have, close by and directly fronting us, the great triad of peaks Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau, which are central in the long panorama seen from Bern. The peaks stand up about 7000 feet above the Scheidegg, the Mönch in the centre being about 27° above level. The geometrical association is so insistent that there is a strong impulse to view them together, but the horizontal angle which has to be embraced is more than 100°, and I found myself involuntarily viewing either the pair Eiger and Mönch or the mass of the Jungfrau and Silberhorn. The former subtend 60° horizontally and form a satisfying view. When looking at the latter, which only occupy 44°, I found myself continually adopting some device to exclude from view the inharmonious form of the Schwarz Mönch on the right. These facts, taken together, illustrate my general experience that a horizontal span of 60° is a full view of mountains whose vertical dimensions are of this order of magnitude. When many pyramidal forms within the effective field of view lead up to a culminating peak, the eye rests here, and sees the whole as one complex pyramid, an apparent structure. The whole complex, although stereotyped by a distinguishing name, disintegrates on near approach, while the smaller pyramids, which are here sufficient to fill the eye, acquire an enhanced individuality. Places resorted to as climbing centres are apt to be situated at the transitional distance which is so troublesome for viewing great mountains. At Grindelwald the eye experiences distress in the endeavour to take in the whole of the Eiger, a demand imposed by association. About an hour's walk farther, where the glacier portal of the upper mountain region is passed, all is once more well, for each upstanding part has become apparently a structural whole, and these group with one another on equal terms. The glacier should not be thought of only as a path to be followed or an obstacle to be avoided, but as a field for a day of delightful wandering. Here crevasse, sérac, and rocks pillared on pedestals of ice, seen in the foreground and no longer dwarfed by mountain masses, have a grandeur of which their appearance from a distance gave no promise. After a night spent at the Schwarzegg hut, which stands close to the glacier at an altitude of 8000 feet, I climbed the ascent on the east in the early dawn and reached the vicinity of the Strahlegg pass (11,000 feet) in time to see the flush of sunrise on the culminating peaks of Finsteraarhorn, Fiescherhorner, Mönch, and Eiger, stretching south and west about 90° along a great mountain wall, at distances of from 2 to 5 miles. Seen thus across the glacier trough from about the level of the saddles, such peaks make the boldest sky-line in Nature, and the spectacle is in its way unsurpassed as they stand crimson in the rising sun backed by the blue of æther, not of common air. This is a perfect view-point for the upper Alpine world of rock and ice, everything below the tree-line being shut out from sight. From lower stations the most perfect pictures of snowy peaks are seen on chance occasions when an opening in the clouds reveals some individual form of special beauty, above and detached from the common landscape, standing halfway between earth and heaven. So have I seen the Silberhorn from Wengen and the Weisshorn from Rothen Boden. Summing up the views of the Great Alps from far and near, we find that from the plains they appear as a row of simple, though not symmetrical, pyramids; that from the nearer foothills each individual, which now subtends a large angle, generally appears as a pyramidal complex trending upwards to a culminating peak; and that, on a yet nearer approach, this complex (which has not the structural individuality of a volcanic peak) vanishes, and is replaced by a number of visually independent pyramids. 6. The Grouping of Trees in a Wood, and their Place in the General Landscape. The woodland canopy which most resembles the dome of sky is seen in groves where trees of spreading habit, such as beech or oak, grow far apart. Around and overhead, distinguishable forms pass imperceptibly into regions beyond the ken of the eye, the seen melting mysteriously into the unseen, and thereby making our environment one with Infinity. In this connection it should also be remarked that the distance ordinarily visible horizontally within a wood is that within which stereoscopic effect is direct, and that tree-trunks are very effective stereoscopically, so that the feeling of distance is considerable. Amidst the unbroken weaving of sinuous lines in the beech grove there is none of that feeling of disappointed effort experienced when the eye is unable to take in the abrupt outline of a mountain viewed too near at hand. Groves of spreading trees with ramifying roots are most beautiful upon gently undulating ground, so that