IN BARBARY
_Books by_ E. ALEXANDER POWELL
_TRAVEL AND WORLD POLITICS_
IN BARBARY
_Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and the Sahara_
BEYOND THE UTMOST PURPLE RIM
_Abyssinia, Somaliland, and Madagascar_
THE MAP THAT IS HALF UNROLLED
_Tanganyika Territory and the Congo_
THE LAST FRONTIER
_Politics and Travel in Africa_
THE END OF THE TRAIL
_The Far West From Mexico To Alaska_
NEW FRONTIERS OF FREEDOM
_From the Alps To the Ægean_
WHERE THE STRANGE TRAILS GO DOWN
_Malaysia and Siam_
ASIA AT THE CROSSROADS
_Japan, China, and the Philippines_
BY CAMEL AND CAR TO THE PEACOCK THRONE
_Syria, Arabia, Iraq, and Persia_
THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN MOSLEM ASIA
_Politics in the near and Middle East_
_HISTORY_
GENTLEMEN ROVERS
_American History_
THE ROAD TO GLORY
_American History_
FORGOTTEN HEROES
_American History_
_THE GREAT WAR_
FIGHTING IN FLANDERS
_The Campaign in Belgium, 1914_
VIVE LA FRANCE!
_The Campaign in France, 1915_
ITALY AT WAR
_The Campaign in Italy, 1916_
BROTHERS IN ARMS
_America Enters the Great War_
THE ARMY BEHIND THE ARMY
_America at War, 1917-18_
[Illustration: A SOLDIER OF AFRICA
There is no finer light-horseman on earth than the spahi—a cow-puncher, a
Cossack, an Indian brave, and a Bedouin warrior combined]
IN BARBARY
TUNISIA, ALGERIA, MOROCCO
AND THE SAHARA
BY
E. ALEXANDER POWELL
WITH EIGHTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND TWO MAPS
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO.
NEW YORK LONDON
Copyright, 1926, by
THE CENTURY CO.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
_To_
MY DAUGHTER
BETTIE
_In memory of the days
when we rode across
the desert_
FOREWORD
Unlike most of my preceding volumes, this book deals with countries which
are comparatively near to home. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco—which we know
collectively as Barbary—lie at the very door of Europe; their principal
ports are scarcely more than overnight from Naples, Barcelona, and
Marseilles; scores of tourist steamers drop anchor in their harbors every
winter, and they are visited by increasing numbers of Americans each
year. Yet it is a curious fact, and one difficult to explain, that the
popular misconceptions regarding these easily accessible lands are even
more glaring than those in respect to far remoter regions which the white
man penetrates at every risk.
The truth of the matter is that most Americans, and most Europeans too
for that matter, think of Barbary in terms of the corsairs, the Garden of
Allah, the dancing-girls of the Ouled-Naïl, the Foreign Legion, Raisuli
and Perdicaris, the squalor and confusion of Europeanized Tangier,
the Riff and Abd-el-Krim, the luxurious resort hotels of Algiers, the
Street of the Perfume-Sellers in Tunis, Moroccan leather-work, camels,
tiled gateways, the utterly impossible sheikhs described by Mrs. Hull
and interpreted by Hollywood, and the sand-dunes so frequently pictured
in the “National Geographic Magazine.” With our unfortunate propensity
for generalizing, we have assumed that these high spots were typical of
Barbary, thus forming a mental picture which is as fantastic as it is
inaccurate.
For example, we speak of the inhabitants of North Africa as Arabs, who in
reality are only a minority, the bulk of the population being composed of
Berbers, the earliest known possessors of the soil, who still hold the
highlands which stretch from the borders of Egypt to the shores of the
Atlantic, from the sands of the Mediterranean to those of the Sahara,
that vast extent of territory to which we have given their name, Barbary.
We think of the Berbers as crude and uncultured, as barbaric,
bloodthirsty, and backward as were the American Indians. Yet before
America was so much as heard of, they, not the Arabs or the Saracens, had
raised at Granada and Seville those glorious buildings which are among
the architectural triumphs of the world.
Because of their sun-tanned skins, and recalling, perhaps, the old
term “blackamoor,” we assume that the Berbers are a colored race and
are astounded when we are told that they are of pure Caucasian stock,
racially as white as ourselves.
