Algeria from within

by R. V. C. Bodley

FOOTNOTES

[1] It is advisable to ascertain the state of the road between Guerrera and Touggourt, as there is much sand in this part. On principle it is wiser to start just ahead of the motor-bus as the route is very desolate and there is no possible means of repairing serious breakdowns.

[2] If time is short, Constantine, Bougie and the Kabyle can be omitted. From Timgad one can get to Sétif via Corneille. By leaving Biskra early one can do Biskra/Batna, see Timgad, and be at Sétif in one day—210 kilometers. From Sétif to Algiers the road is good and straight—300 kilometers.

[3] If this bus journey is thought too excessive, there is no necessity to go to Bou Saada. The train can be taken direct to Djelfa in one day, and then next morning the bus lands one at Laghouat at nine thirty.

[4] I have not marked the number of days for the journey by public conveyance as, being much slower, it is correspondingly more tiring, and the traveler will probably wish to linger longer in the different centers he visits.

CHAPTER XXVI
BOU SAADA

Leaving the ugly suburbs of Algiers, the car turns on to a broad, straight road bordered with plane-trees. On either side stretch interminable vineyards, while ahead the blue slopes of the Atlas rise up from this great plain of the Mitidja. Little French villages are passed and long, white buildings, now closed and silent, which will be in a whirl of activity in August and September when the grapes are being pressed.

In an hour or so l’Arba has been reached and the steep slopes covered with rough scrub and cork-trees. Up, up the road climbs toward the bare crests of the range. Algiers and the Mitidja are lost to view, and the eye wanders over a great expanse of mountain, cultivated here and there with patches of cereals, and now and then a vineyard.

The air is fresh, and the clouds seem ominously close. At Sakamody the watershed is reached, three thousand feet above sea-level, and a wonderful panorama of hills and rivers and forests spreads itself before us.

The road is now running steeply down toward the silvery stream at the bottom, and, reaching Tablat, an iron bridge is crossed and away speeds the car through a fertile valley. If lunch has been carried in the car there are some delightful fields near Bir Rabalou—at the one hundred and third kilometer—where one can picnic in peace. For some reason there is an abundance of tortoises in these fields.

If one is depending on the hotel one must push on to Aumale, where a rather second-rate inn will provide a correspondingly second-rate lunch. Aumale is well over two thousand feet above the sea; it is a modern garrison town and quite uninteresting.

Shortly after Aumale the road starts sloping down toward the flat country parallel to and east of the Sersou, and after thirty kilometers the village of Sidi Aïssa is reached.

At this point two vast errors are made by guides, tourists, and even by many Algerians; and, as stated in a previous chapter, it is the duty of the author to destroy legends invented for the ears of the credulous.

The first of these stories is that Sidi Aïssa means “Our Lord.” Translated literally this word signifies “the Lord Jesus,” but, though the Mohammedans venerate all the prophets from Moses down to Christ, this Sidi Aïssa is not the founder of the Christian faith. The person after whom this village and many others are named is Sidi-el-Hadj-Aïssa, the great marabout who founded Laghouat in the eighteenth century. Of this later.

The second story, which is perhaps served up more frequently, is that at Sidi Aïssa the desert begins. It is an excusable legend, and let it be said at once that the author himself has fallen into the trap. It is an absolute fallacy, but Bou Saada and its neighborhood is one of the most amazingly natural fakes in the world.

Sidi Aïssa is at one thousand eight hundred feet above the sea and is on the same latitude as Boghar, which is perched on the southerly slopes of the Atlas of the Tell. Bou Saada is actually north of Djelfa, which the traveler will visit in two days and which is at over three thousand feet.

“But what of this?” exclaims the reader.

Well, this—that the approach to Bou Saada is as desertic as any scenery he will see, and that many oases of the south have that same first aspect of the Sahara created by Bou Saada; and yet to reach the beginning of the great wastes which run away to the Soudan and the Niger, ranges of mountains and forests south of Bou Saada must be crossed, which in winter are often covered with snow.

Bou Saada is an oasis, of that there is no doubt, but why it springs up in a country which is only a few miles from forests and vegetation is not to be explained. Perhaps it is one of the great jokes created by Allah for the benefit of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique—and a very profitable joke too! However, the important point is that the traveler, on leaving Sidi Aïssa, can, if he wishes, feel that he is entering the desert, but he must not believe it. It is an impression which can not be forgotten, just as if a boat had been exchanged for the car and one had put out to sea. The hills and trees to the north seem to be the land, and the great expanse of stone and scrub spread out before one is the sea. To the west barren mountains rise up with almost flat tops, reminding one of billiard tables built by some dead race of giants. The world has suddenly changed as the car rushes on along the straight, even road.

No one is in sight, no habitation—just the wide plain. If the Sahara proper is to attract one the attraction will come now. There is no question about this: the expanse of desert either takes hold of one’s mind or else it merely bores.

However, bored or enthralled, the first aspect of Bou Saada must seize one and make a thrill pass through the brain. The road suddenly bends to the right, the sand-dunes appear all golden in the evening light, a city of rosy mud houses nestles against a russet hill, fifteen thousand palm-trees bow ever to the lilt of the wind.

Such is the first glimpse of Bou Saada, “the father or place of happiness,” and indeed so it must have been before the days when motors made a week-end visit possible. The Transatlantic hotel is comfortable, and constructed in harmony with the place, and though the rest of the life is as great a fake as nature has made it, it has great charm.

On arrival let the visitor hurry to the bastion below the military hospital to see the glory of the sunset— those amazing lights which he will see again in the south, but of which his first impressions here will never be forgotten. A mantle of gold-dust, the palm-trees in the breeze, herds of sheep and goats returning from their pasture, stately camels plodding along into the city accompanied by solemn Arabs: a vision of enchantment.

The return to the hotel, through the quiet streets in the rapidly increasing dusk, while the muezzin calls the Faithful to prayer from the mosque, is such a complete contrast to the scenes of twenty-four hours before that one wonders if one has only traveled a hundred and fifty miles.

Yet it is not the Sahara, and at night, after dinner, when one is obliged to fall into the hands of the clamoring guides to be taken to see the dancing girls of the Ouled Naïls perform their weird steps, it is not the real thing. Not the real thing inasmuch as the dances are organized for the tourist and do not go on continuously for the native population, but as real as possible as far as it concerns the actual dances and the fact that the girls all belong to the tribe of the Ouled Naïls, in the center of whose area Bou Saada lies.

Another disillusion to the veteran guide is impending, but in a merciful spirit the truth about the Ouled Naïls will be kept till the next chapter. As, however, the traveler has not yet been to the far south, he will appreciate this evening in a quaint little room hung about with gaudy carpets, or, if it is fine, perhaps on the roof, watching the girls dance slowly up and down before him to the squeal of the raïta, or to the deep notes of the reed flute, while the time is kept by a rhythmical beat on the tam-tam.

The stars are flashing overhead in a black sky and peace seems to have settled on the world, a peace which will gradually increase as the journey progresses into the Sahara.

Next morning it is advisable to take one of the small boys outside the hotel (not a regular guide) and, descending into the river-bed, walk along between the tall palm-trees until the end of the oasis is reached, and then, crossing a belt of rough scrub, climb up on to the golden sand-dunes. A great expanse spreads out before one till, away in the distance, can be seen the beginning of the Aurès Mountains. It is a land of strange mirage effects, and, if the sun is hot, visions of palm-trees and green lakes will appear and shimmer away again before the eye has grasped the picture. If the country has taken hold of one, an hour’s contemplation in these golden dunes will pass quickly.

After lunch there is an interesting little excursion to be made some eight kilometers up the Djelfa road to El Hamel. The car should not be overloaded, as there are three or four kilometers to do off the main road up to the gates of the town. Built on the side of a barren hill, it has a wild look, and its tall walls give it an imposing aspect as the car climbs up the steep road to its gates. El Hamel is interesting because of its zaouïa and Mohammedan college for those studying the Koran with a view to becoming muftis or imams. Up to 1904 it had the peculiarity of being under the patronage of a female marabout, Lalla Zineb, and her tomb, much venerated, can be seen in a very lovely mosque. At present there is a charming marabout who is always glad to see visitors. He will show one round and offer coffee in his rather gaudy reception-room. Though it is not usually known, marabouts accept, and often expect, gifts of money, ostensibly given for the zaouïa; it must be presented with a speech explaining that it is a charitable donation.

There are many other pleasant excursions round Bou Saada if time warrants a long stay but, if not, there are more interesting things to see in the south which will entirely eclipse this false little oasis.

I say false and at the same time it is an almost unjust epithet, as, though the place is infested by conducted tours, they have not yet succeeded in removing its original charm, or making of it a middle-class fashionable resort like Biskra.

N. B.—Should it be impossible for the traveler to carry the journey on to Laghouat and the far south, there is a track across country to Biskra, some two hundred and fifty kilometers. Thence the journey can be carried on as laid down in the itinerary.

The track starts on the way to El Hamel, and it is well to have some one who knows it in the car, as there are no signposts and it is very desolate. Moreover, it must not be attempted in wet weather or after a storm, as there are many dried-up river-beds which rapidly become torrents, and there are no bridges.

Otherwise it is an interesting journey, and the first sight of the Sahara near Tolga is arresting.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE SAHARA

Leaving Bou Saada by the same road taken the day before to visit El Hamel, though without turning off down the track which passes the holy city, the car climbs up into a rolling country of alfa—that tall alfa or esparto grass which grows so abundantly all over the Sersou and the Hauts Plateaux, and which is used extensively by British firms to make paper.

Large concessions are leased for lengthy periods, the grass is cut and collected by Arabs between November and March, and brought to convenient centers on camels. Here it is pressed into bales and despatched by motor transport or by rail to the sea, where it is shipped to Europe: a profitable business, but somewhat lonely for the European superintendent who lives at the pressing depot on the plain.

The country traversed during the first part of the journey is very wild. Hills limit the broad horizon, bare of all vegetation; they are the Mountains of the Ouled Naïls, and this time it is impossible to refrain from speaking the truth about these people. Now, it is generally believed that the women of the tribe of the Ouled Naïl (which, incidentally, means children of him who has succeeded) are all ladies of easy virtue, and that in every dancing-place in North Africa this tribe supplies the performers. It is, moreover, stated by many that prostitution among them is a form of religion. Both these ideas are false.

In the first place, this occupation or trade did not exist as such before the French conquered the country. The real facts are these: the confederation of Ouled Naïls is the largest in Algeria; it comprises twenty-one tribes and occupies a very wide area, running all the way from Djelfa to Sétif in length, and almost as broad in depth. It stands to reason, therefore, that in a great many of the towns visited by travelers the Ouled Naïl women are found in their own homes, or in the towns just bordering thereon. Outside their own lairs, however, dancers of this tribe will be found exercising the same profession among their cousins of other confederations. The first reason for this is, again, the fact that they are so numerous that they have migrated outside their own haunts, and even outnumber the other women. The second reason is that prostitution among the Ouled Naïl tribe is not considered a dishonor. This is greatly due to the astonishing laziness of the tribesmen, who are quite prepared to live on the earnings of their women. In any other tribe a mother will bring up her daughter with the idea of marrying well, having a home, and settling down to rear children herself. A mother among the Ouled Naïl people will not discourage her daughter from going as early as possible to the nearest town to earn her living in order to provide a large enough dowry to make a good marriage, or retire into prosperous inertia. Most astonishing of all is the fact that bridegrooms are forthcoming, and that the method employed to raise the money is not considered dishonorable. Among the tribesmen of the Ouled Naïl, moreover, these girls are so weary of the life they have led that they make excellent wives.

There are naturally many families of great respectability, whose daughters are as closely kept as those of other tribes, but they are not in the majority.

All this may sound very crude, but, as I have previously endeavored to show, whatever may be the rights and wrongs of the question, there is none of that sordid atmosphere associated with the same thing in Europe.

About half-way between Bou Saada and Djelfa the mountains are left, and a broad expanse of plain, sparsely cultivated, takes the place of the alfa. In the distance a group of poplars appears, behind which lies a walled village. The car passes through a menacing gate and turns into a long, uninteresting street planted with sad trees. Of all the cities in North Africa Djelfa is the most lamentable. There is nothing to redeem its dull squalor, not even a possible climate. In winter it freezes; in summer the heat is unbearable; in the spring an icy blast blows from the mountains; in autumn it rains and snows.

It would be the test of affection between a man and a woman to pass six months in this place and remain on speaking terms. If the traveler is wise he has lunched on the broad plain before reaching this wretched town, as, if not, he must suffer a meal in the very tumble-down hotel, which does its best, but which fails from want of support. Djelfa must be left as soon as possible.

The car turns to the south, passes through another fortified gateway, and is soon speeding away on the straight white road which leads to the Sahara.

More alfa, more bare hills, more broad horizons. At the fifteenth kilometer the col des caravanes, the highest point on the road, is reached, and, away, away, the road can be seen like a long ribbon unrolling itself toward the blue skies of the great south.

The caravanserai of Aïn el Ibel, the Spring of the Camels, is the next landmark; once the nightly lodging in the days of the diligence, it is now only used as a place to drink coffee if one is frequenting the public car. The country is very lonely and desolate. It is a land of sheep-breeding, and, though the traveler coming straight from the green fields of Europe looks doubtfully at the gray scrub about him, he will have his doubts removed when he sees the great flocks feeding peacefully on either side of the road.

Calm-faced nomads, tall of stature, watch over them, and in the distance a few black patches indicate where the camp has been temporarily pitched. Camels too are everywhere, and have replaced all forms of more modern transport. Caravans of these ungainly beasts, bearing bales of wool and alfa, with here and there the bassours in which the women travel, plod slowly along.

There is a sensation of something new in the atmosphere—the people of the north have been left far behind, and at every revolution of the wheels one seems to be speeding into the past. The flocks, the camels, the tents, the tall shepherds are the same as they were twelve hundred years ago, and even the rumbling motor-lorry which keeps the south supplied with sugar and coffee does not affect them.

A few palm-trees appear, growing about a white caravanserai, while mud houses cluster in a dip. It is the miniature oasis of Sidi Maklouf. The road turns sharply to the right, runs down into a dried-up river-bed, and then stretches straight away to the south. The barren hill on the right looks like the edge of a saw; ahead there is a distant horizon in a haze of blue; the eyes would like to be there and see what is beyond.

Again the road bends, this time to the left, a dark mass appears, which, gradually getting more distinct, reveals itself as trees—palm-trees in thousands. Rosy rocks break the horizon, a white column leaps to the sky; it is the minaret of Laghouat. The car passes through the sandy bed of a broad river, usually a trickling stream, but sometimes in the autumn a roaring torrent, making access to the oasis impossible. The road slips through plantations of tamarisk, and in a few moments an avenue of plane-trees is entered.

Gardens and quiet little villas are on either side, until, reaching the fortified walls, the car draws up before the Transatlantic Hotel, nestling picturesquely amid the tall palms. There is an atmosphere of peace and quiet, and a welcome which is pleasant after the long journey.

The interior of the hotel does not belie the exterior, and, when one realizes that it was once the bash agha’s Turkish bath, the charm of the surroundings is complete.

An English tea awaits one, and when it has been consumed let the traveler climb to the rosy rock near by and get his first glimpse of the Sahara. If it is a clear evening the sunset effect will be a vision never to be forgotten.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE OASIS OF LAGHOUAT

The first view of the Sahara is perhaps one of the most amazing things in the world. The northern part of the oasis is divided from the southern by a barrier of rocks, and, as one tops the cliff, a sense of awe fills one as one contemplates the immensity of the vision spread out. The mind, unaccustomed to such spectacles, rushes back and tries to compare the scene with anything it has ever seen before, but it fails hopelessly, and remains in wonderment before this wide panorama. And yet, as one gazes at the plain—which seems to roll out from the sand in the foreground to an endless expanse of stones, until it merges into the sky and is lost in an infinite horizon—one can not help being reminded of the sea on a calm evening: the oasis is some tropical island, with its palm-trees growing almost down to the water’s edge; the golden sand lapped by this tideless ocean, and then the sea—away, away, far away—until the next island.

“Island” is really the only descriptive word for an oasis in its ocean of desolation. It suddenly springs up and suddenly disappears. Unless the water changes its course, nothing human can cause a tree to grow outside its perimeter, any more than anything could be raised out of the sea.

Laghouat is a very typical oasis of the south. From the rocky eminence can be seen the town, clustering on either side of the rocky barrier; the mosque on an eminence in the center, modern and rather gaudy, but not unpleasant to look at; the very unprepossessing Catholic church, rather like a wedding cake; and the two oases, north and south. The town itself is comparatively modern, having been rebuilt on the site of the old city which was utterly destroyed by the French in 1852 to punish its heroic defenders for having held out so long against them.

There are two versions as to the origin of the name Laghouat. The first suggestion is from the Arab word “gaouth,” or more exactly “rouat,” meaning a house in a dip with a garden, and which has been contracted into “El aghouat.” The second is “El-aghouat,” of which the derivation is a mountain the ridge of which resembles the teeth of a saw. Both are plausible suggestions, as all the houses have gardens, and the mountains in the neighborhood give one very much the impression of saws.

Prior to the eighteenth century there is very little information to be had concerning Laghouat. It was evidently an oasis frequented by nomads, but there does not appear to have been any definite settlement. In 1700, however, Sidi-El-Hadj-Aïssa, a very saintly marabout, collected the tribes of the district about him and made it clear that it would be in their interest to group themselves in one body, and it must have been at this time that the present Confederation of the Larbas came into existence.

Sidi-El-Hadj-Aïssa, who is the patron of the oasis, is a figure of great importance in the Moslem history of Algeria, and he is venerated throughout the country, more especially as a prophet. Concerning the truth of his foresight it is not for us to criticize, but the facts are worth noting. It appears that after creating this center and making of the divided nomads one people, they did not show the desired gratitude, and as punishment the marabout laid a terrible curse on his followers. In the curse he prophesied the downfall of the city, internal war, and the French invasion. And, though it is too long to go into, it is curious to note that all the details of the prophecy occurred.

He made a further prophecy which is kept a great secret, to the effect that Algeria would be delivered by a great chief who would rise in Morocco and finally become Khalifat of North Africa.

I leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusions, but the fact remains that the French did invade Algeria, and that events in Morocco seemed at one time to indicate a fulfilment of his words.

The town reconstructed on the site of the old city may be more solid, but it could not be less beautiful. Straight streets running at right-angles, plain and drab—it is the typical architecture of the modern southern town. There is a certain picturesque atmosphere in the quarter bordering on the southern oasis, but it is very poor and dirty.

The people live in small houses, and ply their business quite humbly. Modernisms have not crept in, and the shopkeepers do not worry the visitor to buy. When the day’s work is over they repair to their gardens—the gardens which have made Laghouat famous. Every man who can afford it has his own piece of land in the oasis. It may be an acre, it may be three, but, all the same, it is his garden and he is proud of it. Surrounded by high walls, it is planted with palm-trees, peach-trees, vines, apricots, figs, oranges, pomegranates, pears, medlars, and, in fact, all kinds of fruit.

The oasis being at a comparatively high level, the date-palms do not produce a very marketable fruit, such as is found at Biskra in the south, and in Laghouat a palm-tree only brings in fifty francs. All the other fruit-trees, however, bear abundantly, too abundantly, for, there being no railway, there is no outlet, and in early summer peaches can be had for one franc the dozen, and apricots are given away. Some people even find it too much trouble to carry the fruit to market, and they merely eat what they can and use the rest for manure.

Vegetables are in almost the same position, and are sold for negligible sums. It is astonishing to realize that such fertility exists so close to the wastes of the desert. There is a wonderful opportunity for an enterprising man with capital who comes to Laghouat with a fleet of lorries and bears away the fruit and vegetables to Algiers. The purchase of the raw material will cost him next to nothing; it is merely a question of transport. A jam factory in Laghouat would pay a hundred per cent., but let it be hoped, for the sake of the peace and beauty of the surroundings, that no enterprising capitalist will come and spoil a land of pure delight, where living is so easy and so cheap.

To produce all this vegetation, however, there must be water, and, its absence being conspicuous in the south, it may interest the reader to hear how an oasis is watered.

The whole of southern Algeria is crossed by rivers, which in the winter have a certain amount of water, but which in the summer are dry, and are in reality only drains to carry off the rain which comes down from the hills after storms.

The real rivers of the south follow the water-courses, but they flow underground, and it is only when they rise to the surface that they form an oasis, and, as the Arabs say, the palm-trees spring up with their feet in the water and their heads in the flames. Anywhere along these courses wells can be sunk and the water tapped at a depth varying from one hundred and twenty to twelve hundred feet, and in some cases there are broad underground lakes, known to the natives as Behar Tahtani—the sea of the underworld.

Sand Storm Getting up on the Sahara

Waterfall of Boiling Water, Hammon, Meskoutine

Arab Falconer Setting Out to Hunt

Wherever, therefore, the river rises to the surface and forms an oasis the land becomes very rich, and all vegetation is of the most luxuriant. Sand mixed with irrigated earth is excessively fertile, and produces everything from roses and strawberries to jasmine and lemons. Cereals would thrive and cover endless acres if there was enough water. Water—that is the question of daily life in the great south. You may cross endless wastes of desertic plain with only a few tufts of alfa grass here and there, and suddenly come upon a great oasis, green and fresh in the watered land. But it ends as abruptly as it began, and, although you may find yourself standing in a garden of flowers and fruits and green grass, two hundred yards away is the blasted desolation of the Sahara.

The distribution of water, therefore, is done very methodically. There is, of course, the underground layer, in which rest the roots of the palms, but the surface water for the lesser vegetables is another matter. There is always a point where the water actually comes to the surface in the form of springs, and, of course, the river-bed which, during the winter rains, is running with water, sometimes after big storms is a raging torrent overflowing the land.

The water is, therefore, captured at these points and carried into the oasis by means of channels called seguias, so inclined that the water is always flowing round the gardens. The oasis is, moreover, divided into areas, and the areas receive the water at regular intervals. A garden has so many minutes, according to its size, and it is calculated that the whole surface under cultivation is flooded for its appointed period once every seven days. The system is ingeniously worked by sluices, padlocked by the water controller of the area, who, when the appointed day occurs, lets in the water, while the owner of the domain diverts it into the necessary quarters on his own land, according to its need. At the end of the appointed time the controller closes the sluice-gates and floods the next garden. Rain is considered as an extra, and whatever the weather the water-day is continued.

