VI—TLEMÇEN THE HOLY
Western Algeria—Sidi Bel Abbès—The Foreign Legion—A city of learning—Its inhabitants—The Mosque of Aboul Hassan—Mansoura—Its story—Sidi Bou Medine—Oran—Spanish immigrants.
“A city dreaming of her ancient pride
Amid the orchards on her mountain-side;
Do you sleep sound, O saint that shares her fame,
While stranger horsemen through her portals ride?”
Far to the west, beyond Oran, and close to the frontiers of Morocco, lies a hill city, once the seat of empire and of learning, but now sunk to the condition of a provincial town. Yet Tlemçen has occupied so high a position in the Mohammedan world, and the reputation of its existing monuments is so widespread, that the enterprising traveller will desire to visit it. The distance from Algiers is great, some 800 miles there and back, and as there is little of interest on the road, a journey by motor-car is not inviting. It is perhaps better to make use of the excellent train service between Algiers and Oran. If you leave Algiers at nine p.m., you may change about six a.m. at a junction a little short of Oran and reach Tlemçen about eleven. Or you may go on to Oran and hire a motor-car for the remaining 110 miles, which it will cover faster than the train does. In any case it is a tiresome journey. The road and the rail alike rise through a series of great plains divided by rocky steps, and chiefly devoted to corn-growing. The country is very bare and very uninteresting. There are few trees. It is said to have been once well wooded, but, although the Arab will take care of a tree near his house or his mosque, he has no regard for trees in general. So countless generations of browsing goats have made an end of the woods. One cannot but think that more attention to re-afforesting would meet with its reward.
Here, as elsewhere in Algeria, both in the plain and on the mountain side, the traveller will notice a number of square whitewashed buildings, surmounted by a cupola. They are known by the name of koubba, and are generally the tomb of a marabout or saint, and serve as objects of pilgrimage and much local veneration.
At Sidi Bel Abbès, a town of 25,000 inhabitants, about half of whom are Spaniards, are the head-quarters of the famous Foreign Legion. The very name of this corps stirs memories of forlorn hopes and dare-devil enterprises. The inimitable Ouida, whose disregard of the grammatical niceties of her own and other tongues was a generation ago the delight of undergraduates; who could say of her high-born hero that he ignored the proud motto of his haughty race, Pro patria et rege, and acted on the principle, Pro ego; Ouida has pictured for us after her own fashion, in “Under Two Flags,” the life of a foreign adventurer in the French service during the earlier days of the occupation. The picture, if imaginative in details, is full of life, and it is no doubt true that many broken men of gentle birth and upbringing found in the campaigns on the verge of the Sahara an outlet for energies for which civilization had no use. To-day the Legion is composed largely of Alsatians, Germans and Poles, and is celebrated for its band. But it is still to the fore when stern work is on foot. The situation of Sidi Bel Abbès renders it very convenient in the event of trouble with Morocco, which is constantly recurring. The town and its environs are an agreeable exception to the surrounding country in being pleasantly wooded. The olive trees are most carefully pruned, all the centre branches being cut out, and the outer ones trained to form a cup. This system admits light and air to the fruit, and facilitates the gathering of the crop.