Because it is in Africa we take it for granted that Barbary swelters in a
torrid climate, whereas it is a cold country with a hot sun. In Algeria
the week after Easter I have seen snow several inches deep, and the
mountains to the south of Marrákesh are topped with snow nearly the whole
year round.
Most of us think of Morocco as a treeless, semi-arid, almost level land,
yet it has vast forests of oak and pine, several rivers comparable with
the Thames or the Hudson, and in the spring its prairies and hill-slopes
are carpeted with countless varieties of wild flowers. Far from being
level, it is a highly mountainous country; the Moroccan Atlas has a
greater average height than the Alps, and at least one of its peaks is
higher than any mountain in the United States outside of Alaska.
We ourselves went to war in ’98 to end the intolerable rule of Spain in
the Western Hemisphere, yet the propaganda skilfully disseminated from
Madrid and Paris has blinded us to the fact that Abd-el-Krim and his
mountaineers of the Riff were fighting for precisely the same reason for
which the Cubans fought—to throw off the yoke of Spanish tyranny and
cruelty.
Because in the geographies of our school-days large portions of North
Africa were painted a speckled yellow, and because of the pictures of
sand-dunes reproduced in certain magazines, we habitually picture the
Sahara as a trackless waste of orange sand, on which grows no living
thing, little realizing that it is broken by mile-high mountain ranges
and dotted with oases, some of them as large as a New England State,
which support thousands of inhabitants and millions of date-palms.
Basing our idea on motion-pictures made in Hollywood, and on novels of
the desert school of fiction, we imagine sheikhs—and for heaven’s sake
pronounce it _shakes_ instead of _sheeks_!—as romantic, picturesque,
debonair gentlemen with chivalrous instincts and charming manners,
whereas candor compels me to assert that most of them are blackguardly
ruffians, lustful, cruel, vindictive, ignorant, debased, as filthy of
mind as of body.
We have long accepted as gospel the assertion that the British are the
only really successful colonizers in the world; the French colonial we
have pictured as a miserable being who spends his days in a hammock,
sipping absinthe, reading “La Vie Parisienne,” and counting the hours
until he can return to _la belle France_. Yet, in the space of a single
generation, these miserable and inefficient beings have in Africa alone
conquered and consolidated and civilized a colonial empire greater in
area than the United States and all of its possessions put together.
And, finally, we cling to the delusion that Barbary, though doubtless
colorful and picturesque, is deficient in monuments of historical or
architectural interest, and that the facilities provided for the comfort
of the traveler are limited and somewhat crude. Let me remark, by way of
answering this objection, that Tunisia is as thickly strewn with Roman
ruins as Italy itself; that the scenery of the Grand Kabylia and the
High Atlas is as impressive as any in Switzerland; that the mosques and
towers and palaces of Morocco were built by the same race which raised
the Alhambra and the Alcázar; that the network of motor-roads which cover
Barbary compare very favorably with the best highways we have in the
United States; and that the hotels which have sprung up all the way from
Tunis to Marrákesh are not far removed in luxury from the great tourist
hostelries of Florida and California.
Extremely misleading too have been the pictures of political conditions
in North Africa as drawn by certain members of self-styled “American
missions,” who have visited the country at the invitation of the
government, have been dazzled by fêtes and flatteries, and have swallowed
the propaganda assiduously fed them by their hosts. I yield to none in my
admiration for what France has achieved in North Africa, but to assert,
as have certain American visitors, that the natives are contented with
French rule and would give their life’s blood to defend it is to take
wholly unjustifiable liberties with the truth.
It is to correct the current misapprehensions in regard to Barbary, some
of which are alluded to above, that I have written this book.
I am perfectly aware that the countries to which the following pages
are devoted have been treated of many times, and that my pages contain
nothing that is startling, little that is really new. But I can at
least make this claim for my book, that it is the only one, so far as I
am aware, which brings the whole of French North Africa, its history,
peoples, customs, places of interest, resources, and politics, between
two covers. During my last two or three visits to Barbary I have been
struck by the lack of such a book, and I have designed this one to fill a
needed want.
Though I have used my last African journey, which occupied the winter,
spring, and early summer of 1925, as a thread on which to string the
incidents and impressions recorded in the ensuing chapters, it should be
explained that much of my information was gathered during earlier visits,
dating back to the early years of the present century. Hence I am in a
position to make comparisons. For it has been my great good fortune to
have seen the preliminary sketches as well as the completed picture. I
was in the Sahara when it was still “the Last Frontier”; I knew Morocco
as it was a decade before the white helmets came.
