Previously to an earthquake that occurred in 1825, the town of Blidah, situated in a fertile valley at the foot of the lesser Atlas, numbered fifteen thousand inhabitants. Many of these perished in the ruins of their dwellings, and the place never recovered itself; for, at the period of the French invasion, the population was only five thousand. Placed in the very heart of the scene of war, the diminution continued, and the native inhabitants are now an insignificant handful. The European population is on the increase, and the situation of the town on the line of communication between the port of Algiers and the country beyond the Atlas, as well as its good climate and abundance of water, seems to mark it out as a place of future importance. In former times it was a favourite residence of the Moors and Arabs, who called it the New Damascus. There has been hard fighting there during the present war, and it has thrice changed masters. It is surrounded by luxuriant gardens and groves of orange-trees, whose fruit is said to be the finest in the world. The plantations formerly extended quite up to the town; but the Arabs took advantage of this to come down and pick off the sentries, and it was found necessary to clear a large number of acres. This impoverished many of the inhabitants, whose wealth consisted in plantations of oranges, lemons, and olives. The town is usually garrisoned by the Zouaves, troops originally raised amongst the natives in imitation of our Sepoys. Soon after the formation of the corps, however, Frenchmen were allowed and encouraged to enlist, and of these the three battalions now principally consist. As fighting men they enjoy the highest possible character, but in quarters they are terrible scamps. Its gallant reputation and picturesque uniform, and the numerous opportunities of distinction afforded to it, cause this corps to be generally preferred by volunteers, and non-commissioned officers often leave the line to serve as privates in the Zouaves.
At Blidah, Captain Kennedy and his friend procured horses, and with their party strengthened by two Prussian officers, they set out for Medeah. West of the river Chiffa they came upon another military road, at which a battalion was then working. Men and officers were encamped in tents, and in huts constructed of boughs. “The men employed on this duty receive seventy-five centimes (about sevenpence) additional pay per diem; and during the winter and spring, as the work is not hard, it is rather preferred by the troops to garrison duty.” The system of providing employment for the soldier, when he is not actually opposed to the enemy, is very generally carried out by the French in their African colony, and also in France when it is possible to be done. Captain Kennedy evidently approves of it. At Medeah, a few minutes’ walk from the gate, are the gardens of the garrison. Each regiment or battalion has its piece of ground, divided into lots for the different companies, and supplying the troops with vegetables. “Here, as at other places I have since visited, the ground in the occupation of the troops was in a high state of culture, and superior both in produce and neatness of arrangement to the gardens of the civilians. * * * In many of our own colonies, and even at home, this system might be followed with beneficial results to our troops; for, putting aside the addition the produce would make to the comforts of the men, any employment or amusement that would tend to keep the soldier out of the canteen or public-house during his leisure hours, and there are many on whom it would have that effect, must be advantageous.”
Medeah is the capital of the province of Tittery, and the head-quarters of a subdivision of the French army, commanded by General Marey, to whom Captain Kennedy had introductions. To these the general did all honour, and sketched out for his guests the plan of an expedition to the Little Sahara. A French traveller, recording his visit to Medeah, has given the following ludicrous and melancholy account of the caravanserais of the town. “On a déjà plusieurs cafés avec l’inévitable billard, et deux hôtels où le travail est divisé, car l’un loge and l’autre nourrit; les chambres n’y sont pas encore tout à-fait meublées, et le charpentier n’a pas encore achevé l’escalier qui y monte. On y a oublié une certaine faience très utile, mais il y a déjà des miroirs.” This description, doubtless as true as it is characteristic, now no longer applies. Things have improved in the last year or two; and at the time of Captain Kennedy’s journey, the Medeah hotels were very tolerable. But he was eager for the desert, and tarried little in the town. Accompanied by an aide-de-camp of General Marey, who had volunteered to do the honours of the colony, and show to the English visitors life amongst the Bedouins, escorted also by a score of light infantry, a party of Spahis or native cavalry, by half a dozen officers of the garrison, several servants, and a vast number of dogs, our travellers struck into the Arab country. The district they were about to traverse being peopled by friendly tribes, this large attendance was less for purposes of protection to the Englishmen than of mischief to the wild-boars, which it was proposed to hunt. After a night passed in an Arab tent, the battue began; and although not very successful, only one boar being killed, the sportsmen deemed themselves well repaid for eight hours’ walk in a broiling sun, by magnificent scenery, and the excitement of the chase.
