When the year is good it is beyond all imagination, and it is, in fact, said that the two very good years should pay for any losses in the remaining five!
A land of light and shade, of everlasting contrasts, a land which, like a lovely woman, charms one by its unexpectedness, by its tenderness and sudden harshness, by all its capricious moods. A land of the future, but a land also of the past—and this, perforce, brings us to the next chapter.
CHAPTER III
A LITTLE HISTORY
The original inhabitants of Algeria were Berbers. The present native inhabitant of Algeria is the Berber, and yet ask any one who the natives are and they will reply “Arabs”; some of the more intelligent will perhaps say “Arabs with a sprinkling of Berbers.”
But this is wrong. When history first threw light on North Africa the Berbers were there, and they have not yet departed. It is true that many invasions and upheavals have passed through Algeria during the past three thousand years, but, though they have left their trace, it is only the Arabs who have really left their mark on the original inhabitants.
The first important landmark in the history of North Africa is the foundation of Carthage about the year 840 B. C. The Phœnicians had already settled on the Tunisian coast for some three hundred years previous to this, but their importance dates from the foundation of their great city, which was to have such an influence on the history of the civilized world for six hundred years.
Since this book, however, is not a history of the country, it will be sufficient to mention the outstanding historical features during those long years during which war and invasion centered round the North African shores. The Carthaginian domination flourished in all its splendor until the year 264 B. C. Up to this period those hardy merchant mariners were masters of the whole of the Mediterranean; they had explored the Atlantic coast as far as Sierra Leone; one expedition had sailed right round the African continent; and they had made it clear to Rome that they would brook no interference. Carthaginian naval power was supreme, and she counted on that alone to ensure her sovereignty of the Mediterranean. In the latter half, therefore, of that century she had defied Rome, and in a few years came into armed conflict with the future masters of the world.
This armed conflict, which was to last for over eighty years, and which was to produce those names famous to every public schoolboy who does not despise classical education—Hanno, Hamilcar, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, Scipio, Fabius Maximus—ended in 146 B. C. with the destruction of Carthage and the foundation of a Roman province consisting of modern Tunisia and part of Tripoli. One hundred years later Numidia, Algeria of to-day, was annexed, and for the next four hundred years the march of empire continued. At first the Romans were not a little embarrassed with their new acquisitions, all the more so on account of the hostile attitude of the Numidian kings at Cirta (modern Constantine). Strifes and minor wars continued for some time. Rome aided first one side and then another, but, finally realizing the futility of her rôle, a strong expedition was despatched and finally succeeded in defeating the Numidian king Jugurtha. It was not, however, until the year 46 B. C. that Cæsar finally routed Juba on the Tunisian coast and in that defeat destroyed the kingdom of Numidia.
The son of Juba, who had been taken to Italy and educated as a Roman, was married to the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra, and was eventually placed on the throne of Numidia, where he ruled in splendor until the year 19 B. C. During his reign the empire had spread and extended over North Africa from the Tunisian coast to the Atlantic, and its military posts guarded the entries of the Sahara. The traces of once-glorious Rome remain in various states of ruin to this day, and will be dealt with in further chapters. It would take too long to enter into details of the administration of the country under the Imperial eagle and of the birth and growth of Christianity in North Africa. The Roman Empire had spread, and it was not until the beginning of its fall that the rule in North Africa tottered.
Ever since the beginning of the fifth century A. D. Roman possessions in Europe were being flooded by the advance of the Vandals. In 428 the terrible Genesric crossed to Africa from Spain, with an army of ninety thousand men, and landed at Ceuta. Like all new invaders, he was welcomed as a savior, and his success was instantaneous. He swept the Roman armies before him, he built a fleet and became the terror of the Mediterranean, and in 455 took Rome.