While having no desire to trespass on the field of Messrs. Baedeker,
Murray, and Cook, I have nevertheless attempted to produce a volume which
will be of real service to the casual traveler by incorporating definite
information as to routes, hotels, and general travel conditions and by
calling to his attention places which, though not always mentioned in
the guide-books, are well worth seeing. I have also sketched the natural
resources of the various regions and have endeavored to acquaint my
readers with the highly involved political situations which exist in
all of them. It may be said, by way of criticism, that my pages are
overburdened with historical matter, but without the background of the
Punic settlements, the Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, and Arab invasions, and
the activities of the corsairs, it is impossible to understand Barbary as
it is under the French.
It may also be assumed by some that, as I was afforded numerous
facilities by the French authorities, this book is a reflection of the
French view. I would remind such critics that the remoter districts of
North Africa are still in military occupation, forbidden to the casual
traveler, and that they may be visited with the permission of the French
military authorities or not at all. Though such permission was promptly
granted whenever I requested it, and though French officials of all
grades went out of their way to show me courtesies and extend assistance,
my judgment has not been affected by the consideration I received, nor
my views biased, as the following pages will testify. To much that the
French have accomplished in North Africa I raise my hat in respect and
admiration; of other phases of their policy I do not approve. In both
cases I have spoken my mind freely. My opinions may not be worth much,
but at least they are my own.
E. ALEXANDER POWELL.
SUGAR HILL, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AUGUST, 1926.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The journey described in the following pages was first suggested to me by
a dear and deeply lamented friend, the late Hugues Le Roux, senator of
France and a noted African explorer, who had taken an active and highly
helpful interest in my preceding expeditions into the Dark Continent.
Through the kindness of Senator Le Roux and of his charming American wife
I met at their dinner-table many persons, some of them high in the French
political world, who were of immense assistance to me.
M. Albert Sarraut, then minister of the colonies, and General Nollet,
at the time minister of war, placed at my disposal all the facilities
of their departments of the government. M. Jean Jules Jusserand, former
French ambassador to the United States; his successor at the Washington
embassy, M. Berenger; the Hon. Myron T. Herrick, American ambassador
to France; Christian Gross, Esq., secretary of the American embassy in
Paris; M. Marcel Knecht, the famous editor and publicist; M. Joseph
Perret, director of the French Government Tourist Information Office in
New York; and my old friend, James Hazen Hyde, Esq., all aided me with
valuable advice and letters of introduction.
In Tunisia my path was made pleasant by the French resident-general, M.
Lucien Saint; in Algeria by the governor-general, M. Théodore Steeg; and
in Morocco by the resident-general, Marshal Lyautey. General Vicomte de
Chambrun, commanding the French troops in Fez, from whom I have always
received the warmest of welcomes upon my visits to that city; General
Daugan, commanding the forces in Southern Morocco; Colonel Paul Azan,
commanding at Tlemcen, in Algeria; and Vicomte Louis de Trémaudan, of
the civil administration at Marrákesh, were all largely responsible for
the pleasure and interest of my journey by making it possible for me to
visit districts not as a rule open to Europeans. It was my great good
fortune to have as my guide to the ruins of Carthage the Rev. Father
Delattre of the Order of the White Fathers, who is one of the foremost
archæologists in the world; while Miss Sophie Denison, who has been a
medical missionary in Morocco for a third of a century, was of great
assistance to me in Fez. Two voyages on the S.S. _La France_ were made
delightful by the thoughtfulness of her commander, Captain Blancart, and
the second captain, M. Vogel. In fact, throughout a journey of nearly
fifteen thousand miles we were shown unfailing hospitality and kindness
by every official with whom we came in contact, from his Imperial Majesty
the sultan of Morocco, who received me in audience in his palace at
Marrákesh, to subalterns in command of lonely desert outposts.
