NOTES FOR THE SPORTSMAN OR TOURIST
IN NORTH AFRICA.
The best time to go to Algeria or Tunis is October, when the heats of summer begin to become cooler. By all means, let the traveller, if he wish to be independent, travel on horseback. In Algeria he will meet with accommodation everywhere, and proceed as safely as in London, or any part of England.
He can go to Boussada or Laghouat, about six days’ journey from Algiers, staying every night at caravanserais en route. Boussada I did not visit myself, but from rumour, I believe, there is excellent gazelle shooting in the neighbourhood. By the plains of Boussada, the tourist can pass into Tunisia over the French frontier. At Algiers, the best hotels are the Hôtel d’Orient and the Hôtel de la Régence, on the Grande Place. For ammunition, I recommend Huèt, armourer, near the English Consul’s; and for horses––François or Francisco, a Maltese, who speaks French and English. The grand thing to be considered is economy of space. Let every necessary for clothing, if possible, be crammed into the saddle-bags attached to one’s saddle, as ammunition, guns, &c. &c., must 89 be placed on the other horses. Well did the Romans call baggage by the appellation of impedimenta. In this country it is so literally, not figuratively. It is absolutely necessary to have an interpreter who can talk Arabic; for though in Algeria there are many natives who jabber broken French or Italian, even this lingua Franca is so disguised that it is almost impossible to comprehend them; and in the interior there are very few “indigènes” who understand anything but Arabic. In Tunisia nothing but Arabic is of any use whatever.
To travel in the interior of Tunis, it is necessary to have a mounted escort, and also a letter of recommendation to the “Caids” (mayors) of the different towns through which you pass. Here you must expect a great want of comfort, as there are no beds, and you generally have to sleep on the floor. On the Lake of Tunis, close to the city, there is very good flamingo shooting. The flamingoes sit on the water in rows like a regiment, and the method I employed in shooting them was as follows:––I used to take a boat with my gun loaded with buckshot (chevrotine), and my rifle. I fired my rifle at the line of flamingoes when about 400 yards off, which used to bring them flying over the boat for curiosity, when I managed, generally with my gun, to bring down one or two. This is, I am sure, the best way of shooting them, though several Europeans told me at Tunis I could shoot them with the rifle.
The shortest way direct to Tunis is by Malta; and, in passing, let the sporting tourist visit Gozo, where, in April and September, there is excellent quail shooting.
The inhabitants of this isle are a simple, primitive race of people, very lively and intelligent; they speak nearly a pure Arabic. They live chiefly by fishing, and also serve as sailors in foreign vessels, where they remain sometimes entire years without being heard of by their families. In this way they often find a watery grave; and in the isle I met some females, whose male relations had all perished in this way.
Navigation appears to have a great charm for these simple islanders; and when they sail along these southern waters, where the sun shines with a brilliant lustre, and the moon with a fairy splendour, they forget not the simple home where the members of their family are crouched side by side, enveloped in a sort of bournouse, and drinking perhaps tea which differs only nominally from the tepid waters of the surrounding ocean, and gabbling a jargon which one can scarcely believe that they understand themselves. The charm which binds these poor people together in their sober and modest existence is less the penchant of natural and intimate affection, than the chain of habit, the necessity of a life of fraternal community and sentiment. A certain equality of position and social development gives them the same desires, the same ends of existence, and like ideas produce an 91 easy mutual understanding. Each one reads, as it were, in the eye of the other; and when they talk, each knows what the other will say almost before he has opened his lips. All the ordinary relations of life are thus present to their memory; and so, by a simple intonation of the voice, by the expression of the visage, by a mute gesture, they excite, inter se, as many smiles or tears, more joy or vexation, than we, among our equals, could perhaps evoke by the longest demonstrations or declarations. For we civilised ones live, on an average, in intellectual solitude; each of us, thanks to our particular form of mind or education, has received a different bias of character; each of us, morally weighed, thinks, acts, and believes differently from his neighbour; and hence misunderstandings arise so frequently among us, that, even in the largest families, life in common becomes difficult, and we are often, as it were, apart, utterly unknown one to another, and everywhere feel ourselves as on strange territory.