Apart from gardening, which is the hobby of all good Laghouatis, there are other industries. Carpet-making and weaving, the occupation of the women of the south, is very important here, and some of the best burnouses and other woolen goods originate in Laghouat; and, of course, there is sheep-breeding; this is the great occupation in the northern Sahara, and a source of substantial revenue.

Some of the Jews are goldsmiths; they are also cobblers, and they embroider leather to make into bags and saddles.

A walk in the evening in the dancing-girls’ quarter will remove all the theatrical atmosphere which the same thing in Bou Saada has created. The streets and coffee-houses are thronged nightly summer and winter alike; the squeal of the raïta and the beat of the tam-tam never cease, and if one strolls in and sits down on a bench the performance will not change because of the entrance of the tourist. The women continue dancing slowly up and down the middle of the room, while the men sit in serried ranks and stare, sipping their coffee or mint tea. There is no charge except for the cup of harmless beverage which costs five sous. Sometimes a dancing-girl will hold out her hand, and will be delighted with a packet of cigarettes or a franc, and occasionally the band makes a collection, but there is none of that grasping rush to exploit tourists associated with those more popular centers.

There is little else to describe in the oasis, as the atmosphere of the past is impossible to realize for those who live in great cities. The lack of traffic, the blueness of the sky, the tall, feathery palms, the dignity of the Arabs, the silence—especially the silence—are things which must be seen and felt to be appreciated.

It is a setting of peace, an atmosphere of calm—a solution to the worries of modern life.

CHAPTER XXIX
THE MZAB

The journey south to Ghardaïa is very desolate; even the tufts of alfa have practically disappeared. The road runs straight across the flat plain, with nothing to relieve the eye except occasional groups of dreary trees known as pistachiers. Flocks of sheep graze by the roadside. The nomads’ tents stand out like black patches on the stony ground. Sometimes a herd of gazelles will be seen in the distance, bustards rise and flap languidly away, hares abound. It is a great country for hawking.

If the day is hot, mirages will spring up and disappear as quickly. It is not a picturesque journey to the land of the Mzab. Half-way, the caravanserai of Tilrempt is reached; it is a long white building standing in a dip surrounded by pistachiers. A very worthy “mine host” will greet the traveler and regale him in this desert home with one of the best meals he will taste in Algeria.

A visitors’ book will be presented to him, with which he can regale himself joyously for half an hour before committing himself to the pages as a further joy to those who follow. After Tilrempt the country becomes more and more desertic, even the alfa has completely vanished—only rough scrub, and little of that. Then suddenly, at the one hundred and fiftieth kilometer, the oasis of Berriane appears, a splash of vivid green in the middle of the wilderness. The sensation of the verdure, after miles of desert, is most refreshing. Berriane is the first city of the Mzab, and one is at once struck by the originality of the architecture, quite unlike anything that has been seen up till now. The minaret of the mosque reminds one of an obelisk.

But this haven of green is soon left behind, and more desolation begins. Not even the scrub, only stones and rocks and strips of sand. It is a merciless, arid desert, the kind of scene which must have inspired Doré to illustrate the Inferno of Dante: nothing to relieve the eye for miles around.

Ghardaïa is reached unexpectedly. One appears to be in the middle of the desert, when all of a sudden the road turns sharply to the right and dips down a steep hill. It is as if one were descending into the crater of a volcano. As the car reaches the flat there suddenly appears the cone-like minaret of Ghardaïa, as it piles itself into a kind of heap of houses on a little hill. To the left is the equally heap-like city of Melika. It is an impression never to be forgotten, a new world quite unlike anything seen before. But then the people of the Mzab are a race of their own, and the confederation of cities is quite unique. The Mzab is the Mzab, and it can be compared to nothing— it is the most original place in North Africa.

The first question to decide, however, before penetrating into its desolation and studying the inhabitants, is, Who are these people? And, curiously enough, the question is not easy to answer. It is obvious to the simplest minded, on seeing these small, squat men—with their smooth, round, white faces, fringed with dark beards—that they are unlike any one else seen in Algeria.

They are as different as the Spaniards from the Germans, as the British from the Italians. There are various theories put forward, of which the most picturesque can not really be said to be founded on any sound basis: it is that these strange people are the lost tribe of Israel. In support of this theory we have the mystery of their origin, and their very Semitic appearance; but, though it would be pleasant to write a romance on the subject, it would certainly have little merit outside fiction.

The second suggestion is that they are the direct descendants of the old Phœnicians. People who oppose this idea bring forward the fact that when Scipio destroyed Carthage he killed or deported all the inhabitants. Against this, however, it must be evident that there were Carthaginians in other parts of North Africa who escaped this fate, and that Phœnician influence is found at a much later date.

In the Mzab itself there are certainly things very closely connected with Carthage. The triangular decoration of the houses, the pictures of fish, of the crescent moon, of the sun and the stars are not Arab. The door-knockers represent the sun, and there are many of phallic shape. But, in spite of these rather conclusive evidences, the general idea is that the people of the Mzab are pure Berbers. In support of this theory we have the fact that they are Abhadites—that is to say, the last group of people created by the great Kharedjite schism. What is certain is that the known groups of Abhadites at Oman, Zanzibar, Djebel Nefarsa and the island of Djerba have the same customs and language as the people of Ghardaïa.

The question then arises, why are these people in this desolation of the Sahara, on no natural highway, and in no trade center, where all the water comes from wells dug by the inhabitants, where it rains about once every ten years? Why have these men voluntarily condemned themselves to this life of trial and struggle? Those learned on the subject maintain that this exile was conceived in a moment of despair and as an act of faith, that in settling themselves in this merciless desert they wished once and for all to flee from the persecution which was always meted out to them by the orthodox Mohammedans, and keep their form of religion and race intact.

It seems difficult to contradict this theory, all the more so when we have evidence that they were driven from the Atlantic coast and Tiaret in Oranie to Ouargla, an oasis some two hundred kilometers south of Ghardaïa, and that, after barely two hundred years in this oasis, they were again driven out by the Arabs. Weary, therefore, of suffering, they determined to settle where no one would come and molest them, and, as the only solution was to find a place naturally hostile to invaders, they chose the Mzab. This took place about A. D. 1070, but already in the year 1000 a reconnaissance had been made in the direction of the Mzab and had founded a kind of refuge at El Ateuf. When, therefore, the general emigration north took place, the remaining six cities which form the confederation of the Mzab soon sprang up—Bou, Noura, Melika, and Beni Sgen about A. D. 1048; Ghardaïa 1053; and some hundred years later Guerrera and Berriane, thirty miles outside the group adjacent to Ghardaïa.

Unlike most oases of the south, where water comes gushing out of the ground and is directed by artificial channels to irrigate the gardens, there was no surface water at all on the site chosen by these people to found their cities. Every palm-tree planted, every seed sown had to be watered artificially from wells, and if one looks at the broad oasis, with its thousands of palm-trees, and when one realizes that when the Mzabites first came the land was as barren as that seen from the road, the feat performed leaves one amazed.

The system of drawing water has, moreover, not changed since those days. The well is sunk and a kind of tank is built beside it, with channels leading out to the parts of the land to be irrigated. A sloping path is constructed, down which walks a camel with a rope tied to its neck, while at the other end of the rope is a skin resting at the water-level. When the camel gets to the end of his walk the skin reaches the surface and by an ingenious contrivance pours its contents into the tank; the camel returns to the well, thus lowering the skin to the water again, and the process recommences. The creaking sound of the pulley drawing up the skin has a certain curious charm reminding one of Egypt.

Occasionally, but very occasionally, the rain comes, and to meet this possibility barrages have been made across every little valley in order to form small lakes. Beside every path or rock, gutters have been constructed leading to one center where the water can be stored. A rain-storm in the Mzab is worth untold millions to its inhabitants.

And yet the Mzabite is not a farmer in any sense of the word, and unless he is himself forced through poverty to work in the garden he will avoid all contact with the soil and employ Arabs to look after the land. He is essentially a merchant, living in his shop and opposed to all outdoor life, all sport or anything military. This antipathy to war again raises the question as to whether he is really pure Berber. His cousins the Touaregs, the men of the Aurès and the Kabyle Mountains, the people of the Riff, are all born warriors. Why, then, has the Mzabite never been able to defend himself?

To my mind it confirms the theory that originally he was a Carthaginian who became Berberized. Moreover, his round, squat appearance is much more that which one would associate with the prosperous trader of Carthage than with the wild men of the Riff. All their instincts are for business. One sees these fat little men plying their trade in Algiers, in the towns of the Tell, living humbly and simply until the day is ripe to return to the Mzab. For return they must, and this because no woman is ever allowed to leave the confederation of the seven towns, and, as no Mzabite may marry an Arab or vice versa, he is obliged to go back to his home to continue the family. The family to him is of the highest importance, and though they are, generally speaking, a democratic race, they are very proud of their lineage, and their aristocracy holds an important position.

Their habits are decidedly conservative, and are very noticeable in the strictness with which their women are kept. They do not go to market, and it is very rare to see one in the street. The children are terribly shy, and at the approach of a stranger they flee and at once hide in the houses.

They observe their religion most conscientiously; as it is the Abhadite dissension it is very strict, and it is carried out to the last letter, and, whereas one finds a good many Arabs breaking the laws of the Prophet as it concerns wines and spirits, it is excessively rare to see a Mzabite drink.

Their mosques are much more respected than those of the orthodox Mohammedan; no one can be buried in them, and they are sanctuary to all criminals. Their cemeteries are venerated, and one sees on the tombs pots and plates, offerings to the dead, which again carries one back to a more subtle origin than that of the ordinary Berber. They sacrifice camels and oxen and sheep at appointed times, chiefly for the purpose of bringing down rain, but also for more daily occurrences, such as the laying of a foundation-stone.

As stated above, their commercial instincts are extraordinary, and it is said that Ghardaïa and the adjacent towns conceal millions of gold pieces. It is certain that in 1921, the year of the great famine, these people had enough money to buy all they needed, and they did not suffer half as much as the other tribes of the south.

They keep themselves very much apart from all other people, and they consider the Mzab as a holy corner of the earth. The Arabs who live in this wilderness are kept quite separate, with a quarter and a mosque of their own, and, while mutually despising one another, are usually the servants of the Mzabites. The Jews likewise who are found in Ghardaïa itself, not only have a reserved quarter of the town but they also wear a peculiar dress, and are treated with the utmost contempt. In fact, in all ways the people of the Mzab are quite different from any other race in North Africa, and the study of their history and customs would give material for a lengthy book. It is hoped, however, that these few pages will enable the traveler to realize that he is no longer among the simple Arabs of the great plain, but in the midst of a strange people whose origin will always remain a mystery.

CHAPTER XXX
GHARDAIA AND ADJOINING TOWNS

During the journey south we have passed Berriane, the outpost of the Mzab, and of later foundation than the other towns. Guerrera is on the journey to Touggourt; the remaining five towns of the confederation are before us in this kind of desolate rock crater. The most important and the largest of them is Ghardaïa, lying at the foot of the military bordj, where it is necessary to pass the night. On a rocky eminence to the east is Melika, further on, the holy city of Beni Sgen, and out of sight, but only a few miles distant, are Bou Noura and El Ateuf.

To the south again there is another oasis called Metlili, which some people erroneously comprise in the confederation of the Mzab, but though in many ways it has Mzabite characteristics it is in reality a town of the tribe of the Chambas, nomads who inhabit a vast area of the Sahara beyond Ghardaïa.

The first thing that strikes one as one looks at Ghardaïa is the way the houses pile themselves up into a heap, rather like a giant ant-hill which is, in its turn, surmounted by the minaret made of mud, resembling an obelisk with little holes in the top. Moreover, if we turn and look at Melika and Beni Sgen we are struck by the same similarity of construction which we saw at Berriane and which we shall see in all the towns of the Mzab.

The origin of these cones is easy to find. As each town was founded, the group of elders whose duty it was to carry out this rite first of all built the mosque on a hilltop; this mosque was at the same time a store for food and arms as well as a fortress. Consequently the people grouped themselves on the slopes beneath. This again is evidence of the great antiquity of the race, for is it not known that all early religious orders frequented heights and that nowadays theosophists refer a great deal to the influence of high places on their mysticism? The effect is very curious, and even if the aspect of the people does not create an impression, their architecture surely will. Descending from the eminence on which is situated the bordj, a narrow street will be followed, which suddenly leads out into a broad square, surrounded by unsymmetrical arcades. If the caïd is at home he will probably permit the visitor to mount to his roof and look down on this animated center and up toward the tall minaret. In the middle of the square is a kind of stone stage where, on certain days, justice is administered, while close by will be seen a curious group of stones set out in a horseshoe formation. This strange circle marks the site where the elders of the city first sat down in the open plain a thousand years ago to found Ghardaïa.

Leaving the square, the route to take is up a narrow street leading direct to the mosque. The houses almost meet, and in certain places the alley is tunneled through the habitations. A narrow passage leads up to the mosque, and if one has a competent guide a dark chamber can be visited which is a place of ablution, but which, in days gone by, was the scene of political conspiracies. The mosque itself is quite unlike anything one has seen before. The pillars are neither Turkish nor Roman, the architecture has no sort of connection with any known style. In the wall are holes to place shoes before going into the sanctuary to pray; hanging from the roof is a skin full of water, the greatest sign of charity in this country where water is more valuable than gold.

Above, a kind of cage covered in with wire netting, reminding one of a chicken-run or rabbit-hutch, leaves one wondering. A hundred guesses will not elucidate the mystery—it is the lost-property office!

Climbing on to the roof, a panoramic view of the town spreads itself below. To the east the Jewish quarter, with a curious pyramid-like synagogue; to the west the Arab quarter, with an insignificant mosque; to the south the more modern buildings, with the house of the White Fathers, while away in the distance can be seen the beginning of the great oasis, brilliant green against the barren hills.

If one is lucky one may see from here the strange sight of a man selling his house. There he stands on the roof while the would-be purchasers squat round making bids.

The walk can be continued through the narrow streets past wells three hundred feet deep with the eternal skin dangling at the end of a long rope. A visit is recommended to the Convent of the White Sisters, who teach the little girls to weave carpets in the patterns peculiar to the country, and if souvenirs are wanted it is advised to buy them here. Likewise at the house of the White Fathers leather goods of the country can also be had at moderate prices.

Returning toward the fort a series of cemeteries will be passed, as well as a broad open space, where on special occasions the public prayer takes place. A morning will suffice for Ghardaïa, and the afternoon can be devoted to the other cities.

The most interesting place to see is the holy city of Beni Sgen and its oasis, but as this will not take the whole afternoon part of the time can be devoted to Melika, Bou Noura or El Ateuf. I would suggest Bou Noura. Melika involves a very steep climb up a cliff and El Ateuf a motor drive over a very bad road. Moreover, all these cities are much alike. What strikes one most is their poverty in comparison with Ghardaïa; all the rich merchants are there, and even the inhabitants of the other towns come to the capital to do business.

After visiting Bou Noura, therefore, a walk can be taken in the oasis behind Beni Sgen. A wide area of verdure relieves the eye, and though the palm-trees are squat like the inhabitants, it is a very refreshing place. There is a barrage of brick drawn right across the oasis to catch any stray water which some unforeseen storm may bring. Here the wells and the method of working them may be seen at close quarters.

Beni Sgen should be reached about the middle of the afternoon, and this for a reason to be explained later. Of all the curious towns in this strange country the holy city is the most curious. It is entirely walled in, with three gates piercing the walls at the north, the east, and the west. No Arab, Christian or Jew is permitted to linger within its keep after sunset; no smoking is allowed in the houses nor in the streets; even the French school is built outside the wall. At the entrance of the northern gate the skin of water hangs in sign of charity.

Climbing up a steep alley one comes to a tower; the key is usually available, and, entering, one can ascend the winding steps which lead one successively to three stories which at one time were guardrooms. From the summit one obtains a magnificent view of the town itself as well as of the oases of Ghardaïa, Melika and Bou Noura. Immediately below the tower is a little cemetery where one will note the offerings to the dead in the shape of plates and jars. To the east are two broad platforms for the public prayer.

Photograph by Mr. Julian Sampson

The Market-Place of Beni-Sgen

Channel for Watering the Garden of an Oasis

Street in Bou Saada

As the afternoon draws on, flocks of goats can be seen wandering slowly in from the barren hills. They have a public shepherd, paid for by the town, who is responsible for the animals up to the gate of the city; at this point he leaves them and the goats, separating themselves, go independently up the narrow streets to their respective homes. When they reach the door they butt it with their heads or tap with their hoofs until they are let in.

The doors of the houses in the Mzab, and especially the locks, are very curious. The door itself is usually made of heavy planks studded with nails and closed with a lock usually associated with a prison gate. This, however, is a modern institution, for the native key is unique in the world. It consists of a piece of wood about a foot long, at the end of which is arranged a pattern of nails. This piece of wood is pushed into a kind of deep slot running from the doorpost diagonally toward the door. From the wall and running into the door is a wooden bar or bolt on which is a pattern of nails corresponding to those on the wooden key. The proprietor slips in his piece of wood until its nails coincide with those inside and then he pulls, the bar gives and it is possible to open the door. It is, I suppose, the origin of the latch-key, as no two combinations of nails are the same, and it means absolute safety to the designer of the piece of wood.

At each turn the traveler is experiencing something new, and though he has seen a series of strange customs common to all the cities of the Mzab, the most curious, which is peculiar only to Beni Sgen, has been left to the last. For some reason, which at present it has been impossible to fathom, there are practically no shops in the holy city, and everything is sold by auction. This sounds quite incredible until, climbing down the steep streets, one comes suddenly into a triangular “square” about fifty yards long. At one end on a raised platform sits the caïd, surrounded by his counselors, while all around squat men of venerable countenance dressed in white robes.

In the middle of the square are a few goats, some camels, a mule, a heap of charcoal, while the auctioneers solemnly carry round the goods to be disposed of, stopping before each person to hear his bid, which is said in a whisper. So he proceeds round and round until the required price is attained. He may be selling a costly carpet or a bottle of pickles, a piece of firewood or some embroidered shoes—it is all the same. The goods can pass only to the highest bidder. Moreover, as the price can only be raised half a franc at a time it often takes days to acquire the object required. Sometimes one sees a man riding round the square on a mule or a donkey which he wishes to dispose of, but it is all the same, and the richest Mzabite can not alter the procedure for untold cash. The spectacle of this auction market is one of the most impressive sights in all North Africa. An atmosphere of an old world, long past and forgotten, is before us, and as one looks at the faces of the men one can not help being reminded of scenes from the Bible, and the legend of the lost tribe springs up unconsciously.

The colored burnous of the Arab has vanished, the bustling merchant of Ghardaïa is no longer before us, there is calmness of demeanor, a whiteness of clothing which speaks of ages and ages in the dim realm of history when Europe was a land of wild beasts and the Britons painted themselves blue.

At times one is almost inclined to cry out:

“But this can’t be real, this is got up for me, it is part of Wembley; in an hour all these men will be settling down to chops and beer in the nearest pub!”

But it is not so. Every day, except on great feasts, year in and year out, for two hours before sunset these silent old gentlemen assemble before the caïd and purchase what they can by auction, and when it is over they repair to the mosque before retiring to their homes to eat a silent meal prior to returning to bed. The Mzabite is not a gay personality, and he takes life very seriously. Unfortunately some of their more ancient characteristics have disappeared by the appointment of civil caïds. In the early days of the French conquest of Algeria these people surrendered to the invader before they had even thought of pushing as far as the Mzab, and they still have a separate treaty with France, making of the country a sort of independent little republic exempt from all obligations to the main Government. They kept all their religious dignitaries who ruled the whole confederation as they had done for centuries before, and the caïd-ship was not imposed on the tribe till after the whole of Algeria had been pacified. Lately the French seem to have rather forgotten their old friends and have voted conscription. This caused great consternation until it was discovered that there was a subparagraph permitting a Mzabite to send an Arab in his place to serve. The authority to spend a thousand francs to find some poor loon to shoulder the rifle brought back the smiles to the smooth, round, white faces, and the placid atmosphere returned to the busy shops of Ghardaïa and to the silent streets of the holy city.

Generally speaking nothing has changed since the foundation of the cities, and even if in some far-off day the railway reaches the Mzab it will probably only have the effect of stimulating trade. The haunt of the children of Carthage will remain as it was when their forefathers imposed their commerce on the whole of the Mediterranean basin as they are now beginning to impose it on the easy-going Arabs of North Africa.

CHAPTER XXXI
GUERRERA AND THE SAND DESERT

To cross over from the rock desert of the Mzab to the sand of Touggourt it is advisable to be very certain of the reliability of the car, and, if possible, to go accompanied by another vehicle. The country to be traversed is terribly desolate, and, except when the mail bus runs, once a week, it is very seldom that one meets any traffic; if one has a serious breakdown one must wait in the desert for the passage of the diligence, which may be some days.

Water—plenty of water—and some food should be carried, a rope and a spade to help one out of the sand, and all necessary spare parts.

The road on leaving Ghardaïa is the same by which one arrives, but, after following it for ten kilometers, one turns sharply to the right along the desert track. There is at once an impression of desolation and loneliness—no more telegraph poles, no more milestones, little to mark the sides of the road. At first the flat-topped hills are on either side, then gradually they give way to great rolling expanses stretching away, away on all sides; even the scrub has disappeared; it is the first real impression of the Sahara, and, though the noisy rush of the car makes one forget the solitude, the silence and loneliness appal one at any stop one makes.

Some twenty kilometers along the track another track branches off to the right. It must not be taken, as it leads to Ouargla, to the Hoggar, to the far south until it reaches Timbuctou. A little farther on, as if nature wished to fool the traveler, one suddenly sees a splash of green winding about among the stony plain. It looks like some lovely river shaded by trees, and, though there is no water running between its banks, it is a river making its way below the surface of the ground, to spring up later at some oasis. But it is soon left behind, and the country becomes more and more desertic, though, curiously enough, it has not such a cruel aspect as the land about Ghardaïa. The hills are of a delicate rose color and the lines less hard; it is the prelude to the sand.