the view above, below and all around is uninterrupted by any straight line. The columns of the fir forest, on the contrary, make a harmony of straight lines on a steep hillside of uniform slope. The effect of the perpendicular cliffs near Beatenbucht on the Lake of Thun, and of those which overlook the Lauterbrunnen Valley, is much enhanced by the tall straight pines which stand as sentinels among the craggy limestone battlements. On the lesser Alps near Les Avants and Caux the spires of the spruce rhythmically reinforce the form of the rocky peaks, particularly when tone and colour are approximated by a powdering of snow. Between Alpiglen (5300 feet) and Kleine Scheidegg (6800 feet) we reach the climatic limit of the coniferous forest. Here the close woods, kept perennially young by cutting and planting, give place to scattered pines, rough-barked, gnarled, and twisted, rugged old fellows making an effective foreground for the great Alpine peaks, which from most points of view suffer somewhat from lack of foreground. A leafy tree is a three-dimensioned form patterned with the concordant shapes of the massed foliage of boughs, and in order to understand the part which detached trees play in scenery we must take account of the limits of distance between which the form and pattern can be appreciated. The form can be taken in at a distance equal to the height of the tree, say 50 to 100 feet for the finer varieties of English trees when they have attained the symmetry of full growth. The radial symmetry of the boughs so binds the form that a very large angle can be taken in laterally. An object has the apparent diameter of the sun at 107 times its own distance, so that trees of 50 to 100 feet should not be insignificant at a distance of 1 and 2 miles respectively, and I have noticed oaks and elms at such distances in the plain of the Weald beautifully shadowed in the early morning light. But where the view across the Wealden valleys is bounded by hills 12 miles away with trees along the crest, the upstanding forms are in every respect insignificant. Yet their projection is sufficient at this and even greater distances to do away with the suave or the vigorous rhythm of an undulating or rugged crest. Thus extensive views across the Weald are best when bounded by the treeless downs ; and in Devon it is when the bold unbroken sky-line of Dartmoor rises in the background that the element of grandeur is added to the prettiness of the scenery. Speaking broadly, the order of height of trees and mountains in the Alpine region of Europe is in the proportion of one to a hundred, and in the harmonious grouping of a belt of trees with apparently compact foliage backed by a serrated mountain crest-line, the former is in the colour foreground of purely local tint, the latter at a distance where atmospheric tone and colour predominate. 7. The Detail of Vegetation viewed at Short Focus. It is in leaves and flowers that vegetation shows the higher developments of symmetry, but only in the Tropics, where leaves and fernery are on a giant scale, can their symmetry be viewed together with the landscape, for the eye has not sufficient depth of focus to take in objects whose distance is to be reckoned respectively in inches and miles. There are however natural surroundings and modes of viewing in which such forms as lowly flowers, heath, and waving grass fill the whole view without intrusion of distant objects. This is so when we happen to walk with the eyes cast down. The primrose flower 7 feet in front then subtends the same angle as the sun or moon. When we are seated on the ground the head usually inclines, so that the horizon draws in to a circle of, say, 30 feet radius. On the fine carpet of pasture or heath beautiful structures then surround us, each subtending a sufficient angle for its form to be appreciated. The eye speedily forgets the smallness of the linear scale, and no thought of insignificant size mars the appreciation of a view which contains more objects possessing fine symmetry than are to be seen in the distant landscape. There are also circumstances in which the smaller forms of vegetation are seen in focus together with the larger, thus giving another kind of beauty, that of miniature. This charm is found in a pine wood where bracken spreads its fronds as branches of a miniature forest below, and toadstools stand with stalks as straight and columnar as the trunks of the trees. Postscript.