How well I remember the day when my husband, an officer in the French
army, was nominated for service in Algeria! I was still plunged in slumber
when I was suddenly aroused by a diabolical yell (if you ask my husband he
will hotly deny this, but men can never be believed). I sat up, thinking
the end of the world had come, and saw my husband frantically waving a
white paper and shouting: “Named in Algeria--1st Regiment of Spahis! With
a wife and children it’s impossible! Why am I married?”
“Well!” I said, still half asleep, but seizing the sense of the remark
that referred to me. “_You_ ought to know why you are married. What’s the
matter with you? Do you want a divorce?”
“Don’t be frivolous; it is a serious matter,” he groaned, holding out the
paper for my inspection. “Do you understand? I am nominated to an African
regiment, the 1st Spahis, and in a fortnight I must be _there_.”
“Do you mean that we--you and I--are going out to North Africa?” I cried.
“Really? Hip, hip, hurrah!”
“Are you mad?” he demanded, in astonishment.
“Yes; mad with joy,” I replied. “I’m tired to death of poky French
garrison towns. We’ll go out to the sun and be stewed, have our throats
cut by Arabs, and enjoy ourselves down to the ground.”
“My dear girl,” said my husband, with as much calmness as he could muster,
“we are ordered to a post in the mountains, Teniet-el-Haad. In all
probability you will get no servants to go with you, and there may not
even be a fit house to live in. A lady _cannot_ go there!”
“An English one can--_we_ follow our husbands,” I said, stoutly.
“I shall have to go alone,” he said, quietly, “unless I can find some
fellow to exchange.”
“You can do as you like,” I answered, loftily, “but I am going to join!”
And so I did, in his company and that of my three children.
I was sadly disappointed in Algiers; it appeared to my jaundiced eyes
quite an ordinary town. Its arcades, filled with elegant Parisian-looking
women and top-hatted, frock-coated men straight from the Champs Elysées
and Bois de Boulogne, gave me quite a shock. However, I consoled myself
with the thought that our station was far away up in the wild mountains of
the Tell, where real live Arabs, hyenas, jackals, and a panther here and
there would advantageously replace these civilized banalities.
[Illustration: “A WHEEL HUNG FOR AN INSTANT OVER BOTTOMLESS SPACE.”]
Our journey from Algiers to Affreville was just like any other railway
journey. At the last-named town we got out, had a nice breakfast at the
station buffet, and at twelve got into the coupé of a diligence so
dilapidated and prehistoric in appearance that my heart sank within me;
but that was only the beginning. This vehicle was drawn by eight skinny
white horses, each of whom seemed to have his own private opinion as to
the manner of drawing the vehicle--and all their opinions seemed to differ
vastly from that of the driver, whose face wore an “I give it up” sort of
expression. So bored was the good man by things in general that during
the journey he indulged in sundry snoozes. This was bearable whilst the
road was wide and on the flat, but when it wound like a narrow white
ribbon round and round the mountains, and one gazed up on the left at a
grey wall of rock, and on the right down fathomless precipices, we glanced
at our slumbering Jehu and held on by the skin of our teeth, whilst the
skinny horses dashed headlong round narrow corners and a wheel hung for an
instant over bottomless space. This nightmare ride lasted for eight hours,
during which time I tried hard to feel that I was enjoying myself, despite
the cramp in my legs and the stiffness of my neck--necessarily slightly
bent on account of the lowness of the roof. Finally we arrived at
Teniet-el-Haad, which appeared to be composed of one narrow street hemmed
in abruptly on either side by the mountains. Thankfully we crawled out of
the diligence and walked up the hill to the “bordj,” or fort, where a
flat had been provided for us by the Government. So this was to be my
home! I gazed eagerly round at the small rooms with their bare,
whitewashed walls, and then--when I had a box to sit on--I sat down and
cried.
“Nice place, Algeria, isn’t it?” mildly remarked my husband. I felt at
that moment as though I could have throttled him cheerfully.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF TENIET-EL-HAAD.
