CHAPTER II.
DESCRIPTION OF ALGIERS.
Arrival in Algeria.––Murray’s Guide-books, and their Amenities.––Disembarkation in the Port of Algiers.––Our Fellow-travellers.––Algiers and its Inhabitants.––The Dey’s Palace.––Cause of the French Invasion.
Next morning, at eight o’clock, came the waiter with the intelligence––“Nous sommes dans la baie d’Alger, monsieur, à une heure de la ville.” My desire to see Algiers was vehement indeed; but scarcely less strong was the craving of the inner man for bread and coffee. With the nectar of Arabia, however, the inspiration of the Orient seemed to percolate my veins; but when a fragrant glass of cognac crowned the meal, the aroma of the East enveloped me, the delicious strains of Bulbul rang in my ears, the Calaisien and the Marseillais, sitting stolidly before me, became straightway transformed into camels, the stewardess into a houri, and the noses of the passengers were as masques in my enraptured sight.
But the book at my side was not the Koran, though it might have been, for the strange farrago it contained.
It was a celebrated traveller’s manual in the 14 English language, and in red binding. The king of the Cannibal Islands has not in his library a more absurd volume than this manual; for in its pages pathetic bagmen give vent to their ludicrous ebullitions concerning the Alhambra, or the Rhine, or any foreign lion you please to name; and young boys just escaped from school dish up their first impressions of the Continent in a style as savoury as the flavour of a Spanish olla podrida. And yet, ascend the Rhine, go to Venice or to St. Petersburg, and ten to one for the chance, that when you meet an Englishman he will have that eternal manual clutched in his British grasp.
Oh, my dear and well-beloved countrymen, what creatures of fashion and precedent we all are, from high to low! What one does, the rest must do; and in the self-same manner. I verily believe, if the late Albert Smith had left it on record that, in ascending Mont Blanc, he planted his foot in a certain hole in the snow, every one of his successors in that glorious undertaking would have paid their guides an extra dollar for indicating to them the identical cavity, that they might go and do likewise. Thank goodness, Algeria is as yet encumbered by no manual or “Hand-book,” as our modern Germanised phraseology elects to call the egregious productions; so shall we travellers be at liberty to follow our own noses, to go exactly where we like, and to do what we please, even to dressing like Arabs, should the whim seize us. Moreover, we 15 may do in Rome as Rome does, and enjoy a French breakfast washed down with good wine in lieu of bad tea, without having ourselves or our proceedings stigmatised as “shocking,” as would undoubtedly be our lot at Paris, or Brussels, or Berlin.
Behold us, then, in happy hour, ready to disembark in Algiers, with the children of the desert thronging on board to act as porters. Their appearance pleases me much, as they come forward, with their tall, striking figures, dark eyes, and distinguished mien. “Perfect gentlemen, these,” said I to myself; but beneath the outside crust little remains that can be called gratifying. These men are like the apple of Sodom; at least, so I thought on landing, after a long squabble with them respecting the passage money, carried on in bad Italian and French. A nearer acquaintance with them may, perhaps, modify my views on this subject.
“Well, it has been a pleasant time on board the packet,” is my parting reflection as I step ashore; nor shall I lightly forget the captain, so different in his politeness and urbanity from the sea-bear with whom I sailed in the North Sea; nor the honest Hamburgher, who appeared to have an equally beloved wife in every land and in every place we came to; nor the would-be dandy, who lit cigars innumerable, and invariably flung them overboard after the first puff; nor the priests, who seemed to possess the gift of invisibility, so rarely did they show themselves; nor 16 the hundred thousand events and personages that flash upon our path for a moment on our journey through life, and then linger in the memory only as the dim phantoms of a dream that has passed away.