THE GRAND KABYLIA
“Travel,” Madame de Pompadour once remarked petulantly to her friend
Louis XV, “is the saddest of all pleasures.” And, with two thousand miles
of African desert and upland behind you, it will not be surprising if you
are of the great courtezan’s way of thinking by the time you have arrived
at Setif, a busy but colorless and uninteresting town some hours to the
west of Constantine. If by now you have reached that stage of physical
weariness and mental boredom which led a companion of mine to observe
upon gaining the summit of the Grand St. Bernard, “Why, my dear fellow,
there’s nothing to see here but scenery,” then I should strongly advise
you to continue westward by the _route nationale_ which leads across the
Chaine-des-Bibans to Algiers; and on the evening of the second day after
leaving Constantine you will be seated in evening dress at a perfectly
appointed table in one of the great tourist hostelries which crown the
heights of Mustapha Supérieur, with the lights of the Algerian capital
twinkling at your feet and the boulevards of Paris only eight-and-forty
hours away.
But, if you can stand a few additional days of traveling, I hope for
your own sake that at Setif you will turn your car north instead of west,
taking the wonderful road which runs through the Chabet Pass to the
shores of the Mediterranean and Bougie and thence into the highlands of
the Grand Kabylia. Unless you do this you will miss some of the grandest
scenery the world has to offer, your friends in Algiers will listen to
your explanations with ill-concealed astonishment, and you will regret it
all your life. I am not urging you to make this detour, you understand; I
am merely suggesting it. What? You are willing to follow my advice? Good!
Let’s go!
For the first thirty miles after leaving Setif you will be disappointed,
for the road runs between endless fields of grain. But upon crossing
a chain of hills, from which we obtain a splendid view of the mighty
range we are about to penetrate, the road drops rapidly to Kherrata and
the little river which has worn for itself a narrow passage—the gorge
of Chabet-el-Akhira—through the Djurjuras, which rear themselves in a
tremendous rampart, in places seven thousand feet in height, between us
and the coast.
Immediately after leaving Kherrata the road plunges suddenly into the
mouth of the gorge, which is about four miles in length. The valley
contracts until it becomes so narrow that one can toss a stone across it;
the river, pent in between its walls of rock, rushes like a mill-race;
the road alternately creeps along a narrow shelf cut in the face of the
overhanging cliff, is borne by lofty arches above the rushing torrent, or
by means of tunnels pierces the obstructing masses of rock. In places the
precipice drops a thousand feet sheer to the river; at others one looks
up between the narrow walls to peaks which tower nearly a mile and a half
into the blue. Tributary streams come roaring down through leafy glens
to hurl themselves over the edge of the abyss into the river below amid
a smother of spray and spume. Yawning in the mountain-side are mouths of
black, mysterious caverns. Troops of Barbary apes leap from crag to crag,
or, looking down like gargoyles from the heights, chatter excitedly at
the passer-by. Even this road has echoed to the tramp of the legions. Mr.
Hilaire Belloc tells of a French general who, during the campaign against
the Kabyles, succeeded in leading his column through the defile, which
up to that time had been considered impassable even for an Arab on foot.
Justifiably proud of the achievement, he sent a detail to inscribe a
record of it on the face of the cliff. A few hours later the men returned
to report that there appeared to be lettering on the cliff already. Upon
examination the time-worn inscription read, “Legio III Augusta.”
After about four miles the gorge begins to widen, its walls become
less abrupt, the mountains give way to hills covered with forests of
oak and cork trees, and we emerge from the gloom of the defile into a
lovely mountain valley drenched in the spring sunshine. So on down the
ever-broadening valley, with occasional glimpses of the azure sea ahead,
until, at a point about twenty-five miles east of Bougie, we reach the
Mediterranean. For a time the road stays inland, traversing the rich
coastal plains which lie between the mountains and the sea; but as we
approach Bougie the increasingly mountainous nature of the country forces
it to the very edge of the lofty cliffs which line the shore, along which
it runs in an endless succession of curves and zigzags, contorting itself
into S’s, U’s, and Z’s. In places, where the spurs of the mountains
run down to the sea in precipitous headlands, the French engineers
have jeered at Nature’s attempt to obstruct the road by carrying it
on a narrow shelf blasted in the face of the sheer rock, so that the
motorist has the somewhat alarming sensation of driving along a slender
ribbon slung between sea and sky. Up and down it winds, round capes,
promontories, bays, and inlets; it is flung across gorges on bridges as
massively constructed as Roman aqueducts; sometimes it is tunneled, and
one emerges from the semi-darkness upon views of bright blue sea and
bright green mountain-slopes which are dreams of loveliness.