The road starts climbing, then all of a sudden, as it tops the rise, the oasis of Guerrera appears, solitary in the middle of these pink hills. It is the most impressive sight of the whole journey. Battlemented walls surround the town, as it piles itself into a pinnacle surmounted by the cone-like minaret. At its feet lies the oasis, with its thirty thousand palm-trees bowing in the breeze. It is one of the most amazing spectacles any traveler can wish to see—an impression of desolation, of solitude, of green vegetation, of a town of a past age.

There is quite comfortable accommodation in the bordj, and, though the food is almost entirely Arab, it is cleanly cooked. In the itinerary set out at the end of Chapter XXV it has been suggested that Guerrera should be passed through on the way to Touggourt, without stopping, but, though it differs little from the other six towns of the Mzab, its oasis, its remoteness from civilization, make it well worth a longer break in the journey.

On entering the town by one of the turreted gates, one is first of all struck by the business and bustle of the people. Arriving here out of the desolation of the Sahara, one almost expects to see savages or, at any rate, dark people living in a primitive state, but not at all; the houses are solidly built and are clean and well-kept; the people are gracefully robed in white, shops abound, and practically every one speaks a little French. It is the civilization, the business instinct of the Mzabite, the inherited perseverance of the Carthaginian which permits these squat little people to thrive in this lost city of the Sahara.

But the most beautiful place is the oasis. Unlike those we have seen before, there are none of those high walls which screen the gardens and which prevent our seeing anything behind them. Here there are no walls, the palm-trees grow all about, with vegetables and grass at their feet; vines are trained from stem to stem, and give an impression of virgin forest. Little paths and sun-baked alleys lead one past wells and fruit-trees until, coming suddenly out of the shade, one finds oneself on the desert again. A small group of palm-trees cuts the horizon, and then, away, away, the Sahara as far as the eye can reach. The sun sets in an orange radiance, wrapping the palm-trees in a mantle of gold-dust; the breeze springs up and rustles through the oasis; peace and silence are everywhere, and one is tempted to remain in this quiet for a few days. It is free to the traveler to do as he pleases, but our journey must be accomplished, and sooner or later we must push on toward the east.

After Guerrera the road continues across this rose-colored landscape. It is impossible to describe it adequately, photographs do not give the impression of delicate color or of the limitless horizon, neither can the mind of him who has not been in the real Sahara visualize the vast expanse of sky which seems to cover the world.

Some fifty kilometers before reaching Touggourt one comes into the sand. It is an impression as different as possible from anything which has been passed up to the present. Soft white dunes rise up before one, curling back and looking like great waves of the Atlantic about to break into foam. In all directions this sea extends without any sort of break, and one realizes a little what it must be to lose one’s way in a desert where there is nothing to guide one, nothing to differentiate one dune from another.

If the wind is not blowing, it is a pleasant drive through this area of sand, but if it is, the drifting grit blinds, gets into the engine, and covers the track, and it is practically certain that sooner or later the car will stick and that it will take infinite trouble to free it.

Touggourt itself is a typical southern town, of little interest beyond its situation in the sand; moreover, it has lost a good deal of its charm by the presence of the railway and the consequent invasion of tourists. Hotels have sprung up, and the streets are infested by guides. It is one of the great date centers of Algeria, and the sweet luscious fruit eaten in England at Christmas-time comes from the one hundred and seventy thousand palm-trees which form its lovely oasis. If one is here in November one can see the Arabs swarming up the trees in a miraculous fashion and cutting off the bunches of golden dates, which are let down to earth by means of a rope slung over one of the branches.

In March and April one will see a still more curious sight, the fertilization of the palm. The flower of the male tree is carried to the top of the female by an Arab who places it in a cleft in the head of the tree while he chants religious airs. A date-palm does not bear fruit for twelve years, but when it does it goes on for over a hundred, and those who own palmeries in the areas which produce the right kind of fruit are excessively rich.

One night will suffice to see Touggourt, and the sunset over the sand-dunes is a spectacle never to be forgotten, while if a caravan from the south arrives it affords a wonderful impression of a period of the past. It is hard to realize that in this sandy country the only really adequate mode of transport is the camel. Some men ride horses, but even then they have a hard time, whereas the ship of the desert, with its spongy padded feet, its nostrils and eyelids hermetically closed to the dust, and its endurance without food or water, prove that it was created for this purpose, and that traveling by any other means is hazardous. It is not a very rapid conveyance, but one can average a good twenty-five miles a day and be certain of reaching one’s destination.

Further south one finds the mehari, or trotting white camel, which moves along at a great pace, but it is reserved almost entirely for the Meharistes, or French African camel corps, who guard the lonely caravan tracks of the Sahara.

On leaving Touggourt the road follows the railway through a country of sandy patches which gradually get stonier as it progresses north. Pleasant little oases are passed, as well as salt lakes which are usually practically dry but which give excellent mirage effects.

We are now in the confederation of the Zibans, one of the most famous tribes of the south, and to-night we shall be at their headquarters, the world-famed city of Biskra.

CHAPTER XXXII
BISKRA

With the aid of a railway an English novelist inadvertently made of Biskra what it is to-day. I say inadvertently because there is not the least reference to Biskra in the whole book, and I am sure that Mr. Hichens was the last person to wish to create of a Sahara oasis a kind of Dieppe-on-sand. Neither would this town have been so thronged with trippers had it been miles away in the desert without a railway, but it is so easy to get into the train at Algiers one night and detrain the next day in time for lunch in the Sahara that more people come here than to any other place in the south.

Of course, from the point of view of the country, the change has brought in a great deal of money and the town has an air of fat prosperity unknown in the other places we have visited. Arab guides are paid the wages of colonels and the hiring of camels is as expensive as a motor-car. The cafés of the Quarter charge what they please and the numerous Palace hotels have corresponding prices.

It is a curious place and well worth a visit. It is difficult to decide which arrival is the most attractive—possibly that from the south, because the oasis is the first thing seen. It is an impression of palm-trees, three times as many as at Laghouat, and as one approaches in the evening, the golden light seems to envelop their feathery heads in a mysterious radiance as the wind rustles through them.

From the northern approach the coloring on the rocks and hills will perhaps be as wonderful, but there is not that same feeling of the Sahara because the town masks the oasis.

The largest hotel is the Royal, and from its tower a wonderful panorama of the desert is spread before one. Unfortunately it is difficult to keep up this atmosphere long, as it is impossible to close one’s eyes to the Anglo-Saxon hibernators who have brought with them their knitting and their bridge and their crossword puzzles, while the foreign waiters in their starched dickeys jar horribly after the silence of the Great South. Moreover, if one steps into the street superb guides in sky-blue robes assail one—flight north seems the easiest course only to find a gallery of curiosity shops stocked with gaudy merchandise from Syria. Again fleeing from the oily merchants toward the sounds of a deep flute, one finds oneself in a coffee-house, as dirty as in the other cities, with the only difference that the mint tea costs five francs. Again in a wretched state of persecution mania one turns south again and, seeing a brilliantly lighted building of Moorish architecture, one hurries in; lights dazzle one, the sounds of bad dance-music strike the ear mingled with monotonous cries of “Rien ne va plus!” It is the casino, but, just as one is about to depart again into the night in search of a haven of refuge, the curious scene arrests one’s steps.

Of all the habitués of casinos in the world I think that those collected in that of Biskra are the most remarkable. The Biskra casino has no kind of pattern or atmosphere; it is just an amazing jumble like the background of one of Mr. Piccasso’s pictures. The hall is full of cheery French inhabitants of Biskra sitting at little tables drinking beer, laughing, and occasionally dancing gaily to the noisy band. A few solemn Britons join in the fun, while Arabs of serene countenance sit and watch without showing the smallest trace of emotion. At the gaming-tables a party of travel-stained tourists belonging to a Transatlantic tour are learning the mysteries of the play under the supervision of the company’s guide in his khaki uniform plastered with medal ribbons. Two or three Anglo-Saxons in dinner-jackets, with their consorts in smart evening gowns, contrast vividly with the robes of the Arab chief whose turban, unlike those we have seen up to the present, is bound about with much thicker strands of camel’s hair and crossed and interwoven in a fashion peculiar to the district.

In a kind of theater, a music-hall show is taking place, partly composed of the usual French turns, partly of Arab music and dancing. If one is lucky one may hear the great tenor Mahi-ed-Din sing the ballads of the Tell. The audience is as mixed as in the other room, but it is gay, and in spite of oneself one is drawn back to this scene each night. It has the great advantage over the native quarter in having no pretensions. It is as genuine as possible and is certainly unique.

The only peaceful spot in the whole of Biskra is the famous Jardin Landon, erroneously supposed to be the Garden of Allah. It is unknown who first spread this story, and it was certainly not the fault of the author that the legend arose. The Garden of Allah is, of course, the desert; the land from which Allah has removed all vegetation and life in order that man may not come and interfere with his solitude, and where He can walk in peace. The restful garden in question is a wonderful plantation of tropical trees and flowers. It was created by the Count Landon de Longueville, and it gives the impression of a conservatory in the open air. Paths run about through passages of trees; green grass grows in abundance, and the ceaseless noise of water ever running through the seguias is as soothing as soft music.

It is a question as to whether the impression of sunset lights is best seen from its wall or from the tower of the hotel. Both views are enchanting, but perhaps that of the garden is more vivid, as it is closer to the desert and to the herds of camels and goats passing slowly across the dried-up river bed which is the continuation of the Mzi we saw at Laghouat.

This long, long river which bursts up here and there to create oases is said by the natives to rise in the Djebel Amour Mountains above Laghouat and, flowing right across the desert to Southern Tunisia and Tripoli, finally to disappear in the Nile.

If one has not come up from Touggourt and one is anxious to get an impression of the sand desert, there is a tract of land to the southwest, the other side of the oases, which is really worth seeing. It is a natural fake, like Bou Saada, and a photograph of the proud traveler sitting on a hired camel can safely be labeled as having been taken in any part of the “Grand Erg.”

The Village Nègre is worth a visit, and if a horrible curiosity appeals to one, the dervishes who eat scorpions and glass and pierce their faces with nails can be seen without difficulty.

Not far away is the oasis of Sidi Okba, which is a good example of a southern town for those who have cut across from Bou Saada. It is famous for its mosque, where lies buried Sidi Okba, who was killed here in his last battle against Koceila, the Berber chief, in the year A. D. 682.

As far as sightseeing, this is about all Biskra can produce. If, however, one is in this cosmopolitan oasis in the early spring when the races are taking place, an entertainment is provided which will not be forgotten. The Arab chiefs in this district are wealthier than most of their colleagues, due to the richness of the date-palms; and owing to the proximity of Europeans, they are given a great deal more to entertaining than others. The bash agha of the confederation of the Zibans keeps open house, and even in the deadest season never dines alone, but calls in his friends from the street to share his repast. At the races he outdoes himself in hospitality, and it is entirely owing to him and to his relations that the meeting is such a success.

The races consist of three quite separate performances. The first are so-called flat races, which consist of a wild gallop round the course for Arab horses of all ages and sizes, mounted by turbaned bandits who just go “all out” for the first place. No pulling here.

The second are the officers’ steeplechases, where one sees some nice horses and some quite good racing.

But the third event, which in reality embraces the whole affair, is the fantasia. The Arab chiefs from all the surrounding land muster their tribesmen, who all come mounted, armed to the teeth, and as wild as children at a birthday party. This kind of irregular cavalry is known as the goums, and in time of war it is levied to fight for France. During 1915 a contingent was fitted out and sent to Flanders, where it behaved heroically. At the Biskra races the goums make a very brave show, too, in their flowing burnouses, sitting bolt upright in their high-backed saddles, their guns across the bow and the curved scimitar beneath the left saddle-flap. There is a mounted band consisting of two men with raïtas and one with a tam-tam, while at the head of the column rides the caïd, clothed from head to foot in scarlet and purple, his feet in embroidered red leather boots resting on massive silver stirrups, while beside him rides a retainer bearing the banner of the tribe.

It is a splendid and majestic sight to see these wild men of the south passing slowly before the improvised grandstands. After the orthodox racing is over, and after the bash agha has entertained endless guests at lunch and tea, it is the turn of these nomads to show what they are worth. There is a stir in their ranks, then suddenly two men dash down the course at a furious speed. As they approach the stand they rise in their stirrups and fire their guns and fly on. The women, in gaudy taffetas, raise high tremulous cries. Two more men follow, and then another two; then one man alone who carries two long guns which he fires together, tossing them in the air as he disappears in a cloud of dust. A larger group of horsemen flash past, the air resounds to the crack of the guns and the cries of the women, but they are gone before one has realized that they have passed.

A pause. Then all of a sudden a tall figure in scarlet and gold is seen detaching himself from the other goumiers; he sets his horse in motion and comes whirling down the course; behind him rides his standard-bearer, so close that he seems to touch. Behind him again four retainers in blue burnouses gallop in hot pursuit. As the caïd approaches the stand he turns sharply and, aiming at the center of the crowd, fires. The color-bearer dips the standard, while the retainers, bending forward, draw the curved scimitars which flash in the setting sun as they wave them above their heads and sweep on in a whirlwind of dust, while the cries of the women rend the air.

Oh, it is a brave spectacle, the fantasia, and makes one realize how far separated are we in Europe from these wanderers of the south.

There is an Arab proverb which says that “Love lasts three seconds, the fantasia three minutes, and misery lasts for ever!”

CHAPTER XXXIII
TIMGAD

The road, on leaving Biskra, runs due north over a land which usually looks barren, but which in periods of rain produces a plentiful crop of cereals. Very soon a ridge is topped, and Biskra and the Sahara are lost to sight. Some people will heave a sigh of relief at leaving for the last time these desolate expanses; others will look back longingly, and these will return sooner or later. Once the Sahara has gripped the heart there is nothing in the world which will free it from its hold.

Just over fifty kilometers from Biskra the oasis of El Kantara is reached, and of all the beauty-spots in North Africa it is one of the most attractive. It is really better to approach it from the north, descending from a high level toward an apparently unbroken barrier of rock. Some trees proclaim the few houses which cluster about the little Hotel Bertrand, nestling under the towering cliffs while the river gurgles at its feet.

Then suddenly a cleft appears in the rocks, and the road and the railway creep out side by side into the plain beyond. It is the complete contrast of the north and south—of winter and summer. On one side of the mountain the soil is dark and fertile, and on the other it is rosy and desertic. The Arabs say that all rain stops north of the Gorge of El Kantara.

Arriving from the south the first thing we shall see will be the oasis: a long array of palm-trees shading a river which is more than often full of water. If time permits, it is well worth the trouble to cross over an iron bridge and visit the curious little villages. There are some interesting Roman remains and a series of views of the palmery, which, even if one is not an artist, furnish material for beautiful photographs.

Proceeding through the Gorge of El Kantara, which incidentally means the bridge, we come to the bridge, built by the famous Third Legion which garrisoned this part of North Africa. Unfortunately it has been badly restored, but the stones used by the Romans are still there.

The Hotel Bertrand is a restful place, a paradise for painters, and, if one is interested in climbing or shooting the elusive moufflon, there is plenty of this sport in the district.

The road climbs on, winding up the steep gradient on to the cereal plains of Batna. The tall peaks of the Aurès Mountains rise up, covered with pines and cedars, and in winter often deep in snow. It is a great contrast after the Sahara. The rest of the road is uninteresting, as is also the modern town of Batna, where one will find all comforts as usual at the Transatlantic Hotel.

The traveler will, of course, make his plans before starting, but it seems opportune to put in some suggestion for the visit to Timgad. If time presses it is advised to leave Biskra early, lunch at Batna, or, better still, picnic at Lambèse, go to Timgad, and return to sleep at Batna. If time is not of importance it would be far pleasanter to leave Biskra later, spend some time at El Kantara, lunch there, sleep at Batna, and spend the whole day at Timgad, and sleep again at Batna.

Or, if Roman ruins do not attract one, go to Timgad in the morning, lunch there, leaving about three in the afternoon, and arrive at Constantine for dinner.

As stated in the note at the end of Chapter XXV, it is possible to do Biskra, Batna, and sleep at Sétif in one burst, which permits one to be in Algiers the following day.

The road from Batna to Timgad runs over a rolling, inhospitable country dominated on the right by the frowning Aurès Mountains. The first place of interest is Lambèse, the Roman Lambæsis. It was founded at the end of the first century as the headquarters of that amazing Third Legion which garrisoned North Africa at that period. It is one of the best existing examples of a military camp, with its magazines, parade ground, officers’ quarters and military church. It has also an amphitheater and a few temples, but their remains are not so interesting as in many other Roman cities. The prætorium, or rather its entrance, built of massive blocks of stone, is in a very good state of preservation; through the middle passed the main roads which ran straight across North Africa—north, south, east and west. Traces of this masterpiece of engineering are continually being unearthed.

Leaving Lambèse, the same scenery continues, a triumphal arch is passed, a few relics of Roman houses, then at the thirtieth kilometer there appear in the distance two tall pillars, which seem to leap up out of the plain to a great height and stand pointing to the sky in solitary grandeur. Straining the eyes, one soon discerns buildings and more pillars. A great arch defines itself—we are arriving at the dead city of Timgad. Two thousand years ago the Emperor Trajan decided to found a settlement for the Roman soldiers who had fought in the Parthian campaigns, and he commanded that Thamugadi should be built by the men of the Third Legion.

Thus Timgad did not grow up according to the needs of the settlers, but was conceived and born in its entirety. For this reason it is one of the most perfect examples of a Roman town of the period. Some writers have called it the African Pompeii, but, though the drifting sand preserved it as did the ashes Pompeii, this is the only thing analogous about the two places. Pompeii was a seaside resort, a town of pleasure and luxury; Timgad was an outpost of a mighty empire. Everything was done to make it resemble as much as possible the settlers’ homes in the mother country, and it must have been a strange sensation for the Berbers of the Aurès who ventured down from their mountain homes to see all the civilized organization going on in the middle of this desolate land. Timgad was, however, never an important nor even a large city. Its area did not exceed one hundred and fifty acres and, though it is interesting to us because it escaped the total destruction meted out by the Vandals and Arabs to most of the other Roman cities, it never created anything in particular.

Entering by the northern gate, we find on our right the big baths. Built with the utmost care and paved with marble brought from Italy, they contained every improvement of the day, and were practically identical with the baths of Caracalla at Rome. They are in a high state of preservation, and it is most interesting to examine the various devices for bringing in water and for heating the many chambers.

Walking up the street from the baths, one passes what must have been shops; only the lower parts of the walls remain. The first building of interest discloses itself on the left. There is a pillared portico and a kind of altar with shelves around; the inscription suggests that it was the public library, but this is not certain. It may have been the shrine of the Lares—household gods.

The Bridge of the Third Legion at El Kantara

Photograph by Mr. Julian Sampson

An Arab of Tadjmout

The street now leads into the Decumanus Maximus, the main thoroughfare. Graceful columns line either side, leading into what must have been large houses. The paving-stones, placed diagonally to prevent their being worn away by the chariots, are nevertheless deeply rutted. Between the chinks can be seen the drain which ran beneath the middle of the way. Immediately opposite this intersection are the steps leading up to the forum: a white-paved court with many pillars, some fifty yards long, with at one end a tribunal where sat the judge. There must have been many statues, but they are no more.

Just below the forum, on the north side, are the public latrines which, with their carved hand-rests, are interesting and worth examining.

On the south side of the forum there is a charming inscription: “Veneri, lavari, ludere, ridere—occe est vita!” “Hunting, bathing, gambling, laughing—this is life!”

Climbing out on an eminence above the forum, we come to the theater. The auditorium is hollowed out of the hill and is in a fine state of preservation. The seating accommodation makes the modern play-goer think, as from every stall the stage is fully visible and the acoustic properties are faultless. Looking across from the theater can be seen the tall pillars we first espied from the road; they are the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter on the capitol. The pillars are immense, fifty feet high, with each capitol three feet, making a total of fifty-six feet. In the middle was a gigantic statue of Jupiter, now in the Louvre in Paris. There is nothing so drearily desolate, so terribly silent, as the two pillars of this temple. It seems as if they stood there to warn the people who pass of the vanity of human things.

Near by are some interesting villas of a more luxurious conception than those we saw before. The rooms are more numerous and spacious, and there is a reservoir for keeping fish.

On the hill behind the capitol, stand the remains of a Christian church, with a baptistery of which the mosaics are in a perfect state of preservation. Leaving this Christian church, we now retrace our steps, leaving the capitol on the right, and make for the triumphal arch of which we have already caught a glimpse from the Decumanus Maximus. Before reaching it there is an interesting market-place. The large court is surrounded by a colonnade, and the stone counters of the shops are just as they were at the time. Opposite the market-place is a small temple, but what strikes the attention at once is the triumphal arch of Trajan. It has three openings, and niches for statues, and is certainly the most imposing monument of Algeria.

Hence we can wander back through narrow streets to the gate by which we entered, and near which stands the museum which is well worth a visit. In addition to all sorts of curiosities such as hair-pins, needles and implements for dentistry of the time, it contains some of the fine mosaics which have been unearthed from the houses and pieced together. If we look at them for a moment and imagine what they looked like up there near the capitol, we can get a small idea of how charming the residences must have been. There are also drawings of what it is supposed Timgad was like in the days of its glory, and certainly, if the artist was not carried away by his imagination— and there is no reason to suppose this—it must have been indeed a noble city. And yet its aspect now leaves the traveler with a feeling of sorrow. The silence is, first of all, appalling; the atmosphere of desolation is impossible to convey in words, and, as one sits in the forum or on the stone steps of the theater and tries to conjure up the gay figures who once frequented these now silent spaces, one is filled with an unspeakable awe. All this luxury, all this amusement, all these habitations—for what? For the future planned by Imperial Rome, since it is evident that no nation would have built the great town, with all in it, as a mere pastime. They intended to stay; they believed in their unshakable greatness; they believed in the power of the sword.

But Rome fell, as had fallen other empires, and as others will also fall. And Timgad is left to the jackals and to the hyenas, to a few intelligent excavators, and to the host of chattering tourists who rush through these ruins of a glorious past without a thought for the cultured race who once lived there.

“Vanity, vanity—all is vanity!”

For this reason I have said as little as possible on this city of the dead, and I leave it to the traveler to go himself and feel the atmosphere which no painter or writer can reproduce.