_From a Photograph._]
Truly my position was not enviable. Accustomed hitherto to be waited on
hand and foot, I now found myself without a servant of any kind, save my
husband’s orderly. I was in a strange country, and was expected to do
everything for myself. However, repining would not help matters, so I set
to work to teach the orderly the rudiments of the culinary art, he knowing
nothing more about it than--than I did. What hard days those were, to be
sure! I wonder my husband survived them. My fried potatoes fell into
greasy bits instead of frying, my scrambled eggs flew up the chimney, my
omelettes were sickening messes, and the meat either would not cook at all
or exaggerated the matter and turned into coal. Then there was the washing
and ironing. I never thought--until I essayed the work--that there was
much difficulty about it; it seemed quite easy. You took soiled things
off, put them in water and soaped them; then you wrung them out, ironed
them, and there you were. Our linen, however, grew greyer and greyer,
yellower and yellower, and I became pensive. “What _do_ you think is wrong
with it?” I asked the orderly, who had become our washerman, there being
no other.
“Well, madam,” he said, diffidently, “I think it wants sort of boiling
gently with something or other. I remember my mother----”
“Oh, what did your mother do?” I asked, eagerly.
“Well, she washed it first, and then put it in a barrel with a hole in the
bottom and--and boiled it, I think. Leastways, it was somehow all right
after.”
“But you can’t boil in a barrel; it would catch fire,” I objected. “And
why a hole? Surely the water would run out?”
He looked shy and unhappy.
“Well, there may be something wrong about the boiling in the wooden
barrel. I misremember that, but”--a slow grin spread over his face--“I’m
sure about the hole, because I used to stop it up, and mother was awfully
wild.”
After some weeks, however, the orderly began to see light, and, helped by
an Arab boy, managed these tiresome domestic matters well enough to allow
of my going out riding and seeing a little of the country.
The mountains, burnt yellow by the hot summer sun when I first saw them,
were growing rapidly green after a few hours’ torrential rain. In the
forest all the spring flowers sprang to life again, flowering hastily on
tiny short stems as though fearing they would not find time before being
cut off by the winter frosts. A carpet of blue and white iris and crocus
spread out under the shade of the mighty cedars, together with all sorts
of bright creeping plants. Orchids and narcissi peeped up from every damp
corner, and in the crevices of the rocks wild carnations and geraniums
made a dash of bright colour.
One day whilst out mushrooming I felt rather thirsty, and proposed to my
husband to go and ask for some goats’ milk at a tent I saw peeping through
the underwood higher up. He acceded, and, talking and picking flowers, we
wandered up slowly. Never in my life have I seen so dilapidated a tent. It
had been mended again and again with rags so various in shape and colour
that little of the original _felidga_ was left. Around it was the
traditional artificial hedge of jujube trees, whose thick, fine, long
thorns protected the inmates from thieves and wild beasts. A sad-looking
donkey and a few goats grazed around, while a particularly savage dog
began barking violently and straining at a very rotten cord at our
approach. Thin and mangy, he looked as if he could thoroughly enjoy a
steak out of my husband’s substantial calves, but he soon retired, with
more haste than dignity, when my better half stooped to pick up a stone.
All Kabyle dogs have a settled opinion about stones, and the gesture is
sufficient for them.
The noise brought out the owner of the tent, and he stood gazing
majestically at us, draped in dirty white rags. A woman followed him. Her
thin, bony, brown face, scraggy neck and shoulders, skinny arms and legs
might have been those of an old woman, yet something told me that she was
young, but worn out by over-work and under-feeding. Such sights are often
seen and fill one with pity. Behind her came five little children, all,
except the two girls--who each modestly wore a red handkerchief on their
curly heads, and a necklet of wooden beads--clothed in sunbeams.
My husband asked if we could have some milk. With a lordly gesture the
Arab signed to the woman, who slowly caught a goat by its hind leg and
began milking it into a broken yet clean-looking earthen bowl.
Nevertheless, I brought out my little picnic mug and made her milk into
that.
My husband offered ten sous to the Arab, but he turned away disdainfully.
“He who drinks at my tent is welcome,” he said. “He is God’s guest, and
between him and me no money can pass.”
And yet how the want of money showed itself on every side!
I made up for it to myself by slipping a few pennies into the brown little
hands of the children, who had finally decided that I was not likely to
bite and had approached me. Delighted, they ran with them to their mother,
who seized them feverishly, with a terrified side-look at her husband.
