THE REAL NORTH AFRICA
"_Africque apporte tousjours quelque chose de nouveau._"
--RABELAIS
Algeria and Tunisia are already the vogue, and Biskra, Hammam-R'hira and
Mustapha are already names as familiar as Cairo, Amalfi or Teneriffe,
even though the throng of "_colis vivants expédiés par Cook_," as the
French call them, have not as yet overrun the land. For the most part
the travellers in these delightful lands, be they Americans, English or
Germans (and the Germans are almost as numerous as the others), are
strictly unlabelled, and each goes about his own affairs, one to Tlemcen
to paint the Moorish architecture of its mosques, another to Biskra for
his health, and another to Tunis merely to while away his time amid
exotic surroundings.
This describes well enough the majority of travellers here, but the
other categories are increasing every day, and occasionally a
"tourist-steamship" drops down three or four hundred at one fell swoop
on the _quais_ of Algiers or Tunis, and then those cities become as the
Place de l'Opéra, or Piccadilly Circus. These tourists only skirt the
fringe of this interesting land, and after thirty-six hours or so go
their ways.
One does not become acquainted with the real North Africa in any such
fashion.
The picturesque is everywhere in Algeria and Tunisia, and the incoming
manners and customs of _outre-mer_ only make the contrast more
remarkable. It is not the extraordinary thing that astonishes us to-day,
for there is no more virgin land to exploit as a touring-ground. It is
the rubbing of shoulders with the dwellers in foreign lands who, after
all, are human, and have relatively the same desires as ourselves, which
they often satisfy in a different manner, that makes travel enjoyable.
What Nubian and Arab Africa will become later, when European races have
still further blended the centuries-old tropical and subtropical blood
in a gentle assimilated adaptation of men and things, no one can
predict. The Arab has become a very good engineer, the Berber can be
trained to become a respectable herder of cattle, as the Egyptian
_fellah_ has been made into a good farmer, or a motorman on the
electric railway from Cairo to the Pyramids.
What the French call the "Empire Européen" is bound to envelop Africa
some day, and France will be in for the chief part in the division
without question. The French seem to understand the situation
thoroughly; and, with the storehouse of food products (Algeria and
Tunisia, and perhaps by the time these lines are printed, Morocco) at
her very door, she is more than fortunately placed with regard to the
development of this part of Africa. The individual German may come and
do a little trading on his own account, but it is France as a nation
that is going to prosper out of Africa. This is the one paramount aspect
of the real North Africa of to-day as it has been for some generations
past, a fact which the Foreign Offices of many powers have overlooked.
It is a pity that the whole gamut of the current affairs of North Africa
is summed up in many minds by the memory of the palpably false sentiment
of the school of fictionists which began with Ouida. Let us hope it has
ended, for the picturing of the local colour of Mediterranean and
Saharan Africa is really beyond the romancer who writes love-stories for
the young ladies of the boarding-schools, and the new women of the _art
nouveau_ boudoirs. The lithe, dreamy young Arab of fiction, who falls in
love with lonesome young women _en voyage_ alone to some tourist centre,
is purely a myth. There is not a real thing about him, not even his
clothes, much less his sentiments; and he and his picturesque natural
surroundings jar horribly against each other at best.
The Cigarette of "Under Two Flags" was not even a classically
conventional figure, but simply a passionate, tumultuous creature,
lovable only for her inconsistencies, which in reality were nothing
African in act or sentiment, though that was her environment.
The English lord who became a "Chasseur d'Afrique" was even more
unreal--he wasn't a "Chasseur d'Afrique," anyway, he was simply a member
of the "Légion Étrangère;" but doubtless Ouida cared less for minutely
precise detail than she did to exploit her unconventional convictions.
The best novels of to-day are something our parents never dreamed of!
Exclamations and exhortations of the characters of "Under Two Flags,"
"Mon Amour," "Ma Patrie," "Les Enfants," are not African. They belong to
the parasite faubourgs of Paris' fortifications. Let no one make the
mistake, then, of taking this crop of North African novels for their
guide and mentor. Much better go with Cook and be done with it, if one
lacks the initiative to launch out for himself, and make the itinerary
by railway, _diligence_ and caravan. If he will, one can travel by
_diligence_ all over Mediterranean Africa, and by such a means of
locomotion he will best see and know the country.
