From these heights—mountainous and æsthetic—it will probably be the lot of the traveller to descend by easy stages to the town of Oran, which, as a commercial port, is the rival of Algiers. Unless he desires to do deal in olive oil or esparto grass, or intends to become a shipper of fine clarets and burgundies, it will not detain him long. Yet it is pleasant for an hour or two to sit before one of its brilliant cafés and survey the palpitating life of the streets. Oran is more than half Spanish; it is historically almost wholly Spanish. To-day, if you inquire of a stranger your way in French he will very likely reply by asking if you have the Spanish, and if you have it not you must try again. But the Spaniards, great builders in Europe and beyond the seas, built little but fortifications on the African shore. Oran is frankly modern and European in aspect; the most Oriental-looking building is the railway-station. The French have built fortifications too; a picturesque fort crowns a hill to the west, a thousand feet above the town; and there is much show of strength below. And there is an important garrison. Brilliant groups of officers frequent a café at the corner of the Place d’Armes, and get through a most unconscionable amount of hand-shaking. I notice that one of them, apparently a Siamese, who yet sips his sirop as to the manner born, is the object of much attention. With the mass of the café’s frequenters the soldiers appear to have no acquaintance. These men of business are Frenchmen in manner and speech, but there is a prevalence of that Levantine air which pervades the Mediterranean ports;—not quite Greek, not quite Jew, and yet not wholly European.
If there is one institution more characteristically French than another, it is the Café. And, further, it is an institution which no other people, unless it speaks French, as do the Belgians, can reproduce. France has set the mode to Europe for centuries, but it has reserved the café. The other Latin nations are content with bastard imitations; the northern peoples frankly own their failure. Who can conceive a café in Hull or Aberdeen? Not more incongruous was the attempted battle of flowers in a Lancashire town,—the mayor had visited Monte Carlo,—which ended in the choockin’ o’ loomps o’ coal and the military being called out. It is not a matter of climate; Brighton and Worthing have climatic advantages over Boulogne and Dieppe. It is rather a matter of character. The café depends for its existence on French moderation and French civility, in the widest sense. The German in his beer-garden piles empty glass on empty glass; the Englishman lolls at his reeking bar; only the Frenchman can be trusted to sit at his will at his little marble table, and contemplate his little drinks, and play his little games. He does not exceed, he does not quarrel; if he did either, the café were impossible. So is he a free man, while we for our sins must submit to stringent regulations of police.
Oran’s fine old Spanish fort and the ancient walls still speak of the Spanish dominion. It was a penal station to which convicts were sent, and the governors were in the habit of putting their labour to some useful purpose. An inscription records that the citadel was built at no cost to his Catholic Majesty but for the timber and scaffolding. After repeated struggles the town was surrendered to the Turks in 1791, a very convenient arrangement, as things turned out, for the French, who occupied it forty years later. And they have made it what it is. Yet among the lower orders the Spanish element is perhaps still preponderant. To paraphrase the words of a French writer[[6]]—"the peasants of Valencia and Murcia have only a few hours of sea to cross, and a bad season at home brings them in hundreds. If they find no work in and around Oran as gardeners they betake themselves to the country, and become field-labourers, or harvesters of esparto grass. Sober and industrious, they are especially fitted to the conditions of cultivation in Algeria, which without irrigation is unproductive. They have in their veins the blood of those Moors who taught Spain to husband her waters. Oran is for them almost their own country, the two sides of the Mediterranean have identical characteristics; and in the smallest villages of the province they find themselves at home among their own people."
[6]. P. Bourde.
It is interesting to recall in this connection that the increase of emigration from Spain generally is becoming a very serious matter. It reaches the annual average of 200,000 persons, or considerably more than one per cent of the total population. The late Government in 1907 dealt with the matter, and appointed a Conseil Supérieur de l’Emigration, which took the exceedingly futile course of endeavouring to check it by police interference with persons arriving at a port to emigrate, the arrest of emigration agents, and complicated regulations affecting steamship companies, which it has been found impossible to carry out. The chief effect has been to conceal a certain amount of emigration, which doubtless exceeds the official figures. The present radical Government, pledged to reform in every department of the national life, is attempting to check unemployment and emigration by a scheme of extensive public works. Meantime under French institutions, Spaniards are living contentedly and prosperously in a country marked out by nature for their occupation, which they were never able to secure for themselves.
VII—THE CITY OF PRECIPICES
Road and rail to the eastward—Constantine—Its remarkable site—Its chequered history—French Conquest—Roman remains—Fronto—The Mairie—The road northward—The Aurès.
“A towered citadel a pendant rock.”
Antony and Cleopatra.