If the traveller intends to journey from Algeria into Tunisia, he will do well to visit Khabylia before he starts further east; if not he may proceed first to Constantine, and motor through the mountain districts from Sétif on his return. For the greater part of the way the great trunk road and the railway from Algiers to Constantine take a similar course; but towards the end they diverge, Constantine being situate north of the main line from Algiers to Tunis, at a distance of twenty miles from the junction of El-Guerrah, while the road passes through the city. Hence it comes that the distance by road is 434 kilometres, by rail 464. There are not many convenient stopping-places, perhaps Sétif is the best.
By train you may make the journey either by night or by day; the latter is preferable, as much of the scenery is beautiful and interesting. Leaving Algiers the line crosses the Metidja, the great plain which encircles the Sahel, the rocky promontory on which Algiers stands, stretching on either side of it from sea to sea. At Ménerville it begins to ascend, and shortly enters the Gorge of the Isser. The country here is very picturesque; the river roars through a narrow cleft in the rocks, Khabyle villages are perched on isolated points, and ruddy mountains stand bare against the deep blue sky. Palestro, a little further on, was the scene of a terrible and treacherous massacre in the Khabyle insurrection of 1871. The European residents, numbering over a hundred, were attacked in their residences. After a desperate resistance about half surrendered on terms, but were immediately killed. The remainder held out longer but about forty survivors, including thirty-two women and children, were ultimately captured and kept prisoners till the revolt was crushed.
Further on the line runs under the southern slope of the snowy Djurjura range, which is such a prominent object from Algiers. The view of the mountains is very fine. All the time the line is ascending, as it continues to do as far as Sétif, 200 miles from Algiers, and 3573 feet above the sea. Here we are in the centre of a vast corn-growing district, once the granary of Rome. The country-side is full of Roman remains, of towns and country-houses and farms. At this altitude the climate, if hotter in summer, resembles that of Central France. The landscape is very bare,—a vast sea of corn, without a tree to break its monotony. To the east of Sétif the plain begins to slope downwards; the railway diverges to the south, but the road enters the valley of the Roumel, the river which forms the moat of the rock-girt city of Constantine.
CONSTANTINE
Constantine occupies one of those positions of natural strength which from the earliest times man has seized upon as a habitation secure from the attack of his fellow-man. It is too much to suppose that its beauty had any force in such a selection. Yet it combines picturesqueness and grandeur with strength to a remarkable degree. A circular chasm or ravine, nearly 1000 feet deep, and sometimes not more than 200 feet wide, creates a plateau which is in fact a peninsula of rock, only united to the mainland by an isthmus on the west side. Through the abyss roars the river Roumel. The plateau is not circular, but in the form of an irregular square, with sharp angles,—a formation which greatly increases the majesty of its effect. The length of the sides averages about 1000 yards. In this confined space are crowded together the habitations of men,—the European quarter, the Arab quarter, and the Jewish quarter,—the public buildings incident to an important town, and considerable barracks and fortifications.
“Le fantastique Roumel, fleuve d’une poème qu’on croirait rêvé par Dante, fleuve d’enfer coulant au fond d’un abîme rouge comme si les flammes éternelles l’avaient brûlé. Il fait un île de sa ville, ce fleuve jaloux et surprenant; il l’entoure d’un gouffre terrible et tortueux, aux rocs éclatants et bizarres, aux murailles droites et dentelées.”[[7]]
[7]. Guy de Maupassant, “Au Soleil,” 1904.
A great part of the attraction of a city occupying such a site lies in its suggestion of romance. It calls up visions of furious siege and desperate defence, of attempts to scale impossible cliffs, of hand-to-hand encounter at the only gate. And the actual records of Constantine almost surpass the possibilities of romantic imagination. It can lay no claim to that happiness which comes from having no history. Alike from its commanding situation and the richness of its surrounding lands it has been marked out by nature to be an incentive to ambition. It has known many masters. It is said to have stood eighty sieges. Its apparent impregnability has but invited attack. It has been a necessary mainstay to the support of every power which has aspired to the lordship of Barbary. It has seldom been a fitting residence for those who desired a quiet life.
Under its early name of Cirta it was the capital of that dynasty of Numidian kings who fought first for Rome against Carthage, and then for themselves against Rome. It became in due course a Roman colony. In the fourth century it was ruined in the wars which rent the empire, and re-arose as Constantine. Re-naming, with a spice of subservience, was a passion of the time; even so to-day do the Piazza Umberto and Boulevard Carnot obliterate ancient landmarks. The frenzied quarrels of Christians and Christian heretics, which tore Africa to shreds, raged within its walls, but spared its buildings. Genseric the Vandal, and the Byzantine Belisarius were its lords in turn. Then came the Arab. Darkness broods over its history for centuries, broken only by lightning flashes of capture and recapture. The Barbarossa brothers recognized the truth that he who would rule in Algeria must hold Constantine. They and their successors conquered it, and lost it, and conquered it again. Its Beys were nominally subservient to the Deys of Algiers, but Constantine breeds insurrection, and maintained its traditions during the Turkish domination. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, during a period of thirty years, twenty Beys succumbed to poison, the bow-string, or the sword.