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While these races, all Berbers
under different local names, are Mussulmans in profession, they are not so
highly civilized as their co-religionists who people the coast of the
Mediterranean. They live a tribal life, and are blood-thirsty and
predatory. They are of course mixed in race with the Arabians, but they are
separate in their life and institutions, and they possess no written
literature. Their oral literature is, however, abundant, though it is only
within quite recent years that it has become known to America and Europe.
The present collection of tales and fables is the first which has hitherto
been made in the English language. The learned men who collected the tales
of the Berbers and Kabyles (who are identical in ethnical origin) underwent
many hardships in gathering from half-savage lips the material for their
volume. They were forced to live among the wild tribesmen, join their nomad
life, sit at their feasts, and watch with them round their camp-fire, while
it was with difficulty they transferred to writing the syllables of a
barbarous tongue.


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