The _diligence_ of the plain and mountain roads of Algeria and Tunisia
is as remarkable a structure as still rolls on wheels. Its counterpart
does not exist to-day in France, Switzerland or Italy. It is generally
driven by a portly Arab, with three wheelers and four leaders, seven
horses in all. It is made up of many compartments and stories. There is
a _rez-de-chaussée_, a _mezzanine_ floor and a roof garden, with prices
varying accordingly as comfort increases or decreases. A fifty or a
hundred kilometre journey therein, or thereon, is an experience one does
not readily forget. To begin with, one usually starts at an hour varying
from four to seven in the morning, an hour which, even in Algeria, in
winter, is dark and chill.
The stage-driver of the "Far West" is a fearsome, capable individual,
but the Arab conductor of a "_voiture publique_," with a rope-wound
turban on his head, a flowing, entangling burnous, and a five-yard whip,
can take more chances in getting around corners or down a sharp incline
than any other coach-driver that ever handled the ribbons. Sometimes he
has an assistant who handles a shorter whip, and belabours it over the
backs of the wheelers, when additional risks accrue. Sometimes, even,
this is not enough and the man-at-the-wheel jumps down and runs
alongside, slashing viciously at the flying heels of the seven horse
power, after which he crawls up aloft and dozes awhile.
Under the hood of the _impériale_ is stowed away as miscellaneous a lot
of baggage as one can imagine, including perhaps a dozen fowls, a sheep
or two, or even a calf. Amidst all this, three or four cross-legged
natives wobble and lurch as the equipage makes its perilsome way.
Down below everything is full, too; so that, with its human freight of
fifteen or sixteen persons, and the unweighed kilos of merchandise on
the roof, the journey may well be described as being fraught with
possibilities of disaster. There is treasure aboard, too,--a strong-box
bolted to the floor beneath the drivers' feet; and at the rear a
weather-proof cast-iron letter-box, padlocked tight and only opened at
wayside post-offices. The sequestered colonist, living far from the rail
or post, has his only communication with the outside world through the
medium of this mobile _bureau de poste_.
The roads of Algeria and Tunisia are marvellously good--where they
exist. The Arab roads and routes of old were simple trails, trod down in
the herb-grown, sandy soil by the bare feet of men, or camels, or the
hoofs of horses and mules. So narrow were these trails that two caravans
could not pass each other, so there were two trails, like the steamship
"lanes" of the Atlantic.
Tradition still prompts the Kabyles to march in single file on the
sixteen meter wide high-roads, which now cross and recross their
country, the results of a beneficent French administration. Morocco some
day will come in line.
In Tunisia, the roads are as good as they are in Algeria, and they are
many and being added to yearly.
There are still to be seen, in the interior, little pyramids of stones,
perhaps made up of tens of thousands, or a hundred thousand even, of
desert pebbles, each unit placed by some devoted traveller who has
recalled that on that spot occurred the death, or perhaps murder, of
some pioneer. The Arabs call these monuments Nza, and would not think
for a moment of passing one by without making their offering. It is a
delicate, natural expression of sentiment, and one that might well be
imitated.
There is no more danger to the tourist travelling through Algeria and
Tunisia by road than there would be in France or Italy--and considerably
less than might be met with in Spain. There are some brigands and
robbers left hiding in the mountains, perhaps, but their raids are on
flocks and herds, and not for the mere dross of the gold of tourists, or
the gasolene of automobilists. The desert lion is a myth of
Tartarinesque poets and artists, and one is not likely to meet anything
more savage than a rabbit or a hedgehog all the fifteen hundred or two
thousand kilometres from Tlemcen to Gabès.
The African lion is a dweller only in the forest-grown mountains; and
the popular belief that it can track for weeks across the desert,
drinking only air, and eating only sand, is pure folly of the romantic
brand perpetuated by the painter Gérome.
During the last ten years, in all Algeria there were killed only:--
Lions and lionesses and cubs 181
Panthers 988
Hyenas 1,485
Jackals 22,619
It may be taken for granted, then, that there are no great dangers to be
experienced on the well-worn roads and _pistes_ of Tunisia and Algeria.
