The best way to get an idea of Algiers as a whole is to row out into the bright blue bay. Then you see as pretty a picture as ever was sent to a Royal Academy. The town seems to rise from the sea in a series of shining white marble terraces. Above the European quarter lies the old Arab town—white and weird and wonderful. But it is the background that makes the picture. The glorious green heights that frame the landscape are dotted with French villas and Moorish palaces, amid the rich colouring of tropical fruit and flower, and, high over all, stretching far away into the dim distance, are the snowclad summits of the Atlas Mountains.
But the greatest beauty of all lies in the sky and the sea and the sun, and the ever-glowing, smiling landscape. You can’t describe this sort of thing—at least, I can’t. My stock of adjectives is small, and I should exhaust it in a paragraph if I tried to depict the loveliness of this favoured spot.
The best of scenery soon palls on me, but the ever-changing, ever-moving crowd never does. I should like to have the great gathering-place of Algiers, the Place du Gouvernement, packed and exported to London for my especial benefit. Always at my dark hour, when I begin to wonder whether razors or poisons or water-butts are the best solutions of the enigma of life, I would go and sit down on the Place du Gouvernement, and my dark hour would give way to the dawn—nay, to the full glory of the noonday sun. What a marvellous crowd it is that saunters up and down! The stately Arab, spurning the ground as he paces it in white burnous; the gaudy Moor, in his bright blue, gold-embroidered jacket, short white trousers, and red fez; the Jew, with his yellow turban, his black jacket, and his many-coloured sash; the black Bedouins of the desert; the Greek; the Turk; the Maltese; the swarthy, fierce-eyed Spaniard; the French Zouaves and Turcos; the raven-haired, lustrous-eyed daughters of Spain and Southern Italy; the Arab woman, veiled upwards to the nose and downwards to the eyes—how you wonder what they look like behind that tantalizing gauze!—the Jewess, with her straight silk robe and slippered feet—all these races mix and commingle with the dandy Frenchman and the commonplace Englishman, and make a ‘bit of colour’ which it would be hard to find equalled anywhere.
How one despises broadcloth and chimney-pot and all the sober hues of cockneydom as one gazes on this scene! I feel that even I might begin to find a few minutes’ pleasure in life if I could only dress myself up in one of these romantic garbs and wear a bright-coloured sash instead of braces, and shining buff boots or scarlet slippers. If I could wear these things and have a fierce black moustache and a turban or a fez, I am quite sure the world would also wear a different aspect. Of course I may be wrong. It is quite possible that these picturesque people who eye me as I pass are envying me my prosaic billycock hat and my tallow-coloured complexion and my commonplace black coat.
How these people ever get about Algiers without spoiling their finery is a great mystery to me. I have not been out five minutes before I am mud-colour from top to toe—not black mud; that does not exist here—but a brown-coloured mud, which dries café-au-lait, or fawn colour, and shows up splendidly on your dark garments. The roads of Algiers are awful. They are sometimes a foot thick in light, liquid mud. If you take an open carriage, you might as well put the mud on with a whitewash-brush at starting to save trouble. The administration of Algiers does not worry itself about such a thing as road-making or road-sweeping. The mayor is a learned professor, and the council probably join with him in learned discussions on abstruse questions. They never do anything for Algiers.
To take a good drive in the neighbourhood you want nerves of iron. One Sunday I drove a roundabout way to our Lady of Africa, the church that stands on the summit of the high hill of Bou Zarea. Two little Arab horses drew me, and the driver left the path to them. He only attended to the pace, which was the maximum all the way. Go up the side of a house and down the side of a house in an open carriage at full speed, then dash round the house on the extreme verge of the gutter, then, without getting out of the carriage, make your steeds jump from the roof of one detached house to the next, then drive straight across a row of roofs, taking the centre and never turning to the right or the left merely because a stack of chimneys is in the way—do all this, and you will then be able to understand the sort of drives my coachman takes me in Algeria. I am told the precipices and the ravines we pass over and the mountains we scale are grand and glorious. I can’t say; I always, when I come to them, shut my eyes, and wonder whether they will think to join my pieces together before they pack me for transportation to England, just to see if I am ‘all there.’
Our Lady of Africa stands upon a precipice overlooking the sea. Here I saw a ceremony which is, I believe, unique. The priests and the acolytes, and the whole religious procession, filed out after prayers and stood on the brow of the precipice. Then began a grand and beautiful service. The priest ‘blessed the sea,’ and then performed a solemn funeral service for all those who have died therein. It was a very impressive service, and it was a very lovely idea. Some of us were so touched by the solemn ceremony at the edge of that vast grave that we broke down a little. Amid the sad-faced women who stood around there were evidently some to whom the prayers for the dead who lay beneath the sad sea-waves brought back the loved face lost, the vanished hand, and the sound of the voice for ever still. The ceremony is one no visitor to Algiers should miss, but it leaves a sadness on the mind which does not soon pass away.
The interior walls of Our Lady of Africa are covered with votive offerings from the faithful, chiefly pictures of wrecks and narrow escapes by land and sea, from fire and water, which are intended to commemorate the miraculous intercession of the Holy Virgin; and there is also to be seen a very quaint statue of the Archangel Michael, usually hidden behind drapery, and which is said to be worth a hundred thousand francs, being made of solid silver. It is the property of a confraternity of Neapolitan fishermen. The church of Our Lady of Africa is the place of worship of Mediterranean seafarers, irrespective of nationality; and Spanish smugglers, Italian fishermen and French sailors forget their differences when they kneel down in prayer before her shrine.
The village of Bou Zarea, which is built on a slope of the mountain, lies 1,300 feet above the sea, and from it you can get some idea of what this coast must have looked like in the days of the Deys and the pirates. Every prominent point is studded with the ruins of a fort, or the tomb of a saint. These tombs, properly called koubbas, but usually styled marabouts by the French, are often exceedingly picturesque. Just behind us, half a mile up the mountain, there is the koubba of Sidi Naaman, a venerated patriarch who worked miracles while in the flesh, and whose fame is still green among the Arabs. But this is but one in a hundred, or a thousand, and there are few pretty spots on the seashore or in the mountain without a koubba.
One day, while wandering in the hills, I came upon one of these koubbas, the tomb of a very celebrated marabout, whose life had been one of holiness. I was quite alone, there was not a living soul to be seen, so I opened the door of the mausoleum and walked in. To my surprise, I found inside the tomb a beautiful bed hung with gorgeous draperies, and by the side of the bed was a little table, on which stood a plate of oranges, a plate of bananas, and a plate of dates. I fancied I had mistaken somebody’s one-roomed house for a tomb, so I crept out cautiously and walked away. The same evening, while talking with a French officer, I related my adventure, and he explained the mystery.