CONSTANTINE AND THE GORGE DU RUMMEL
Constantine is one of the natural citadels of the world. Hitherto we had
only known it by name, and that chiefly by the contemplation of Vernet's
"Siége de Constantine," in that artistic graveyard, the Musée de
Versailles.
The bizarre splendour of the site now occupied by the bustling Algerian
metropolis of Constantine struck us very forcibly as we rolled over its
great gorge just at sundown on a ruddy autumn evening. It is all grandly
theatrical, but it is very real nevertheless. A great deal more real
than one would believe as he viewed that hodge-podge painting of
Vernet's.
The town sits high on a ravine-surrounded peak of bare rock, and were it
to undergo a siege to-day, not even modern war-engines could reduce it
till the dwellers had been starved out.
The original settlement was very ancient long before the Romans of the
time of Scipio, who gave it its present name. Romans, Arabs, Vandals,
and Turks all held it in turn until General Valée came in 1836 and drove
the latter out by strategy. Not by siege, as the painter has tried to
make us believe.
The great rock of Constantine is only attached to the surrounding
country by a slim neck of land. Below lies the Rummel, still cutting its
bed deeper and deeper each year, until now a very cañon is gouged out of
the city's rock foundation. The only communication between the city and
the surrounding plateau is by the Bridge of El Kantara, spectacularly
picturesque, though not artistically beautiful, the successor of an old
Roman bridge on the same site.
Any who have marvelled at the Bridge of Ronda in Spain, and at the
natural rock-bound fortress to which it leads, will observe its
similarity to Constantine. Its rocky walls are impregnable, though not
untakable. Nothing but a continuous dynamite performance could blow up
Constantine; to accomplish it would be to blow up a mountain.
Nevertheless, the French captured the Mohammedan fortress at the time of
the occupation--albeit at a great expenditure of time and loss of men.
Centuries earlier than this, in Roman days, Sallust, governor of the
province under Cæsar, was a property owner here, and fortified the city
that it might best protect his interests. With what success is seen by
the fact that, though the fortress was besieged and taken eighty times,
its garrison was always starved out; it was never blown up or battered
down.
The first glimpse of Constantine is confusing. It is difficult to
separate its component parts; its historic picturesqueness from its
matter-of-fact hurly-burly of commercial affairs. The houses seen from
the railway appear commonplace and uninteresting, only saved from sheer
ugliness by their remarkable situation. The great gorge of the Rummel
flows beneath the ugly iron bridge,--the successor of that more splendid
work of the Romans,--and ugly trams, omnibuses, and carts rumble along
where one pictures troops of camels and parti-coloured Arabs. Arabs
there are at Constantine, of all shades, and Turks and Jews, of all
sects, and when one is actually settled down in his hotel and starts out
on a wandering, with the intention of focussing all these things into
some definite impression, they begin to grow upon him, and Constantine
begins to take rank with the liveliest of his imaginings and memories.
Constantine is a wonder, there is no doubt about that; but one must
become acquainted with it intimately in order to love it. Constantine's
streets are running rivers of as mixed a crew of humanity as one may see
out of Cairo, Constantinople, or Port Saïd. Tunis is its nearest
approach in the Moghreb.
[Illustration: A Minaret at Constantine]
The main artery of the Arab town is the Rue Perrégaux. Here are the
Moorish cafés, the mosques, the shops of the sweetmeat sellers, the
vegetable dealers, the embroiderers, and the jewellers. The Cirta of
Jugurtha has become the Constantine of to-day, but its mediævalism still
lives in spite of the contrast of a gaudy opera house, a bank, and an
"hôtel-de-ville." The native quarter keeps well to itself, however; and
modern improvements do not
[Illustration: _A Constantine Mosque_]
encroach upon its picturesque primitiveness as they do at Algiers.
Beside its site and its bridge, Constantine's monuments are not many or
great. The chief one is the Mosque of Salah Bey, with its marble
decorations chiselled out by the hand of the slave of an olden time. The
cathedral of to-day is built up out of a transformed mosque, but shows,
undefiled, its ancient Mauresque arcades and faïences. On the broidered
_mihrab_, with inscriptions from the Koran woven in the woof, some
well-meaning Christian has added a bleeding heart. Is this treating the
original Mussulman owner right? It seems enough to make a Christian
church out of a Mohammedan mosque, without trying to incorporate two
opposing religious symbols in a mural decoration.