There is interest, although no very great novelty, in Captain Kennedy’s narrative of his wanderings amongst the dasheras and douars of the Bedouins. The douars are Arab camps, the dasheras villages, or rather collections of huts, built of stone and mud, and roofed with branches of trees. The walls of these miserable habitations are low; the door does duty as sole window; for a fireplace a hole is made in the earthen door; the furniture consists of a few mats, a corn-mill, some pots, and a lamp. These are the dwellings of the agricultural tribes, who live near the mountains. The pastoral tribes roam over the desert; their tents, corn-mills, and mats, packed upon camels; and driving with them flocks and herds of sheep, goats, and cattle. When they halt, the tents are pitched in a circle, the opening towards the east; and at night the animals are driven into the inclosure, for safety from robbers, and to prevent straying. A family of Arabs will frequently wander several days’ march from their usual abiding-place to some French garrison or settlement, there to barter their stock for corn and European produce. They travel by easy journeys, and halt whenever convenient, only taking care to keep out of the way of hostile tribes. “A short time serves to unload the camel, spread the mats, and pitch the tent. A few handfuls of corn, ground in the mill, kneaded into a paste with water, and baked in thin cakes on the fire, with a drink of water, or, if they have it, milk, forms their simple meal.” Such is the abstemious life of these sons of the desert. In the autumn, when the great fair is held at Boghar, the advanced post of the French on the side of the Little Sahara, several thousand people repair thither, bringing hides, cheese, butter, and wool; also dates, skins of beasts, ostrich feathers, and the woollen manufactures of the Arab women, received from the interior of the country. These various products are exchanged for honey, oil, corn, cutlery, and cotton cloths. Arms and ammunition used to be greatly in request, but the French have prohibited that traffic. The imports of European goods are on the increase, and Captain Kennedy considers French trade in the north of Africa in a highly improving state, favoured as it is by numerous roads, made or making, through the Atlas, by the pacification of the country, and submission of the tribes between Blidah and Boghar. How long this submission may last must be considered doubtful. It has been induced neither by love nor fear, but by self-interest. The more prosperous tribes, and those located in the plain, finding Abd-el-Kader unable to protect them, took the only means left to secure themselves from the fierce razzias of the French, and from the ruin that these entailed. So long as they deem it advantageous, they will doubtless be staunch to their compact; but let then see or imagine a probable change in the fortune of the war, and they will be found eager, as some of them have already shown themselves, to rally once more round the standard of the Emir.
Amongst the tribes whose hospitality was shared by Captain Kennedy, the most powerful was that of Ouled-Macktar, whose chief, Ben Douda, is considered by the captain to afford a good type of the Arab chiefs in the pay of France. For a long period he acted as one of Abd-el-Kader’s lieutenants, but at a critical moment transferred his services to the French. His people had their possessions secured to them, and he himself received the appointment of Aga over the Arabs of the Little Desert, with an allowance of ten per cent on the tribute paid by the tribes under his jurisdiction. He is described as about fifty years of age, with handsome though harsh features of the true Arab cast. “What struck me most in his appearance, was the expression of deep cunning strongly marked in the lines that crossed his forehead, and in the downcast and furtive glances of the eye, observing every thing, yet seemingly inattentive.” The Aga is very wealthy, and lives in great luxury, comparatively to most of the Arabs. Captain Kennedy’s party reached his camp at a fortunate moment. The douar was in an unusual state of excitement, and great rejoicings were on foot in honour of the marriage of the Aga’s son. The wedding-feast, consisting of sheep roasted whole, stewed gazelle, cuscusoo, and other Bedouin delicacies, was succeeded by some very graceless dances. Whilst the latter proceeded, the men kept up an irregular fire of guns, pistols, and blunderbusses, presenting their weapons at each others’ breasts, and suddenly dropping the muzzle at the moment of pulling the trigger, so that the charge struck the ground. As might be anticipated, this dangerous sport did not terminate without an accident. One young savage omitted to sink his muzzle, and sent a blank cartridge into the hip of a comrade, knocking him over, burning his bournous, and causing an ugly, although not a dangerous wound. “The rest of the party did not seem to care much about it, and the wounded man’s wife, instead of looking after her husband, rushed up to the man who had shot him, and, assisted by some female friends, opened upon him a torrent of abuse, with such fluency of tongue and command of language, that, after endeavouring in vain to get in a word or two, he fairly turned tail and walked off.”