CHAPTER XXXIV
DJEMILA THE DESOLATE

If Roman ruins are of interest to the traveler there is a second edition of Timgad, to my mind finer and more complete than the subject of the last chapter, but unfortunately not on any main road.

I refer to the town of Cuicul, now called Djemila, situated on the barren hills to the northeast of Sétif. There are two means of access: from Algiers via Sétif, or from Constantine via the road to Djidjelli, described in the next chapter.

From Sétif the main road to Constantine is followed for thirty kilometers to Saint Arnaud, where one turns sharp left and begins climbing into a rolling country of cereals sparsely cultivated until, after some thirty more kilometers of winding roads, one reaches Djemila. The other route branches out of the Constantine-Djidjelli road at Zeraîa, sixty-five kilometers from Constantine, and soon begins climbing up into the rolling country described above, rejoining the Sétif approach some fifty kilometers farther on, and ten from Djemila.

The first aspect of the ruins is certainly more impressive than that of Timgad. The road has been winding along the side of a steep hill, high up through a country so harsh and desolate that one looks about apprehensively as if the dead themselves guarded the bare slopes, watching over the scenes of their great triumphs.

Then suddenly at a bend in this sad road the eye suddenly distinguishes, on a kind of promontory far below, something which at first looks like a great graveyard. Then gradually, as one watches, the stones detach themselves from the gray surroundings, graceful pillars rise up, triumphal arches, the massive walls of a temple. . . .

We are looking down on what was once one of the most prosperous cities of that dead empire which ruled Algeria as no one since has ruled it. The road winds down toward the miniature village outside the site of the ancient city. The Compagnie Transatlantique has, as usual, a comfortable hotel, in fact it is the only hotel, and if the traveler ventures to this lonely spot out of the tourist season he will have to carry his own food and sleep out-of-doors. This is, as a matter of fact, quite feasible, as during the summer months the heat of Djemila is intense.

The excavation of Djemila has been carried out with much more care and system than that of the other Roman cities in Algeria; this is chiefly due to the intelligent interest taken in the place by its curator, the Comtesse de Crésolles. This charming lady lives in a comfortable house overlooking the ruins, and if the visitor has the good fortune to make her acquaintance he will find in her a fund of information about the excavations, and an untiring guide.

Djemila can be seen in a morning, but a week would seem more like the period required really to study the ruins properly. The first thing that strikes one on entering the precincts of the ruins is why this town was built on a spur so far below the mountains which tower menacingly above. The reason is quite clear. At the end of the first century, when the city was founded, the main roads ran along the bottom of the valleys, and it was therefore necessary to plan the military centers at some point where they not only formed a guard over the long arteries of civilization, but also a stage for the caravans as they passed up and down from Constantine and from the coast. But quite apart from the military side of the question, Djemila under the Romans was one of the great cereal centers of the empire and within its walls the grain was brought to be despatched to the far-flung limits of the mighty empire.

The first portion of the town to be visited is the Christian quarter. Begun in the third century it rapidly grew in importance and was undoubtedly the see of a bishop. The great basilica of Cresconius was built by this Christian bishop as a mausoleum for his predecessors. There are two other churches excavated near this cathedral, and there are no doubt other important buildings still under the earth.

The most interesting edifice, perhaps the most interesting in all the Roman remains on account of its state of preservation, is the baptistery. To the reader used to well-preserved churches and art museums in Europe it is difficult to convey the real impression created on the mind on entering the low doorway of this first evidence of Christianity in this part of the world: outside, the desolation of the barren hills and the sadness of the gray ruins; inside, the fresh color of mosaics, stuccoed niches, graceful pillars. A gallery runs round the actual place of immersion, lined with hollowed-out seats, reminding one of the stalls in some university chapel in England. Rich gold mosaics stud the walls; on the floor all kinds of intricate designs in rich colors, which make one realize the trouble taken by that dead race to beautify all that was their work.

At each end of the baptistery, two doors lead into the center portion where the converts were christened. The floor is carpeted with delicately colored pictures of fishes and seashells; above, a canopy carved out of one block of solid stone rests on four pillars; on the floor of the primitive font a mosaic inscription in Latin reads:

“A day will come when all people will have been baptized.”

It is with a feeling of reverence that one quits this jewel in the midst of the ruins.

It seems useless to describe the other edifices in detail; they are like all Roman ruins, and require the atmosphere of loneliness to produce their effect. A few words will suffice:

The theater is in about the same state of preservation as at Timgad. It is, however, being gradually restored, and will soon be in its original state. Only the other day (1926) a company of the Comedie Française gave a performance of Œdipus Rex on its stage.

Leaving the theater it is advised to take the path leading to the northwestern extremity of the ruins, passing the baths of the capitol and various private houses. Turning to the left, one enters the capitol which formed the northern extremity of the old forum. The temple of Jupiter, with its six columns forty-two feet high, rose majestically above the other buildings; a colossal statue was in the center. Now only two bases of columns can be seen in place, the remains of others lie about the steps and before the altar of sacrifice.

The ruts of the chariot wheels are less distinct in the Cardo Maximus here than at Timgad. The drain down the center is clearly visible.

The new forum is very impressive. On the right a triumphal arch seems to leap from the earth almost intact in the middle of the ruins. An inscription dated 216 tells that it was raised in honor of Caracalla, conqueror of many nations. On the other side of the open space stands a great temple. Broad steps lead up to the lofty pillars supporting the remains of a roof; the walls, though shorn of their marble facings, are almost intact. Another inscription states that the temple is in honor of the family of the Emperor Septimus Severus and was erected in the year 229 by the Republic of Cuicul. From the entrance a fine view can be had of the original city.

The visit has been rapidly accomplished, and only the great baths remain to be seen on our way to the hotel. As usual they are magnificent in all their luxury; nothing seems to have been omitted by these Romans in their far-away exile to make their homes as like as possible what they had left in the northern country.

It rather reminds one of the Briton who, in all his arrogance, carries his clubs, and his drinks, and his games into whatever distant corner of the Empire he settles himself. To the Roman nothing was good which was not from Rome. It is rather the same with us, and I suppose it will always be so. Machinery makes life more complicated, but it does not change the mentality of mankind.

There is a good museum near the hotel where the excavators have collected the best things found in the ruins. Apart from the usual implements of daily life, seen in greater profusion at Timgad, there are some very fine mosaics. It would take too long to describe them, but to those interested the museum is well worth a visit, and when one looks upon those lovely designs, so intricate, so artistic, one wonders why the Arab and the Algerian of to-day does not copy his floors from these pictures in stone instead of plastering everything with hideous modern flags of impossible colors. And yet even the beauties of those Roman cities of the past do not bear comparison with the monuments of the mother country.

There is something coarse, unoriginal in them, which at first leaves one wondering, until one suddenly realizes that one is in the presence of the Roman colonists, the expatriated wanderer who set out to seek his fortune overseas, the retired soldier or the rich grain merchant. He tried to copy what he had at home; he did better than would a present-day colonist from England or France, but it was not the real thing.

Still, the dead cities of that great empire are of vast interest and, to those who like to live in the past, it is a joy to wander through the silent streets and realize how great and civilized this colony once was, and how still greater the desolation and misery caused by the advent of the Arab.

From Djemila the traveler can either return to Algiers direct or continue the voyage through Constantine, or, if time presses, he can leave out Constantine and make direct for Djidjelli.

For the moment we must turn our attention to the third city of Algeria, the first city of Christianity under the Emperor Constantine.

CHAPTER XXXV
CONSTANTINE TO THE COAST

The scenery along the road to Constantine by either route differs little from that just passed. It is a land of cereals, once upon a time properly irrigated by the people of a great empire, now sadly dependent on the rainfall.

The approach to the city is impressive. It seems to stand out on a rocky pinnacle, and as one crosses the bridge and looks down into the depths of the Gorges of the Rhummel, one suddenly wonders if it is not all a stage setting: chasms, perpendicular cliffs, natural rock bridges and tunnels, the houses clinging dizzily to the rock wall, and, far beneath, the silver streak of the river. Constantine was originally the capital of the Numidian kings, and was known as Cirta. Syphax, Massinissa, and Micipsa ruled here, but it was not until the fourth century and after it had been destroyed during one of the many conflicts which raged round its walls, that it was rebuilt by the Emperor Constantine.

Its history during the rest of time is a series of revolts and conspiracies, and, though a few of the beys during the Turkish rule built some lovely houses, its record is not elevating. There are only three interesting things to visit, and they can all be done in the day. First is the Gorges of the Rhummel, a most amazing spectacle of natural arches and passages hundreds of feet below the level of the town. When finally the river bursts out of this chasm into the open plain at the foot of a perpendicular rock towering up to dizzy heights it is like the entrance of a giant church. To the top of this rock, which watches over the whole plain of historic interest, tiresome or unfaithful wives of the bey were taken, placed in a sack with a cat, and hurled to their doom below. No one has yet been able to explain the cat, but I suppose it added to the fun of the thing.

Standing once on the summit of this pinnacle with a Scotch friend who was traveling without his better half, I recounted this story. He was a man of few words, and for a moment he made no reply; then, peering cautiously over the precipitous edge, he exclaimed, “Oh, for the good old days!”

The next place to visit is the palace of the bey of Constantine. It is now used as the divisional headquarters, and, though it is not properly kept up, one can get an impression of something very lovely: a series of courts open to the sky with marble floors and delicate pillars, enclosing miniature gardens, in the middle of which fountains splash gaily. The walls are covered with multi-colored tiles, while the ceilings and doors of rare wood are adorned with intricate carvings. On a sunny day it is a vision of blue and white and green and orange, and, though the drab clothes of the modern inmates and the click of the typewriting machine jar on the senses, one can imagine the enchanting atmosphere of these quiet courts when men in splendid robes passed in and out, followed by their dark-skinned slaves.

Communicating with the palace is the present-day cathedral, in the old time the mosque of the bey, who could pass unseen from his residence to his devotions. The French have enlarged it, but it is quite easy to see what was the original building. Here again there are some very lovely blue tiles.

There are other mosques, also Jewish and Arab quarters, which are worth a visit if the traveler has not been anywhere else, but after the long journey with all its scenes of Arab life, it will suffice to visit the above-mentioned places and return to rest, prior to the journey to the coast.

By starting early one will be able to lunch at Djidjelli, and the afternoon run along the corniche to Bougie can then be taken leisurely. The first impression on starting is that of hills. Up to the present all traveling has been done across rolling plains, but serious gradients have been unknown. The descent from the crag on which Constantine is perched again makes one wonder how it was captured by force. The cereal lands continue to give to the country a very desertic appearance, and, though it is not the desert of stones and rock, the rolling fields, with lonely farms, do not attract one to stay. One gets good examples of the desertion of villages by the French colonists, always yearning to get to the big towns near the coast.

Mila, at the fifty-fourth kilometer, was once a Roman city of importance; it is the last village of any size we shall pass. Thence onward the country is very wild. At Zeraïa (junction of the road from Djemila mentioned in the last chapter) we traverse forbidding gorges, after which the road runs for a few kilometers across a small plain of olive-yards, crosses a river, and then starts the long climb to the Col de Fdoules.

The road is a masterpiece of engineering as it climbs dizzily along the steep cliff of the mountain. At the hundred and fourth kilometer the Col, three thousand feet above the sea, is reached; from the watershed there is one of the finest mountain views in North Africa. To the north and to the south the hills rise up sheer and the valleys are lost in deep shade. The road then runs down into the Gorges of Taberkroutz and for the first time after the long travel, trees appear quite close. The road climbs up again and the woods approach, until soon we are in a thick forest. At the Col de Texenna a splendid panorama of forests and mountains is spread out before one. It is a wonderful sensation to return to luxuriant vegetation after the perpetual desert, and the sound of water with the smell of the damp earth revives the mind, weary with staring over limitless expanses. Another sensation of delight seizes one as the sea comes in view and, rapidly approaching the shore, the road follows it to Djidjelli.

One can either lunch at the hotel or picnic in pleasant surroundings, but whatever plan is adopted the new atmosphere and the fresh air will give one the appetite of the proverbial hunter. Djidjelli was originally a Phœnician settlement, and later, under the Romans, was an important harbor. It is most famous as being the first capital of Barbarossa the elder, who came here after his first failure to dislodge the Spaniards from Algiers, and when his original Tunisian lair at the island of Djerba had become too inhospitable for him to return. His greatness began with his election as Sultan of this little seaside city. His conquests and raids are world famous, and though it was his younger brother who eventually ruled Algiers and became the scourge of the Mediterranean, it was the temporary Sultan of Djidjelli who in reality was responsible for the pirate fleet which was to terrorize the sea from its headquarters in Algiers for three hundred years.

At the present day Djidjelli is the center of the cork trade. The forests cover an area of one hundred and fifty thousand acres, and cork is exported from the harbor to ports all over the world.

The road along the seacoast from Djidjelli to Bougie is one of the loveliest in North Africa. Deep red cliffs look down on to the sapphire blue of the Mediterranean, while the green of the forests above contrasts again with the azure of the sky. Natural tunnels are traversed, and here and there the road clings dizzily to the perpendicular rocks. This road, like many others in North Africa, is a wonderful piece of engineering.

At the thirty-sixth kilometer stone there are some marvelous caves well worth a visit. An Arab looks after them, who will illuminate the multitude of stalactites and stalagmites which adorn its fairylike halls, creating a vision of enchantment.

Pretty little villages succeed pretty little villages, where one would like to spend the day lazily watching the tranquil sea. In the hills there are masses of game and wild boar abounds; occasionally one sees monkeys—the famous Barbary ape.

Bougie has a Spanish aspect, but is in itself not particularly interesting. In Roman times it was a colony for veteran soldiers, and later it became like most Algerian ports, a harbor for pirates. Charles Quint spent a few days here after his disastrous attempt to capture Algiers. If time permits there are some delightful excursions round about, but the traveler by this time is probably so weary of motoring and contemplating scenery that he will want to return to his trunks and his comforts in Algiers.

As stated in the plan of the journey there are now four alternatives before us—the direct run to Algiers via Bouira and Palestro, or via Azazga and Tizi Ouzou—or else, if time permits it, by Michelet and the Massif Kabyle or by Tigzirt, the coast, and Dellys.

By Bouira and Palestro the road runs through a smiling valley and the return to Algiers can either be made via the gorges and Menerville or by the Bouzigza Pass. By Azazga and Tizi Ouzou or by Tigzirt the same routes will be followed as far as Azazga; the road rises rapidly up through woodlands to the Col de Tigdint, whence a superb panoramic view of the Kabyle Mountains can be seen on one side, while all about appear those quaint stone villages perched on the summits of every peak. Running down again, the forest of Yakouren is entered, and the road wanders through delightful glades, restful to the eyes, until the little village of Azazga is reached. It is recommended to picnic in the forest.

If Algiers is the goal it is straight ahead.

Tizi Ouzou, apart from its name, has nothing curious; silversmiths make massive jewelry here, but there is no need to stop. The road runs through orchards and tobacco plantations rather monotonously after all the gorgeous scenery of the rest of the journey, and the arrival in Algiers will be welcomed.

If the road via Tigzirt has been selected one must turn off to the right some six kilometers after Azazga. The road continues bearing to the right and climbs steeply up to a Col whence one gets a magnificent view to the south of the Djujura range, deep in snow in winter. The road now runs down to the coast and then follows it for twenty-six kilometers to the little seaside resort of Tigzirt.

Here, if time does not press, and if one does not mind primitive, though clean, comforts, one can pass the night in the hotel and thus have an opportunity of visiting the delightful ruins of an old Phœnician settlement, later Romanized.

Thence the run to Algiers is via the seacoast to Dellys, and after that the dull Tizi Ouzou road—one hundred and fifty kilometers in all.

It is, however, hoped that the season of the year will have permitted the traveler to visit the Great Kabyle country, and in the next chapter I will endeavor to describe the scenery and the people of this district, which is almost as unique as the Mzab.

CHAPTER XXXVI
KABYLIE

The Kabyle country lies to the northeastern extremity of the department of Algiers, with a small portion lapping over into the department of Constantine as far as Bougie. It begins at Palestro, runs down to the sea, and is bounded on the south by the road from El Kseur to Bouira. It seems curious to speak of a country in the middle of a French department, and yet its physical boundaries are as defined as its people. Like the wild men of the Aurès, the Kabyles are hardy mountaineers of the same race—the Berbers. Perhaps a little purer than the people of the Aurès, who undoubtedly intermarried with Roman soldiers when the Empire fell, whereas their cousins of the north have remained intact since the days when the foreigner had not set foot in Africa.

The actual area of the country is about thirty-eight hundred square miles, and is composed of great mountains running up at some points to an altitude of six thousand feet, and deep in snow from December to March.

Unlike the people of the Mzab, the Kabyle types vary considerably, and though the majority are tall, blond men, one notices many who are small and dark. They have the same spirit of independence as the Berbers of Ghardaïa, with the great difference that they are all warriors and brook no interference. There is no area in Algeria which has caused so much trouble to the French, and even now the inhabitants consider themselves superior to all other races, and only accept the foreign rule because they have to. In spite of this these people never seem to have had any sort of main state, and though the word zouaoua, from which is derived the appellation of the French regiment Zouaves, is the name given to this group of Berbers, they have always been a divided nation; and it is only since the French fully pacified them that they have ceased to be in a perpetual state of internal war. These wars usually originated as vendettas, it being admitted that a man killed required another man killed and that all disputes about land must be settled by the sword.

Before this period each village was a kind of little republic of its own with the principle of government of the people by the people, that is to say that the Djemma, or local council, was supposed to be composed of all the men who had attained their majority. As a matter of fact this was rarely put into practise, and the government of the village lay in the hands of the heads of families, the elders and a few young men of note. These men elected an Amine, who presided over the assembly, which decided every detail concerning the daily life of the community. The Amine had, however, little real power, as his position depended on the good-will of the other members over whom he presided, and who could by a simple ballot dismiss him. It was a state of absolute socialism, and the man of good family or the richest farmer had no more authority than the poorest laborer.

Moreover, to this day there is no distinction of class; there are no fine houses for the prosperous; the beggar and the rich man wear the same rags and live in the same squalor. The Djemma still exists and the simple stone seat on which the worthies sit can be seen in any village. The wars or vendettas also continue, but in a somewhat more discreet manner, and though they still speak of the Cof Oufella, the clan of the higher levels, and the Cof Bouadda, the clan of those below, the French do all they can to keep order.

They are all naturally industrious farmers, and though the difficulty of cultivating this steep land, combined with the density of the population, makes farming no easy matter, the results are amazing. The growing of cereals holds a minor place in their agriculture, and their attention is chiefly directed to trees, especially the fig and the olive, of which the fruits are regularly exported. Owing to the overcrowded population, however, one finds few large landed proprietors, and the ownership of property is carried to the most ludicrous extremes. For instance, a whole family may own a fig-tree without owning the land on which it grows, and cases have been known of a man who owned an olive-tree hiring out the branches to the olive exporters.

The family ideals are the same as among all Berber groups: absolute respect for the head of the family, precedence for the males, but unlike the modern Arab family, no position at all for the women. It is true that polygamy is much rarer here than in the rest of North Africa, but this is largely due to economy rather than to anything else. Otherwise the wife is an absolute slave, and one is at once struck on the roads by the sight of Monsieur riding his mule while Madame trudges behind. As soon as a girl is of marriageable age, and often before, she is bought, and from that moment she must do all her husband’s work, bear and bring up his children and, if he wishes, be divorced. Even if he dies she is not allowed to keep her children, who are taken over by the man’s family as soon as weaned. Moreover, no woman can inherit from a man. When she has passed the period of bearing children she is relegated to the status of a beast of burden. Against this she has much more liberty to go about unattended, and she is not veiled. Small compensation!

It is hard to instil different principles into these wild people, as they are very hostile to all forms of European interference, and it is with the utmost difficulty that the children are made to go to the French school.

What is still more extraordinary to note is the fact that men who have been educated and who have actually been to Europe will return to their villages and, without the smallest hesitation, rebegin their old life, sleeping on the floor near their donkeys or their horses, while the women chop wood and do the rough work. Neither are these isolated cases as, since the war, many an old soldier, realizing the unequal struggle in his own country, has gone to France as a workman in a factory, and during that period has made money which has been regularly sent back to the family in the mountains, but once weary of Europe he has returned to his people to lead the same life as before. Berbers they were two thousand years ago, Berbers they are still, and, like the men of the Mzab and of the Hoggar, of the Aurès and of the Riff, they remain unaltered, and there seems little prospect of anything changing them.

As in the Mzab, the villages differ considerably from those of the Arabs of the plain. Here again we find the town built on a pinnacle. Practically every peak in the Kabyle Mountains is dominated by a group of houses which cling dizzily above steep precipices. The houses themselves are small, low and squalid; the better ones consist of three rooms very slightly separated from one another. One room for the men, one for the women and children, and one for the animals, but there are many cases where men and beasts all dwell together.

The Departure of a Caravan in the Far South

Market Looking toward Trajan’s Arch, Timgad

Praetorium. Lambèse

The men are poorly dressed, and one never sees the prosperous white robes of the Mzabite nor the costly burnous of the Arab chief, but in spite of their rags they stalk along the road, stick in hand, the head high, and a look of defiance in their clear eyes. The women, on the other hand, wear brilliant colors—red and yellow and green; their heads are wrapped in high turban-like head-dresses consisting of many scarfs wound one above the other. Their faces, unveiled, are handsome and, contradictorily to their status, have usually an expression of great gaiety. Like most people who have never known anything better, their lot seems to them normal, and they have no other ambition.

They are all very superstitious—childishly so, and they carry countless antidotes against spells and the Evil Eye. Their courage is proverbial, and they callously bear pain. A man who had been stabbed in the abdomen was seen to push back his intestines into the gaping wound, mount his mule and ride off to the nearest French authorities to make his complaint. A doctor once said that if he saw a Kabyle cut in half he would not give a death certificate until he was sure that the heart had stopped beating!

Unfortunately space forbids my recounting countless anecdotes and stories about them. Like the Mzab, this is a country where one can linger quietly for some weeks and never have a dull day.

The road from Bougie to Michelet runs first of all along the foot of the Kabyle Mountains, giving one an excellent idea of the isolation of this district from the rest of Algeria. Great barren peaks rise up and the red earth of the slopes contrasts brilliantly with the olive-yards and fig plantations.

