Instead of the koubbas so common in other parts of the country, the tombs of holy men are here marked by a few stones, broken pots, and one or two white flags stuck amongst them. The first that we met was that of Sidi Bou Firnan (My Lord, the father of cork oaks), who had possessed a number of these useful trees before his beatitude. As our guide passed his rustic shrine, he stopped a moment, held his hands open as if they were a book, and muttered a short prayer. The good Hadj is a holy man himself; he has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and is delighted to find that I have been to Arabia, and have visited Jerusalem and especially Kerouan, next to Mecca and Medina, the most holy city in the eyes of Western Mohammedans. He is never tired of telling everyone he meets the marvellous tale, and of communicating the fact that the English are the most faithful friends the Sultan has, and are almost Mohammedans themselves. It is not in the heart of the Khomair country, that one would try to controvert this theory of his.
After having ridden for about five miles, we crossed the Oued el-Ahmer, and entered a country called El-Baiadha, now a moor of tree heath, but once a great forest, as the blackened stumps of trees, destroyed by fire, attest. Here and there a few Aleppo pines and junipers are still found, and on the summit of the hill, about 1,100 feet above the sea, and under a gigantic oak, we observed the first appearance of Roman colonisation in this district. Only a few cut stones remain, but there could be no doubt regarding their origin.
We now descended into the valley of the Oulad Sidera, which runs in a north-easterly direction for a distance of fifteen or twenty miles. We entered it at about the broadest part, where it had a width of rather more than a mile. A short distance lower down the hills converge, forming a narrow gorge called Khangat el-Hadeed, or the iron pass; but as our route lay in an opposite direction, we were unable to examine it. Beyond it again appeared the high peak of Djebel Atatfa, but the hills which bound the valley itself appear to have no other name than that of the tribe which inhabits them.
If a poet or a painter wished to depict a valley ‘sacred to sweet peace,’ he could do no better than take for his model that of the Oulad Sidera. It is admirably cultivated throughout, and from every direction beautiful sparkling streams join the river, which flows along the bottom. The pasturage is rich and succulent, and the brilliant carmine of some of the clovers contrasted with the bright yellow of other species, nestling in a carpet of green, still fresh and wet with the late rains, added a richness to the landscape, which can nowhere be seen in a more northern country.
Not only by the river banks, but along the bottom of the hills, and indeed here and there throughout the whole course of the valley, are trees of very unusual size. As a rule, the cork oaks in Africa do not attain the dimensions they do in Spain; yet here we saw some not less than fifty or sixty feet high, and with trunks four feet in diameter. I also observed, what I had seen nowhere but at the Fontaine des Princes in the Forest of Edough, ancient trees of various kinds, the upper surface of whose branches was covered with a thick layer of moss, out of which grew masses of polypodium and other ferns. This is the best possible certificate of climate, for in a locality subject to great heat or drought, especially in one exposed to the sirocco wind, such vegetation could not exist during a single summer.
The villages throughout the district we traversed were carefully concealed from observation, and sites have been chosen high up on the crests of the hills, with the double object, no doubt, of defence and economy of space. The huts are rude and squalid, built generally of branches of trees and diss grass, sometimes with a little plastering of mud. Near the upper end of the valley of the Oulad Sidera, under the shade of some grand old olive-trees, whose age it is impossible to conjecture, stand the remains of a Roman farm. The walls are still in some places fifteen feet high, built of small hammer-dressed stones, with finely-cut masonry at the angles, and here and there an upright course of similar stones in the walls. The building was rectangular, twenty-two paces long by twenty wide, regular in shape except at one corner, where was probably the entrance gate. The interior was so thickly overgrown with briars and weeds that we could detect no remains of partitions.
We saw other ruins further up, and heard of the existence of many more, so that there can be no doubt that even these inaccessible mountains must have been occupied in a serious manner by the Romans.
Peaceful and smiling as this valley seems, it is occupied by a sturdy and truculent race, whom one would rather meet as friends than as foes, and it is the refuge of all the unquiet spirits who have made the plains of Tunis or the frontiers of Algeria too hot to hold them. While we were examining the ruins I have just described, a party of ill-looking fellows kept creeping up to us, dodging from tree to tree, to escape as much as possible our observation. No sooner, however, did they see our friend the Hadj, than they seemed to conclude that all was right; they came forward at once and saluted him with great respect, kissing the palms of each others’ hands. Then I overheard a whispered conversation—
‘Who are they?’
‘English travellers going to La Calle.’