In the douar of the Abides tribe, Captain Kennedy fell in with a scorpion-eater. This was a disgusting-looking boy, who, being an idiot, was looked upon by the Arabs as a saint—deprivation of intellect constituting in their opinion a high claim to holiness. This urchin bolted, sting and all, a fine lively scorpion upwards of two inches long—the reptile writhing between his teeth as he deliberately crunched it. Our traveller had heard of such exploits, but had naturally been rather incredulous concerning the non-removal of the sting. In this case, however, he was perfectly satisfied that no deception was practised. The boy afterwards devoured another of the same dangerous species of vermin. He belonged to the religious sect of the Aisaoua, who claim the privilege of being proof against the venom of reptiles and the effects of fire. A most extraordinary account of a festival of this sect has been given by a French officer, of whose narrative Captain Kennedy supplies a translation. Fortunately he does not vouch for its veracity; so we may be permitted to disbelieve one half and doubt the rest. M. St Marie relates some marvels of a similar description, collected from an interpreter who had been a prisoner of Abd-el-Kader.
The general impression made on us by Captain Kennedy’s account of his visit to the Arab tribes, is, that the French have as yet done little or nothing towards securing the affections and improving the condition of the people they have subjugated. It must be acknowledged that they have had to do with an intractable race, and one difficult to conciliate. The old hatred and contempt of Mussulmans towards Christians has been preserved in full force in the deserts and mountains of Northern Africa. Centuries have done nothing to weaken it, or to cause the followers of Mahomet to look with liking, or even tolerance, upon the children of the Cross. The Christian is still a dog, and the son of a dog; and even when crouching before his power and intelligence, the Arab nurtures hopes of revenge, long deferred but never abandoned. The French regard their conquest as secure; and doubtless it may be rendered so by the maintenance of a powerful military establishment; but who can foretell the time when they will be enabled to withdraw even a portion of their present African army? Their doing so would be a signal for revolt amongst the chiefs now in their pay, amongst the tribes apparently most effectually humbled and subdued. Patience and vindictiveness are distinguishing traits of the Arab. He bides his time, but never loses sight of his object and of his revenge. “They do not forget,” says Count St Marie, speaking of the Arabs of the province of Oran, “that the Spaniards, weary of occupying a territory which cost them great sacrifices, and yielded them no advantages, abandoned their conquest after two centuries of possession. They foresee that, one day or other, they will be rid of the French, who have made as great a mistake as the Spaniards. The Arabs are animated by an innate spirit of pride and independence which nothing can subdue.” We venture no prophecies in this sense, but neither can we predict the day when Algeria, as a colony, will become other than an unproductive burden to its present possessors, or when it will repay them for the blood and treasure they so liberally expend upon it. They should beware of arguing too favourably from apparent calm and submission on the part of the natives. The ocean is often smoothest before a storm; the Arab most dangerous when apparently most tranquil. Like other Orientals, he starts in an instant from torpor and indolence into the fiercest activity. “The Arab,” says a German officer, whose narrative of adventure in Africa has recently been rendered into English, “lies whole days before his tent, wrapped in his bournous, and leaning his head on his hand. His horse stands ready saddled, listlessly hanging his head almost to the ground, and occasionally casting sympathising glances at his master. The African might then be supposed phlegmatic and passionless, but for the occasional flash of his wild dark eye, which gleams from under his bushy brows. His rest is like that of the Numidian lion, which, when satisfied, stretches itself beneath a shady palm-tree—but beware of waking him! Like the beasts of the desert and the forest, and like all nature in his own land, the Arab is hurried from one extreme to the other, from the deepest repose to the most restless activity. At the first sound of the tam-tam, his foot is in the stirrup, his hand on his rifle, and he is no longer the same man. He rides day and night, bears every privation, and braves every danger, in order to make prize of a sheep or ass, or of some enemy’s head. Such men as these are hard to conquer, and harder still to govern: were they united into one people, they would form a nation which would not only repulse the French, but bid defiance to the whole world. Unhappily for them, every tribe is at enmity with the rest; and this must ultimately lead to their destruction, for the French have already learned to match African against African.”
