MOUNTAIN LIFE IN ALGERIA.
CHAPTER I.
EFORE leaving Algiers, my friend Muirhead and I engaged a Frenchman as a servant, who undertook, in accompanying us, to guard the tent during our absence, and to cook.
This matter being arranged, he went with us on a shopping expedition, when we purchased the necessary kitchen utensils, and got them packed in a conveniently shaped box. We filled our empty tins with provisions, and supplied ourselves with a few medicines, a precautionary measure that happily proved superfluous.
Muirhead bought an excellent folding camp-bed at Attaracks’, the army purveyors. For myself, I took an Indian bullock-trunk, containing clothes, books, and a store of photographic gelatine plates; and a box with painting materials and a camera. Folding irons by uniting these two packages formed a bedstead, upon which a cork mattress could be spread. A carpenter made for me a flat case to hold canvases, which served also as an easel, having pieces of wood so arranged on one side that they could be slipped down to form leg supports. This proved convenient; it was strong, so simple that it could not get out of order, and it could be adjusted so as to stand firm however uneven the ground.
Our preparations completed, we took places in the diligence leaving for Tizi-Ouzou, a French settlement on the borders of Kabylia. We started April 6, 1880.
The diligence left at the inconvenient hour of eight o’clock in the evening, and arrived at its destination at eight the following morning; we had a very uncomfortable, sleepless ride, and at Tizi-Ouzou only remained long enough to breakfast, after which we took the omnibus for Fort National.
The fort is built in a commanding position, at the top of a mountain 3,153 feet in height. The road at first passes through a plain, crosses the river Sebaou, which is not bridged and is liable to freshets after rain, when it becomes impassable.