The African Corniche, as that portion of the coastal highway between
Djidjelli and Bougie is called, fully equals, if it does not surpass,
the famous road of the same name along the Riviera. I believe, indeed,
that the day is not far distant when this strip of the Algerian littoral
will rival the Côte d’Azur as a resort for winter tourists. It has a
better winter climate than the Riviera; it is almost immune from the
cold winds which at times set Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo a-shiver; it
is surrounded, east, south, and west, by scenery incomparably grander
than any in the Maritime Alps; its vegetation is richer and more varied,
with more suggestion of the tropical, than that on the other side of the
Mediterranean; hundreds of miles of splendid highway are open to the
motorist—east to Tunisia, west to Morocco, south to the Sahara; it is no
further from Bougie to Algiers than it is from Nice to Marseilles; and
Algiers, thanks to the _rapides_ of the P. L. M. and the swift steamers
of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, has become only a step from
Paris. Dredge the spacious harbor of Bougie to a depth which would permit
the entrance of the great tourist steamers; erect a casino and a good
hotel or two; line the sandy beach below the town with bathing-cabins,
and the Kabyle Coast would ere many years, if I am not mistaken, put the
Blue Coast out of business. For, apart from its innumerable natural
attractions, it offers to the tourist a romantic and irresistible appeal,
the lure of Africa.
Bougie, which is the natural seaport of Kabylia, is superbly situated
on the slopes of Mount Guraya, which are so steep that the red-roofed,
white-walled buildings of the town seem in imminent danger of sliding
into the sea. Many of its streets, in fact, are too precipitous for
vehicular traffic, being ascended, as in the case of certain Italian
towns, by long flights of stairs. There is a theatrical air about the
place, roofed with rose-red tiles and smothered in crimson bougainvillea,
as it rises, tier on tier, above a U-shaped harbor on whose ultramarine
waters ride at anchor vessels which bear beneath their sterns the
names of half the ports along the Mediterranean, fishing-craft with
hibiscus-colored lateen-sails, a French destroyer, slim and gray.
Frowning on the heights above the town is an ancient Spanish fortress
whose crumbling, mellow-tinted walls might have been built from
papier-mâché by a designer of stage-scenery. At its back rises the
great rock of Guraya, topped by a shrine which is a place of pilgrimage
for pious Moslems; while behind that in turn tower skyward the mighty
peaks of Babor and Tababort, dominating and dwarfing all else. As I
breakfasted on the lofty, rose-embowered balcony of my hotel, the ruined
corsair castle clinging to the hillside just above me, the red-and-white
town sprawling at my feet, and the sun-flecked, bright blue sea as a
back-drop, I always had the feeling that I was in a box at the theater,
and that shortly the orchestra would strike up and a chorus of pirates
and peasant maidens would come prancing out upon the stage.
Skirting the edge of the precipitous headland on which Bougie stands,
or hewn from its face, is the finest cliff walk I have ever seen; a
narrow foot-path, nearly four miles long and in places barely a yard
in width, every turn of which reveals a view of sea or mountains which
causes one to gasp with admiration and awe. The Strandweg at Abbazia, the
pergola-covered walk of the Cappuccini-Convento above Amalfi, the path
which borders the cliffs of Anacapri, all these are very lovely in their
way; but I, who have seen most of the sights this world has to offer,
assure you that none of them can compare in grandeur and beauty with
Bougie’s promenade.
Bougie—which, because of its trade in wax, is said to have given the
French their word for candle—is a place of great antiquity, probably
owing its origin to the Carthaginians. Phenicians, Romans, Vandals,
Byzantines, Berbers, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks, and French—it has been
occupied by them all in turn, and all have left their impress on its
architecture, its customs, or the faces of its inhabitants. Upon the
collapse of the Carthaginian power it became a Roman stronghold, and
extensive remains of Roman masonry are still to be seen amid the
olive-trees. During the reign of En-Nasr, the most powerful of the Berber
dynasty of Hammad, it attained a high degree of civilization, being
the greatest commercial center on the North African coast. As early as
1068 the heliograph was here in common use: by means of special towers,
provided with mirrors, messages were flashed for great distances along
the coast. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rich Genoese and
Venetian merchants erected numerous fine buildings in the city, leaving
so deep an impress that the place is more Italian than French to-day.
