Algeria from within

by R. V. C. Bodley

In the same district as the vine we find the mandarin, orange, and lemon plantations. Protected by cypress-trees, the golden fruit is grown in large quantities, and exported daily during the winter months.

A curious herb known as geranium is also grown on this fertile plain. It is made into perfume, and supplies the base for cheap scent. A great deal of it goes to England, and, curiously enough, the only other country where it is cultivated in quantity is Mauritius.

All along the coast east and west of Algiers we find the market-gardens for early vegetables. The expert labor is chiefly supplied by Majorcans and Sicilians, and during a good year it is a most profitable occupation, as the markets of Paris and other big centers are supplied from these tiny seacoast gardens.

Next in importance comes the tobacco industry. The best plantations are along the coast east of Algiers, in the lower levels of the Kabyle country, and, again, in that wonderfully fertile plain of the Mitidja. Provided one can obtain the suitable soil, it is one of the most profitable products to exploit—little cost, and none of the worry or expense incurred by the Regie, as in France. Moreover, it is quite a high-class tobacco, and some of the cigars are really quite good smoking, while the pipe tobacco and the cigarettes can be offered to the most difficile. It is much healthier smoking as there are no foreign matters or mixtures, but just the pure leaf, which differs according to district.

Figs are grown in great quantity in the Kabyle Mountains, and are exported. In the prolongation of the same mountains and all along the coast to Tunisia the cork forests abound. This industry is much developed, and English and American firms vie with the Algerians to obtain concessions and export the cork to their own countries.

The olive-tree is indigenous to Algeria, and grows wild on all the mountains. In certain centers the trees are grafted, and the olives are plucked and oil extracted from them.

Apart from the fruit-bearing trees, however, the forests of Algeria are few and far between. Here and there one comes upon magnificent cedars and pines, but it is not a wooded country, and a great deal of the timber is imported.

There are people who maintain that Algeria was once covered with forests, and that the same state of things could be reproduced. I am not of this opinion; in the first place, because of the absence of practically any coal, and second, by the fact that the country is, and always has been, essentially agricultural.

There are minerals of many kinds in Algeria, but never in great quantity. Iron, zinc, lead and copper have been found, but they are not worked, merely taken out of the ground and sent to Europe.

A little oil has been tapped in Oranie, but up to the present not in sufficient quantity to make its development interesting from a commercial point of view. The same can be said of the small coal-field discovered near Colomb Bechar, in the south of the same department.