That the long journey, much of it in desert regions, was so replete with
material comforts, was due to the great kindness of M. Jean dal Piaz,
president of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, and to his able
assistants, M. Maurice Tillier, director-general of the company in Paris;
M. Robert Hallot, Chef du Services des Auto-Circuits Nord-Africains, and
M. Georges Paignon, manager of the North African Tours Department in New
York, who generously placed at my disposal all the facilities of their
vast organization. It will be noted that in the following pages I have
repeatedly called attention to the services provided for the traveler in
North Africa by the “Transat.” Not to mention the part played by this
company in the opening up of Barbary would be equivalent to ignoring the
work of Fred Harvey and the Santa Fé in the development of the American
West.
I also welcome this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to C.
F. and L. S. Grant, authors of “African Shores of the Mediterranean”; to
L. March Phillips, Esq., author of “In the Desert”; to Norman Douglas,
Esq., author of “Fountains in the Sand”; to Frances E. Nesbitt, author of
“Algeria and Tunisia”; to Charles Thomas-Stanford, Esq., author of “About
Algeria”; to the late Budgett Meakin, Esq., author of “Life in Morocco”;
and to Sir Harry H. Johnston, Frank E. Cana, Esq., and Edward Heawood,
Esq., authors of monographs in the “Encyclopædia Britannica” on Tunisia,
Algeria, and the Sahara respectively. From all of the above works I have
obtained historic and economic data and many valuable suggestions.
E. A. P.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. I NEVER SEE A MAP BUT I’M AWAY 3
II. THE GATE TO BARBARY 14
III. THE FACTORY OF STRANGE ODORS 26
IV. MID PLEASURES AND PALACES 42
V. CARTHAGO DELETA EST 56
VI. ASHES OF EMPIRE 82
VII. TO KAIROUAN THE HOLY 100
VIII. TROGLODYTES AND LOTUS-EATERS 119
IX. ACROSS THE SHATS TO THE SANDY SEA 144
X. THE CONQUEST OF THE SAHARA 158
XI. THE LAST HOME OF MYSTERY 179
XII. DOWN TO THE LAND OF THE MOZABITES 203
XIII. BISKRA, DEMI-MONDAINE OF THE DESERT 220
XIV. FRONTIERS OF ROME 238
XV. THE GRAND KABYLIA 263
XVI. THE CAPITAL OF THE CORSAIRS 278
XVII. FOLLOWING THE PIRATE COAST 304
XVIII. THE FOREIGN LEGION 323
XIX. THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN “THE FARTHEST WEST” 339
XX. FROM A FASI HOUSETOP 374
XXI. IN THE SHADOW OF THE SHEREEFIAN UMBRELLA 400
XXII. SOUTH TO THE FORBIDDEN SUS 424
A SHORT GLOSSARY OF ARABIC WORDS AND PHRASES
COMMONLY USED IN BARBARY 459
INDEX 469
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
A soldier of Africa _Frontispiece_
Lo, all the pomp of yesterday 17
Here Scheherazade might have told her tales 32
Church and state in Tunisia 37
Thirteen centuries look down upon you 44
A gate to Barbary 49
They spend their holidays among the dead 64
The city of the mole-men 85
Homes of the Troglodytes 92
The voice from the minaret 97
The marabout in the desert 112
In the land of polygamy and passion 117
One of the most amazing ruins in the world 121
Medenine, the strangest city in the world 124
The Sun-God paints his picture in the West 129
Like feathered bonnets on the heads of a savage army 144
The fantastic dwellings of Mechounech 149
The forgotten of God 156
The sandy sea 161
Basking in the blinding sunlight of the Tunisian Sahara 176
The road to Timbuktu 181
Crossing the sand-dunes of the Grand Erg by motor 185
To prove that we were really there 188
A landmark for those who navigate the sea of sand 193
The shrine in the sands 196
The sand-storm 205
The sport of kings 208
The city of the Mozabites 213
Far hence, in some lone desert town 217
The start from Touggourt 220
The strange capital of a strange people 225
Desert damsels, old and young 229
What the pious Moslem expects to find in paradise 236
A Saharan market-place 240
The glory that was Rome 245
The city of the precipices 252
“Ul-l-l-l-l All-ah!” 273
Algiers, the capital of the Corsairs 280
Veiled women slip like sheeted ghosts 288
The resting-place of Cleopatra’s daughter 304
No, it is not always hot in Africa 321
The Moroccan is not afraid of mephitic maladies 328
The Riff 357
The price of empire 364
From out of the unknown 369
Strange folk from the far places 372
The panorama of the East 381
Forbidden to all save the faithful 384
In the city which gave the fez its name 389
Moroccan vaudeville 392
The Great Prayer outside of Fez 396
The harkas come down from the hills 401
A place of walled delight 408
The peace of Allah 416
The shadow of God on earth 421
A refuge of the rovers 424
The red city 428
The minarets of Marrákesh 433
The Aguenaou Gate of Marrákesh 437
The puppet and the man who pulled the strings 440
The empire-builder 440
Overlords of the southland 444
Most people think of Morocco as a semi-arid country 448
The stronghold of the Caïd Goundafi, overlord of the Forbidden Sus 452
A seat of feudal power 456
MAPS
Outline map showing the French possessions in Africa 8
Map showing the countries of Barbary 24
IN BARBARY
CHAPTER I
I NEVER SEE A MAP BUT I’M AWAY
Beyond the East, the sunrise.
