There came about fifty boats manned by wild-looking Arabs. They crushed round the steamer shouting and swearing at each other, and gesticulating to attract the attention of the passengers. When at last the signal was given they swarmed up the sides of the ship, and at once laid hold of all the luggage that was unguarded. Two or three men would lay hands on a bag and fight over it. Presently all the hand-bags and the rugs were in the boats; but some of the passengers found themselves in one boat, while their rugs and bags were being carried ashore in another. We managed to keep our things together, but for a quarter of an hour we had a bad time of it, and I had begun to doubt that the French had ever conquered Algiers, because these boatmen were so much like pirates.
When we landed, we were taken in tow by a handsome, barefooted Arab lad of about seventeen, who insisted upon shouldering all our bags and rugs, and putting a heavy portmanteau on his head, and conducting us to the Custom House. Here, to my utter astonishment, the Custom House officer, instead of asking if we had tobacco, cigars, eau-de-Cologne, or spirits, demanded sternly if we had any ‘verdure.’ I hesitated before replying. I have a considerable amount of verdure. I am as green in some things as a country bumpkin, but I hesitated to confess it in public. I might have parried the question with a joke, by asking the grave official if he saw any verdure in my eye, but his solemnity of manner overawed me. I ventured to ask what he meant by verdure. A French officer attached to the Bureau Arabe, who had crossed with us and become friendly, hastened to the rescue, and explained that ‘verdure’ means ‘green stuff’ at the Custom House. The officials were merely anxious to know if I had any fruit, flowers, or vegetables in my baggage.
The key to the enigma was soon supplied. Algeria is in a state of morbid terror lest the dreaded phylloxera should be imported from France and destroy her vines. Not a green leaf, not an orange, not a flower is allowed to pass the Custom House. I assured the official that I had nothing of the sort, when, with a sudden yell, he sprang at me and seized me by the coat. Two soldiers ran to his assistance, a crowd gathered around me, and, amid the indignant cries of the multitude, a poor little faded rosebud was torn from my buttonhole. I had taken it from the dinner-table on board ship, put it in my buttonhole, and had forgotten it was there. I believe that the rosebud was put into a boat at once, rowed out ten miles to sea, and sunk in the Mediterranean by means of a big stone tied to its stalk. My own fate was less terrible. I was severely lectured and allowed to pass, but for many days afterwards, when I walked abroad in the town, the inhabitants turned and gazed after me with scowling faces, and muttered imprecations on the head of the ‘Sale Anglais,’ who had basely endeavoured to introduce the phylloxera into Algeria.
Once free of the Custom House, Achmet, our young Arab, conducted us to hotel after hotel. All were full. At last we succeeded in getting two rooms on a top landing. Achmet carried our luggage up, and then asked us for the ticket of the heavier portmanteaux, which were in the ship’s hold, and could not be got out till the morning. I hesitated, but Albert Edward instantly handed it to him. ‘Trust him,’ he said; ‘an Arab never betrays a trust.’ And so Achmet walked off with the ticket of our portmanteaux.
At nine the next morning ragged, barefooted Achmet knocked at our door. He wanted the keys of our baggage to pass it at the Custom House. We gave them to him, and in an hour the lad came to the hotel and brought the baggage, and returned the keys. And not so much as a handkerchief or a pair of socks had disappeared. To me this is one of the most wonderful features of my journey. Here was a lad—almost a beggar lad—utterly unknown to us, we could not even recognise him in the crowd of Arabs that haunt the quays, and we had trusted him blindly and implicitly with the sole custody and control of valuable property. I shouldn’t like to try the same experiment in London or anywhere else. And it wouldn’t do to try it in Algiers with a European boy of the same position. This is one great feature of the Arab character. Trust them, and they would die rather than betray the trust; suspect them and guard against their dishonesty, and they will glory in robbing and tricking you at the first opportunity.
For his trouble and his civility I gave Achmet a five-franc piece. He grinned and smiled and chuckled, and tied it up in a piece of rag, and put it in his bosom. I asked him what he was going to do with it. ‘Ah! monsieur, it will help to buy me a wife,’ replied Achmet, and then he told us how he was saving up to get £5 that he might buy a wife. An old woman had told him of a very pretty girl, and the father only wanted 125 francs for her. I engaged Achmet there and then to do all my little commissions for me, and to accompany me to the Arab quarter, and show me everything; and I promised him that if he was good, before I left Algeria I would give him the balance he needed, and leave him a happy married man.
The Arab marriage system is curious but simple. There can be no love and no courtship about it. That must come after marriage, because the Arab husband never sees his wife’s face, or speaks to her until the marriage ceremony has been performed. Old women are the match-makers. They see the Arab girls at home, and describe their beauty in glowing Eastern language to the eligible Arab men. A young fellow is kind to an old woman, runs errands for her (I am speaking of Achmet’s class now), and in return she gives him ‘the straight tip’ as to whose daughter to buy for a wife. Achmet had saved his old lady friend from being insulted by a drunken Zouave, and she had rewarded him by telling him of the beautiful Saidah Bint Mohammed, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Mohammed Ben Omar, the old Arab donkey-driver of the Upper Town. Papa wanted 150 francs, but he would take 125. Achmet was in great terror lest some other young fellow should hear of the bargain first.
These young Arab women are rarely seen in the streets. The old women and the divorced women (women sent back to their fathers) go about, but closely veiled, so that only the eyes are visible. The Arab divorce is curious, and, like the marriage system, singularly easy. An Arab with too many wives who wants to get rid of one, or the poor Arab with one who wants a change in his domestic circle, says to the wife, ‘I divorce thee.’ This he must say three times at a week’s interval. The girl then goes back to her father, and takes all her jewellery, and any property she brought with her. Divorce, however, is not very frequently resorted to. Husband and wife jog along together. Jealousy does not exist on the female side, and the wife has very little opportunity of causing her lord uneasiness. There is nothing in the domestic arrangements to cause words. The Arab husband does not dine with his wife, and it never enters into her head to object to his latchkey and late hours at the café.
The system of polygamy prevents the poor Arab from feeling the pressure of a large family, and the labour market is not affected by female competition. These people escape the difficulties of our London poor. A man’s sons work for him at a very early age, and the daughters are all marketable. When they are very pretty they are really valuable property. Besides this, the Koran commands charity, and there is no such thing as an Arab who has been true to his faith dying of hunger. Arabs, again, are forbidden by their religion to drink intoxicants. An Arab can cross Africa from Morocco to the Soudan with nothing in his pocket. Shelter and food are offered him gratis by every tribe he meets. The rich help the poor, not as an act of charity, but as an act of religion. Islamism does not at present enjoy the benefit of the teaching of the Charity Organization Society.
With Achmet to accompany me, and Albert Edward to exchange Arabic pleasantries with the natives, I have been able to sit among them at their own cafés, to chat with them in their bazaars, and to visit some of them in their homes. To me this has been more instructive than wandering about the famous old town of the pirates and its picturesque environs. No one can look without emotion for the first time on this once blood-bespattered spot, on the wild African coast from which the scourges of Christendom sailed forth to sweep the seas and then desolate the neighbouring lands; to bring back thousands of slaves—the men to toil their lives away in cruel bondage, and the women to be sold in the great market to the wealthy lords of vast harems—no one, I say, can look upon this spot without feeling stirred and interested. But, after all, the proper study of mankind is man. The condition of a race existing is a more useful study than the story of a race which has passed away. Algiers has had its Dey, and now it has its Governor-General; but I doubt much whether the Arabs of Algeria are really fonder of the French soldiers than the Christians of old were of the Moorish corsairs.