The ancient palace of the Bey,--the last Bey of Constantine,
Hadj-Ahmed,--though comparatively modern, is a very interesting
building. This terrible Turk, the Bey, was a very terrible potentate
indeed. He massacred and pillaged his own subjects. He would nail the
hands and feet of a fancied offender to a tree, leaving him to die, and
would sew up the mouths and manacle the hands of those who spoke ill of
him. He held a big club always uplifted, and many other murderous
implements besides were ever in the air ready to fall. This palace of
the Bey's was in course of construction at the time the Turkish
domination fell. It had been built of porphyry and marble columns, and
fine old tiles and sculptured balustrades, brought by rich merchants as
presents to the Bey, under pain of imprisonment should they default. It
is a miniature Alhambra of courts within courts, and is really
extraordinarily beautiful. It covers an area of over five thousand
square metres. Under the guidance of a zouave with baggy red trousers
and a fez dangling on the back of his head, we walked and
circumnavigated all of the paved and orange-planted quadrangles, and
quite believed we were living in the days gone by, in spite of the fact
that tram-cars were passing by the door, and inconsiderate,
_un-churchly_ chimes were ringing out ribald airs from the neighbouring
cathedral tower.
On the whole the old Beylical palace of Constantine is far more
elaborate and interesting than the Dar-el-Bey at Tunis--or the Bardo,
usually reckoned the chief tourist sights of their class. It all depends
on the mood, of course, but then we had the mood.
Some of the frescoes of this palace of Turkish dominion are most
curious. One of them, painted in the most crude and infantile manner, is
inexplicable except for the following legend.
A "dog of a Christian slave"--as his Turkish master called him--was set
at the task. He knew nothing of art, but that did not matter to the
domineering Turk, who said that "all Frenchmen were born artists." The
frieze was completed, as it may be seen to-day, and the artist (?) stood
before his workmanship in fear and trembling, dreading his master's
wrath. The wrath was not forthcoming. His Beyship liked the frieze of
birds as big as houses, of ships and frogs all of a size, of cows the
size of mosques, and all the other fantasies of an untrained hand and
brain. "I told you," said the Bey, "all these dogs of Frenchmen know how
to paint;" and with that he set him free. All potentates have their
vagaries. Hadj-Ahmed's were no greater and no worse than the present
German Emperor's, which have permitted, if not commanded, political
portraits to be sculptured on the portals of a Christian church.
Constantine is unique. It is a city as live and bustling as any of its
size on earth. It is undergoing a great development. Everybody is
prosperous and contented. And, above all, it is historic, and its
native quarter unspoiled in spite of the city's great attempts to become
a commercial metropolis.
Constantine is the gateway to a vast and wealthy grain-growing region,
and it sits high and proud on the great central plateau of Algeria
between the desert and the sea. Practically it is the sole gateway or
means of communication through which passes a great proportion of all
the life and movement of the great province of which it is the capital.
Contrastingly Constantine's magnificently theatrical site gives entirely
another view-point for the stranger within its gates. The great gorge of
the Rummel cuts the city entirely off from the surrounding plateau by a
thousand foot chasm, where the gathered waters of the plain roll and
thunder with such regularity and force that the steep sides are cut
sheer as if by the quarryman's drill. Constantine's Arab town, too, is
entirely a unique thing. It is complete, unspoiled, and genuine. It sits
off at one side of the European town, sloping down towards the steep
brink of the gorge, and is entirely uncontaminated with the contemporary
life of the French. Its colouring is marvellous; and the comings and
goings, and the daily affairs, of its Arab merchants and traders lend a
charm
[Illustration]
of antiquity which not even the realization of the fact that we are
living in the twentieth century can wholly spoil. The Kabyle with his
skins of oil, the Berber with his wool and leathers, and the town-bred
Arab--half Turk, half Jew--occupying himself with all sorts of trading,
give a local colour rich and unmixed, such as one finds nowhere else in
the East,--either at Algiers, Tunis, Cairo, or Constantinople. What is
lacking is mere size and grandeur,--the rest is all there. And the
Moorish cafés and the sweetmeat and pastry sellers' shops of
Constantine's Arab town, visited on the eve of Ramadan, give such a
variety of surprises that no one who has once seen them can ever forget
them.
