were inconveniently crowded in their own. I began by doing the
unpardonable thing; deceived by certain guttural syllables, I said, “Are
you a German?” He replied: “No! thank God, I am Dutch.” And my heart was
glad within me, for the Dutchman is our brother, and our friend; perhaps
because we have fought him over and over again, and sometimes we have
beaten him, and sometimes he us. We have had, as far as I am aware, no
such pleasant relations with the German; perhaps if we had fought him
for a century or two we should appreciate his good qualities. In spite
of this inauspicious beginning, I soon found points in common with my
chance companion. We both knew many lands; especially we both knew the
same places and the same men in Norway. My Dutchman loved Norway as I
love it, and knew it better. Our points of view were different. His to
range far and wide, to sip as a bee winging from flower to flower the
varied beauties of fjord and fell, of fond and brae; mine to mark the
rise and fall of one much-studied river, chained as a galley-slave to my
angle.
So we played the pretty and seductive game of resemblances. Here in this
fierce African landscape we contrived to see Bratlandsdal, here Sundal,
here the smoothened rock-faces of Naerodalsosen. Lower down where a vast
amphitheatre of hills guarded the meeting of two waters we saw the
Pyrenees. But the while I was hugging to myself a secret study of which
my comrade recked nothing. Even as a man may travel by train, and mark a
country, and consider within himself how he would ride over it to
hounds;—so was I noting the pools and streams of the river, muddy as a
glacier-fed river may be in a hot July, and judging where the fish would
be like to lie, and how I should put the fly to them. A very pretty
pastime, but clouded by the knowledge that no fish that is a fish, not
even a wee trout, may live in these waters. They contain calcareous
salts, or something unpleasant, which no fish of the royal race will
stand. There are hopes of acclimatizing tench; but who can wax warm at
the prospect? Yet was this to look upon a real river, the finest river
(with all respect to the Nile and the Zambesi; I speak as an angler)
that I have seen in Africa; a fair succession of pool and stream,—of
pools running swiftly beneath steep banks and shelving shores, of
streams just steep enough to make the pools holding. The pity of it!
From end to end Africa has an air of being unfinished and ill-designed;
there is always something wanting to its completeness; in some ways it
is too big, in others too small; it lacks water, or it has too much; and
things are seldom what they seem,—when you descry a distant lake it is
generally the mirage; wherefore a salmon river without salmon falls
quite within the natural order of African things.
So on through the broadening valley, with glimpses of azure sea ahead,
and soaring mountains, clad with primeval forest, all around. The road,
well engineered,—that goes without saying,—is much cut up by the heavy
traffic to and from certain mining enterprises in the hills. One
iron-ore mine,—the property of an English company, I hear with national
pride,—on the opposite side of the valley has a little railway and a
little port of its own; and two vessels, hovering suspiciously in the
offing, are not corsairs, but intent on a lawful freight. But here, as
everywhere, the authorities are busy in making the road smooth for the
motor-car, and the repairers and a steam-roller are at work. The car is
not yet a familiar object to man and beast. A mule bearing a native
bolts at our approach, and unseats its rider. We call to the chauffeur
to stop. He replies, “Mais, ce n’est qu’un Khabyle”; in which I
recognize a common colonial note. We look round to see the mule caught
and the rider up again, and go on happily.
The long descent comes to an end at length, and at a point about
twenty-three miles short of Bougie we reach the sea. The coast-lands
here consist of a series of semicircular plains, divided by great spurs
which run northward from the main range, and form capes. Across these
flat and highly cultivated plains our road lies where it may with
Algerian directness, but rises to dizzy heights by zigzags to surmount
the precipitous headlands which once or twice bar its progress. The
contour of this variable and rocky coast is eminently picturesque, the
views of sea and mountain of infinite variety. And afar the dazzling
whiteness of Bougie stretching upwards from its harbour among the olive
groves invites us. The level lands appear to be of great fertility; amid
great fields of corn and vine pleasant and prosperous-looking country
houses stand, girt about with fruit trees,—figs, apricots and peaches.
In some places the cultivation is carried almost to high-water mark, in
others a sward of fine turf seems to meet the sand.
Bougie, rising on the steep hill-side behind its protecting cape, looks
almost southward, and its bay appears to it as a land-locked lake. On
the southern shore stand the majestic mountains through which we have
bored our way from Sétif, with plenty of snow on this, their northern
face, crowning their copious forests of cedar and pine. Few seaports
have such a romantic outlook. It cannot be doubted that this coast is
destined some day to be a second and grander Riviera, and if another
Lord Brougham sets to work to create another Cannes, it is perhaps in
the neighbourhood of Bougie that he will place it. Apart from its own
abounding attractions, it is surrounded east and south and west by
incomparable scenery. Its charms are already beginning to be known. It
is a meeting-place of excellent roads, and the motor-car has rendered it
easy of access. Its comfortable hotel is always full, and is making
haste to enlarge itself. Let Bougie start a casino and band, and it will
begin to have a season. And in my mind’s eye I can see golf-links along
the shore of the bay, _para thina thalasses_, where the sea-sand meets
the verdure.