Beyond the West, the sea.
And East and West, the wander-thirst that will not let me be.
The wander-thirst is like the drug-habit. Once you acquire it you are
done for. It will never let you rest. There is no mistaking its symptoms:
a hatred of the prosaic, the routine, and the humdrum; an aversion to
staying long in one place; an insatiable craving to move on, move on—to
see what lies beyond yonder range of hills, around that next bend in the
road.
It is as persistent as it is insidious. There comes the stage when you
think that you are cured of it. You delude yourself into believing that
you have had enough of discomforts and privations and that it is high
time you settled down and had a home. You weigh the respective merits, as
a place of residence, of Long Island and Southern California; you even
consult an architect and subscribe to “House and Garden” and “Country
Life.”
But one day you casually pick up a list of steamer sailings, or stumble
on your battered luggage plastered over with foreign labels, or whiff
some exotic smell which brings back memories of the hot lands (there is
no sense which stimulates the memory like that of smell), or see a vessel
outward bound, or idly open a map, whereupon the old craving suddenly
grips you like an African fever, and, almost before you realize it, you
are on the out-trail once again.
The symptoms usually recur with the approach of winter, when the northern
days grow short and gloomy, when the shop-windows are filled with fur
coats and mufflers and galoshes, when the wind howls mournfully beneath
the eaves o’ nights. But the attacks which are hardest to resist come in
the early spring, when the snow has disappeared, and the smell of fresh
earth is in the air, and the country-side is already green in spots. That
is the time when it is most difficult to control one’s restless feet.
For a quarter of a century the urge of spring had perennially sent me
packing to the Far Places. But when I came up from Equatoria, after a
year spent beneath the shadow of the Line, I said to myself that I was
through with wandering as a vocation—that I was going back to my own
country and my own people and on an elm-shaded street in some tranquil
community buy me a long, low, rambling house—a white house with broad,
hospitable porches and green blinds. I had carefully planned it all
out on the long African marches or during sleepless nights beneath the
Southern Cross. I would join the local golf-club, and amuse myself with
my horses and my dogs and my books, and keep my house filled with friends
over the week-ends, and even go into politics in a mild way, perhaps. In
fact, I proposed to do all the sensible, prosaic things for which I had
never had the time before.
But, before sailing for America to put these laudable resolutions into
effect, I met at a Paris dinner-table the gentleman who was at that time
charged with the conduct of France’s colonial affairs. We had much in
common, it developed, for he too had been on those distant seaboards of
the world where the Gallic empire-builders are creating a new and greater
France. Lingering over the coffee and cigars we talked shop—the future
of Indo-China, Madagascar’s need of harbors, Miquelon and its fisheries,
the Syrian mandate, the control of sleeping-sickness in the Congo,
cotton-growing in the country round Lake Tchad.
“Why don’t you round out your survey of our possessions,” the minister
suggested, “by taking a look at what we’ve accomplished in North Africa?”
“The North African tour?” I asked, laughing. “Algiers, Constantine, and
Tunis, with a side-trip to the Garden of Allah? Thank you, no. After
what I’ve seen I’m afraid that I’d find that sort of thing pretty tame.
Besides, I’ve already been to North Africa any number of times. I once
spent a winter in Tunisia, and Algeria and I was in Morocco back in the
bad old days when unsuccessful pretenders to the Shereefian throne were
carried about the country in iron cages lashed to the backs of camels.”
