Leaving the ugly suburbs of Algiers, the car turns on to a broad, straight road bordered with plane-trees. On either side stretch interminable vineyards, while ahead the blue slopes of the Atlas rise up from this great plain of the Mitidja. Little French villages are passed and long, white buildings, now closed and silent, which will be in a whirl of activity in August and September when the grapes are being pressed.
In an hour or so l’Arba has been reached and the steep slopes covered with rough scrub and cork-trees. Up, up the road climbs toward the bare crests of the range. Algiers and the Mitidja are lost to view, and the eye wanders over a great expanse of mountain, cultivated here and there with patches of cereals, and now and then a vineyard.
The air is fresh, and the clouds seem ominously close. At Sakamody the watershed is reached, three thousand feet above sea-level, and a wonderful panorama of hills and rivers and forests spreads itself before us.
The road is now running steeply down toward the silvery stream at the bottom, and, reaching Tablat, an iron bridge is crossed and away speeds the car through a fertile valley. If lunch has been carried in the car there are some delightful fields near Bir Rabalou—at the one hundred and third kilometer—where one can picnic in peace. For some reason there is an abundance of tortoises in these fields.
If one is depending on the hotel one must push on to Aumale, where a rather second-rate inn will provide a correspondingly second-rate lunch. Aumale is well over two thousand feet above the sea; it is a modern garrison town and quite uninteresting.
Shortly after Aumale the road starts sloping down toward the flat country parallel to and east of the Sersou, and after thirty kilometers the village of Sidi Aïssa is reached.
At this point two vast errors are made by guides, tourists, and even by many Algerians; and, as stated in a previous chapter, it is the duty of the author to destroy legends invented for the ears of the credulous.
The first of these stories is that Sidi Aïssa means “Our Lord.” Translated literally this word signifies “the Lord Jesus,” but, though the Mohammedans venerate all the prophets from Moses down to Christ, this Sidi Aïssa is not the founder of the Christian faith. The person after whom this village and many others are named is Sidi-el-Hadj-Aïssa, the great marabout who founded Laghouat in the eighteenth century. Of this later.
The second story, which is perhaps served up more frequently, is that at Sidi Aïssa the desert begins. It is an excusable legend, and let it be said at once that the author himself has fallen into the trap. It is an absolute fallacy, but Bou Saada and its neighborhood is one of the most amazingly natural fakes in the world.
Sidi Aïssa is at one thousand eight hundred feet above the sea and is on the same latitude as Boghar, which is perched on the southerly slopes of the Atlas of the Tell. Bou Saada is actually north of Djelfa, which the traveler will visit in two days and which is at over three thousand feet.