Toward the close of the fifteenth century Bougie passed under the
dominion of the Hafsides, whose empire extended from Tripolitania to the
borders of Morocco, but in the fifteenth century it was seized by the
Barbary corsairs, who used it as a base from which to harry the commerce
of the Mediterranean. So heavy were the losses inflicted by the corsairs
on the sea-trade of Spain that in 1510 Ferdinand V sent a squadron under
Don Pedro Navarro to capture Bougie, and Spanish it remained for nearly
two score years. The Spaniards built the great citadel that still looks
down upon the town, which they succeeded in holding against two attacks
by the Barbarossa brothers, only to have it wrested from them in 1555 by
Salah Reis, the pirate-pasha of Algiers. Thenceforth until the landing of
the French in 1833 the Turkish standard flew over the heights of Bougie,
the town, which once boasted one hundred thousand inhabitants, rapidly
falling into decay under the blight of Ottoman rule.
Forming the background of the rich coastal plain which stretches westward
from Bougie is the great Djurjura range, its lofty peaks, some of them
nearly a mile and a half in height, inclosing the highland regions
known as the Lesser and the Grand Kabylia, with which for grandeur of
scenery no other part of Algeria can compare. It is a wild and rugged
country, a land of towering, snow-capped mountains and secluded valleys,
of overhanging crags and leafy glens, of black forests and bright-blue
rivers, of yawning chasms and dizzy precipices and sparkling waterfalls,
a bright red village perched on the top of every peak and hill. “If
all the artists in the world came to Kabylia,” writes one enthusiastic
traveler, “there would be enough subjects to keep them busy for a year.”
A branch of that fierce and rugged Berber race which has occupied North
Africa since history began, the Kabyles, despite a history of foreign
conquest—Phenician, Greek, Roman, Vandal, Arab, and French—have preserved
to an astonishing degree the physical characteristics of their race,
its language and its customs. The Arabization of the Kabyles is limited
to little beyond their conversion to Islam, for, instead of amalgamating
with the Arab invaders, they retreated to their mountain strongholds,
where they maintained their independence until taught by the French
that undisciplined men armed with swords and flintlocks, no matter how
courageous individually, cannot stand for long against repeating-rifles
and field-guns.
Though the Kabyles, like the Arabs, are a “white” race, centuries of
exposure to sun and wind have darkened their skins to the color of a
much-used saddle. As a rule, however, they have brown hair and eyes, but
blue-eyed blonds are sometimes found among those of purer stock and red
or tawny beards are not infrequent. While most Kabyles are able to speak
Arabic, those who dwell in the remote fastnesses of the Djurjuras cling
tenaciously to various local forms of the ancient Berber tongue; it is a
singular fact that in spite of the thousands of years during which these
people have dwelt in isolation—or, perhaps, by reason of that fact—their
dialects vary but slightly from the long-extinct Hamitic language from
which they are all derived. As in the case of the Mozabites, the Kabyles
have no alphabet, their legends, sagas, verses, and folk-songs being
handed down by word of mouth, usually by priests or by the professional
story-tellers who are found in every village. Of the numerous Berber
dialects spoken in Kabylia, the most widely used is the Zouave; whence
the term “zouaves,” at one time applied to Kabyles who enlisted in the
French army, but now used to designate four infantry regiments, wearing
the tasseled cap and baggy trousers of the mountaineers, which, though
stationed in Africa, are composed entirely of Europeans.
The Kabyles profess to be Mohammedans of the Sunnite branch of Islam,
but they are a source of scandalization to their Arab coreligionists by
reason of their laxity in religious matters, their failure to obey the
precepts of the Koran. They observe Sunday instead of Friday as their day
of prayer; they eat the meat of the wild boar and drink a highly potent
brandy made from figs, though the use of pork and alcohol is strictly
forbidden to all True Believers; they honor the fast of Ramadan in the
breach rather than in the observance and seldom take the trouble to
perform the ablutions required of good Mohammedans; and, though tattooing
is prohibited by Koranic laws, all the women have a cross tattooed in
dark blue on the forehead between the eyebrows, and most of the men
bear the same symbol on the arm or the palm of the hand—a survival, it
is asserted by some, of the days when North Africa was Christian and
the cross was a token which exempted its wearer from certain forms of
taxation.