--Such in brief is the Grouping of Forms in Natural Scenery which I have noticed in travel by land and sea, but when travelling by air the grouping is different, and when among the clouds gives new combinations of extraordinary beauty, as I have lately seen in preliminary flights. I propose to attempt the correlation of Scenery from the air with that from the land if I am able to attain the necessary facilities for flying. I THE TUAREG VEIL H. R. Palmer, C.M.S., C.B.E. HAVE read Mr. Francis Rodd's very interesting paper (Geogr. Fourn., January 1926) on the origin of the Tuareg, and the subsequent discussion on it. It is to be hoped that the problem may receive further attention from archæologists. In the meantime I venture to put forward certain data which are material to the issue. Firstly, as regards the word Tuareg "* (Tawarik) itself, current explanations of the word are not very convincing, for there is no evidence that the word was invented by the Arabs, though the form Tawarik first occurs in their works as the correctly formed broken plural of Targi. As Mr. Rodd points out, the ordinary name for the Tuareg proper, the so-called "nobles," is the root MZGh. That root, however, connotes males," "masters," "warriors" rather than the tribal or national unit, the proper term for which is in the singular ili or alil, and in the plural il-lam or ilella. In the legends, still current in the Chad region, of the Hilalian Arab invasion of Fezzan in the eleventh century and the deeds of the hero Abu Zeid el Hilali, the term used to describe the Tuareg who opposed Abu Zeid is always Ullam or Illam. The modern tribal name Ullim-miden is thus composed of illam, " members of the tribe," and miden (Tamashek plural = men). In the eastern half of the Sudan the common word (usually classed as Arabic) for a country or tribal area is Dar. The word is however not really an Arabic word, though adopted and used by the Arabs as such. It is the pre-Arab (i.e. Berber) word for an encampment," and from this meaning of "camp," Dar or Tar, with its variant Dala, acquired in many parts of the Sudan and Sahara the meaning of "hill," since camps were frequently on a hill or elevated ground. In the Chad region the present use of this word or root Dr among * The author would spell the name Tuwareg, for which there is much to be said: but in an uncertain case we have preferred to retain the spelling Tuareg as used in Mr Rodd' papers - ED. G.F. both Arabs and Teda-Kanuri is dor or dar, meaning an encampment; dirdir meaning a fence, palisade, or wall. Thus in the Kau-war Oasis the Tebu title of the chief is Dir-deh; the capital, so to speak, of the oasis being called Dir-kiyi(n), though in ordinary conversation the n is dropped and the name is pronounced Dir-kų. The meaning of the name Dir-kų is, in fact, "the camp dir of the Kiyin or Keyin,” ¿.e. the camp of the Zaghawa Tuareg or Beli who were the first rulers of the kingdom called afterwards Bornu. The word Kiyin with its variants Kinin and Kindin is the normal word for "Tuareg " among all the Sudan peoples east of Lake Chad. The masculine singular of this word is Kiyi, making feminine Kita or Kinta-whence the tribal name Amakitan or Maki-dan (Makeda), and the Berber word Kinta or Kita, "mother," whence Kita-ki or Kinta-ki(t) (Candace)," my mother." It will be seen that a "Tuareg" in this region was called Tar-kiyi (Targi), sometimes pronounced Tarauwi, which quite naturally among the Arabs acquired a broken Tuwarik. Perhaps the clearest proof that these early rulers of Kanem were Tuareg lies in the word Dugu, as in (1) the word for the grandson of a king; (2) the third mythical Mai of Bornu, whose name is given as Mai Dugu. Dugu, though now in the word Mai-dugu, meaning any grandson of a Mai, strictly meant the son of the king's daughter, i.e. it was a word parallel to the Tamashek tégasi, which latter means "child of a sister" and so "the heir," teg or dug being the feminine of the Tamashek -ek or -eg = "son"-from which it will be seen that the Tamashek word for the "veil" or "covering " which the Imoshek wear, viz. Tegelmist, is really Teg-el(l)am-ist, i.e. the covering of the illam or "nobles." The generic name Sanhaja used of the Tuareg by the Arabs is, I think, only the Arab modification of San-gara or San-a-gar, which is the same word as Zenj on the one hand, and Senegal on the other. Mr. Rodd does not indicate the detail of his suggested "Nordic " origin of the Tuareg, but accepting his hypothesis broadly to mean Northern races, it is suggested that if Nordic peoples be included in the so-called "Iranian " nomads of Asia, it is possible to reconcile both his idea and those of the Arabs on the subject. It will be understood that the names of the Tuareg peoples as given by Ibn Khaldun, i.e. Lamta, Lamtuna, Kitama, Kitala (Gaedala), etc., are nothing more than variants of the names mentioned above, Kitala (Keyi-Dala) still surviving in the Teda-Kanuri title Ketala, i.e. the Bornu title Kachella; i.e. Keyi (Ki), “ ruler of " Dala," the camp." The two oldest Sudanese names for the Tuareg are therefore : A. Ili, pl. Il-am (or Illam for euphony). B. Kiyi or Keyi, pl. Kien or Kinin, which has in fact another plural in the tribal name Koiyam (for Kiyam), who trace their descent to the Beni Kiyeh of early times in Kanem. |