“I’ll wager that I can name some places in North Africa that you haven’t
seen,” the tempter said persuasively. “How about a visit to Djerba—the
island of the lotus-eaters, you know—and the desert sky-scrapers of
Medenine and the troglodyte dwellings of the Matmata Plateau? Then you
could push down into the Sahara, cross the sand-dunes of the Grand Erg by
twelve-wheeler to Ouargla and Ghardaia, keep on to the Figuig Oasis, and
so over the Atlas into Morocco.”
“Yes,” I remarked speculatively, “if I were going to do it at all I
should certainly include Morocco. There are some parts of it which I have
never seen, and it has rather worried me. I’ve always had a hankering to
have a look at some of those _kasbahs_ in the High Atlas, where the grand
caïds live like the marauding barons of the Middle Ages, I am told. And,
while I was about it, I should like to get into the forbidden Sus, and
even to see a bit of Mauretania and the masked Touareg, perhaps.”
“That can all be arranged quite easily,” the minister assured me. “If you
decide to go, I’ll write to Marshal Lyautey, who runs the show for us in
Morocco, and instruct the officers commanding in the Saharan military
provinces to give you every assistance.”
“Suppose we have a look at the map,” I suggested, half capitulating. (I
could feel the old familiar symptoms coming on; already my feet were
growing restless.)
We appealed to our host, who led us into his library and on the table
spread a large-scale map labeled “Afrique du Nord Française.” There
they lay before me, tempting as jewels, those glowing lands of sun and
sand, of Arab, Berber, and Moor, of mosque and minaret. Set in the
Mediterranean shore-line like great fragments of colored mosaic were the
Barbary States—Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. Below them, sweeping southward
to the Great Bend of the Niger and the swamps around Lake Tchad, was the
yellow expanse of the Sahara, crisscrossed with the thin black lines
which I knew for caravan-routes and sprinkled with the patches of green
which stand for palm-shaded oases. And far to the westward, where Africa
almost rubs shoulders with South America, lay Mauretania, land of the
Blue-Veiled Silent Ones, The Forgotten of God.
Now I maintain that it is as unfair to unroll a map before a man who is
striving to overcome the wander-thirst as it is to offer cocaine to a
reformed drug-addict. For how, I ask you, could one be expected to resist
the lure of those magic names—Kairouan, Gafsa, Touggourt, Ghardaia,
Laghouat, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Oujda, Fez, Mequinez, Mazagan, Mogador, Agadir?
At sight of them my resolutions crumbled like Mexican adobe. Almost
before I realized it my carefully made plans had been tossed into the
discard, and instead of poring over plans and specifications with an
architect I was overhauling my travel-gear and ordering riding-breeches
from my tailor and making inquiries about the sailing-dates from
Marseilles.
Yes, it was the map that was my undoing, for
I never see a map but I’m away
On all the errands that I long to do,
Up all the rivers that are painted blue,
And all the ranges that are painted gray,
And into those pale spaces where they say,
“Unknown”....
There are three routes from France to French North Africa, and they are
all served by the steamers of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, or,
as it is better known to Americans, the French Line. The first is from
Bordeaux to Casablanca, the chief seaport of Morocco; a four-day voyage,
this, half of it in the Bay of Biscay. Speaking for myself, I have never
found that ill-reputed body of water anything save smooth, but doubtless
that has been my good fortune. The second route is from Marseilles to
Algiers by the Mediterranean greyhounds, swift, luxurious vessels which
make the crossing in something under four-and-twenty hours, so that you
have scarcely said good-by to Europe before you are being greeted by
Africa. The third route, and the one which we took, is from Marseilles
to Tunis—a two days’ voyage if the steamer is not detained at Bizerta.
Of course there are other roads to Africa; roads which are more
picturesque and interesting, perhaps, provided that speed and comfort
are not essential. Thus one may travel by the Sud Express from Paris
to Algeciras, a charming little Spanish coast-town across the bay from
Gibraltar, whence small and rather dirty vessels cross the straits thrice
weekly to Tangier in Morocco. The chief objection to this way is that,
in order to reach French Morocco and the main lines of travel, it is
necessary to traverse the Spanish zone by motor-car, a somewhat arduous
trip and one which has heretofore been subject to interruption because of
the troubles in the Riff.
