To outward appearance Algiers is a busy French town. But when we come to probe below the surface we find that the Golden East, with its leisurely and slipshod methods, holds us in fee. The mere sending of a common telegram is no light matter. I desired to telegraph five words to an inhabitant of the city of Funchal in the island of Madeira. I took the despatch to a branch office at Mustapha, officered by female clerks. It caused some commotion. The young women laid their heads together, pored over several tattered volumes, and finally informed me, with a certain touch of commiseration, that the charge was four francs and fifteen centimes a word. Now as the charge from London is one shilling a word, this was obviously too much. What visions of Madagascar or Macao they had conjured up I know not; they are, I believe, both islands, both, like Macedon, Monmouth and Madeira, have M’s in them, and both are distant enough to justify some such charge. I tried to point out that Madeira does not ride in such remote seas, but to no purpose; and wearily I betook myself to the chief post office. This is a magnificent building in the finest style of neo-Arab art, glorious within and without. It is agreeable to find that the French authorities are now erecting great buildings in the local style, instead of reproducing the monotonous ugliness of the Third Empire. If only the Boulevard facing the harbour could be so transformed, the view of the port would indeed be worth looking at. In this resplendent Temple of Mercury one youthful clerk is considered sufficient to receive the telegrams of Algiers. He took my paper, counted the words backwards and forwards, and said airily, “Un franc.” I inquired whether he meant for each word, or for the whole. He replied for the whole. Now he was evidently erring on the side of moderation, as his sisters had erred on the side of excess. I protested that I would not pay so little. Books were consulted, higher officials interviewed, many shoulders shrugged and many palms spread, but to no purpose. Meantime in a somewhat impatient queue the telegraphic business of Algiers stood waiting. At length I was invited to state what I would like to pay, and I suggested a suitable amount. It was then discovered that as the charge for Teneriffe, which is also situate in the Atlantic Ocean, is one franc twenty centimes (or thereabouts) a word, this figure might not be unsuitable for Madeira; on that basis the account was adjusted, and Algiers restored, after a considerable interval, to telegraphic communication with the outer world.
Although the words colonization and colonists are on everybody’s lips, Algeria is not in fact a colony. It is attached to the Ministère de l’Intérieur, and is therefore technically a part of France. It is divided into three departments, each of which sends to Paris two deputies and one senator. The suffrage is “universal,” but confined to citizens of French origin or naturalized. The Mohammedan natives are subjects, not citizens. A colonial air is given by the existence of a Governor-General, appointed by the President on the advice of the Ministre de l’Intérieur. The organization of local government is similar to that of France.
II—THE CORSAIR CITY
The old town—The Arab ménage—The Penon—Barbarossa—French achievements and shortcomings—The Arab house—Christian slavery—Lord Exmouth.
“That execrable sum of all villanies.”—Wesley.
A perambulation of the town of Algiers removes much of the impression of its over-modernization which is received on landing. The boulevards facing the sea and the streets immediately behind them are all new, but where the hill begins to rise steeply the traveller will pass at a step from the French city to the old Arab town. A greater contrast could not be imagined. The French love broad streets, lofty houses, big windows, open spaces, and above all straight lines. The Arab town is a labyrinth of narrow lanes, twisting and curling according to no sort of plan, in fact to all appearance so inextricably confused and so full of blind alleys that one might suppose no living man capable of mastering their meanderings. But a stranger need be under no apprehension of being lost. He has only to keep ascending to reach the Kasbeh, the old Turkish fort at the top of the town, or descending, a course which sooner or later will bring him back to civilization. The lanes are very narrow, in many cases only just wide enough to permit a horseman to pass a foot-passenger; and as a rule the first floors of the houses, supported on diagonal cedar poles, in themselves an interesting and picturesque feature, extend over the footways, and almost meet. In many cases the road is completely vaulted. Beyond the general suggestion of ancientry there is really little in this old town to engage the attention of the stranger; a few charming marble doorways of conventional Arab design; an occasional glimpse of a colonnaded court-yard within; that is all. Writers on Algiers have strained their vocabularies in frenzied efforts to make something of this curious maze of dwellings; to produce any effect they have generally had to fall back on their imagination of what is happening behind those locked portals and those heavily barred windows; of that life of the Orient of which we know and comprehend nothing. Perhaps there is nothing very extraordinary to be known. The sombre, tyrannical master and husband, the infantile and enslaved wife,—that is our general impression of the Oriental ménage. Yet even Arab wives are not dumb animals, and all men that are born of women are born to be henpecked. Perhaps even here les paroles de l’oreiller have their force, and it may be that the stately lord sometimes meets his match.
“From a vixen wife protect us well;
Save us, O God! from the pains of hell,”
says The Gulistān. The conventional sternness of the husband’s control suggests a sense of his own weakness. It certainly confesses a curious diffidence as to his own charms, perhaps with reason, for, says an Arab proverb, “Quand la femme a vu l’hôte, elle ne veut plus de son mari.” So even if the Western idea of Mohammedan domestic tyranny is correct (I am far from believing that it is), we may at least console ourselves with the hope that the wife sometimes has as much of her own way as is good for her.
