The Algerine coast has enriched our language with at least two words, respectively warlike and peaceful—razzia and fantasia. The latter is applied to a game of horsemanship, used to express joy or to honor a distinguished friend. A spirited fantasia is organized by the guests of the agha on returning to Akbou. Twenty of the best-mounted horsemen having gone on before, and being completely lost to sight in the whirlwind of dust created by their departure, all of a sudden reappear. Menacing their host and his companions like an army, they gallop up, their bornouses flying and their weapons flashing, until at a few paces they discharge their long guns under the bodies of the horses opposite, and take flight like a covey of birds. Loading as they retire and quickly forming, again they dash to the charge, shouting, galloping, and shooting among the legs of their host's fine horses: this sham attack is repeated a score or two of times, up to the door of the agha's house. The Bedouins, in their picturesque expression, are making the powder talk. Finer horsemanship can nowhere be seen. Their horses, accustomed to the exercise, enter into the game with spirit, and the riders, secure in their castellated saddles, sit with ease as they turn, leap or dance on two feet. Used, too, from infancy to the society of their mares, they move with them in a degree of unity, vigor and boldness which the English horseman never attains. The Arab's love for his horse is not only the pride of the cavalier: it is an article of faith, and the Prophet comprehended the close unity between his nation and their beasts when he said, "The blessings of this world, up to the day of judgment, shall be suspended to the locks which our horses wear between their eyes."
Truly the Oriental idea of hospitality has its advantages—on the side of the obliged party. This haughty ruler, on the simple stress of a letter from a French commandant, has made himself our servant and teased his brain for devices to amuse us. His chief cook precedes us to his birthplace at Chellata, to arrange a sumptuous Arab supper. After a ride made enervating by the simoom, we descend at the arcaded and galleried Moorish house where Ben-Ali-Cherif was born, and are visited by the sheikh of the college which the agha maintains. It is a strange, peaceful, cloistered scene, consecrated to study and hospitality. Chellata, white and silent, sleeps in the gigantic shadow of the rock Tisibert, and in its graveyard, among the tombs of sacred marabouts, walk the small bald-headed students reciting passages of law or of the Koran. Algeria is dotted over with institutions (zaouias) similar to this, which, like monasteries of old, combine the functions of seminaries and gratuitous inns. That of Ben-Ali-Cherif, to which he contributes from his own purse a sum equal to sixteen thousand dollars a year, is enshrined in buildings strewn around the resting-place of his holy ancestors. The sacred koubba (or dome) marking the bones of the marabout is swept by shadows of oak and tamarind trees: professors stray in the shadow, and the pupils con their tasks on the adjoining tombstones.
Every impression of Chellata is silvered over, as with a moonlight of beneficence, by the attentions of Ben-Ali's house-steward, who rains upon our appetites a shower of most delicious kouskoussu, soothes us with Moorish coffee, and finishes by the politeness of lighting and taking the first whiff of our cigarette—a bit of courtesy that might be spared, but common here as in parts of Spain.
With daybreak we find the town of Chellata preparing to play its rôle as a mart or place of industry. The labor seems at first sight, however, to be confined to the children and the women: the former lead the flocks out at sunrise to pasture in the mountain, the women make the town ring with their busy work, whether of grinding at the mill, weaving stuff or making graceful vases in pottery. The men are at work in the fields, from which they return at nightfall, sullen, hardy and silent, in their tattered haiks. These are never changed among the poor working-people, for the scars of a bornouse are as dignified as those of the body, and are confided with the garment by a father to his son. The women, as we have remarked before, are in a state of far greater liberty than are the female Arabs, but it is more than anything else the liberty to toil. Among these mountaineers the wife is a chattel from whom it is permissible to extract all the usefulness possible, and whom it is allowable to sell when a bargain can be struck. The Kabyle woman's sole recreation is her errand to the fountain. This is sometimes situated in the valley, far from the nodding pillar or precipice on which the town is built. There the traveler finds the good wives talking and laughing together, bending their lively—sometimes blonde and blue-eyed—faces together over their jars, and gossiping as in Naples or as in the streets around Notre Dame in Paris. The Kabyles—differing therein from the Arabs—provide a fountain for either sex; and a visit by a man to the women's fountain is charged, in their singular code of penal fines, "inspired by Allah," a sum equal to five dollars, or half as much as the theft of an ox.
