Quite apart from the official masters, there are the White Fathers and White Sisters. These good people have posts in all the far-flung posts of the French colonies, and their devotion to duty is an example to all. Founded by Cardinal Lavigerie about 1865, their work in North Africa is beyond all praise, and they have done more to pacify the country than any soldiers or politicians. They do not try to convert their pupils, but teach them some trade or occupation, at the same time instilling into their minds principles of good living and moral obligations. The White Fathers produce some wonderful leather work from their workshops, and the Sisters’ carpets are the best examples of Arab workmanship one can find. They also run a small school where they teach all elementary matters, including religion. The Arab children do not usually attend these classes but the Jews do. I have talked to Jewish parents on this apparent contradiction of their principles, but they have replied that the teaching of the Sisters is so much superior to that of the lay schools that they prefer their children to receive it, and the parents can always counteract at home any of the Christian doctrines.
The Lycées in Algiers, and for that matter in France, are open to all Arabs who like to pay to send their sons there. Some Arab chiefs make a point of doing so, but it is noticed that the boys do not really reap the benefits of this education but return to their homes without much more knowledge than their brothers who have studied in the local schools, and with all the vices of the Europeans with whom they have come in contact.
What does strike an Englishman is the enormous proportion of Arabs who talk fluent French. In India it is the officer and the official who have to learn Urdu to make themselves understood among the natives; in Algeria it is the native who must learn French. This is carried to such an extent that in some of the communes mixtes of the north the little Arab boys are not learning their own language as a channel of conversation.
The south is different, as only a few nomads can say a word of French, but in time the language of the conqueror will impose itself into the farthest recesses of the Sahara. It is another example of the results obtained by an administration which at first sight seems a contradiction to all sense, and which yet produces wonderful results.
CHAPTER XIX
SPORT AMONG THE ARABS
The Arab who has not become softened by life in European towns thinks more of sport than of anything else. His greatest ambition is to own a horse, and the possession of a breech-loading gun is a dream he rarely realizes. With his old muzzle-loading blunderbuss, however, he does wonderful shooting, and rams down the charge with amazing rapidity.
Game of all kinds abounds in Algeria—partridge, hares, woodcock, bustard, pigeons, quail, wild boar, gazelle, moufflon, and occasional panthers in the mountains. I will discuss the various methods of shooting the animals as employed by the Arabs, as, with rare exceptions, sport in the country is organized by them. Small game is either walked up or driven; usually driven, as the areas are so wide and open that it is difficult to approach within range of the birds. Hares can be walked, and they make very pretty shots as they dart round the tufts of alfa; the bustard seems to be a bulky target and does not appear to fly very fast, but is not too easy to hit. Dogs are taken out, but they are badly trained, and it is preferable to leave them at home and rely on native boys to pick up the game.
The most interesting way of hunting the small game in the south is mounted, with hawks. The breed is a kind of small falcon, and unlike those trained in India and other countries, which once captured are kept as long as they can fly, these hawks of North Africa are caught in the autumn and are released again in the spring as soon as the molting season begins. What is still more curious is that the same birds are found again the following year by the falconers, with their young, to be trained for the first time. A hawk is an expensive luxury, and costs four or five hundred francs to buy, while a falconer must be mounted, clothed, fed, and paid a salary. But it is a noble sport, and perhaps one of the most picturesque in the world.
A meeting-place is fixed, and the party rides out in twos and threes, or, in the case of the rich, send on their horses, and motor there in comfort. When every one is assembled a long line is made, converging at the two extremities so as almost to make three sides of a square; the falconers, with the birds, capped, perching on their turbans or shoulders, ride in the center. The horsemen slowly advance. Suddenly there is a shout—a hare has got up; the line steadies its pace, for it is against all rules in any way to hunt the hare until the falcon has got to work. This does not take long, however, for in a second a bird is uncapped and is soaring rapidly up into the air, a second bird has followed it, perhaps a third.
Up they go, flying swiftly above the hunted beast. Suddenly the first falcon swoops down toward the earth, then up again. He has missed, but before the hare has got over this first escape the second falcon comes down; if he misses, the third is there; and, with cries of delight, the Arabs ride up to see the prey held firmly in the falcon’s talons as he pecks savagely at the head.