Shortly after Akbou we meet the road from Sétif to Algiers via Boaria, which can be taken if the suggestion to run straight through to Algiers from Timgad has been followed, or if one is making straight from Bougie to Algiers via Palestro. Our own course is to the north and, turning sharply to the right, the road begins to climb steeply up into the mountains. It is a magnificent drive, and the panorama from the Col de Tirourda is one of the most superb in North Africa. The whole of this great system of mountains is around us, chain succeeds chain, with the quaint little villages perched on the top of every point of vantage. It is as new a scenery as the Mzab, and one is hardly able to realize that barely a week ago one was staring across those desolate plains of stone and rock. The road winds on along the edge of precipitous slopes to Michelet.

Here there is an excellent Transatlantic hotel which, unlike most of its sisters, is open summer and winter, Michelet being a holiday resort for the overheated business men of Constantine and Algiers.

If one has time, there are many delightful excursions to be made from here, but to carry out the program we must leave the following morning. The road continues circling along the side of the mountain; little villages appear on the hilltops and give place to other villages until the fortified town of Fort National is reached. From here the gradient is very steep down to Tizi Ouzou, where lunch can be taken if the more preferable picnic has not been consumed under a group of fig-trees.

From Tizi Ouzou the road runs dully back to Algiers through tobacco plantations.

And so the journey is over, and though at first the mind will be unable to grasp all that has been seen and that feeling of a long evening at the cinema will hold it for some time, little by little the ever-changing scenes will detach themselves in order and remain photographed on the brain as an undying memory.

The vine-clad Mitidja, the Atlas, the rolling plain of the Sersou and the Hauts Plateaux, the rocky desolation of the Mzab, the golden sands of Touggourt contrasting suddenly with the cosmopolitan crowd at Biskra, the silent ruins of Timgad and the business town of Constantine, the first view of the hills and the sea, the blue and scarlet of the corniche road to Bougie, and the towering peaks of the Kabyle peopled by a strange race of the past, until the white city of Algiers is reached, with its palaces and its gardens and its damp atmosphere.

All these things will gradually unwind themselves from the recesses of the brain, to form one vast panorama, and as one sits at home a few weeks later one will say to one’s self incredulously:

“Did I really see all this in a fortnight, and all in the same country?”

CHAPTER XXXVII
TRAVELING OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

Having now followed in the paths of the tourist and the official tours of the Compagnie Transatlantique, it will perhaps be interesting to cast a glance at the less-frequented routes. There is no doubt that once one leaves the beaten track in Algeria one travels in comparative discomfort, and that the accommodation is, to say the least of it, primitive. Neither is it necessary to go far from the main center to find these discomforts.

On the other hand, unless one has these experiences one does not get to know the real people of the country whether they be Arabs or Frenchmen. The true Algerian colonist is there in all his roughness, talking vaguely about France as a paradise, which he may never have seen, in spite of the little distance which separates Europe from North Africa; treating the natives with a curious mixture of comradeship and harshness, little interested in affairs not affecting his actual district, and as unlike an Englishman in the same situation as it is possible to imagine.

The common Arab, poor, ill-fed, lazy, working just as long as it is necessary, dishonest when it is worth while, and quite unscrupulous in matters of life and death, exists there with little ambition, while the Arab chiefs whom one has perhaps met in magnificent clothes at some official function live in these lost districts without any ostentation. The only method of communication between the villages, and they are usually some sixty or eighty miles apart, is by road. Some of the richer cultivators and caïds have motor-cars; the well-to-do Arab rides, but it is usual to travel by the motor diligence which carries the mails. The diligence usually starts early in the morning, as, though it travels a good twenty miles an hour, there is always the danger of a breakdown with no question of outside help, and as they are under government contract it is essential that they should have plenty of time to spare.

The bus is almost full at the start, but it expands its accommodation in a most astonishing way as it picks up travelers who sit by the roadside, and when it arrives at its destination the roof and the running-boards are crowded with Arabs. People who have correspondence for the post also wait at appointed places with their letters, which are collected by the driver and taken along. And in the same way the mail for the districts where there are no roads is picked up by the postman as the diligence dashes by.

Occasionally in years of famine there are holdups, and though the driver is always armed, it is of little avail. The road is barred at some convenient spot where there is cover, the diligence stops, and before any one realizes what has occurred the track is seething with Arabs armed with blunder-busses and bludgeons, who take all there is, puncture the tires and disappear as mysteriously as they came.

Another form of delay is often created in summer by locusts, which drift in great clouds across the road and in an inconceivably short space of time clog up all the wheels with the fat of their crushed bodies. And it is extremely difficult to clear them out and go on if they are in any numbers.

The arrival of the diligence in a small center is a great event. The postmaster, who is also the telegrapher and postman and bookkeeper, comes out with much dignity to receive the mail; Arabs crowd round and gossip with the occupants of the second-class compartment or with those on the roof; the tall gendarme walks up and down with a look of imminent arrest on his mustached countenance. At the terminus there is the same sensation while the European traveler, stiff and dusty, wends his way to the only inn. It is always a “Grand” Hotel “Something” with from twelve to twenty rooms. There are many which are simply comfortable, where one gets a good cuisine bourgeoise; these are among the smaller and more remote and kept by a family of French people, the father looking after the café, the mother cooking, the children doing all the rest of the work. Meals are served at a common table with the family. The rooms are sparsely furnished, but they are clean. But there are many hotels where hygiene is unknown, where the food is cooked by an Arab and is foully oily, and the rooms! . . . Too much or too little can not be said about them, and the traveler is advised to cast the well-used sheets into the farthest corner of the chamber, place the mattress on the floor, put on his longest pair of trousers and his stoutest boots and wrap himself up in his cloak. If he is fortunate he will rise next morning immune from the night attack of the denizens of the bedstead, but that is all.

Market-day is the time to see these little towns at their best. It usually takes place on a Friday, the Mohammedan Sunday, and from midday Thursday long caravans of Arabs with their flocks begin appearing on the horizon and move slowly across the wide plain toward the market town. Camels pad disdainfully along while the humble donkey trots beside, great flocks of white sheep with their advance guard of goats throwing up clouds of dust. The roads too have their complement of travelers, and carriages and carts jolt along bearing Arabs and French farmers; there are also horsemen and pedestrians, while the motor-car and the diligence bring buyers from Algiers.

It is a marvelous sight to see the streets of the little town thronged with every type of Arab. Clear-eyed men from the nomad tribes of the Larbas, and the Chambas in the far south; tall men with haughty looks from the mountains, thin, wiry men from the rolling plains of the Sersou, stout little Mzabites, pale and bearded, selling their wares to the credulous Arabs as their Phœnician ancestors did in the same land two thousand years ago. Here and there an Arab chief— an agha or a caïd—in a brilliant cloth burnous, moves in stately manner, greeting friends with the brotherly embrace and receiving the kiss of submission on the shoulder from the members of his tribe with as much dignity as a king of old accepting homage from his vassals.

When night falls the little hotel is full of bronzed-faced colonists and wool merchants and sheep breeders, discussing the prospects of the harvest and the probable price of wool and livestock over glasses of anisette and water. The scene in the café is really a most entertaining spectacle of all classes and races mingling in friendly chat.

Sometimes there is an Arab flutist from the far south earning his dinner, sometimes there is a Spanish sheep-farmer with his guitar, sometimes there is a row among Arabs and one sees the glint of the steel dagger, which alone the children of the Faithful know how to wield with dexterous rapidity.

In the Arab coffee-houses too the animation is great, and the guests flow out into the streets and squat by the wall holding their cups of coffee or mint tea in their hands. Inside some one is singing a ballad, accompanied by a flute or a mandolin, while up the road one can hear the rhythmical beat of the tam-tam and strident squeal of the raïta of some rival establishment. Away in the dancing girls’ quarter the gaiety continues until the Arab policeman, blowing on his trumpet, sends all the Faithful to bed, for the most part under the bright stars.

At dawn the city is astir, the coffee-houses are again open, and the shepherds are gathering about the fondouks, where they have lodged their animals for the night. The more thrifty, who have preferred to sleep out on the plains with their flocks rather than pay lodging to the fondouk keeper, are already on the market-place, a broad open area clear of the city.

There are twenty thousand ewes and as many lambs to be sold to-day. It is an amazing sight to see hundreds of flocks herded together, with here and there a black patch where stand the goats. A little apart from the sheep is the donkey market—poor little beasts blinking patiently in the sun, while a little farther on the camels groan and gurgle as if they resented being vulgarly disposed of in a sheep-market.

All the Arab chiefs and the Frenchmen from the hotel are there moving about the flocks, looking at teeth, examining fleeces, feeling backs. Prices which during the early hours have been unstable, settle down toward seven, and the serious buying begins. The sun rises up in the heavens and blazes down on the great concourse of white-robed shepherds. Then gradually as the purchases are completed, the various buyers separate their lots from the general herd and drive them into different groups away from the main market.

And now there is a flow of people in the opposite direction, the sellers are being paid, the cafés are filling up again, the more thrifty are investing their money in barley or clothes, the generous are purchasing scarfs for their women. As the afternoon draws on, the caravans begin reforming and moving off across the great plain, little groups of sheep and camels can be seen following the long straight tracks. By sunset the town has once more dwindled to its normal population, the coffee-sellers and the Mzabite grocers are counting their profits, and flute players and dancing girls have retired to rest, and quiet reigns till the next market-day.

But though all this is picturesque and interesting and unusual, the European used to average comfort is glad to see the last of the gray diligence as he is deposited at the nearest railway station, and he sinks back with a sigh of relief on the soft cushions of the first-class railway carriage.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
A FEW SKETCHES OF ARAB LIFE

1. Summer in the Sahara

Having now endeavored to give the reader a general idea of Algeria from all points of view, I propose to close this book with a few sketches of my life among the Arabs.

There is nothing particularly striking about these experiences, but I feel they will lift a further veil on the inner life of these people whose privacy it is so difficult to penetrate. Only years of contact have opened the innermost doors of their homes, only the word of some intimate friend telling of the fellowship between the lone Englishman and the people of Algeria has removed all suspicious constraint, only the reputation of simplicity and the instinct of caste has brought them to me with all their ideas laid bare.

However, before describing these scenes I would like the reader to catch a glimpse of the country in a clothing different from that thrown on the screen by the Circuits Transatlantiques. The average traveler will have fled the shores of North Africa before the first months of summer, when the big hotels in Algiers have closed their shutters and the syncopated saxophonists have packed up their greasy dinner-jackets and crossed to cooler climes. The hot weather in Algiers itself is singularly unpleasant, not so much from the point of view of temperature, which never rises very high, but because of the damp. It is like living in a steam bath all day, and correspondingly tiring.

Once in the plains of the Mitidja, however, or up in the hills, the heat is greater but the air is dry, and provided one keeps quiet in the middle of the day one can quite well bear the summer months. The temperature of the Sahara is high, but the heat, being very dry, is not too unpleasant, and though it is not recommended to pass July and August in an oasis it is no real hardship for the young and healthy once in a while.

In the first place houses are built to protect one from the sun; very thick mud walls plastered over, which do not attract the heat, outside verandahs or inner courts open to the sky, and heavy shutters, make it possible to keep the house comparatively cool during the middle hours of the day. Life too is organized to meet the requirements of the weather. All business is contracted between six and ten. At eleven everything closes, including the post-office, and remains shut until three. During these hours lunch is eaten, followed by the siesta, and it is not until four that those who are not forced to, appear. By five the main street presents an animated aspect of Arabs strolling up and down in their white robes, while the cafés begin to fill up. Those who have gardens in the oasis repair to them and work until friends arrive to pay calls and discuss the produce of the rich soil over cups of mint tea, while in a secluded corner the women squat with the children and gossip in whispers.

Sometimes an Arab of importance will give a dinner in his garden. A carpet is spread out on the ground, a brass tray is placed in the middle, while near-by the sheep is being roasted whole on a brushwood fire. A flutist or a guitarist will play under the orange-trees by the light of the summer moon. The diners will often remain on the carpet the whole night and return direct to their business in the morning.

These gardens are worthy of note. They are not usually anywhere near the residence of the owner, who lives in the town; they vary in size from three acres to half an acre, and are planted with fruit-trees and vegetables, which grow in astonishing abundance. In fact, with the exception of the dates, the oranges and the apricots, all the fruit can not be disposed of. It is a wonderful sight to see gardens full of pears and apricots and figs and strawberries and pomegranates, while vines heavy with grapes climb up the walls and the tall date-palms nod in the warm breeze, protecting the garden from the fiercest rays of the midday sun.

In the terrible months of July and August one wonders why the leaves of the trees do not shrivel up under the fiery rays of the summer sun. But on the other hand it must be remembered that all is a matter of contrast and that during the midwinter months, when the temperature is that of April in England, it is cold for the Sahara vegetation, and trees are as leafless as those at home in the same period. In fact, vegetation on the Riviera in winter is infinitely more abundant than on the edge of the Sahara at the same season.

The desert too, like the gardens of the oasis, presents a totally different aspect in summer from that which might be supposed. Whereas this heat transferred to England would burn up every blade of grass, here it brings to the surface all kinds of scrub vegetation, and standing on an eminence looking over the northern tracts of the Sahara, the view presents a greener impression than to the tourist in winter. The nights too are comparatively cool, and a blanket is sometimes required after midnight when the stony land has cooled and when the house is storing up all the fresh air before the hermetic closing of all windows at sunrise.

If, therefore, those who stay all the summer will mind the precepts of all hot countries, a reverential respect for the sun, a light diet and abstinence from alcohol, they will not suffer too much, provided the experience is not repeated too often.

The flies are tiresome, but there is little disease, and except during famine years the typhus does not appear. The sun is a marvelous disinfectant, and the mortality in these southern cities is very low.

But when the sirocco starts blowing it is a very different story. It always comes in series of three, six, nine days, and it usually rises at dawn. There is no mistaking it. Peacefully asleep, one suddenly awakes to the rattle of shutters and a sensation that one’s hair is being scorched on one’s head. Every one is up immediately, closing every window to keep in a little freshness. The day is terrible; standing in front of a furnace in a glass factory is the only comparison possible, intensified by great clouds of whirling sand which come sweeping across the desert and which drive on for miles, shrouding the sun in a kind of yellow cloak and creeping even into one’s innermost chamber as one tries in vain to keep out of the heat.

But apart from the ordeal of sirocco days a man sensibly dressed and living a reasonable life in an oasis of the Sahara, with an average shade temperature of one hundred degrees is better off than the tall-hatted Londoner devouring his copious British lunch and not resting in the middle of the day, and the tourist who will venture south in June will return home with a marvelous impression of real summer.

2. Staying in a Country House in the Tell

Staying in an Arab country house is as different from staying in a country house in Europe as it is possible to imagine. (I am speaking, of course, from the point of view of intimate friends who are treated as the Arabs.)

In the first place there is no specific invitation; one is asked to come and stay, say in the summer, and when one feels inclined, one arrives. If one is polite one wires beforehand, but it is not expected. Secondly, one goes always with some specific object—to shoot, to visit flocks, to contract some business in the neighborhood, but rarely just to stay.

When one arrives the host may or may not be there; if he is not he will have delegated some near relation to do the honors in his place, and he may appear during the course of the visit. In the same way he may suddenly go away when one has only been there a few days, but it does not in the least suggest a hint for the guest to leave; a deputy host will take his place and things will go on in exactly the same way.

Another thing in an Arab home, which is quite peculiar to the country, is the fact that the guests not of the actual family neither eat nor sleep in the house in which the people live, that is to say that there is a kind of guest annex which is only opened on these occasions. This custom is chiefly due to the presence of the women, who might be difficult to conceal from strangers if they had access to the main building.

The particular country house I am going to describe belongs to a bash agha and is situated in the Tellian Atlas near to the village of Bourbaki. The country is mountainous and produces cereals.

I arrived two days late for my visit, but not at all through my fault, as I had arranged to go by train to Boghari, where my host would send me a car. I arrived at the specified time, but the conveyance did not come for forty-eight hours. I naturally expressed astonishment and some annoyance, but it seemed to surprise the driver, to whom a day or so before or after meant so little.

When I arrived, dinner awaited me, and I was pleased to see that I was being treated really as one of the family, and that there were no tables or chairs, no knives and forks. The party was assembled in a pillared courtyard open to the sky, with jasmine and rose bushes growing around. Two lemon-trees stood at either end, and above us a July moon shed a gentle radiance.

We sat down in three circles. In the first group was the bash agha, myself, my caïd partner of the sheep farm, an old schoolmaster and a very aged imam. In the second group were the bash agha’s sons, his nephews, and his chief clerk. In the third group were my head shepherd, the chauffeur, and the rest of the retainers.

The food was first of all placed in the center of our circle, and we all dipped into the common bowl: when we had had enough it was passed to the second circle, who did likewise, until it was finished by the third party. While the third group was eating we began our next course, and the servant was able to join the last group.

“Servant” is not exactly the right word, as “khedime,” which is literally translated by “servant,” is almost a term of insult. The people who wait and look after the house of an Arab chief are not considered in the same way as those who minister to us. In the first place they are not paid, but are merely clothed and lodged—they and their families, and when they get too old they are kept on and their sons take their places for the actual work.

When dinner was over and we had washed our faces and hands and tea and coffee had been brought, we stretched out our legs on the carpet. While we in our little circle began to smoke, the other groups broke up and moved silently out of the court, for in the presence of their elders they could not light a cigarette; in fact, during the whole of the meal they had conducted their conversation in respectful whispers.

For an hour or so we sat and conversed on all kinds of subjects, then one by one the Arabs dropped off into a doze, no constraint, no endeavoring to keep awake when sleep dominated. For a while they slumbered, then, coming to again, said good night and went off to the other part of the house to rest, while I settled myself in the vast guest-chamber in a large brass bed.

In the middle of the night there was an earthquake. It did not last very long, but for a moment the house shook violently. The household rose in commotion, and the bash agha came rushing into my room fully dressed, which proved to me again that these men sleep in their clothes. He looked at me in surprise.

“How is this,” he cried, “an earthquake and you remain in bed without moving?”

I laughed.

“It is I who should be surprised,” I replied, “for with your belief in the mektoub you shouldn’t worry about such trifles as earthquakes.”

His eyes twinkled in spite of his emotion.

“You are right,” he said, “what is written is written, and none but Allah can interfere. Good rest!”

He left me and I heard him outside admonishing the others for making such a noise.

The next day we motored up to see some of the bash agha’s cattle in the cedar forest near Teniet el Haad. This is one of the finest excursions in Algeria, but it is unfortunately off the tourist track, and practically no one goes there.

It is, however, quite a simple journey, and if the traveler wishes to see real forest he has but to motor from Algiers, either via Tipaza and Miliana, which is in itself a gorgeous drive, and continue to the south by Boghari, or else he can return to Algiers by Goghari and Medea. If he does not have a car he can take the train to Affreville, where an excellent motor-bus will land him at Teniet el Haad. Here there is quite a good hotel of the unluxurious type.

The cedar forest is in the mountains some fourteen kilometers along a quite passable mountain road. It winds steeply up through pine-trees, then little by little the cedars begin to appear standing erect, their long arms stretched out forming roofs of that delicate blue-green. As one progresses the cedar alone remains, increasing in size until one comes upon giant trees a hundred feet high and with a circumference of seven or eight yards. The view over the valleys below is superb.

We stopped at a clearing where the bash agha kept a small house, and we went in search of the cows. It took some time to find them, but during our walk we passed some really magnificent trees—giants, centuries old. On our return to the house I was surprised to find, instead of the cold chicken and beef associated with picnics in the mountains, a five-course hot lunch with the best wine of Algeria.

The bash agha explained that he always kept all material ready in his chalet, and that it only needed the bringing of the food to have it prepared. As a matter of fact I have always noticed with Arabs that in the question of meals there are no half-measures. One either spends the whole day out with nothing except perhaps a piece of bread, or else one sits down to a feast in the most out-of-the-way place.

The meal was excellent, too excellent, with the result that we all went to sleep after. When we woke up it was late afternoon and the sun was glinting through the blue branches of the cedars and lighting up the forest in a fairy fashion. One expected to see gnomes and elves appear from out of the vast trunks. We drove back in the sunset, the softest light imaginable, but quite unlike the golden radiance of the Sahara.

The following day was market-day at Burdeau, some thirty kilometers away, so that every one was astir at dawn, and before sunrise every male member of the household had piled into the cars and we were speeding across the cereal plain which overlooks the Sersou. All the aghas and caïds of the district as well as those from the south were there, and there was much kissing and shaking of hands.

I saw here another curious example of the respect of the younger generation for the older. I wanted my breakfast, so I went into a café with the caïd; my partner and I ordered our coffee. It was just being brought when up jumped the caïd and went off into the street. I followed anxiously, and to my surprise he went into the café opposite, where he ordered the same collation. This time it was actually brought and set on the table, when like a flash my companion was up again and outside before I could speak.

I caught him up and saw that he was making for the original café.

“Hi!” I cried, “what’s all this about? Is it a game? Why can’t we eat in peace? I’m hungry.”

“Didn’t you notice?” he asked calmly.

“Notice what?” I asked.

“My uncle, the bash agha of the Larbas.”

“No, I can’t say I did,” I replied, “but what of it?”

“He came into the first café when I was sitting there, and I couldn’t remain; and then just as I had settled in the next, he came in there too.”

“And I suppose we shall go on chasing round Burdeau till the old gentleman settles or until we die of hunger,” I laughed back. “No, mon vieux, I’m hungry, and I won’t starve for any one.”

So saying I took my coffee and roll and carried it across to the bash agha’s table, where I sat down and explained my action. He smiled, but I realized that he was smiling to please me, and that he saw nothing in the inconvenience caused to his nephew, who might wait all day for his coffee if necessary.

On the way back we called on various caïds and rich farmers, who gave us quantities of sweet mint tea. At one house the old bash agha, who had accompanied us, found an aged kadi who played chess, so he insisted on having a game while we all had to wait, regardless of the fact that it was getting near dinner-time.

How different from the customs of Europe, where age is, if anything, jeered at. Fancy giving a lift to some one’s grandfather after a day in the country and having to wait while he played a silly game with a local judge whom he met in some one else’s house!