The constant hostilities amongst the tribes have doubtless facilitated their conquest; and the French still act upon the maxim of “divide et impera,” as the best means to retain what they have won. As yet little attention has been paid to more humane means of strengthening themselves in their new possessions, and to the civilisation of the natives. The chief plan proposed for the attainment of the latter object, has been to subject to the conscription all Arabs born since the occupation of the country by the French. It is very doubtful what may be the effect of this measure should it be carried out. Will it Frenchify the natives, and induce kindly feelings towards their conquerors, or render them more dogged and dangerous than before? They will, at any rate, acquire military knowledge, and an acquaintance with the European system of warfare, which, combined with the skill in arms and horsemanship they already possess, will render them doubly dangerous in case of a revolt. After their seven years’ service, they may perhaps think fit to join Abd-el-Kader, or any other leader then warring against the French. It is want of proper discipline that has rendered the Arab cavalry unable to compete successfully with that of France. They charge tumultuously and with little order, each man relying much upon himself individually, but doing little to aid the combined effect of the mass.
Might not conversion to Christianity be made a powerful lever for the civilisation of the tribes? They entertain a degree of respect for the Catholic priests scarcely inferior to that shown to their own marabouts. Abd-el-Kader has more than once released a prisoner, without ransom, at the prayer of the Bishop of Algiers. Near the last-named city, some French Jesuits have formed an establishment for the education, in the Christian faith, of young Arabs and Moors. There, as the author of “Algeria in 1845” informs us, a certain number of youths, after being baptized, are fed, clothed, lodged, and instructed in some trade. The French government pays little attention to this establishment, which is supported chiefly by charitable contributions. “It is, however, a great work of civilisation. The young pupils are hostages in the hands of the French. It is pretty certain that their fathers, brothers, and relations, will not join the rebels. When they leave this establishment, they will carry with them indelible feelings of gratitude. They will have an occupation, they will speak the French language, and will be of the same religion as their masters.”
Exclusive of the army, Frenchmen form less than half of the European population of Algeria. After them come Spaniards, who are very numerous; then Maltese and Italians; and finally, a small number of Germans, barely five per cent of the whole. The Spaniard, although often taxed with idleness and dislike to labour, here proves himself an industrious and valuable colonist; the Maltese travels from village to village with his little stock of merchandise; the German tills the ground. In the neighbourhood of Algiers, things have a very European aspect; and the Arabs themselves, from constant intercourse with the city, have lost much of their nationality. The appearance of a flourishing colony is, however, confined to this district. Little progress has as yet been made in rebuilding the other towns, although in most of them the work of improvement is begun, and the narrow dirty streets are being pulled down to make room for wider avenues and more commodious houses. In some of them the only buildings as yet erected are barracks and hospitals. The seaport town of Bona, bordering on the regency of Tunis, is an exception. In 1832 it was reduced to ruins by the troops of the Bey of Constantina, under command of Ben Aïssa. It is now rebuilding on the European plan. A large square, with a fountain, has been laid out in its centre, and several well-built streets are completed. The town already boasts of an opera, with an Italian company, who are assisted by amateurs, chiefly Germans, from the ranks of the foreign legion.