“He saw it falling, filling,
And sinking in the main;
For him—his eyes were sinking—
He never drank again.”[3]
That was indeed a jovial and glorious death! I could not wish a better.
After daybreak we marched to Mostaganem, which stands half a league from the sea, and took up our quarters in some wooden sheds under the walls of Matamor.
Matamor is a small Moorish fort built on a rock commanding the town. Here the Spaniards formerly won a great victory over the Moors, and thence the name Matamoros (kill the Moors).
Mostaganem is separated from this fort by a considerable brook, which rises at about two leagues up the mountain. The town is accessible only from the south, by one solitary gate; on every other side it is surrounded by a deep ravine at the bottom of which roars a mountain torrent, or by lofty and precipitous walls of rock. It would therefore seem easy enough to defend Mostaganem against any attack, but unfortunately Fort Matamor, which should protect the town, itself needs protection, as it is commanded by a neighbouring height, and its walls are not of sufficient strength to resist heavy ordnance; and thus it was that the French obtained possession first of the fort and subsequently of the town.
Mostaganem contains four or five thousand inhabitants, Arabs, Spaniards and Jews, besides the French regiment in garrison. The town must formerly have been much larger, as is shown by the number of ruins scattered without the walls; but, with the exception of a few mosques, there is no building of any importance. The former citadel, the Casabah, is in ruins, and is only garrisoned by some fifty or sixty pairs of storks who have founded a colony on the extensive walls.
Almost as much Spanish is spoken here as French or Arabic. Nearly all the natives speak a corrupt Spanish, a kind of lingua franca, which prevails in all the towns on the coast of Africa. The younger generation, however,—boys from 10 to 14—speak French with tolerable fluency, but somewhat marred by their deep guttural tone. The ease with which Arabs and Bedouins continue to imitate whatever they have but once seen or heard is very remarkable. Nature seems to have bestowed this gift of imitation on half-savage nations to compensate them for the want of original invention.