Filled with pity, I slipped a silver piece into her lean hand--rather too
well rewarded by the ardent kisses she showered on my hands, my shoulders,
and the edge of my dress. I then asked the Arab to show me the interior of
his tent. He seemed pleased at my demand, but I regretted it deeply when I
beheld the dirtiness of it. Dirt was the principal furniture, together
with several wooden spoons, an “aguesseau” for rolling the semolina into
cous-cous, a “kess-kess” for cooking it by vapour, and a heap of
terrible-looking rags. On this heap lay an indistinct form, from which
came slow, painful gasps--the gasps of a departing life. Shuddering, I
bent down and saw a venerable woman--so small, so wizened, so
extraordinarily thin that I could not imagine how there was any life in
her. She opened her eyes and turned them slowly on the Arab; and I read
pitiful supplication, mingled with bitter reproach, in their cavernous
depths.
The Arab looked down gloomily, and a wave of emotion swept over his
hitherto impassive face.
“What is the matter with her?” I asked.
“She has not eaten for two days,” he answered.
“But why? Is she ill? Give her some milk at once. At once, do you hear?”
I felt angry at the calmness of these people in the presence of this dying
woman.
“She is dying,” he said, obstinately.
“But you are doing nothing to save her,” I cried.
My husband pulled my sleeve.
“Come, come, dear,” he whispered, “you are giving yourself useless pain.”
“But I will make him give this old woman something,” I persisted. “She is
his mother, perhaps, and is trying to ask him for food with all her
strength. Give her some milk,” I cried.
The man mumbled something; I understood that he was telling me she was
old, worn out, and that it was waste to feed her.
Overwhelmed with horror, I gasped: “Then you are letting her die--on
purpose! She--she is dying because you have let her starve to death?”
He bowed his head. Then, as if he felt that some explanation was due to
the _roumia_ who was his guest, he added, in a low voice, “Her children
will have her share. They want it.”
I seized my husband’s arm. “Come--come away from this horror,” I cried;
and quickly we ran down the hill to where the fragrant narcissi grew, and
there I flung myself on the ground and sobbed.
Presently the sweet, balmy air was filled with sharp shrieks and
yells--the cries of mourning of the Arab women as they tear their faces
with their nails. And I knew that the poor old woman had passed away, and
that those who had starved her to death were now bemoaning her loss, and
consoling themselves by saying, “_In cha Allah!_” (“It is the will of
God”).
[Illustration: “‘GIVE HER SOME MILK,’ I CRIED.”]
I went home a wiser and a sadder woman; I have never forgotten the horror
of the incident.
From my window in the fort I had a beautiful view. In front was the range
of mountains along which the cedar forest runs. I could just discern the
rock where General M----’s first lion tried to get at him, and the small,
scrubby tree up which the gallant General swarmed just in time. Lions are
very rare nowadays in these parts, though a forester signalled the passage
of one on the other side of the forest during my stay. On the left of my
window I could see the bee-hive habitations of a race of negroes who live
on the hill rising up immediately behind the chief street of Teniet. I
think I have never seen such inhuman-looking, hideous specimens of the
human race. Monkeys are far superior in looks to them, and their utter
malignity and wickedness of expression lent additional ugliness to their
distorted, pointed features. Murders were--well, if not daily occurrences,
at least very frequent among them, and at last I grew quite accustomed to
the diabolical shrieks and shouts which the warm, balmy air wafted to me
from the opposite hill.
More often than not the rows originated over some very trivial matter. No
European would venture for love or money into this negro village, and
several French Spahis told me that they would not guarantee the life of
the white man who dared to enter it even in broad daylight. The Arabs held
the same opinion, and no honest man among them would visit the place on
any account. Thieves and murderers, however, were certain to find a safe
refuge, and many a one, I was informed, had hidden there, married a
negress, and become one of the sinister tribe. The police never thought of
entering the hamlet, and always abandoned pursuit of a criminal at its
boundaries. I cannot imagine why the whole place was not burnt down and
its lawless inhabitants dispersed.
I failed to obtain a photograph of one of these beauties. They objected to
being taken, and no one dared to insist. The next picture, however,
depicts the village itself, as seen from Teniet-el-Haad.
[Illustration: THE THIEVES’ VILLAGE AS SEEN FROM TENIET-EL-HAAD.