Alert, energetic, and enterprising, the Kabyle is immensely superior to
the Arab in industry, as he is in honesty, reliability, and intelligence.
He gives the impression, in short, of being, as he is, the descendant of
men who have lived in sturdy independence, self-respecting, self-reliant,
and self-governing. That he makes one of the finest soldiers in the
world the French discovered to their cost during the great Kabylian
revolt in 1871; indeed, he has never been fully subjugated, regarding
with contemptuous indifference the grim French fort which now frowns
down upon his villages from the mountains. The Kabyle is frequently
found far afield—serving in the armies of France (on the battle-fields
of the World War the Kabyle battalions covered themselves with German
blood and glory), as a workman in the cities along the littoral, as a
field-laborer in the Tell, as an itinerant trader or peddler laboriously
earning the wherewithal to buy a bit of land and build himself a home in
his native village. In their social tendencies the Kabyles are distinctly
communistic; property is often owned by the family in common, and a
man can call upon his fellow-villagers for assistance under certain
circumstances, such as tilling a field or building a house. The Kabyle’s
village is his state, the government being vested in an assembly composed
of all adult males, the poorest inhabitants having as great a voice in
village affairs as the richest. Kabylia consists, in short, of a great
number of town democracies, each absolutely independent so far as its
internal affairs are concerned, loosely bound together in a sort of
confederation.
The Kabyle woman enjoys a vastly better social position than her
Arab sister, being permitted far more power and treated with more
consideration. True, her husband buys her as he would a cow and can
dismiss her whenever it so pleases him; she performs most of the heavy
work about the house and farm; and when she is old, particularly if she
has not borne a male child, she is frequently abandoned. But she has
a voice in public affairs; she manages the household; she has a right
to the money she earns; she goes unveiled; and in time of war she has
frequently fought in battle beside her husband. The Kabyle pays his
wife the compliment of remaining monogamous, and female saints are held
in the highest veneration. When young the Kabyle women are usually
strikingly pretty and graceful, and when they are old they rarely become
the mountains of flesh one sees waddling through the streets of Arab
communities, perhaps because hard work keeps them thin, perhaps because
fat women are not popular in Kabylia.
[Illustration: “UL-L-L-L-L-ALL-AH!”
The spahis do not charge in line, like European cavalry, but every man
for himself, as fast as his horse can put hoof to ground, the riders
firing from the saddle]
It is a half-day’s motor run, shortened by fine roads and enchanting
scenery, from Bougie to Tizi-Ouzou—a fascinating name, isn’t it?—the
capital of Kabylia, where begins the wonderful military highway, built by
the French engineers, which leads to Fort National and to Michelet, the
latter a charming little mountain village in the heart of the Djurjuras.
Up and ever upward winds the road, now taking the steep ascent in a
series of long zigzags, sometimes circumventing a particularly steep
mountain by climbing it in endless spirals, again doubling back upon
itself in perfect hair-pin turns, each of which discloses a panorama of
breath-taking beauty and grandeur. Honesty compels me to admit, however,
that it is not a road which a timid passenger or an inexperienced driver
will thoroughly enjoy, for it is very steep, in places none too wide, and
bordered by numerous giddy precipices, so that to negotiate it without
disaster requires a cool head, good brakes, and a skilful hand on the
wheel. Under Harvey’s experienced guidance, however, the big Cadillac
skimmed up it like a swallow, though he had the paralyzing habit,
acquired during the war, of charging the V-shaped corners at full speed
and, when disaster seemed inevitable, suddenly jamming on the brakes,
thus permitting the rear end of the car to skid around. This method
doubtless saved time, but it was trying on the nerves and the tires.
Three hours of steady climbing from Tizi-Ouzou brought us to Fort
National, a French stronghold, grim and formidable, erected after
the revolt of ’71 as “a sword in the heart of Kabylia.” Perched on a
mountain-top, from which it dominates a vast area of mountain and valley,
it serves as a silent reminder to the warlike Kabyles of the power of
France. Barring a quaint walled village, entered through a medieval
gateway, there is little of interest there, however, and, pausing only
long enough to view the superb panorama commanded by the ramparts of the
citadel, we continued onward and upward to Michelet—an Alpine hamlet set
down in Africa. Here the Transatlantique people have built a delightful
little hotel—just the sort of place you dream of after a long, cold drive
but seldom find—with great open fires and capacious leathern chairs and
cozy, well-heated, chintz-hung bedrooms. Though it was late in April
when we were there, the ground was white from a light fall of snow, and
the chill mountain air pierced to the bone, but such minor discomforts
were instantly forgotten at sight of logs crackling on an open hearth
and, standing, on a table, a brown pinch-bottle whose label bore a
once-familiar name.