And so the pleasant visit wore on. Each day we did something different, each day we had enormous meals until finally I was obliged to leave. Looking back on the visit the thing which strikes me the most is the complete lack of fuss during the whole of my stay. Everything was done quite haphazardly and yet without a hitch. I suppose it is the effect of centuries of such existence which remains as a background and which is carried on generation after generation. A few modern inventions have appeared which facilitate things a bit, but otherwise the same life is led with exactly the same ideas as it was twelve hundred years ago, and it seems difficult to see any radical change ever taking place. In this mode life runs smoothly for the Arabs; complications do not trouble them, so why change?

3. A Week-end with a Marabout

The Marabout of Kourdane asked me to spend a week-end with him to discuss the possibilities of organizing a moufflon shoot in the Djbel Amour. I was interested in the prospects of getting a moufflon, but still more interested to see Kourdane.

Situated in the Sahara some fifty kilometers from Laghouat, at the foot of the Djebel Amour Range, this country home of marabouts was created by a Frenchwoman known as Madame Aurélie, whose maiden name was Aurélie Picard, the daughter of a gendarme. She had met the Marabout of Aïn Mahdi at Bordeaux when he had been exiled during the insurrection of 1870. She married him in France, and when he was allowed to return to Algeria she came too, and became a great personage in the country. At his death she married his brother, and continued as lady of this desolate area, loved and respected by all. Finally the second husband died too, and she remained on alone for a while in the wonderful house she had built. She is still alive, but she rarely returns to the scenes of her greatness for two reasons; in the first place, the present marabouts are not quite the saints they should be, and secondly, they are all a little jealous of her reputation.

As I had never seen this desert castle I accepted with alacrity, and left with a friend one Saturday morning in a car. The road on leaving Laghouat is to the north, but soon it turns southwest across a desolate land of sand and rocks. I had decided to lunch with an old friend of mine, the Caïd of Tadgemout. I reached the ksar at noon: a sad, desolate little village partly in ruins, perched on the top of a rocky eminence overlooking a small oasis, very green in the midst of the desert. The road climbed up behind the rock and emerged before the caïd’s house, which dominates the oasis. The view from his terrace is one of the most impressive in these parts. In the immediate foreground, the oasis, then a silver thread of water running down the river-bed and away, away, the desert. But unlike most of the Saharan views the horizon is cut all of a sudden by a group of rugged hills standing up grim and bare. Again, looking to the northwest the scene is not at all expected, as one’s eyes rest on the great range of the Djebel Amour, deep blue against the brilliant sky.

Storks Nesting on the Roofs at Constantine

Bonfarik, Religious Print Seller

Vegetable Market

Tadgemout is said to mean the “Crown of Death,” and was the capital of a desert queen whose every punishment even for the smallest crime was death. It is a place which grows upon one, and one is loath to leave its lonely site.

The caïd himself is a charming person, far superior to most of his kind, both in intelligence and manners. This is partly due to his own efforts and also to the fact that during the war he was made prisoner and, being eventually exchanged as an invalid, spent a long time in Switzerland, where he attended lectures at Geneva University and came in contact with all kinds of people. He received us before his door and led us into the guest-house where one of those interminable repasts was prepared. We discussed all manners of extraordinary subjects, or rather I was subjected to a series of endless questions, as the caïd is of an inquisitive turn of mind. One remark is worthy of note as showing the curious working of an Oriental brain.

He suddenly said:

“Why don’t Protestant clergymen wear vestments like the Catholics?”

I began with a dissertation on the Reformation, but he knew all about that.

After lunch he accompanied us on our journey. The road dipped down into a dried river-bed, where the car stuck; we all had to climb out and push; no comment was made, as this is one of the most usual occurrences when motoring across the Sahara. The road continued desolate as we drew near to the blue mountains.

Suddenly a great block of buildings stood out of the wasted land; a garden covering at least a square mile surrounded it, making a wonderful contrast of green.

“Kourdane,” replied my companion to my inquiry; “the house built by Madame Aurélie; the garden created by her with water from many wells; everything done on the most lavish scale and now hardly appreciated by her descendants.”

Indeed, as we approached the wide portal of the outer wall, I noticed that the building had not been whitewashed for years and that the plaster was peeling off. Fissures had appeared, and though the mass of the edifice struck one forcibly after the usual one-storied Arab houses, I realized that we were in a splendor of the past.

The marabout hurried out to greet us. Small of stature, with decidedly negro features, his general appearance on first contact was not impressive. And yet as one watched him one realized a kind of superiority engrained by many generations of domination. My caïd kissed his hand, the chauffeur kissed his hand and his head; the young man took it all as calmly as the hand-shake I gave him. He led us along the side of the house to the front and here, of a sudden, one was transported out of any sort of Arab setting. Instead of the usual small doorway leading to some dim ante-chamber or narrow staircase, we came upon a great flagged space interspersed with flower-beds and fountains and rivulets, while tall cypresses grew about, protecting the garden from the desert winds.

A broad staircase built of rosy stone led up to a terrace pillared and tiled in delicate shades, giving an impression of majesty, of far-away power, of magnificence. We mounted the stairway and were led into a dining-room quite simple in spite of its size, and then into a drawing-room. An array of superb Arab furniture filled the room, not the tawdry tables and chairs bought in Algiers, but the real work of the country: chests of drawers, cupboards, brackets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, priceless carpets on the floor, and lovely hangings over the doors; swords and daggers of all periods festooned the walls. We passed out of the drawing-room on to a gallery running all the length of the building, and on to which opened the guestrooms. As we entered the first, I was struck by the richness of the setting, by the real Arab bed hung about with brocaded curtains, then I realized that I was not in one room but in a series. I turned in surprise to the caïd. He smiled at my astonishment and explained that at Kourdane every guest had his private suite—bedroom, sitting-room, dining-room—and that in the old days of the Great Marabout meals were sent separately to each person who spent the night there. The importance of the repast varied according to the standing of the guest, but great or small, he was waited on in his own apartment. Afterward every one met in the drawing-room for coffee.

“Even now,” he added, “we shall dine in the dining-room without our host, who will be served apart.”

I could find nothing to say; the old baronial hall of the Middle Ages with the high table seemed eclipsed.

We returned to the garden and were led with reverence to the tomb of the marabout. It was built round an ancient tree under which he was wont to take his afternoon sleep. A light burned perpetually there.

We visited the domain, and the richness of the vast garden in the middle of the desolate land was almost as impressive as the pomp of the house.

At seven-thirty we dined, and as the caïd had predicted, our meal was partaken without the host. There was a sheep roasted whole, with one of the best Bordeaux wines I had tasted for a long time. Afterward the little marabout came in and took his coffee with us in the gorgeous drawing-room. We talked for a while about shooting and then, turning toward a battered piano, contrasting sadly with the rest of the furnishings, he asked if any one could play. My English companion was persuaded to approach the keyboard. The holy atmosphere inspired him to play Nazareth, but the sounds evoked from the yellow notes were so unexpected that he swiftly changed into a Waldteufel waltz, though it did not sound at all like the tune I knew. However, this did not in the least matter, and the Arabs sat spellbound as the unspeakable discords burst from the instrument which had not been tuned for fifty years.

Finally the party broke up and we retired to our respective apartments in an atmosphere of decadent grandeur. During the night I was awakened by the casements rattling, and though I tried to turn over and sleep again, I knew instinctively what it meant. As soon as I was called I walked out on to the terrace and at once realized that my intuition was right. A fierce wind was blowing up from the southeast and clouds of sand and dust were whirling across the desert. As the day increased the wind rose and the sand which had merely been coming in gusts became a cloud which swept across the land, enveloping all.

The sun tried to pierce the pall of dust, but little by little it was obliterated and the atmosphere became that of a sea mist mixed up with a London fog. Dust, sand, grit filtered its way in everywhere while the wind roared through the cypress trees and about the house. By lunch-time the sand-storm was at its height and the light of day was no brighter than at dusk. We had, however, promised to go over to Aïn Mahdi, a few miles farther on, and visit the head marabout. We rolled ourselves in burnouses, wrapped our heads in chechs, and started off in the car. The Djebel Amour was quite obscured, and the whirling sand stung our faces, while above, miles above it seemed, the great yellow cloud swept on.

Aïn Mahdi is a holy city, walled and fortified, which lies at the western end of the Djebel Amour. Built about the eleventh century it used to be a university town and a city of great learning, where some of the most valuable manuscripts were produced. During the middle of the last century the holy order of the Tidjanis was founded and took up its headquarters here. The Tidjanis have branches all over the Moslem world, which explains the riches of Kourdane, as well as the great fortune of the old gentleman we were going to see. All the members of these branches send their yearly offering to the seat of their order, and the annual revenue of the marabout’s family probably exceeds any income in the world.

We passed in through a square archway and stopped in front of two fine old doors standing at right angles to one another in the corner of a small square. The first was the mosque, the second the zaouia. Taking off our shoes we entered the mosque. Built on old foundations, the present structure is only some hundred years old, but it is exceedingly picturesque. A courtyard with tall trees growing in the middle first meets the eye; at the foot of the opposite wall is an old bronze cannon captured from Abd-el-Kader, who besieged the holy city in 1838.

Turning to the left, we entered the shrine, small and dim, but which nevertheless disclosed some lovely green tiles lining the walls. On the floor were beautiful carpets, while banners of the saints hung from the graceful arches. On the far side a dark mass, suggesting a catafalque, with glints of gold and silver and precious stones, draped about with costly stuffs, could be seen, and under it the tomb of the Great Marabout, founder of the order.

On leaving the mosque we went to the marabout’s house and were received by his son, a very strong negroid type, but always with that look of self-assurance, that almost regal presence. He could not have been more than twenty, but he held out his hand to be kissed as if he ruled the world.

His house was clean but modern, and after eating cakes and drinking sweet tea we took a walk through the town. Unlike most of the oasis villages it is built entirely of stone, and though the houses might be in a better state of repair, it gives a more solid impression than the usual mud streets. Another most striking thing is that the women not of maraboutic blood all go about unveiled, and the marriages are not arranged as in ordinary Mohammedan centers—by the parents— but the young men are allowed to court the ladies of their choice, who are at liberty to refuse their suitors. The female descendants of the marabouts are, on the contrary, veiled at the age of eight, and never unveil until they die.

My companion of Tadgemout took us to visit his uncle, the Caïd of Aïn Mahdi, who again plied us with tea; from there we progressed to the house of another marabout, and so on until we were so saturated in mint and tea and coffee that we could hardly walk, and we had practically no time to visit the looms where they weave the famous blue and red carpets of the Djebel Amour. However, the day was drawing on, and we had to think of returning to Kourdane, so, accompanied by a host of marabouts of all ages we reached our car, where the accolades and hugs rebegan. One felt as if one had stepped right back hundreds and hundreds of years into some scene of the past, and indeed it might have been so, for the life of these people has not changed in the least degree since the days of the foundation of the city, when King Harold sat on the throne of Britain and William the Conqueror cast longing glances across the channel.

Armor, trunk-hose, laces, curls, ruffles, knee-breeches, pantaloons, tall hats, have come into fashion and disappeared in England since those days, but to the children of Aïn Mahdi it has never occurred to dress otherwise than in a gandourah and burnous, and I don’t suppose that it ever will.

When we left the gates of the city the wind had dropped, but the sand still hung like a great pall over the land, just as when a dust is raised in a room it hangs in the air for some time before settling. Our visit was almost over, and next morning we took leave of our hospitable little host, and returned to Laghouat, realizing that we had had an experience which would last long in our minds.

4. A Day’s Fishing in Southern Algeria

Jelloul ben Lahkdar, bash agha of the Larba tribe about the oasis of Laghouat, is a man with the presence of an emperor, and when I meet him I feel that I ought to kneel down and kiss his hand.

I do not do this, however, partly because it would be misconstrued, and partly because the bash agha is a charming old gentleman with a sense of humor, and one whose soul is simplicity itself. He is rather a tyrant with the younger members of his family, and I know that they are very frightened of him, and that they are like young schoolboys when he is with them.

However, this does not prevent his being a very entertaining companion, and though he rarely maintains a lengthy conversation, what he says is wise and to the point. When I met him, therefore, in Chellala, a little market-town nestling among the hills some two hundred miles north of the Sahara, I was delighted.

“Why, what are you doing here, bash agha?” I exclaimed, after we had passed through the lengthy Arab greeting which is very poetical but rather tedious in the long run.

“I have taken up my summer quarters with the Caïd Ali, my cousin,” he replied. “And you, my friend?”

“Oh, I’ve just come up for the sheep-market.”

“You dine with us to-night,” he went on, “you will taste some fish.”

“Thank you,” I replied, “it will be a pleasure to dine at your hospitable table and a luxury to eat fish from the sea.”

“They do not come from the sea,” he replied. “They are fish from the river at Taguine, forty kilometers from here.”

“Freshwater fish,” I exclaimed. “I have lived in this country long, but I did not know such things existed in Algeria!”

He smiled.

“Come and see,” he went on, and, patting my arm, continued his stately promenade down the road.

I went and found a party of Arab chiefs I knew. More solemn greetings. At the beginning of the long meal the fish was served. There was no doubt about it, they were good-sized river-fish, a kind of carp or perch or gudgeon with little taste.

The bash agha smiled at my surprise.

“Would you care to fish them yourself?” he enquired.

“Most certainly,” I replied, “but I have no rod or line with me.”

“I am going to Taguine to-morrow,” he went on, “and if you come here at eight I will give you a lift, and you can lunch there with me. I’ll see that you are supplied with rods and lines.”

I thanked him warmly, wondering in myself what the fishing could be like.

The next morning a cavalier or Arab retainer came round and, entering my room, roused me from my slumbers by telling me that the bash agha awaited me.

I bounded from my bed and looked out of the window at the clock on the Administrateur’s office, but it said only seven. I pointed this out to the cavalier and explained that I had been warned for eight. He did not seem in the least impressed, and only repeated the information that the bash agha awaited me. I gathered that he expected me to run down in my pajamas. Arabs rarely undress, and wash only at the Turkish bath and at meals, and they can not understand that a European can’t walk straight out of his bed to his daily duties.

I failed to convey any of this to the cavalier, and he left me, repeating that the bash agha awaited me.

At seven-thirty the Caïd Madani came into my room and, after passing through the ritual of early morning salutations, informed me that the bash agha awaited me.

I said, “But he warned me for eight, and it is only seven-thirty.”

He said, “But the bash agha is ready.”

I said, “Well, he ought to have told me to come earlier.”

The caïd did not seem to understand my point of view, and only replied, “Well, perhaps you will hurry; I will wait down-stairs.”

I hurried, and eventually dashed out, followed by my companion, to where the car waited. The bash agha sat in a chair and smoked a meerschaum pipe. He was surrounded by a group of Arab chiefs.

“What respect,” I said to myself. “The old man goes out for the day and all the chiefs come to see him off.”

The bash agha saluted me and made no reference to the hour of our departure. I felt relieved.

His chauffeur got into the car, the old gentleman got in beside him. The Caïd Madani motioned me to get in behind, the Caïd Madani got in after me, the Caïd Aïssa got in after the Caïd Madani, the Sheik Marhoun got in after the Caïd Aïssa, the kadi got in after the Sheik Marhoun. The Caïd Ali said, “I don’t think I shall come, there isn’t much room left.”

All the others protested, so he got in too.

The Caïd Mohamed categorically refused to make a ninth.

The bash agha turned round and said, “Well, I think we are all here. Let us start.”

The car moved off. At the entrance of the town the Sheik Marhoun said, “Do you think that we’ve got enough petrol to get there and back?”

“Inch Allah,” replied the chauffeur.

The kadi, who is a practical man, and who likes his comforts, interposed, “I think you had better make certain.”

The chauffeur made certain and found there was enough to do about one mile down hill.

We therefore returned to the town to get some. No one seemed to mind, though; my seven Arabs made no comment and remained as placid as if the filling of the petrol tank was merely a childish whim of the kadi. I felt certain that they were saying to themselves, “If the car lacks fuel, Allah will surely provide.”

I said to the kadi, “Lucky you thought of asking.”

He smiled benignly. I love the kadi. He is a charming person. He is the Mohammedan Judge of Chellala, and he looks like an early Victorian Englishman: fair beard, very white skin, a slightly rubicund nose, clear blue eyes, and long white hands. If he wore a pair of nankeen pantaloons and a choker instead of a burnous and a turban, he would be the image of what Alfred de Musset must have been in his prime. The kadi has, moreover, a great sense of humor.

When we had filled up, we rolled off first of all through the mountains of Chellala and then on to the great open plains which run down to the Sahara, forming some of the finest pasture-land of Algeria.

My companions all chatted away to each other about their sheep-raising, their crops, their horses, their falcons, their shooting—all those things so dear to these country gentlemen.

Occasionally they poked fun at the kadi, who is not a warrior nor a sportsman, but he always had a sharp retort which sent them into helpless laughter.

Finally we arrived at Taguine and stopped for a moment at the monument which marks the place where the Duc d’Aumale’s flying column captured the whole of the Emir-el-Kader’s smala in 1843 and thus broke his long resistance.

This was an occasion to rain more jokes on the kadi’s head, as he is a direct descendant of the great emir, and it was the great-uncle of the Caïd Aïssa, the loyal General Yusuf, who was in command of the native cavalry on this occasion.

As soon as we alighted, the various chiefs had business to attend to, and I was despatched to fish. I was furnished with a long pole, on the end of which was a piece of thin rope to which was further riveted a hook. There was also a box of worms.

My guide was an ex-soldier dressed in a tattered burnous on which was proudly pinned the Croix de Guerre, and under which he wore a seedy frock coat with satin facings. He had no socks, but a pair of very battered slippers.

After trudging through the fields of standing barley for about half an hour we came to a kind of brown ditch with a rivulet one yard broad trickling sadly down the middle.

“Here is the river,” said the guide proudly.

I said nothing, but looked anxiously into the trickle, but all I could see were five or six tortoises paddling about. Eton days when I kept these beasts in a biscuit box in the wash-stand, hidden from the eagle eyes of m’tutor, returned to me, but I somehow did not connect them with rods and hooks.

My companion seemed to read my thoughts. “The fish are further on,” he said simply; “come!”

I followed him along the bank and eventually we came to a deep, muddy pool about twenty feet square. The Arab squatted down, knotted a cork into the middle of the rope, baited my hook and handed me the pole. I took it and felt inclined to laugh. It reminded me of that stupid Christmas game where one fishes for useless presents out of a tub. However, I lowered the worm into the opaque water and waited. Two minutes had hardly passed when down went the cork. Instinctively I struck. Memories of sudden thrills by tumbling streams, the hiss of a line running out, the bend of the rod, flashed before me. But they were only visions, for I had struck so violently, and the string or cable at the end of my pole was so strong, that I jerked the fish right out of the pool and on to the bank.

My fisherman instantly rescued it from the hook and I took it up to examine it. I expected to find the mud-fish which I had often come across in certain Indian rivers; but not at all. In shape it resembled a perch, but though the fins were red, there were none of the sharp points on the back, and the color was more that of a carp. Its weight was about two ounces.

I continued fishing. We visited some three or four pools, and in two hours I caught nearly one hundred of these fish. The majority were like the first, but there were a dozen or so of over a quarter of a pound, and two must have weighed a good twelve ounces.

Finally surfeited with this somewhat crane-like occupation, I trudged back.

Clouds were banking up over there toward the north, and the Arab watched them with interest.

“Two days, rain now, sidi,” he exclaimed, “will double our crops and afford pasturage for the flocks for the rest of the summer.”

I reached the house of the Caïd Aïssa to find my friends all sitting in a circle on a priceless Djebel Amour carpet, and looking hungrily out of the door where four Arabs turned a sheep spitted on a long pole before a brushwood fire. The sheep was becoming a glorious golden color as the chief turnspit poured fat on its roasting sides. After my long walk the smell of this cooking meat roused my appetite.

I slipped off my shoes and went and sat down on a cushion beside the bash agha. I told him all about my fishing exploits, but he didn’t seem to take the least interest in my tale. He merely turned to me and said: “These foolish young men have brought you out to lunch here and they have forgotten to bring knives or forks or plates, so you will have to eat like us.”

“Oh,” I replied, rather nervously, “I consider that eating with one’s hands is much more cleanly than using knives and forks which may not have been washed.”

The bash agha grunted and the others looked anxiously about. I realized that the old man was in one of his tyrannical moods.

At last one of the cooks came in and demanded if he should serve.

“Of course,” said the bash agha, “but where is the Caïd Madani?”

“He is saying his prayers,” ventured the Sheik Marhoun.

The bash agha said, “Alham dullah!” (“May Allah be praised”), but his eyes expressed, “Why the deuce must this idiot say his prayers at lunchtime?”

I was seized with an uncontrollable desire to laugh, so I went to the door and I saw, out on the plain, the tall figure of Madani, his burnous spread out before him, bowing and prostrating himself with that complete lack of self-consciousness so remarkable in all Mohammedan devotions.

However, he finished and, after remaining for a moment in meditation gazing out toward Mecca, he took up his burnous and returned to us.

A low table and tray were brought and placed before the bash agha. He motioned me to seat myself beside him, he called the kadi, and he called an aged agha who seemed to have suddenly grown out of the earth at the smell of food. The others went and squatted at a respectful distance from the old man and spoke in whispers.

A man passed round with a brass basin and jug and we all washed our hands in silence.

A large bowl of schorba, highly spiced soup, was placed on the table, some loaves of barley bread and some wooden spoons. We all dipped into the bowl and commenced the meal. When the bash agha had finished we all put down our spoons, which were carried away with the bowl and placed before the others.

The long Arab midday meal began: the bourak, or sausage roll; the mechoui, which we clawed at with our fingers; the leham lalou, stewed mutton with prunes; the kous-kous; and finally the honey cakes.

As we finished each dish the remains were taken to the others, who by this time had been joined by the bash agha’s chauffeur.

A large jug of skimmed milk was passed round and we all took a sip.

“Alham dullah,” said the bash agha.

“Alham dullah,” repeated the kadi with the aged agha and the young caïds.

The man passed round with the brass tray and jug and the water, and the bash agha went through a lengthy toilet which commenced with his beard and ended with his fingers.

Coffee appeared.

We all sighed contentedly, the tension of before lunch had disappeared. The bash agha lighted his pipe. I did the same, while the others looked at us with envy, as they themselves could not smoke in the old chief’s presence. Gradually they slipped toward the door to get at their cigarettes.

“I wish to play cards,” suddenly said the bash agha.