There is an even more out-of-the-ordinary route to Barbary, but it is
uncertain and in parts exceedingly uncomfortable, so, unless the traveler
is prepared to put up with delays and discomforts, I cannot recommend
it. This is by the fortnightly Italian boat from Syracuse, in Sicily, to
Tripoli and thence by narrow-gage railway along the coast of Tripolitania
to the present end-of-steel at Zuara. Here, by making arrangements
well in advance, it is usually possible to obtain a motor-car for the
two-hundred-mile journey across the desert to the French rail-head at
Gabés, in southern Tunisia.
In deciding to enter Barbary through the Tunisian gateway we were
influenced by reasons historical, climatical, and sentimental. To the
historically minded traveler the east-to-west journey is more satisfying
than the reverse route because, going westward, he follows the march of
history, the hoof-prints of the Islamic invaders who, sweeping out of
Asia behind their horsetail standards, carried fire and sword and the
green banner of the Prophet along the northern shores of Africa until,
halted by the Atlantic, they swung northward into Spain. To travel in the
opposite direction would be equivalent to reading history backward.
[Illustration: OUTLINE MAP SHOWING THE FRENCH POSSESSIONS IN AFRICA]
Again, should you go to Barbary, as we did, in the late winter, the
weather is more likely to be favorable in Tunisia than in Morocco, where
cold, rain, and mud usually prevail until well into the spring. If,
moreover, you purpose striking southward from Tunis into the desert, it
is well to get that portion of the journey over with before spring is
too far advanced, as after mid-April the heat becomes intolerable in the
Sahara and the sirocco season begins.
From the dramatic point of view, as well, it is infinitely preferable
to follow the journeying sun, for, whereas Tunisia is as civilized and
well-behaved as Egypt, Morocco, save in spots, remains not far removed
from barbarism, so that the peoples, customs, and scenes, instead
of decreasing in novelty and interest as you press westward, become
increasingly romantic and strange.
In making preparations for a journey in Barbary one should never lose
sight of the fact that North Africa is a cold country with a hot
sun. Most people, I find, labor under the delusion that Africa is
synonymous with heat. This is due, I imagine, to our careless habit
of generalization, of taking things for granted. Just as Canada was
given a wholly undeserved reputation for frigidity by Kipling’s “Our
Lady of the Snows,” so the pictures of sun-scorched deserts made so
familiar by steamship-lines and tourist-companies have led to the
assumption that every African country has, perforce, a torrid climate.
Such misconceptions would be less general if people were more prone to
consult the family atlas. There they would see that Tunis is on the
same parallel as the city of Washington and that Algeria and Tunisia
correspond in latitude to Virginia and North Carolina. The truth of
the matter is that in the countries lying along Africa’s Mediterranean
seaboard there are few evenings between November and May when a warm
overcoat will be found uncomfortable, and even far south in the desert in
the late spring I have shivered beneath three heavy blankets.
Yet an astonishingly large proportion of American visitors to North
Africa appear to be wholly ignorant of the climatic conditions which
prevail in that region. Staying in Biskra while we were there was a
motion-picture company from California. While “on location” the actors
wore pith helmets and white drill riding-breeches and shirts open at
the neck and the other garments associated in the popular mind with
life in the tropics, but, once the day’s filming was over, they wrapped
themselves in sweaters, overcoats, and mufflers and huddled, shivering,
about the open fire in their hotel. Those who saw that picture on the
screen—it was called “Burning Sands” if I remember rightly—little dreamed
that the actors who made it spoke their lines through chattering teeth
and gesticulated with hands blue from cold.
There is one other popular misconception about North Africa which
might as well be corrected now as later on. Save in the extreme south,
Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are not flat, desert-like countries, as is
frequently assumed. On the contrary, they are distinctly rugged and in
parts extremely mountainous. Perhaps it will astonish some of my readers
to be told that the High Atlas has a greater average height than the Alps
and that at least one of the Moroccan peaks is higher than any mountain
in the United States outside of Alaska. Though the Algerian ranges of
the Atlas are not so lofty as those further to the westward, I have seen
several inches of snow on the passes of the Grande Kabylie a few days
before Easter.
* * * * *
I always like sailing from Marseilles. Perhaps it is because I have set
out from there on so many long and fascinating journeys, but to me it has
always been, along with Constantinople and Port Said and Singapore and
Panama, a gateway to adventure.