The hyenas and lions are hidden away in the great mountain fastnesses,
and the jackals themselves are harmless enough so far as human beings
are concerned. The _sanglier_, or wild boar, is savage enough if
attacked when met with, otherwise it is he who flees, whilst the
jack-rabbits and the gazelles make up the majority of the "savage life"
seen contiguous to the main travelled roads away from the railways.
Scorpions and horned vipers are everywhere--if one looks for them,
otherwise one scarcely ever sees one or the other. The greatest enemy of
mankind hereabouts is the flea; and, as the remedy is an obvious and
personal one, no more need be said. Another plague is the cricket,
grasshopper or _sauterelle_. The _sauterelle_, says the Arab, is the
wonder among nature's living things. It has the face of a horse, the
eyes of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horns of a deer, the breast
of a lion, the stomach of a scorpion, the legs of an ostrich, the tail
of a snake, and is more to be feared than any of the before enumerated
menagerie. It all but devastated the chief wheat-growing lands of the
plateaux of the provinces of Alger and Constantine a generation or more
ago, and brought great misery in its wake.
The scorpion and the gazelle are the two chief novelties among living
things (after the camel) with which the stranger makes acquaintance
here. The former is unlovely but not dangerous. "_Il pique, mais ne mord
pas_," say the French; but no one likes to find them in his shoes in the
morning all the same. The gazelle is more likable, a gentle, endearing
creature, with great liquid eyes, such as poets attribute to their most
lovely feminine creations.
The gazelle is an attribute of all fountain courtyards. It lives and
thrives in captivity, can be tamed to follow you like a dog, and is as
affectionate as a caressing kitten. It will eat condensed milk, dates,
cabbage and cigarettes; but it balks at Pear's soap.
In the open country the nomad Arab or even the house-dweller that one
meets by the roadside is an agreeable, willing person, and when he
understands French (as he frequently does), he is quite as "useful" as
would be his European prototype under similar conditions. The country
Arab is courteous, for courtesy's sake, moreover, and not for profit.
This is not apt to be the case in the cities and towns.
The Arab speech of the ports and railway cities and towns is of the
solicitous kind. One can't learn anything here of phraseology that will
be useful to him in the least and it's bad French. "_Sidi mousi! Moi
porter! Moi forsa besef!_" is nothing at all, though it is eloquent, and
probably means that the gamin, old or young, wants to carry your baggage
or call a cab. And for this you pay in Algiers and Tunis as you pay in
London or Paris, but you are not blackmailed as you are in Alexandria or
Cairo.
One may not rest two minutes on the terrace of any café in a large
Algerian town without having an Arab, a Kabyle, or a Jewish ragamuffin
come up and bawl at one incessantly, "_Ciri, ciri, ciri!_" If you have
just left your hotel, your boots brilliant as jet from the best Algerian
substitute for "Day & Martin's Best," it doesn't matter in the least;
they still cry, "_Ciri, ciri, ciri, m'siou!_" Sometimes it is, "_Ciri
bien, m'siou!_" and sometimes "_Ciri, kif, kif la glace de Paris!_" But
the object of their plaint is always the same. Finally, if you won't let
them dull the polish of your _shine_, they will cire their faces and
demand "_quat' sous_" from you because you witnessed the operation. Very
businesslike are the shoeblacks of Algiers; they don't mind what they
_cire_ as long as they _cire_ something.
[Illustration: "Cireur"]
The Café d'Apollon in Algiers is the rendezvous of the "high-life Arab."
Here Sheiks from the deserts' great tents, Caïds from the settlements,
and others of the vast army of great and small Arab officialdom assemble
to take an afternoon _bock_ or _apéritif_; for in spite of his religion
the Mussulman will sometimes drink beer and white wine. Some, too, are
"decorated," and some wear even the _ruban_ or _bouton_ of the Legion of
Honour on their chests where that otherwise useless buttonhole of the
coat of civilization would be. Grim, taciturn figures are these, whose
only exclamation is a mechanical clacking of the lips or a cynical,
gurgling chuckle coming from deep down, expressive of much or little,
according as much or little is meant.
The foreign population in Algeria and Tunisia is very mixed; and though
all nationalities mingle in trade the foreigners will not become
naturalized to any great extent. Out of forty-one naturalized foreigners
in Tunis in 1891, 27 were Italians, 2 Alsatians, 2 Luxembourgeois, 2
Maltese, 1 German, 1 Belgian, 1 Moroccan, and 5 individuals of
undetermined nationality.