To return to the great scenic charm of Constantine; it must be seen and
familiarized. As a mere gorge it is no more wonderful than dozens of
others,--in the Rockies in America; in the Tarn, or the Gorges du Loup,
in the Maures. What the Gorge du Rummel stands for is that it is, and
has been for ages, the chief defence of the great city of Constantine,
and for that reason it appeals more strongly than any other of its kind.
Before entering the narrow chasm which renders the position of
Constantine, "_la ville aérienne_," well-nigh impregnable, the Rummel,
or Rivière des Sables, has joined forces with the Boumezou, the river
which fertilizes.
The change is sudden from the sunny valley to the dark Passage des
Roches. The torrent, suddenly narrowed, passes close to a hot spring
spurting forth from a cleft in the rock, then flowing through the arch
of the Devil's Bridge and tumbling in cascades through the winding chasm
or ravine.
From the edge of the abyss one cannot see the stream which is hidden by
the curves of the ravine; the projecting strata of rock furrowed at
frequent intervals by vertical water-worn clefts even prevent one from
seeing the bottom.
Just below the rock bridge of El Kantara (that of to-day being a
reconstruction of the Roman work), the Rummel disappears beneath a vault
of rock. The ravine here is only a narrow trench, torn and pierced by
underground passages, from the bottom of which rises the sound of
rushing waters. Three hundred metres beyond, the torrent emerges from
these dark galleries and on both sides the cliffs rise vertically. A
single isolated arch, naturally ogival and singularly regular in form,
still uniting the two walls of rock.
Here the irregularities and rents in the earth's surface are the most
imposing; the walls of variously coloured rock here and there overhang
and rise to a height of over 200 metres, giving a perilous foothold to
the buildings of the town above. At this apex of the island city above
is the Kef Cnecora or Rocher du Lac, from which an old-time _pacha_
threw down his recalcitrant wives sewn up in sacks, quite after the
conventional manner of the day, one thinks. Yes, but here they had an
awful drop, and fell not always on the soft watery bed of the river, but
on the pointed, jagged rocks of the rapids. Theirs must have been an
awful death!
Years ago access to the ravine was entirely impracticable; but since an
intrepid engineer with a ninety-nine year concession has built rock
ladders and bridges along its whole length--and charges two francs to
cross them--the experience of making this semisubterranean tour of
Constantine is within reach of everybody.
One day at Constantine a discordant rumbling of voices in the street
below attracted us to the windows of our hotel. A strange, conglomerate
procession of Mussulman faithful was marching by. Hundreds of brown
Arab folk, Kabyles, Moors, and nomads from the south, were marching
hand in hand, each with a flower behind his right ear, and all shouting
at the top of their voices. A funeral procession had passed but a few
moments before, and we thought it a part of the same ceremony, though
indeed, as we learned later, it was something quite different.
[Illustration]
The few straggling hundreds of the head of the procession soon grew into
thousands, all chanting verses of the Koran. Following close came the
gaily coloured green, white, and red flag of the Prophet.
We followed in the wake of the procession and at the end of the town
came to the Mussulman cemetery. There is no remarkable sadness or
sentiment about the Arab cemetery at Constantine, at least not such as
one associates with a Christian burial-place. It sits on the sunny slope
of a hill, with a silhouette of mountains for a background, and a
foreground strewn, helter-skelter, with little tombs and _koubas_ in
crazy building-block fashion. There is no symmetry about anything, and
tiny headstones crop up here and there through a tangle of weeds and
wild flowers. Frequently there is a more imposing slab, and occasionally
a tomb or _kouba_ tinted blue or pink, with perhaps its dome gilded. The
whole impression, however, is of an indiscriminate mixture of things
that just "happened in place," and were not set out on any preconceived
plan.
One imposing domed _kouba_ has a bit of shade from an overgrowing tree
and is surrounded by a little level grass-plot which gives it a certain
distinction of dignity such as a religious shrine should have.
Beyond the cemetery was a great open plot upon which was to be held the
Mussulman fête, which was the real objective of the fast-growing
procession, and which by this time had gathered into its fold all of
Constantine's available Mussulman population,--some twenty-five thousand
souls who habitually say their prayers to Allah.
Here at the fête the thousands of Arabs, their yellow, red, or green
burnouses flowing in the breeze like flags and pennants, grouped
themselves first of all around the _khaouadji_, or open-air cafés, the
drinking of coffee being the preliminary to every social function with
the Arab.