On those sparkling blue-and-gold mornings for which the Côte d’Azur is
famous I like to sit over my coffee beneath the striped awning of one
of the restaurants along the Cannebière and watch the human panorama
unroll itself before my eyes. Here one sees picturesque types from
the Near, the Middle, and the Farther East; representatives of all of
France’s far-flung colonial possessions. The gaunt, stooped man with the
yellowed skin and tired eyes, in his buttonhole the red rosette of the
Legion d’Honneur, is a colonial administrator, home on a much-needed
and all too brief leave of absence from some God-forsaken outpost of
empire in Syria, Somaliland, Madagascar, Indo-China. Here is a group of
zouaves, boisterous, sun-bronzed fellows in tasseled fezzes and baggy
scarlet trousers, fresh from service with the Army of Africa, who ogle
every pretty girl they pass and pause for a round of drinks at every
café. Tunisian _marchands des tapis_, gaudily colored rugs draped over
their shoulders, shuffle along in heelless yellow slippers, urging their
wares upon the patrons of the sidewalk restaurants until the exasperated
waiters harshly order them away. A trio of bearded, grave-faced men, very
dignified and aloof in their white hoods and flowing white burnouses,
pace by unhurriedly, concealing their wonder at the unaccustomed scenes
behind masks of Oriental imperturbability; they are powerful caïds from
one of the Saharan provinces, visiting France for the first time as
guests of the Republic. Down the center of the street, under the watchful
eye of a grizzled sergeant, briskly marches a platoon of down-at-heel,
out-at-elbow nondescripts—recruits for the Foreign Legion, with five
years of iron discipline and heartbreaking desert service before them.
Sauntering along beside a pretty woman is an officer of chasseurs
d’Afrique, a light-opera figure in his flaring scarlet breeches,
wasp-waisted sky-blue jacket, and képi piped with gold and silver braid.
Staring with childlike curiosity at the displays in the shop-windows
are yellow men from Annam, brown men from Tripolitania and the Red Sea
countries, black men from the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Hulking negro
stevedores rub shoulders with greasy, furtive-eyed seamen from Levantine
coasters and Lascar stewards from the P. & O. boats in the harbor.
Zigzagging along the pavement, arm in arm, comes a row of rollicking
sailors from the fleet, scarlet pompoms on their rakishly tilted caps and
the roll of the sea in their gait. And everywhere, seated at the café
tables, mingling with the moving throng, are the _filles de joie_, the
ladies of easy virtue, bold-eyed and carmine-cheeked, who find in the
streets of the great seaport a happy hunting-ground.
When in Marseilles I like to make a little pilgrimage by funicular to
Notre Dame de la Garde, the church of those who go down to the sea in
ships, and, strolling through its dim, hushed transepts, to read the
inscriptions, some naïve, some pathetic, on the hundreds of votive
tablets placed there in gratitude and thanksgiving by those who have
been saved from storm and shipwreck. I like to dine in the quaint little
restaurants which fringe the waterfront on the delicacies for which
Marseilles is famous—_langouste_, _homard_, crab, scallops, oysters,
fish, and, of course, _bouillebaisse_. But particularly I like to stroll
along the edge of the harbor, with its forest of masts and funnels, and
watch the ships, flying the flags of many nations, coming from or setting
forth for strange, far-off, outlandish ports on all the Seven Seas.
* * * * *
The short winter’s day was drawing to a close when the _Duc d’Aumale_
nosed her way cautiously between the arms of the Marseilles breakwater
and lifted to a choppy sea. From her lofty pinnacle above the city Our
Lady on Guard seemed to bid us a benign farewell. Atop the cliffs off
our port bow the Corniche Road twisted and wound and doubled upon itself
like an uncoiled lariat tossed carelessly upon the ground. Further to
the north, the peaks of the Maritime Alps reared themselves majestically
skyward, purple-cloaked and ermine-caped. To starboard rose the rocky
islet, crowned by the grim Château d’If, where Monte Cristo sought to
ease his solitude by proclaiming, “The world is mine!” And before us, its
foam-flecked surface turned to a field of dancing gold by the westering
sun, stretched the Mediterranean—the road to Africa.
Ah, “outward bound!” The words beget
A dream of mosque and minaret
And golden dalliance
In orange gardens redolent
Of nights of stars and wonderment.
“Down Channel!”—down the foam-besprent
Blue highway to Romance.