When we awoke in the morning the mountains were covered by so dense a
mist that it was impossible to discern an object a hundred feet away,
but before we had finished our _café au lait_ the mist had lifted like
the curtain of a theater to reveal a scene which fairly took the breath
away. The terrace on which we stood fell sharply away in a series of
steep, sometimes precipitous, hill-slopes, and, dotted with red-roofed
Kabyle villages, broken here and there by groves of olive, fig, and pine,
to a long and narrow valley, lush with grass, through which meandered a
lovely bright-blue stream. Beyond the little river the slopes again rose
skyward until the grass was lost in a bank of stunted pines and the pines
ran out in bare blue rock. For a time the ultimate heights were veiled in
clouds of pale gray chiffon, but as the mist slowly rose peak upon peak
was revealed—one of them, Lalla Kedija, upward of seventy-five hundred
feet in height—each with a little village perched on its summit like a
small red bonnet. Beyond the nearer mountains the higher peaks of the
Djurjuras reared themselves against the cloudless sky in lonely majesty,
wrapped in robes of green and crowned with snow.
From a distance the Kabyle villages are as fascinating as those imaginary
fantastic hill-towns which Maxfield Parrish was wont to paint, but if
you object to filth, squalor, and unmentionable stenches you should view
them from afar. Seen close at hand their fascination quickly vanishes,
and they prove to be but clusters of wretched hovels, one side of each
dwelling—usually the better—devoted to the stabling of sheep and cattle,
the other occupied by their owners. As the winters are bitterly cold in
Kabylia, and as the houses are quite unheated, the close proximity of
the live stock has certain advantages, however, for the heat from the
crowded stables keeps the temperature in the rest of the house slightly
above freezing, and, should the cold become unbearable, the family can
always go in and sleep amid the animals! In some villages, I was told,
the natives spend the winter nights in vaults beneath their houses,
taking the sheep down with them to serve as living comforters. Most of
the houses are of rough, flat stones, the crevices filled with mortar
made from clay and cow-dung; they are usually chimneyless—for the cooking
is done over primitive ovens in the open air—and sometimes windowless
as well, for of what use are windows to an illiterate household save to
admit undesired fresh air?
It was noticeable, however, that even the poorest villages were
surrounded by well-cultivated fields and thriving orchards, for the
Kabyles are highly successful agriculturists in spite of the discouraging
nature of their country and the fact that they are handicapped by
implements of the most primitive description. In arts and crafts they are
not proficient, though an exception should be made in the case of the
Kabyle jewelry, of which I saw some beautiful specimens, fashioned from
silver and set with brightly colored native stones and colored enamels.
The really fine pieces are becoming extremely scarce, however, the best
examples, as is the case with Venetian glass, Turkish carpets, and
Persian shawls, being found in the smart shops of the larger cities more
readily than in the remote villages where they are made.
The lives led by the Kabyles of the mountains are but little different
from those led by their remote ancestors, the original inhabitants of
North Africa, untold centuries ago. They till their fields with plows
identical with those depicted in the drawings of ancient Egypt. Grain
is trodden out by oxen to be stored in osier baskets or in curiously
shaped granaries of clay. The wheat is ground, as in Old-Testament times,
between an upper and a nether millstone, turned by blindfolded donkeys
plodding patiently round and round. The mountaineers extract the oil from
their olives by means of clumsy presses of a model which was old when
Moses was a boy. Fires are kindled by the aid of flint and steel. Their
foot-gear is made from home-tanned cowhide. The cloth from which their
garments are made is woven by hand, the manufacture of woolen stuffs
being one of the chief occupations of the women when they are not milking
the cows and goats, hoeing the gardens, cooking the meals, bringing water
on their heads from the nearest stream, or helping to cultivate the rocky
hillsides while yoked with a donkey or an ox to the plow. As might be
expected, the life these people lead has set its imprint on their faces;
there is something in the isolation, the loneliness, the drudgery, the
unending struggle for existence, that makes them grave and melancholy
and taciturn. In Kabylia one has the feeling that somehow he is very far
from modern civilization, not merely in miles but in years—that he has
dropped back through the ages to the very Dawn of Time.