By the white light of day-dawn we quit Chellata, with the naked crests of the Djurjura printing themselves on the starry vault behind us and the valley below bathed in clouds. As we descend we seem to waken the white, red-roofed villages with our steps. The plateaus are gradually enlivened with spreading herds and men going forth to labor. We skirt the precipice of Azrou-n'hour, crowned with its marabout's tomb. The plains at our feet are green and glorious, pearled with white, distant villages. Opposite the precipice the granite rocks open to let us pass by a narrow portal where formerly the Kabyles used to stand and levy a toll on all travelers. This straitened gorge, where snow abounds in winter, and which has various narrow fissures, is named the Defile of Thifilkoult: it connects the highways of several tribes, but is impassable from December to April from the snow and the storms which rage among the cliffs. We are still four thousand feet above the plain, whose depth the swimming eye tries in vain to fathom, yet the snowy peaks above us are inaccessible. Descending chains of rocks mingled with flint and lime, we attain a more clement landscape. Kabyle girls crowd around a well called the Mosquitoes' Fountain, a naked boy plays melancholy tunes on a reed, and the signs of a lower level are abundant in the fields of corn and orchards of olive. But the rugged mountains, in whose grasp we have found so many wonders, are not left without regret. The most picturesque part of our course is now behind us, and as day dies upon our crossing through Iferaouenen, we turn back to behold the fine line of the mountains, half sad and regretful,
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
Fourteen expeditions were found necessary by the French between 1838 and 1857 to subdue the Kabyles, who under leaders such as Ben-Salem, Ben-Kassim, the Man-with-the-Mule, the Man-with-the-She-Ass, and other chiefs less celebrated, defended their territory step by step. In the great chastisement of 1857, Marshal Randon, after subduing this part of the Djurjura ridge in detail, determined to preserve the fruits of victory by two new constructions—a fort and a military road. France was to reside among her unwilling colonists, and she was to possess an avenue of escape. The building of these two conveniences, as we may call them, over the smoking ruins of victory, was a conspicuous example of the excellent engineering genius of the nation. An English officer, Lieutenant-colonel Walmsley, witnessed, and has left a spirited account of, the great conquest, and the immediate improvement of it. The strongholds of the Djurjura (it being May, 1857) were taken: the most difficult, Icheriden, was soon to fall, yielding only to the assault of the Foreign Legion—that troop of Arabs and of Kabyles from the Zouaoua plain wherefrom we derive the word zouave. Marshal Randon selected for his fort the key of the whole district: it was a place known as the Souk-el-Arba ("Market of Wednesday"). It was in the heart of the Beni Raten land, and in a spot where three great mountain-ridges ran down into the plain of the Sebaou. These ridges, subdued and friendly, would be held in respect by the garrison of the fort, and the other ridge of Agacha, still rebellious, would likewise terminate at the fort. The works were immediately laid out and quickly built. As the road sprang into its level flight like magic, the peeping Kabyles, perfectly unaware that they were conquered, laughed in derision. "It is to help the cowards to run away," they said. In due time rose the pale walls of the citadel, with mountains above and hills below. The Kabyles call it the White Phantom. Their songs, the "traditions" of illiterate tribes, recite the building of the terrible stronghold: "The Roumi has arrived at the Market: he is building there. Weep, O my eyes! tears of blood. The children of Raten are valiant men: they are known as masters of the warlike art. They fell upon the enemy at Icheriden. The Franks fell like lopped branches. Glory to those brave men! But the Roumi has peeled us like seeds. The powder talks no more. The warlike men are fainting. Cover thyself with mourning, O my head!"