The caïds paused at the door.

“Go on, Madani,” said the Caïd Aïssa.

“No, no, it’s not my turn,” he replied.

“And it isn’t mine,” said Marhoun.

“The kadi must play,” said the Caïd Ali.

“Yes, send along the kadi,” they all said.

“But I am always made to do this,” protested the man of peace, “and I always lose.”

“It’s about all you’re fit for,” laughed Marhoun.

This was considered a great joke, and they hustled him back into the presence of the bash agha, smiling at his woebegone expression.

He squatted down opposite the old gentleman, the chauffeur brought in some stones and placed them between the two players for counters. That mysterious Hispano-Mauresque game began, a game which came from the Peninsula when the Christian kings retook the Alhambra and drove out the Arabs. The kadi looked more and more like an early Victorian dandy than ever.

I sat and watched while the others poked fun at the victim, discreetly, from the corner of the room.

But this time luck seemed to favor the judge and he began to win; the bash agha got cross again; then he got sleepy; his head began to nod, and finally he dropped off. The kadi turned to me and winked knowingly while he gathered up his winnings.

I dozed off too. Arab lunches are conducive to slumber, and I understand why the Orientals recline at their repasts. . . .

Suddenly I was roused by Madani. “We ought to be getting away,” he said, “but the bash agha is still asleep.”

“Well, wake him,” I replied.

“Oh, I can’t. None of us can; we’d never hear the end of it,” broke in Madani. “But you can.”

“But I certainly won’t,” I retorted. “I’m sleepy enough myself. Make the kadi do it!”

This seemed to amuse Madani, and he returned to the other chiefs and I saw that my suggestion was causing them joy. But not to the kadi, who, as usual, protested, and I realized that he was the sort of joke-man of the district. At last, however, he was bustled into the room.

He looked anxiously about and, finally, seeing the large brass tray on which the mechoui had been served, he took it up and dropped it with a crash on the part of the floor which was uncarpeted. Then he fled out on to the plain.

The bash agha opened one eye, then the other, then seemed about to sleep again. However, at that moment a diversion was caused by the entry of the aged agha with the statement that there was a man with a petition to make.

The bash agha came to and, sitting up, settled his turban and became at once the “Emperor.”

The caïds became “princes,” and squatted down in a semi-circle on the carpet; the chauffeur ventured back and started mending a tire. The petitioner marched in and, after kissing the old man’s shoulder, went and sat at a distance. For ten minutes he said “How-do-you-do” in different poses and accents. For a moment there was a lull, and then all of a sudden the storm burst, as in a torrent of words he poured out his story.

He talked so rapidly that I only understood vaguely, but I gathered that his flock had been stolen by nomads of the bash agha who had come up from the south. The bash agha was silent for a time, then he too burst into a flood of verbiage.

It was a most extraordinary group. The bash agha at one end of the room, sitting on a heap of cushions, his whole attention riveted on the man before him who squatted, speaking rapidly, but with practically no gestures.

Occasionally one of the caïds would throw in a remark, but otherwise one would have supposed that the matter was quite indifferent to them. And yet it was a question which to these Arabs was one of the greatest importance.

The complaint was of the tribe of the district who accused one of the nomad tribes of the Larba, now pasturing near-by, of stealing sheep. The sheep had disappeared ten days ago and had been tracked with that mysterious instinct across those limitless wastes of desert to Ghardaia, three hundred miles to the south. The man wanted their return as well as the punishment of the thieves.

The bash agha turned to the kadi, who for the moment ceased being the joke-man, and spoke a few words to him.

The kadi nodded.

The bash agha addressed the Caïd Madani.

“This affects your tribe. You will send a mounted man to Ghardaïa forthwith. He will apprehend the robbers and have them drive the flocks back here. You will bring them before me at Chellala.”

“Inch Allah,” acquiesced Madani.

Justice was done. A horseman was to ride over the desert to Ghardaïa and back, and I pictured a Lord-Lieutenant of Sussex saying to the sheriff: “You will tell a constable to bicycle to Edinburgh and fetch back a couple of hundred sheep,” just as one might say, “Go and post this letter.” It was a marvelous example of the simplicity of primitive justice.

The bash agha rose. The complainant kissed his turban, and we all followed the old man out.

During lunch the sky had become gray and the wind was coming from the north in cold gusts, bringing clouds of sand and grit.

We all piled into the car again and started on our return journey.

The sky grew darker and in a few minutes the rain began. Rain in Algeria is quite common on the coast in winter or spring, but rain in the neighborhood of the desert rarely comes after March, and when it does it is good for the cultivator but it is not amusing for those who travel. The first dried river-bed we came to was far from dry, the second was running with water, the dry track before the third had become a morass, the third was gurgling gaily down, and the road was an inch or so under water.

At this point we punctured. We all got out and looked at the flat tire, but no one did anything.

I said, “Suppose we change the wheel.”

The chauffeur said, “The spare wheel is punctured too. We must change the inner tube, but I don’t think it will last long.”

We got out the inner tube; it looked rather wretched, and a preliminary pump-up revealed that it held little air. Another one was found which appeared to be air-tight. The rain swept icily across the great plain. The kadi shivered and drew his burnous about him. Marhoun took off the wheel; the bash agha smoked his pipe as he sat on the running-board. The caïds talked and laughed at the miserable kadi. There was none of that fever and excitement and cursing of the chauffeur which one would have seen among Europeans on such an occasion. The chauffeur had forgotten to mend the spare wheel; it was the will of God and nothing could be done to remedy it.

At last we started again, but the next oued was a rushing torrent. The car floundered in water swirled about the axles, the engine roared, the chauffeur shouted something and every one, except the bash agha, tumbled out into the water. I followed and started pushing, while the water raced round us about up to our knees. The car began to move, and at last laboriously climbed out of the river.

“Only just in time,” exclaimed Aïssa. “Look.”

I did so, and I saw, to my amazement, a kind of swirling mass of water sweeping down the river, and before I could count two the oued had become a raging, overflowing torrent. A few minutes sooner and car and all would have been swept away.

“Luckily that is the last oued,” said Ali.

We all got in and started off again. The chauffeur put on speed, and we bumped furiously over the holes in the road. Then the other tire went. We stopped and all got out and then all got in again.

“Ma kanch chambre à air,” said the chauffeur. (“No more inner tubes.”)

In a few minutes the original tire went again, and we all got out again and all got back. We crawled along on the rims. Suddenly I became aware that my feet were getting very cold and wet. I could not understand. I asked Madani, but he had reached a state when he no longer seemed to care. He was telling his beads.

I moved my legs about and suddenly, to my astonishment, discovered that my feet were hanging in space. I peered down and perceived water and mud splashing all round me, and realized that the bottom of the car had fallen out. Visions of the pantomime gentleman whose carriage loses its floor and who is obliged to run between the wheels, sprang before me. And I saw myself and Madani being precipitated on to the road and having to run wildly back to Chellala, unable to make the chauffeur hear our cries of distress.

However, this catastrophe did not take place, for the simple reason that the car suddenly stopped of its own accord. We all got out again. No one seemed to dare to ask what the matter was.

“Ma kanch petrol,” said the chauffeur calmly.

“No more petrol!” exclaimed the bash agha nervously. It was the first time during the whole of the proceedings that he had shown any emotion.

“Ma kanch,” repeated the driver.

No one spoke. I heard Madani murmuring “Mektoub,” but otherwise there was silence as we stood there in the driving rain watching the car. Then suddenly the bash agha said, as if to the skies, “I pray Allah that it is raining like this in the Tell; my brother’s crops have sore need of rain.”

“Inch Allah,” they all said.

It filled me with amazement. I had before me the complete abstraction of immediate discomfort, the unaccountable Oriental mind, praying to Allah, miles from anywhere, soaked to the skin, and with no means of getting home. I thought of my English friends and their attitude and thoughts on such an occasion. However, it was no good standing in contemplation.

“Well, what do you propose doing?” I ventured at last. “I am getting cold.”

“I don’t know,” replied the old man, brushing drops of rain off his beard. “What do you think, my friend?”

“To my mind the only possible thing to do is to walk back before it gets too dark,” I said.

“But the rain,” said the kadi, “and the mud, and the wind!”

“A little rain and wind more or less never did me any harm,” I replied; “though perhaps I am more used to it than you.”

“Of course, he is right,” said Madani. “We will leave the chauffeur with the car and we’ll be in Chellala before six.”

“Come on,” said the Caïd Ali. “I know a short cut across the hills which will reduce our journey by at least a third.”

The kadi started murmuring again, but seeing that the bash agha agreed to this proposal, he felt that he could not let an old man of seventy do what he feared to do, so he reluctantly followed us. In single file we started across the waste of water and tufts of alfa.

Madani led, then came Ali, after him Aïssa, then the bash agha, then myself, and behind me the kadi, with Marhoun bringing up the rear. The wind blew fiercely across our path, bringing great sheets of soaking rain, but our camel’s hair burnouses kept the wet out wonderfully. Only the kadi, who had a kind of black woven burnous, complained that he was getting soaked. I distinctly heard Marhoun laughing in the driving rain.

Gradually we approached the hills, all wrapped in mist, and descending into a habitually dry river-bed, splashed up the muddy bank.

Suddenly the kadi gave a yell.

“I’ve lost my shoes,” he screamed.

“Where?” I exclaimed.

“In the mud! They got stuck and came off!”

The procession stopped. Aïssa started laughing. I became perfectly helpless as I watched the wretched judge making futile dives for his slippers in the muddy torrent.

At last Marhoun got the better of his mirth and managed to secure the lost property, but, as can be imagined, the elegant slippers looked like bits of old leather ready for the dust-heap. The kadi began wailing again, and said he would go back, but Marhoun pushed him up the bank and he plodded on.

We soon came to a goat-track and gradually began climbing the steep slopes of the hill. As we rose, the mist closed down upon us and wrapped us in its damp embrace. I could no longer see Madani, and the bash agha was only a dim form before me. The kadi I didn’t need to see as his wail of malediction on motor-cars and excursions, and idiots who could live out in the desert, never ceased.

After an hour or so we reached the summit and gathered together in a ghostly group.

“Not very far now,” said Ali gaily. “Reminds me of winter in the trenches. Eh, Aïssa?”

“Yes, the Vosges,” he replied. “Not too tired, bash agha?”

The old man shook his head and he brushed the drops from his burnous.

“Well, let’s proceed,” said Madani. “We don’t want to be caught by the night.”

“My shoes are full of stones,” moaned the kadi. “Well, take them out,” exclaimed Marhoun.

Without further ado we started along the crest and soon began descending another path. The wind was less fierce on this side of the mountain, but the mist swirled like a great shroud about us. None of us spoke as we plodded on in our dripping burnouses. My mind became a sort of damp blank as I mechanically followed in the procession.

Suddenly the bash agha said to me over his shoulder, “What has become of Miss G., who was in Laghouat for two months this spring?”

“Eh?” I said.

He repeated his question.

“Oh, she has gone back to Scotland,” I replied.

“Why did she go?” again asked the old man.

“Oh, I suppose she wanted to see her family and get back to this sort of weather,” I answered vaguely.

“She was a very nice girl,” said the bash agha. “She was full of gaiety. I liked her.”

He lapsed into silence again. I followed on, wondering how the brain of Jelloul ben Lahkdar, bash agha of all the Larbas, reasoned, that he should suddenly ask me the whereabouts of an English friend of mine while descending the slopes of the mountains of Chellala in a Scotch mist. The working of an Oriental mind has always been and always will be a mystery to me.

However, the mist was beginning to clear and the rain was abating when suddenly, from nowhere, the sun, brilliant in its setting, burst through the clouds, and we looked out on to the smiling village of Chellala nestling among its green trees, and out on to the great plains of the Sersou, right away to the blue mountains of the Atlas in the distance. That wonderful Algerian climate, where there is never a day without a little sun to keep one’s spirits alive to the glories of nature!

Every one seemed to cheer up.

I turned round and looked at the kadi and I mercifully restrained my laughter, as the picture of wretchedness he presented was too genuine to admit of more jests.

“You’ll be in dry clothes soon, kadi,” I exclaimed.

“I shall take great care never to leave my home again, Inch Allah,” he groaned.

At the moment Marhoun started singing one of those strange, melodious songs of the great South with the deep, long note drawn out at the end. Aïssa picked it up and sent back the verse, trembling, high and melancholy. Marhoun returned with the refrain, so soft, so gentle, that I approached the bash agha and asked him the meaning of the words.

He smiled and said, “I can not give it exactly translated because it is too beautiful in Arabic, but it runs thus: ‘My love is as great as the fire, and it consumes my heart.’”

And I repeated it to myself, wondering on the strange nature of the Arabs, as the sun, all orange and gold, dipped behind the hills, wrapping the land in golden radiance.

5. The Turkish Bath in Algeria

We have heard a great deal in this book about religion; let us turn our attention for a brief moment to its great adjunct, especially in the Moslem faith— cleanliness.

To the average Englishman the words “Turkish bath” suggest tiled chambers, whiteness, great heat, much water and complete exhaustion. This is what he has seen in Jermyn Street. In his imagination he may have conjured up a vision of the hammam of the East with its marble halls and multi-colored tiles, its splashing fountains and exhilarating hashish, while ebony-bodied negroes flit noiselessly about. Now, though this average Englishman will never be bathed in this Arabian Nights atmosphere in Algeria, let it be known that his imagination has not altogether run into the realms of fable.

In certain private houses of great chiefs this atmosphere, to a lesser degree, exists, and the owner of the bath insists on all the most luxurious rites being carried out. However, as this remains private property it can not be entered into, and it will suffice to describe the common Turkish bath known in Algeria as le bain maure, which resident or tourist, pedler or caïd, respectable maiden or femme du Quartier, must use if cleanliness is to be observed.

In this haunt of steam and strange odors there will be found neither the tiled chambers of Jermyn Street nor the splashing fountains of Haroun al-Raschid. The entrance to the bath is usually imposing; this is presumably to attract the passer-by. The entrance-hall is also roomy, and with a purpose, as it is here that many of the Faithful come to say their prayers after their ablutions. After this there is a series of primary disillusions. I purposely use the word “primary.”

To undress, one is ushered into a small chamber, where probably a number of other persons of all ranks and ages are already undressing. One hastily confides one’s purse to the owner or manager of the bath, who puts it in his pocket. This looks risky at first sight, but it is in reality quite safe. Having disrobed, an emaciated bandit appears and, placing a towel about one’s body and one about one’s head, proffers a pair of wooden clogs, which are flat pieces of wood the shape of the sole of a shoe with a strap to go across the foot. They appear to be harmless affairs at first sight; I emphasize “sight,” for the moment one suggests that they should be modes of locomotion one is disillusioned. For some unknown reason these clogs have a distaste to progress in a forward direction and seem bent on going either to the right or to the left, or in both directions at the same time—anyway, at right angles to the proposed progress of the wearer, which rationally should be toward the bath.

At first it needs the strength and will power of a great and persevering man to advance with the aid of the wall out of the lofty court to the heated chamber. The passage is usually narrow and full of stagnant water, the light is conspicuous by its absence, and as one gropes for the entrance one’s mind rushes back to memories of the dungeons beneath the Ducal Palace in Venice. When at last the massive door has been pulled back, one’s terror, if anything, increases. A cloud of damp, suffocating steam fills the chamber, the body becomes suddenly moist, and one instinctively turns to the exit. However, it is too late; the emaciated bandit is behind, and pushes one forward through pools of water to a large square slab.

The eyes are gradually getting used to the dim light thrown by a single sputtering candle, and one distinguishes little by little the forms of other people washing in various corners of the room. The heat is intense, the steam swirls about the ceiling, the grunts and murmurs of the bathers make one think of Doré’s illustrations of Dante’s Inferno. However, little time is allowed for reflection in this place of torment, as suddenly the skeleton which has done the undressing and the guiding pushes one on to the floor, where, lying on a kind of blue duster, one awaits the rack!

Photograph by Mr. Julian Sampson

The Oasis of Guerrera, from the Maison Arabe

Roman Sarcophagus at Tipaza

Pictures Done by Roman Children on Damp Bricks Drying in the Sun

And here the beauty, the glorious compensation for all the rest, begins. Of all the masseurs in the world, be they British, Latin, or Scandinavian, there are none I have met who can equal the Arab of the Algerian south. No training, no knowledge of anatomy—these men, by some curious instinct, understand the wants of the body, and as one lies in this steaming atmosphere one feels all the pains and poisons of the human frame being magically pressed out of one. It is a complete relaxation, a complete cure to all ills, and when the coarse glove is put on and the rolls of fat come out of the opened pores of the skin, it is done as gently as a mother powdering her baby. Soap follows, warm water after that, until the cold douche, poured out of a wooden bucket, brings one to one’s feet and, transformed and light-hearted, one returns fearless along the dark passage to be massaged with towels till dry.

The result is magical; magical the swiftness with which it is all accomplished, magical when one realizes that the total fee for the bath is five francs.

The white-tiled chamber and the exhilarating hashish may add to the delight of the thing, but to feel a sensation of real fitness give me the common Arab masseur in the common Arab bath in the far south.

I am told that the negresses who look after the women who attend the bath on specific days of the week have also great merits. Of this I am ignorant, but of all things I miss most, when away in Europe, my emaciated bandit who “masses” out of my body all weariness—mental and physical—disease and cares, who sends me out into the street capable of sitting down to write a chapter of Algeria from Within.

6. The Keef Smoker

Before closing these sketches of Arab life a word must be said on a vice which is luckily not very prevalent, but which nevertheless exists in many centers.

I speak of keef-smoking.

Keef is the dried flower of the hemp-plant chopped up and smoked like tobacco, rolled in a cigarette, or in the bowl of a small pipe. In a different form it is the basis of the hashish sweets, rarely seen in Algeria, but very common in the Near East.

The effect of keef on the smoker is to make him practically independent of food and sleep as long as he is under its influence, and a habitual keef-taker is easy to detect. His eyes are very bright, his face is pale and drawn, his arms and hands are terribly thin, his movements are restless. At the same time he is not at all dazed like one under the influence of a drug, and though after a few days’ smoking he will drift off into a kind of feverish sleep, during the early periods he is extraordinarily lucid. In fact, it is said that the first effects of keef are to make the brain work at three times its normal pace.

European tourists in the south occasionally get hold of some keef to smoke, and complain that it has had no effect at all beyond giving them a sore throat. This is quite normal, as the fact of smoking a little hemp in a pipe or cigarette will hurt no one if not continued. To feel the effect of keef one must smoke for at least one night through, and three days are necessary to get really poisoned. The danger of an experiment of this kind is that the desire to go on may seize one, and once keef has taken hold of a man it is rare to see it give him up. However, it is quite amusing to go to a keef-smoking den, all the more so as it has to be done in secret and with the connivance of a smoker, as no outsiders know where these little nocturnal réunions take place.

As a matter of fact I doubt whether there is much danger of the police interfering as, though it is against the law to smoke keef, the French are not going to try to stop something which must always go on, and unless the offense is deliberately open they will not peer into the dark streets to catch a few poor Arabs.

The town where keef-smoking is the most prevalent, I believe, is Ghardaïa—not of course among the puritan Mzabites, but in the Arab quarter. This is partly due to the fact that these Arabs are far away from their own people, and club together in small groups to do what they would not dare do before their relatives in their own oases.

I remember going to one of these places in the Mzab with some English friends who wanted to see the den for themselves. We were a curious party—an English girl, a short-story writer and another man connected with letters—none of whom knew the country well, while our Arab guide was the khodja of the Bureau Arabe, a man unbelievably fat, who rather sailed along the street than walked. We passed through interminable little streets, pitch black, fell up and down steps until we came to a tumble-down house, all dark save for a yellow light which flickered in an upper chamber. The tinkle of a mandolin floated out, a warm breeze sent little whirls of dust up the narrow way, the stars stood out bright in the sky.

Our immense companion tapped mysteriously at the door, the sound of the mandolin ceased, and we heard some one coming cautiously down-stairs. A few whispered words were exchanged, followed by the noise of heavy bolts being drawn, the door swung back, and we found ourselves in front of a rickety wooden staircase at the foot of which stood an Arab in tattered clothes, who held aloft a hissing acetylene lamp. He scrutinized us closely, and then, bidding us enter, drew aside as we filed slowly past and followed our fat friend up the stairs. The janitor waited till we were all inside, and then with a clash shot back the bolts, and we felt ourselves prisoners in this illicit haunt.

At the top of the stairs we came to a room dimly lighted, and the first thing which struck our attention was an enormous skin full of water. When I say that it struck our attention it is not quite exact, as in reality it was struck by the head of my friend S. A., who had not noticed it until a stream of icy water poured down his back. When we had recovered from this pleasing little incident we looked about us.

On the floor all round the little room squatted men of all ages and grades—some in rags, some in prosperous-looking gandourahs, some in very modern red fezzes—but all with the same hungry look on their drawn faces. At the far end the Arab who had opened the door attended to the little fireplace ornamented with colored tiles and on which he prepared coffee and mint tea; in the middle of the group sat the mandolinist playing with a far-away look in his shining eyes.

The air was heavy with a sweet, rather sickly smell, an odor not unlike new-mown hay, only stronger. A bench was mysteriously produced for us and for our stout companion, who explained that if he sat on the ground he would never be able to get up again. Tea was placed before us, and then rather diffidently one of the corpses on the floor rose and offered Miss G. a small pipe. Seeing she was prepared to smoke, he drew a wallet from the folds of his gandourah and filled the bowl with the strange grayish-green, tobacco-looking matter, and handed it back to her.

In the meanwhile we had also been supplied with similar pipes, and in a few moments we had lighted up. The taste was not pleasant to the regular pipe-smoker like myself, and at the same time it was not as nasty as my first attempts at smoking when in the depths of a wood my brother and I, aged nine and ten, filled a cast-off pipe of my father’s with brown paper in the belief that we were smoking!

Keef is better than brown paper. The taste and smell were rather like that of hay.

When the company saw that we were quite human and ready to join in the fun there was a general relaxation. All the pipes were lighted, the mandolinist tuned up, and soon the whole crowd was as merry as children at a birthday party. In fact, so great was the effect of the atmosphere that S. A. insisted on singing himself, and would have danced had not M. J., who has his interests at heart, held him forcibly on the bench.

