Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by J. B. Lippencott & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.

THE AMIN OF KALAA.
Emerging from these gloomy caflons , and passing the Beni-Mansour, the village of Thasaerth (where razors and guns are made), Arzou (full of blacksmiths), and some other towns, we enter the Beni-Aidel, where numerous white villages, wreathed with ash trees, lie crouched like nests of eggs on the summits of the primary mountains, with the magnificent peaks of Atlas cut in sapphire upon the sky above them. At the back part of an amphitheatre of rocky summits, Hamet, the guide, points out a little city perched on a precipice, which is certainly the most remarkable site, outside of opera-scenery, that we have ever seen. It is Kalaa, a town of three thousand inhabitants, divided into four quarters, which contrive, in that confined situation, to be perpetually disputing with each other, although a battle would disperse the whole of the tax-payers over the edges. Although apparently inaccessible but by balloon, Kalaa may be approached in passing by Bogni. It is hard to give an idea of the difficulties in climbing up from Bogni to the city, where the hardiest traveler feels vertigo in picking his way over a path often but a yard wide, with perpendiculars on either hand. Finally, after many strange feelings in your head and along your spinal marrow, you thank Heaven that you are safe in Kalaa.
KALAA.
The inhabitants of Kalaa pass for rich, the women promenade without veils and covered with jewels, and the city is clean, which is rare in Kabylia. There are four amins (or sheikhs) in Kalaa, to one of whom we bear a letter of introduction. The anaya never fails, and we are received with cordiality, mixed with stateliness, by an imposing old man in a white bornouse. Enta amin? asks the Roumi. He answers by a sign of the head, and reads our missive with care. Immediately we are made at home, but conversation languishes. He knows nothing but the pure Kabyle tongue, and cannot speak the mixed language of the coasts, called Sabir, which is the pigeon-French of Algiers and Philippeville.