_From a Photograph._]
Talking of murders brings to my mind a double suicide which occurred in
the fort. One night I was awakened by a revolver-shot just outside my
window. I got up and looked out, but at first could see nothing, so black
was the night. After a time, however, I saw a dark mass on the ground and
heard a faint moaning. I was about to give the alarm when the sentry
passed, stooped down, and uttered an exclamation. Then he went away, to
return immediately with others. There was a murmur of voices, and finally
they carried something away. My husband was absent, so I was forced to
await morning in order to ascertain the facts of the matter. “_Cherchez la
femme_” is, alas! a very true adage. The shot was fired by one of our
non-commissioned officers, who had killed himself as he walked to and fro
in the barrack-yard smoking and talking with his best friend, whom he had
just discovered was a successful rival for the heart of the girl he loved
and meant to marry as soon as his service was over. Having had suspicions,
he had determined to draw the truth from his friend, who was perfectly
oblivious of there being any engagement between him and the girl, and
confessed freely when pressed that they loved each other and meant to be
married later on. Drawing a revolver from his pocket, the unhappy
_sous-officier_ cried, “She was to have been my wife!” and, before the
other understood what the phrase meant, pulled the trigger and fell dead
at his horrified comrade’s feet.
The morning after, the friend, another non-commissioned officer, was
raving mad. When the girl learnt of the tragedy she had caused, we learnt
afterwards, she grew very white, but said nothing. All day she sat silent
with fixed eyes, deaf to the reproaches of her parents, who did not spare
their abuse. The next morning they found her asleep in death--she had
poisoned herself!
I noticed here and there whilst riding about the country trees from whose
branches hung long shreds of different-coloured cloth. On making inquiries
I was told they were marabout, or holy, trees. Each district has one or
more of these sacred trees, and to them come all the women to beseech of
Allah to grant their prayers. In order to obtain the intercession of the
holy tree, they hang pieces of their clothing on the branches, which are
sometimes almost entirely covered with coloured rags, fluttering in the
breeze, and giving the tree a most curious appearance.
A marabout is a saint, or holy man, and it is not given to every man to be
a saint, however pious he may be. Real saintship among the Arabs is
hereditary, and is one of the three castes of nobility. The sons are heirs
to the fathers’ piety, and, though often far from worthy, reap the benefit
of their birth-right. This religious nobility has great influence, and can
excite or quell revolts, as, Koran in hand, they preach its precepts,
often explained to satisfy their own wishes.
Apart from the hereditary marabouts there are the “little” marabouts, who
live miserably on public charity beside the tomb of some ancestor who died
in the odour of sanctity. Many of these so-called marabouts manage their
affairs uncommonly well and are really wealthy men. Here is a story I have
been told, which gives one an idea of the way these “little” marabouts set
up in business.
Mohammed ben Mohammed was a marabout whose affairs were in a most
flourishing condition. Pilgrims visited his ancestor’s tomb by hundreds,
leaving many and rich offerings, and Mohammed ben Mohammed grew fatter and
wealthier daily until his servitor, Ali ben Ali, became tired of watching
his master’s increased wealth and bulk, whilst his own pocket was as flat
as his body was thin. So one dark night he silently took his departure,
riding on the back of a young ass belonging to his master.
After a march of about thirty miles the ass had enough of carrying Ali. It
was a young ass, and knew no better, so it went on strike, lay down, and
forthwith died. Thereupon Ali dug a big hole and put the ass in, piling a
great mountain of stones over it. Then, sitting down beside the heap, he
began to pray. A traveller passing inquired by whose tomb he prayed so
fervently. Ali was filled with astonishment. “What! Had he never heard of
the great Saint Amar ben Amar (literally ‘an ass, the son of an ass’)? All
the people of the country round came there to pray.” The traveller did not
fail to mention the Marabout Amar ben Amar’s tomb, and soon pilgrims
flocked to it with offerings, and Ali ben Ali grew fat and rich. The
faithful neglected Mohammed ben Mohammed, who at last, furious, abandoned
his marabout in order to pay a visit to his rival. Great was his
astonishment when he recognised his runaway servitor.
Taking him aside, he whispered, “Tell me the truth. Who is your marabout?”
“The ass I stole from you. And now tell me--who is your marabout?”
“The mother of the ass you stole from me!”
I conclude that the two Arabs chuckled together and continued to exploit
the faithful in common, but history does not relate any more of their
doings--nor, indeed, does it vouch for the complete veracity of the story.
It is, however, to my personal knowledge quite the sort of thing one might
expect to happen.
[Illustration: THE AUTHORESS AND HER CHILDREN IN THE CEDAR FOREST NEAR
TENIET-EL-HAAD.
_From a Photograph._]
(_To be continued._)
My Alaskan Christmas.