belief of the
fact, and that moreover they formed certain connections with the
Moors of the coast, to whom it is likely that they occasionally
sold children stolen in Spain; yet such connection would by no
means have opened them a passage into the interior of Barbary,
which is inhabited by wild and fierce people, in comparison with
whom the Moors of the coast, bad as they always have been, are
gentle and civilised.

To penetrate into Africa, the Gitanos would have been compelled to
pass through the tribes who speak the Shilha language, and who are
the descendants of the ancient Numidians. These tribes are the
most untamable and warlike of mankind, and at the same time the
most suspicious, and those who entertain the greatest aversion to
foreigners. They are dreaded by the Moors themselves, and have
always remained, to a certain degree, independent of the emperors
of Morocco. They are the most terrible of robbers and murderers,
and entertain far more reluctance to spill water than the blood of
their fellow-creatures: the Bedouins, also, of the Arabian race,
are warlike, suspicious, and cruel; and would not have failed
instantly to attack bands of foreign wanderers, wherever they found
them, and in all probability would have exterminated them. Now the
Gitanos, such as they arrived in Barbary, could not have defended
themselves against such enemies, had they even arrived in large
divisions, instead of bands of twenties and thirties, as is their
custom to travel. They are not by nature nor by habit a warlike
race, and would have quailed before the Africans, who, unlike most
other people, engage in wars from what appears to be an innate love
of the cruel and bloody scenes attendant on war.