Civilization and progress has marked North Africa for exploitation, but
it will never overturn Mohammedanism. The trail of Islam is a long one
and plainly marked. From the Moghreb to the Levant and beyond extends
the
[Illustration: THE FLIGHT _of the_ MOORS]
memory and tradition of Moorish civilization of days long gone by. The
field is unlimited, and ranges from the Giralda of Andalusia to the
Ottoman mosques of the Dardanelles, though we may regret, with all the
Arab poets and historians, the decadence of Granada more than all else.
The Arab-Moorish overrunning of North Africa defined an epoch full of
the incident of romance, whatever may have been the cruelties of the
barbarians. This period endured until finally the sombre cities of the
corsairs became the commercial capitals of to-day, just as glorious
Carthage became a residential suburb of Tunis. The hand of time has left
its mark plainly imprinted on all Mediterranean Africa, and not even the
desire for up-to-dateness on the part of its exploiters will ever efface
these memories, nor further desecrate the monuments which still remain.
The French African possessions include more than a third of the
continent, an area considerably more extensive than the United States,
Alaska, Porto Rico, and the Philippines combined. One hears a lot about
the development of the British sphere of influence in Africa; but not
much concerning that of the French which, since the unhappy affair of
Fashoda, has been more active than ever. The French are not the
garrulous nation one sometimes thinks them. They have a way of doing
things, and saying nothing, which is often fraught with surprises for
the outside world. Perhaps Morocco and Tripoli de Barbarie may come into
the fold some day; and, then, with the French holding the railways of
Egypt and the Suez Canal, as at present, they will certainly be the
dominant Mediterranean and African power, if they may not be reckoned so
already.
The Saharan desert is French down to its last grain of sand and the last
oasis palm-tree, and it alone has an area half the size of the United
States.
Of Mediterranean French Africa, Tunisia is a protectorate, but almost as
absolutely governed by the French as if it were a part of the Ile de
France. Algérie is a part of France, a Department across the seas like
Corse. It holds its own elections and has three senators and six
deputies at Paris. Its governor-general is a Frenchman (usually promoted
from the Préfecture of some mainland Département) and most of the
officialdom and bureaucracy are French.
Trade between Algeria and France, mostly in wines and food stuffs on one
side, and manufactured products on the other, approximates three hundred
millions of francs in each direction. Algeria, "la belle Algérie" as the
French fondly call it, is not a mere strip of mountain land and desert.
It is one of the richest agricultural lands on earth, running eastward
from the Moroccan frontier well over into Tunisia; and, for ages, it has
been known as the granary of Europe. The Carthaginians and the
Phoenicians built colonies and empires here, and Rome was nourished
from its wheat-fields and olive-groves.
The wheat of Africa was revered by the Romans of the capital above all
others. One of the pro-consuls sent Augustus a little packet of four
hundred grains, all grown from one sole seed, whereupon great national
granaries were built and the commerce in the wheat of Africa took on
forthwith almost the complexion of a monopoly. The sowing and the
harvest were most primitive. "I have seen," wrote Pliny (H. N. XVIII,
21), "the sowing and the reaping accomplished here by the aid of a
primitive plough, an old woman and a tiny donkey." The visitor may see
the same to-day!
At the moment of the first autumn rains the Arab or Berber cultivator
works over his soil, or sets his wives on the job, and sows his winter
wheat. The planting finished, the small Arab farmer seeks the sunny side
of a wall and basks there, watching things grow, smoking much tobacco
and drinking much coffee, each of these narcotics very black and strong.
Four months later his ample, or meagre, crop comes by chance. Then he
flays it, not by means of a flail swung by hand, but by borrowing a
little donkey from some neighbour,--if he hasn't one of his own,--and
letting the donkey's hoofs trample it out. Now he takes it--or most
likely sends it--to market, and his year's work is done. He rolls over
to the shady side of his _gourbi_ (the sunny side is getting too warm)
and loafs along until another autumn. He might grow maize in the
interval, but he doesn't.
