It is hard to instil different principles into these wild people, as they are very hostile to all forms of European interference, and it is with the utmost difficulty that the children are made to go to the French school.
What is still more extraordinary to note is the fact that men who have been educated and who have actually been to Europe will return to their villages and, without the smallest hesitation, rebegin their old life, sleeping on the floor near their donkeys or their horses, while the women chop wood and do the rough work. Neither are these isolated cases as, since the war, many an old soldier, realizing the unequal struggle in his own country, has gone to France as a workman in a factory, and during that period has made money which has been regularly sent back to the family in the mountains, but once weary of Europe he has returned to his people to lead the same life as before. Berbers they were two thousand years ago, Berbers they are still, and, like the men of the Mzab and of the Hoggar, of the Aurès and of the Riff, they remain unaltered, and there seems little prospect of anything changing them.
As in the Mzab, the villages differ considerably from those of the Arabs of the plain. Here again we find the town built on a pinnacle. Practically every peak in the Kabyle Mountains is dominated by a group of houses which cling dizzily above steep precipices. The houses themselves are small, low and squalid; the better ones consist of three rooms very slightly separated from one another. One room for the men, one for the women and children, and one for the animals, but there are many cases where men and beasts all dwell together.
The Departure of a Caravan in the Far South
Market Looking toward Trajan’s Arch, Timgad
Praetorium. Lambèse
The men are poorly dressed, and one never sees the prosperous white robes of the Mzabite nor the costly burnous of the Arab chief, but in spite of their rags they stalk along the road, stick in hand, the head high, and a look of defiance in their clear eyes. The women, on the other hand, wear brilliant colors—red and yellow and green; their heads are wrapped in high turban-like head-dresses consisting of many scarfs wound one above the other. Their faces, unveiled, are handsome and, contradictorily to their status, have usually an expression of great gaiety. Like most people who have never known anything better, their lot seems to them normal, and they have no other ambition.