At the further end of the open ground were set up the tents of the great
chiefs,--the Caïds and Cadis of the surrounding tribes, and along one
side were grouped cook-shops and fruit-sellers. There were no
"hurdy-gurdies," "Aunt Sallies," or "shooting galleries." The Arab takes
his pleasures and makes his rejoicings less violently, preferring to
squat on his heels, or lie on a straw mat, and drink coffee, smoke
cigarettes, or munch a handful of dates or a honey-cake boiled in oil.
One general cook-shop occupied a prominent place. Here were great copper
cauldrons where the couscous was being prepared. This indigenous
Algerian dish is about the only one containing meat which the temperate
Arab eats. Even then he eats mostly of the _semoule_ and bread and
gravy, leaving the fragments of mutton or lamb, or chicken (if by chance
one wandered aimlessly into the pot) to be boiled down again for another
brew.
The Arab eats his couscous out of a great wooden platter, and disdains
knife or fork or spoon. A dozen Arabs sit around this shallow bowl of
wood and dip their fingers into it, each in his proper turn. It is a
sort of game of grab. One may get a choice morsel, or he may not. If not
as cleanly a method of eating as that of the Chinaman's chopsticks, at
any rate one's appetite is sooner satisfied. The Arab has the true
spirit of _camaraderie_ in his eating and drinking. The most cultivated
and fastidious will mingle with the hoi-polloi, and eat from the same
dish and drink from the same _merdjil_ as the most miserable one among
the crowd.
The fête, for such it was, seemed to have little religious significance,
beyond the marching in procession and chanting, and the fact that it was
being held in proximity to holy ground. After the feast there was
something like a demonstration, when two score or more Arabs did a sort
of a fanatical dance or swirl, which reminded one of the combination of
an Indian war-dance and the gyrations of the dervishes of Cairo. Shrill
cries and dislocating leaps and bounds brought some of the participants,
in time, to a state of inanimation and convulsions; but still the others
kept on. One by one a dancer would drop out, this evidently being the
way the game was played. When we finally came away, half of them were
still bounding about in a frenzy of delirium.
We learned later they were a sect of Islam, called the Aïssaouas, whose
principal tenet of faith is the mortification of the flesh. There are
various ways of doing this: the hair shirt, flagellation, and crawling
about on the hands and knees; but the way of the Aïssaouas is certainly
the most violent. Some of them even go so far as to pierce the cheeks
and nose with great pins and needles; but if one can swirl and gyrate
himself into an epileptic state, his chances of grace and entrance into
that Paradise of Houris promised by Mahomet are just as good.
The fête finally came to an end sometime during the night. Then the
cook-shops and _khaouadjis_ piled up their belongings in a donkey cart,
or on camel-back, and the Arabs folded their tents and silently stole
away after the manner set forth in the fable.
The marabout in whose honour all this came about was then left in peace
to sleep his long sleep undisturbed until the same orgie should be
repeated the following year.
The environs of Constantine are marvellously beautiful. Northward
towards Philippeville by road or rail one rises to the Col des Oliviers
by zigzags and sharp turns, to descend eventually--a matter of a couple
of thousand feet or more--to the brilliant blue Mediterranean. Nearer at
hand, rising high above Constantine itself, are the hills of Mansourah
and Sidi-M'cid, and to the west the fertile valley of the Hamma.
Philippeville is interesting only because of its site, which lies on the
beautiful Gulf of Stora, an ancient port of the Romans. The monuments of
Philippeville are nearly nil. There are some few fragments of the
arcades of an old amphitheatre, and the modern mosque, though in no way
an ambitious monument, is picturesquely perched above the town. The
great square, or _place_, opposite the port is a modern improvement
which is commendable enough, but not in the least in keeping with
Africa. It is more like a cheap imitation of Monte Carlo's terrace.
The Italian influence is strong in all these parts. The village of
Stora, about four kilometres from Philippeville, is practically peopled
by Italians. And one hears as much Italian as he does French in the
streets of Philippeville. The little house-corner shrines to be found
all over the older part of the town are also frankly reminiscent of
Italy.
In the bay, too, the little lateen-rigged, clipper-prowed fishing-boats
are Italian in design, and are manned by Italians. Right here one
recalls that the "sunny Italian" in a foreign land is almost invariably
a "digger of dirt," a worker on a railway or canal cutting, or a
fisherman.
Philippeville has a decided colour of its own, but it is not Arab, and
the French is so blended with the Italian that its colouring is
decidedly mixed.