The Barbary fig, or prickly-pear cactus, is everywhere in Algeria and
Tunisia. It grows wild by the roadside, in great fields, and as a
barrier transplanted to the top of the universal mud walls. Frost is its
only enemy. Everything and everybody else flees before it except the
native who eats its spiny, juicy bulbs and finds them good. The rest of
us only find the spines, and throw the fruit away in disgust when we
attempt to taste it. The Barbary fig is the Arab's sole food supply when
crops fail, the only thing which stands between him and
starvation--unless he steals dates or figs from some richer man's
plantation. The Arab's wants are not great, and with fifty francs and
some ingenuity he can live a year.
The palm-trees of Africa number scores of varieties, but those of the
Mediterranean states and provinces, the date-bearing palm, come within
three well-defined classes: the _Phoenix-dactylifera_, the
_chamaerops-humilis_ and the _cucifera-thebaica_.
Even the smallest Arab proprietor of land or sheep or goats pays taxes.
The French leave its collection to the local Caïds or Sheiks, but it
gets into the official coffers ultimately,--or most of it does.
In Algeria there are four principal taxes, or _impôts_:
The _Achour_ on cereals; the _Zekai_, on sheep and cattle to-day, but
originally a tax collected for the general good, as prescribed by the
Koran; the _Hokar_ (in Constantine), a tax on land; the _Lezma_, the
generic term for various contributions, such as the right to carry
firearms (the only tax levied in Kabylie), and the tax on date-palms in
the Sud-Algérie and Sud-Oranais. The Arab carries a gun only after he
gets a permit, which he must show every time he buys powder or shot.
In Tunisia the taxes are much the same; but there is a specific tax on
olive-trees as well as date-palms, and on the markets and the products
sold there.
The wines of Algeria and Tunisia are the product of foreign vines whose
roots were transplanted here but little more than half a century ago.
These vines came from all parts, from France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy,
Malta and America; and now the "_vin d'Algérie_" goes out to the ends of
the earth,--usually under the name of a _cru_ more famous. It is very
good wine nevertheless, this rich, hybrid juice of the grape; and,
though the Provençal of Chateauneuf, the sons of the Aude, the Garde and
the Hérault, or the men of Roussillon do not recognize Algerian wine as
a worthy competitor of their own vintages, it is such all the same. And
the Peroximen, supposed to be a product only of Andalusia, and the
Muscatel of Alexandria, are very nearly as good grown on Algerian soil
as when gathered in the place of their birth.
The "_vin rosé_" of Kolea, the really superb wines of Médea, and the
"_vin blanc de Carthage_," should carry the fame of these North African
vintages to all who are, or think they are, judges of good wine.
With such a rich larder at their very doors, the mediæval Mediterranean
nations were in a constant quarrel over its possession. Vandals and
Greeks fought for the right to populate it after the Romans, but the
Moorish wave was too strong; the Arab crowded the Berber to the wall and
made him a Mussulman instead of a Christian, a religious faith which
the French have held inviolate so far as proselytizing goes. It is this
one fundamental principle which has done much to make the French rule in
Algeria the success that it is. Britain should leave religion out of her
colonizing schemes if she would avoid the unrest which is continually
cropping up in various parts of the empire; and the United States should
leave the friars of the Philippines alone, and let them grow fat if they
will, and develop the country on business lines. We are apt to think
that the French are slow in business matters, but they get results
sometimes in an astonishingly successful manner, and by methods which
they copy from no one.
The ports of Algeria and Tunisia are of great antiquity. The Romans, not
content with the natural advantages offered as harbours, frequently cut
them out of the soft rock itself, or built out jetties or _quais_, as
have all dock engineers since when occasion demanded. There are vestiges
of these old Roman _quais_ at Bougie, at Collo, at Cherchell, at Stora
and at Bona. These Roman works, destroyed or abandoned at the Vandal
invasion, were never rebuilt; and the great oversea traders of the
Italian Republics, of France and of Spain, merely hung around offshore
and transacted their business, as do the tourist steamers at Jaffa
to-day, while their personally conducted hordes descend upon Jerusalem
and the Jordan.
The Barbary pirates had little inlets and outlets which they alone knew,
and flitted in and out of on their nefarious projects; but only at
Algiers, until in comparatively recent times, were there any ports or
harbours, legitimately so called, in either Algeria or Tunisia, though
the Spaniards, when in occupation of Oran in the eighteenth century,
made some inefficient attempts towards waterside improvements of a
permanent character.