I don’t know how long this would have gone on had not a discreet signal from the street warned us that the police were making their rounds. In a second the light was dimmed, the music ceased, and we sat as still as mice until we heard the measured tramp of the Arab constables disappearing up the street. We felt it more discreet to depart ourselves, so we took leave of our fevered-eyed hosts and returned to our inn.

Though I spent a rather restless night, I don’t know if it was the effect of the reef or not, and we all certainly felt quite fit the next day.

Still, I can never think of that night without smiling; it was all so mysterious, so much part of another world, and I often wonder if M. J., as he sits editorially in London, or S. A., scooping in royalties, or Miss G., in her English surroundings, realize how they peeped into the past for a few seconds and lived again the life which, if it had not been Algerian, would have probably been celebrated by another De Quincey.

CHAPTER XXXIX
A LAST GLANCE AT THE ARAB

The preface of a book should always be written at the end; this insures it being read. In this particular work the first chapter rather takes the place of the preface, but at the same time there are certain things which rather need explaining.

In the first place, the necessity to compress the matter into a limited number of pages. On practically every subject mentioned, there is material in my mind to write a book, and it is difficult to realize where to stop. It is equally difficult to know where to begin as, to some, the information set out in these pages will not be new, and they may be looking for something deeper. Of these people I ask patience, for if the result of the book is encouraging, another one will follow, and perhaps another, dealing at length with the subjects only touched on now.

This work has been prepared more as something which any traveler can read during his journey to Algiers, and which will allow him to see the country through other eyes than those of the guides, be they books, chauffeurs, or the luxuriously uniformed gentlemen of the Transatlantic Company.

Let it, moreover, be understood that the history, the geography, the remarks on French administration are, more than anything else, a prelude to the rest of the book, “The Arabs.”

The Arabs, whether they be those in the scarlet burnouses of the caïd-ship or in the rags of the beggar, are all the same: a people who have destroyed without creating, who have been divided when their unity would have made them great, who have lived on theory.

We have before us the relics of the Carthaginians, of the Numidians, of the stupendous work of the Roman Empire, and then centuries of nothing. War, devastation, intrigue, mark the period covered by the Arab domination.

Even those buildings which we see in Algiers, at Constantine and in the other ancient towns, are the work of Turkish or European architects. And yet, in spite of this apparent futility of existence, in spite of this atmosphere of strife, there is something very noble in the nature of the Arabs, something very engaging, something utterly aloof from all that is European; for in spite of dissension among themselves they are all held under the sway of Islam, that all-powerful principle which separates them entirely from all other persuasions.

Moreover, the longer one lives among the Arabs the more one realizes the insurmountable barrier which separates us from them. It is not a question of race, though this does count; it is a question of religion. One can establish the deepest intimacy in all matters of daily life and then suddenly come face to face with this blank wall.

Some Europeans contend that it is possible really to become as the Arabs—even to mate with them. The few who have tried this last experiment have met with utter disaster. I know a caïd who has been all over Europe, who occasionally wears European clothes, who has had affairs with women of all nationalities, but without ever legally marrying one. He told me that twice he had been on the point of doing so, but that reason had always prevailed.

“How could it be?” he exclaimed. “How could the gulf which separates us from you ever be spanned? How could a European woman admit being shut up, or, if she emancipated herself, being considered by us on the same level as a woman of the Quarter? How could she admit to her children being brought up in the principles of the Koran, with our habits and customs? Why, we don’t even sleep in beds or sit on chairs; we eat with our hands; we have no learning; we never read books. We don’t consider any belief but our own; and, even if such a mating began successfully, how could you expect one of your people to admit the husband taking other wives to live legally under the same roof if he felt so inclined?”

This is so obvious that it seems almost superfluous to speak of it, and yet there are Europeans who will not see the impossibility of such a step; there are some who have actually taken it; I know a few of them. I have never mentioned the subject to them; the look in their eyes has told me more than any words, and has made me shrink from further laying bare the wound.

I was talking to an educated Arab not so long ago about religions, and he expressed the opinion that only Mohammedans would go to heaven. I suggested that the question of after-life was not so much judged by religion as by the actions of men, and I quoted the example of a very worthy Christian we know, respected by all Arabs, and a hopeless, immoral, drinking marabout.

“Which of the two will be recompensed, the honest and sober unbeliever, or that scoundrel who calls himself a holy man of yours?”

“I can not say,” he replied, after a moment’s thought; “but probably neither of them will go to paradise.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You mean to suggest that worthy Mr. X., who has spent the whole of his life doing good, will find himself in company with your drunken marabout?”

“I can not say,” repeated the Arab; “but if our friend believes that Jesus is the Son of God, he can not go to heaven. God is above all, and no one is like him.”

“That is all very well,” I said; “but our religion says that if you don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus you will also not go to paradise; that is why I am contending that people can not be judged by their respective faiths, but by their actions.”

“But your religion is wrong,” he said finally.

I was on the point of continuing the argument, but the look in his eyes made me desist. This belief, to him, was conclusive evidence.

And that is Islam, that is the Arab; his faith is absolute, and his opinion of other religions is quite simple—they don’t exist.

“Why,” they say, “we believe in Moses and Aaron and Jacob and Elijah and Jesus; they are all great prophets who preceded ours; what more do you want?”

A wall—a blank wall which no one can pierce without becoming a Mohammedan. Et encore. . . .

The more one lives with these people the more apparent this becomes, and if in this book the impressions given differ from those which have struck others, perhaps it is because only one side of the character has been seen, the character allowed to be seen by the Roumi.

I know the Arabs well, I know them intimately, but I have not the remotest idea what they think of me, and I never shall have.

There may be future developments of this book, with possible reversal of certain opinions, but as far as the working of the Arab brain is concerned, I know that I have penetrated as far as I ever shall. Let the reader, therefore, close this volume realizing the task which has been before the author—who, after spending over five years constantly studying these people, has arrived at this somewhat negative conclusion.

THE END

INDEX

• Abd-el-Kader (Djelali), [113], [122]
• Abd-el-Kader (Emir), [31], [32], [123]-27, [267], [273]
• Abd-el-Krim, [127]
• Abhadites, [196]
• Ablutions, [75], [102], [286]
• Adel, [53]
• Administration, [37], [40], [48]
• Agha, [36], [49], [51], [53]
• Aid el Kebir, [109], [113]
• Aid Serrir, [109]
• Ain-el-Ibel, [184]
• Ain Mahdi, [60], [125], [262], [267], [269]
• Aissa, [103]
• Akbou, [243]
• Alfa, [20], [156], [182], [191]
• Algiers, [14], [15], [17], [21], [27], [29]-37, [52], [113], [158]
• Allen, Sir Thomas, [28]
• Amine, [240]
• Amboise, [126]
• Anglo-Saxon Automobile Company, [175]
• Antony, [23]
• Arba, [176]
• Aschana, [109], [113]
• Atlas (Mountains), [19], [35], [36], [176], [286]
• Aumale, [126], [177], [273]
• Aurès (Mountains), [32], [35], [39], [180], [198], [221]
• Azazga, [237]
• Bugeaud, Marshall, [31], [125]
• Baghar and Baghari, [177], [256], [259]
• Barbarossa, [27], [235]
• Barbary Ape, [20], [236]
• Bash Adel, [53]
• Bash Agha, [36], [48]-57, [186], [217], [218], [256]-61, [269]
• Bagdad, [122]
• Bassour, [141], [142], [185]
• Batna, [166], [220]
• Beni Sgen, [197], [201], [203]
• Belisarius, [24]
• Berard, [166]
• Berriane, [194], [197], [201]
• Berbers, [22], [26], [32], [35]-39, [72], [102], [196], [198], [222], [239], [242]
• Bible, [117]
• Bir Rabalou, [176]
• Biskra, [15], [25], [35], [36], [65], [70], [213]
• Blida, [168]
• Borgeaud, Lucien, [168]
• Bône, [156]
• Bolskevik, [64]
• Bordeaux, [19], [153]
• Bou Noura, [197], [201], [204]
• Bourbaki, [256]
• Bouzigza Pass, [237]
• Bouira, [236]
• Bougie, [27], [156], [236]
• Bourmont, General, [29], [31]
• Bou Saada, [60], [65], [178], [179]
• Boutin, Colonel, [29], [30]
• Burdeau, [260]
• Bureau Arabe, [44]-53
• Burgundy, [19], [153]
• Bustard, [133], [135]
• Byzantine, [24], [35]
• Cæsar, [23], [166]
• Cæsarea, [166], [167]
• Caid, [36], [41], [49], [50], [53], [70], [142], [202], [218], [263], [270]
• Carthaginians, [22], [23], [102], [118], [196], [198]
• Casino, [214]
• Castiglians, [166]
• Cereals, [153]
• Cercles Militares, [44]
• Cervantes, [27], [162]
• Chambas, [143], [150], [201], [249]
• Charles X, [31]
• Charles Quint, [27], [30], [161], [236]
• Chellala, [60], [150], [273], [282], [285]
• Chenoua, [168]
• Cheops, [167]
• Cherchell, [166]-68
• Chorba, [78], [79]
• Christ, [28]
• Christianity, [24], [167]
• Cirta, [23], [232]
• Cleopatra, [23], [166]
• Coal, [155], [156]
• Cof Bouadda, [241]
• Cof Oufella, [241]
• Col de Fdoules, [234]
• Col de Texenna, [235]
• Col de Tigdint, [237]
• Col de Tirourda, [244]
• Colomb Bechar, [156]
• Commission Municipale, [41]
• Conseil Supérieur, [43]
• Communes Mixtes, [41], [43]
• Conseil du Gouvernment, [42]
• Constantine, [23], [36], [39], [125], [147], [153], [167], [231], [232]
• Cordova, [26]
• Cork, [21], [155], [235]
• Crésolles, Comtesse de, [227]
• Danse du Ventre, [92], [97]
• Dates, [156], [189], [211]
• Day of Judgment, [117]
• Décret Crémieux, [37]
• Delegations Financières, [43]
• Dellys, [168], [236]
• Derbouca, [94]
• Deval, Consul, [29]
• Divorce, [83]
• Djebel Amour, [137], [216], [262], [267], [275]
• Djebel Nefersa, [196]
• Djelfa, [177], [183]
• Djemila, [234]
• Djemma, [240]
• Djerba, [196], [235]
• Djidjelli, [226], [231], [234]-36
• Djujura, [237]
• Dress, Arab, [75]-76, [91]
• Droit Musulman, [53]
• Duquèsne, [28]
• Education, [128]-32
• El Ateuf, [197], [201], [204]
• Elaghouat, [188]
• El Golea, [36]
• El Hamel, [60], [180]
• El Kantara, [219]
• Estrés, d’, [28]
• Eton, [274]
• Exmouth, Lord, [28]
• Fabius Maximus, [23]
• Fantasia, [217]-18
• Fathima, [26]
• Fatimedes, [26]
• Fez, [15], [26]
• Fishing, [139], [269]
• Flute, [95]
• Fondouks, [250]
• Food, Arab, [78], [79]
• Fort de l’Eau, [164]
• Fort National, [244]
• Foxes, [138]
• Franco-Prussian War, [32]
• Garden of Allah, [215]
• Gazelles, [133], [135]
• Genesric, [24]
• Geranium, [154]
• Ghardaïa, [97], [150], [200]-03, [280], [291]
• Gibraltar, [25]
• Goethe, [68]
• Goums, [217]
• Governor-General, [40], [42], [49]
• Granada, [26]
• Grand Erg, [216]
• Guerrera, [197], [201], [209], [210]
• Hadj, [106]
• Hamilcar, [23]
• Hammam Meskoutine, [156]
• Hamman Rhira, [156]
• Hannibal, [23]
• Hanno, [23]
• Hares, [133]
• Hasdrubal, [23]
• Hauts Plateaux, [20], [33], [152], [156], [182]
• Hawks, [133], [134]
• Heaven, [117]
• Hell, [104], [117], [118]
• Hichens, Robert, [213]
• Hilals, [26]
• Hoggar, [35], [39], [208]
• Horses, [138], [152]
• Hot Springs, [156]
• Hussein Dey, [29], [30]
• Hyenas, [138]
• Ibadites, [106]
• Imam, [55], [59], [104], [110], [180], [257]
• India, [132]
• International Harvester Company, [153]
• Interprètes Judiciares, [52]
• Irrigation, [21], [191], [197]
• Islam, [55], [119], [127], [298]
• Itinerary of Journey, [173]
• Jackals, [138]
• Jardin Landon, [215]
• Jesus, [71], [103], [298]
• Jews, [37], [39], [61], [131], [192], [200]
• Juba, [23], [166]
• Jugurtha, [23]
• Kaaba, [106]
• Kabyle, [18], [32], [35], [80], [130], [155], [168], [198], [238], [245]
• Kadi, [53], [54], [81], [83], [109], [126], [261], [273]
• Kasba, [162]
• Keef, [290]
• Khaliphat, [49]
• Kharedjites, [106], [196]
• Khodja, [53]
• Koceila, [25], [216]
• Kolea, [168]
• Koran, [52], [58], [59], [66], [68], [69], [79], [89], [97], [107], [116]-20, [128], [129]
• Kouba, [122]
• Kourdane, [262], [264], [265]
• Kous-kous, [78], [79], [129], [277]
• Laghouat, [32], [34], [113], [147], [187]-193
• Lalla Aurelie, [60], [262]
• Lalla Zineb, [60], [262]
• Lambèse, [220], [221]
• Landon, Count, [215]
• Laperouse, [164], [165]
• Larbas, [143], [188], [249], [260], [280], [285]
• Lavigerie, Cardinal, [32], [131]
• League of Nations, [64]
• Lebon, Gustave, [65]
• Locusts, [247]
• Louis XIV, [28]
• Louis Phillipe, [31], [126]
• Lycées, [131]
• Mai-ea-Din, [123]
• Maison Carré, [164]
• Makante, [109]
• Malta, [29]
• Mandolins, [96]
• Marabout, [57]-63, [97], [104], [113], [141], [181], [188], [262], [268]
• Marengo, [168]
• Marriage, [81]
• Martel, Charles, [26]
• Mascara, [125], [154]
• Masseurs, [75], [286]
• Massinissa, [232]
• Matifou, [164]
• Mecca, [60], [123], [164]
• Mechoui, [78], [277], [279]
• Medea, [153], [259]
• Medersa, [52], [131]
• Mediterranean, [27], [28], [29], [158], [161], [164], [167], [236]
• Mehari, [212]
• Mektoub, [62], [115], [116]-21, [151], [258], [283]
• Melika, [195], [197], [201], [203]
• Metlili, [201]
• Michelet, [236], [244]
• Micipsa, [232]
• Mila, [234]
• Miliana, [153], [259]
• Mirage, [195]
• Missionaries, [107]
• Mitidja, [19], [125], [154], [155], [176]
• Moghreb, [146]
• Mohammed, [25], [36], [64], [101], [117]
• Moses, [298]
• Mosque, [84], [106], [161], [187], [202]
• Moufflon, [133], [137]
• Mouloud, [109]
• Muezzin, [55], [104]
• Mufti, [54], [61], [105], [109]
• Mustapha, [14], [158], [161]
• Mustapha Kemal, [93]
• Mzab, [35], [36], [195], [197]-99, [205], [209], [245]
• Mzi, [216]
• Napoleon I, [29]
• Napoleon, Louis, [126]
• Negroes, [98]
• Nomads, [38], [69], [72], [84], [130], [140], [185], [188]
• Numidia, [23], [99], [123], [146], [166]
• Octavius, [166]
• Oil, [156]
• Olive, [155]
• Oman, [196]
• Oranges, [154]
• Oranie, [17], [19], [32], [36], [39], [43], [153], [156], [197]
• Ouargla, [36], [197], [208]
• Ouarsenis, [35]
• Ouled Naïl, [90], [97], [143], [179], [182], [183]
• Palais Bourbon, [43]
• Palestro, [168], [236]
• Panthers, [133], [138]
• Paradise, [103], [104], [113]
• Partridge, [133]
• Pau, [126]
• Pères Blancs, [32], [131], [203]
• Phallic, [196]
• Phosphates, [156]
• Phylloxera, [153]
• Pigeons, [133]
• Phœnicians, [22], [35], [146], [157], [165], [237]
• Pilgrimage, [106]
• Pistachiers, [194]
• Polygamy, [82], [88], [241]
• Pompeii, [222]
• Prayer, [102], [103], [104], [105]
• Préfets, [41], [42]
• Public Library, [161]
• Purgatory, [118]
• Quail, [133]
• Quartier, Reservé, [61], [87]-93, [112]
• Race el Ame, [109]
• Raïta, [95], [98], [112], [180], [192], [217], [250]
• Ramadan, [109]-12
• Rebat, [57]
• Regnard, [27]
• Religion, [101], [109]
• Rhummel, [232]
• Riff, [199]
• Roman Empire, [19], [23], [24], [25], [118], [152], [157], [166], [225]
• Roumis, [130], [298]
• Rusgunium, [165]
• Sahara, [17], [18], [20], [21], [33], [36], [44], [47], [85], [123], [163], [186], [187], [260]
• Sahel, [30]
• Saints, [119], [122]
• Sakamody, [176]
• Scipio, [23], [196]
• Secrétaire-Général, [42], [44]
• Seguia, [191], [216]
• Senegalese, [99]
• Sersou, [18], [20], [31], [147], [156], [182], [245], [249], [260], [286]
• Sétif, [183], [221], [226]
• Seville, [26]
• Shakespeare, [68]
• Sheep, [146], [148], [192]
• Sheik, [50], [51]
• Sheridan, Mrs. Clare, [71]
• Shiahs, [106]
• Sidi Aissa, [177]
• Sidi Ferruch, [30], [123]
• Sidi Maklouf, [185]
• Sidi Obka, [25], [216]
• Sierra Leone, [23]
• Sirocco, [154], [255]
• Smala, [50], [125]
• Sofrites, [106]
• Spahi, [45]
• Spaniards, [27]
• Spells, [119], [121]
• Sport, [133]
• Spragg, Sir Edward, [28]
• Staoueli, [30], [153], [168]
• Stoddard, Lothrop, [65]
• Sudanese, [99]
• Sunnites, [106]
• Superstitions, [116], [243]
• Syphax, [167], [232]
• Taberkroutz, [235]
• Tadgemont, [268]
• Taguine, [31], [126], [270], [271]
• Talebs, [55], [120], [128], [129]
• Tam-tam, [62], [94], [96], [112], [180], [192], [217], [250]
• Tarik, [25]
• Tell, [17], [20], [35], [143], [152], [177], [256]
• Teniet el Haad, [19], [259]
• Territoires du Sud, [17], [43]
• Tiaret, [197]
• Tidjanis, [267]
• Tigzirt, [168], [236]
• Tiles, [161]
• Timgad, [220], [221], [222], [244]
• Tilrempt, [194]
• Tipaza, [165]-68, [259]
• Tizi, [236], [237], [244]
• Tlemçen, [26]
• Tobacco, [155]
• Tolga, [181]
• Tombeau de la Chrétienne, [166]
• Touaregs, [35], [198]
• Touggourt, [208], [212], [216]
• Toulon, [126]
• Tournin, [32]
• Transatlantique Cie., [172], [173], [178], [186], [215], [220], [244], [246], [252]
• Trappists, [30], [168]
• Tunis, [15], [26], [28]
• Tunisia, [22], [23], [40], [155]
• Turks, [27], [28], [30], [37], [161]
• Urdu, [132]
• Vandals, [24], [28], [35], [222]
• Vines, [19], [153]
• Violins, [96]
• Voltaire, [68]
• Voronoff, [62]
• White Fathers, [32], [131], [203]
• White Sisters, [80], [131], [203]
• Widows, [84]
• Wild Boar, [133], [135]
• Wine Drinking, [104]
• Witchcraft, [119]
• Women, Arab, [80], [241]
• Women, European, [69]
• Woodcock, [133]
• Yakouren, [237]
• Yusuf, General, [273]
• Zanzibar, [39], [196]
• Zaouia, [59], [60], [85], [181], [267]
• Zeraia, [226], [234]
• Zibans, [212], [217]
• Zouaoua, [240]
• Zouaves, [240]

[List of illustrations]

The Author	[Frontispiece]
	PAGE
[Map]	[14]
Algiers as It Was before the French Conquest in 1830	[20]
The Old Port of Algiers as it is To-day	[20]
An Arab Beggar	[36]
Scene of Arab Life	[36]
An Arab Barber	[54]
Roasting the Lamb Whole	[54]
Children Bathing in a Southern Oasis	[54]
A “Propriétaire”	[76]
Numidian Type: Musician of a Marabout	[76]
A Moorish Villa	[76]
An Arab Type	[90]
Arab Women Veiled	[90]
Girl of the Quarter	[90]
Women in the Cemetery, Algiers	[106]
A Beggar Woman	[106]
An Arab Tam-Tam Player	[106]
[Calendar]	[110]
Arab Band and Dancer about to Perform in a Southern Town	[124]
Pilgrimage to One of the Shrines of Abd-el-kader	[124]
Arabs with Flutist Waiting to See the Caravans Going North	[124]
A Water Carrier in Laghouat	[142]
Algerian Cavalryman	[142]
Head Shepherd, the Author, the Kaïd Madam and the Calipha	[142]
Caravan Moving North	[142]
A Street in the Kasbah, Algiers	[160]
Mosque of Sidi Abd-er-Rahmane	[160]
Café Outside Grande Mosque, Algiers	[160]
Sand Storm Getting up on the Sahara	[190]
Waterfall of Boiling Water, Hammon, Meskoutine	[190]
Arab Falconer Setting Out to Hunt	[190]
The Market-Place of Beni-Sgen	[204]
Channel for Watering the Garden of an Oasis	[204]
Street in Bou Saada	[204]
The Bridge of the Third Legion at El Kantara	[222]
An Arab of Tadjmout	[222]
The Departure of a Caravan in the Far South	[242]
Market Looking toward Trajan’s Arch, Timgad	[242]
Praetorium. Lambèse	[242]
Storks Nesting on the Roofs at Constantine	[262]
Bonfarik, Religious Print Seller	[262]
Vegetable Market	[262]
The Oasis of Guerrera, from the Maison Arabe	[288]
Roman Sarcophagus at Tipaza	[288]
Pictures Done by Roman Children on Damp Bricks Drying in the Sun	[288]