In thinking of North Africa it is well to recall that it is not a
tropical belt, nor even a subtropical one. It is very like the climate
of the latitude of Washington, though perhaps with less rain in winter.
It is not for a moment to be compared with California or Bermuda.
The temperature on the Algerian coast is normally as follows:--
Winter, 11°-12° centigrade Summer, 25° centigrade
Spring, 15°-16° centigrade Autumn, 19°-20° centigrade
Average yearly, 17°-18° centigrade
As compared with the temperature of the French Riviera, taking Nice as
an example, the balance swings in favour of Algeria in winter, and a
trifle against it for summer, as the following figures show:--
Winter, 9° centigrade Summer, 23° centigrade
Spring, 17° centigrade Autumn, 18° centigrade
Yearly average, 16° centigrade
One pertinent observation on North Africa is that regarding the influx
of outside civilizing influences. The American invasion of manufactured
products is here something considerable; but as yet it has achieved
nothing like its possibilities, save perhaps in electrical tramway
installation, sewing machines and five-gallon tins of kerosene. The
French have _got_ North Africa, mostly; the Germans the trade in
cutlery; the English (or the Scotch) that in whiskey and marmalade; but
the American shipments of "Singers" and "Standards" must in total
figures swamp any of the other single "foreign imports" in value. One
does not speak of course of imports from France. As the argument of the
dealers, who push the sewing-machine into the desert _gourbis_ of the
nomads and the mountain dwellings of the Kabyles, has it, the civilizing
influences of Algeria have been railways, public schools and "Singers."
What progressive Arab could be expected to resist such an argument for
progress, with easy-payment terms of a franc a week as the chief
inducement? The only objection seems to be that his delicately
fashioned, creamy, woollen burnous of old is fast becoming a ready-made
"lock-stitch" affair, which lacks the loving marks of the real hand-made
article. Other things from America are agricultural machinery, ice-cream
freezers, oil-stoves, corn meal, corned beef, salmon from Seattle, and
pickles from Bunker Hill. As yet the trade in these "staples" is
infinitesimal when compared with what it might be if "pushed," which it
is not because all these things come mostly through London warehouse
men, who "push" something else when they can.
A few things America will not be able to sell in North Africa are boots
and shoes, the Arab wears his neatly folded down at the heel, and ours
are not that kind; nor socks, nor stockings, the Arab buys a gaudy
"near-silk," made in the Vosges, when he buys any, and the women don't
wear them; nor hats, though a Stetson, No. 7, would please them
mightily, all but the price. There is no demand for folding-beds or
elastic bookcases. The Arab sleeps on the floor, and the only book he
possesses, if he can read, is a copy of the Koran, which he tucks away
inside his burnous and carries about with him everywhere. Chairs he has
no need for; when the Arab doesn't lie or huddle on the ground, he sits
dangle-legged or cross-legged on a bench, which is a home-made affair.
The women mostly squat on their heels, which looks uncomfortable, but
which they seem to enjoy.
Besides the American invasion, there is the German occupation to reckon
with--in a trade sense.
"Those terrible Germans," is a newspaper phrase of recent coinage which
is applicable to almost any reference to the German trade invasion of
every country under the sun, save perhaps the United States and Canada.
In South America, in Russia, and in the African Mediterranean States and
Provinces, the Teuton has pushed his trading instincts to the utmost. He
may be no sort of a colonizer himself, but he knows how to sell goods.
In North Africa, in the coast towns, over a thousand German firms have
established themselves within the last ten years, all the way from
Tangier to Port Saïd. This may mean little or nothing to the offhand
thinker; but when one recalls that the blackamoor and the Arab have
learned to use matches and folding pocket-knives, and have even been
known to invest in talking machines, it is also well to recall that the
German can produce these things, "machine-made," and market them cheaper
than any other nation. For this reason he floods the market, where the
taste is not too critical, and the cry is here for cheapness above all
things. This is the Arab's point of view, hence the increasing hordes of
German traders.
To show the German is indefatigable, and that he knows North Africa to
its depths, the case of the late German consul at Cairo, Paul Gerhard,
who wrote a monumental work on the butterflies of North Africa, is worth
recalling.