There is something theatrical about Bougie’s scenery. Stand on the shore
in front of the old Saracen gateway and look upwards at the background
of the town rising tier on tier, a town of brilliant white houses gay
with the dazzling purple of the _bougainvillea_, with the bastions of an
apparently cardboard fort to the right, and a suggestion of ruined
castles to the left, and you may fancy that you are in the stalls at the
Opera, and that a chorus of fisher-girls will shortly appear and point
to a pirate in the offing.
Bougie, exporter of wax, is said to have given its name to the candle.
And it has other historical associations. Its story is not very
dissimilar from that of many ports on this coast. Phœnician traders,
Roman colonists, Vandal invaders, Byzantines, Berbers, Arabs, Spaniards
and Turks,—all have had their day, and many of them have left their
impress. Traces of the Roman wall exist; the Saracenic _enceinte_,
enclosing a space seven times the size of that which lies within the
present fortifications, is still marked by ruined towers which rise
picturesquely among the olive trees. In the matter of piracy Bougie
followed the example set by Algiers with great zeal and success. So
troublesome were its corsairs to Spain that in 1508 Ferdinand V was
goaded to action, and sent a fleet of fourteen ships under Don Pedro
Navarro to take possession of it; and the Spaniards held it for nearly
forty years. But the failure of the expedition of Charles V against
Algiers in 1545 put great courage into the Algerians. They attacked the
castle on the harbour and the citadel on the heights with an
overwhelming force. The governor, Don Alonzo de Peralta, seeing
resistance hopeless, and anxious to save the lives of his garrison and
its women and children, surrendered the town on condition that all the
Spaniards within the walls should be allowed to depart, and that ships
should be furnished to carry them to Spain. The Emperor, doubtless still
smarting under his defeat, did not take this fresh reverse in good part
and condemned the unfortunate governor to lose his head. Thenceforth
until the French invasion Bougie was held by a small Turkish garrison,
and the town, which is said to have contained in its palmy days a
population of 100,000, fell into decay. It is now once again on the
up-grade of prosperity.
From Bougie it is possible to proceed to Algiers by steamer, or by
train, but the traveller who has reached it by motor-car from Sétif
should on no account miss the opportunity to drive through Khabylia, the
beautiful and interesting mountain district which lies between the snowy
Djurjura and the sea. The distance via Fort National to Tizi-Ouzou, on
the western side of the upland country, whence Algiers may be reached by
train in three hours, is about 150 miles. A magnificent new road breasts
the mountain wall which confines the valley above Bougie, and leads with
interminable curves and zigzags through forest and cultivated land,
through heath and downland turf, to a chilly height of nearly 5000 feet.
The configuration of this country, the foot-hills of the Djurjura, is
peculiar. A series of slopes confines a wealth of valleys great and
small, into which project knife-edges, commonly crowned at their
termination with castle-like rocks. The Djurjura range protects these
valleys from the hot and drying winds of the desert, and its snows
supply copious torrents and a moist atmosphere. The country affords a
very striking contrast to the typical arid upland of Algeria. In such
conditions we naturally find a very luxuriant vegetation. Cedars, oaks,
olives, figs and vines flourish exceedingly, and beneath them the sward
suggests a more northern land. Africa maintains its character as the
continent of surprises.
On every vantage-point which offers possibilities of defence, especially
on the narrow ridges near their final crests, stand Khabyle villages,
commanding both slopes. In such a situation there is seldom water to be
found; and it is the perpetual task of the women (who are unveiled) to
carry it to their homes from the cascades on the neighbouring hills. The
villages are composed of small stone houses densely crowded together,
roofed with tiles, the lines of the roofs being generally parallel,
which gives them a curiously symmetrical appearance. Their dirt and
squalor is indescribable.
A strange people these Khabyles:—a white race, or at least not more
tanned than many dwellers on the northern shore of the Mediterranean,
and recalling in physique an Italian type; ardent cultivators and
determined fighters in defence; with a long-established and intelligent
system of local self-government, and elaborate institutions, public and
domestic; yet confessing the faith, and wearing the garb of the Arab,
with whom they have nothing else in common. Till the French came they
had never owned a master. Before 1871 they had maintained and been
permitted a modified independence; but to their own undoing they took a
leading part in the rising of that year, and committed many savage
murders and outrages on helpless French colonists. Their subjugation
followed as a matter of course; many of their lands were forfeited, and
they became the servants of the new lords.
There is quite a large and serious literature dealing with the peculiar
habits and customs of the Khabyles after the thorough and logical, if
somewhat dull, manner of French writers. From an artistic point of view
an Englishman, Mr. Edgar Barclay, has made Khabylia his own. His
“Mountain Life in Algeria” (London, 1882) is a description of the
country as it appears to an artist and a scholar. The common eye is
filled with the non-essential details of personal uncleanliness and the
squalor of seldom-washed garments; the artist looks below these to the
inherent qualities of form. In the troops of girls filling their
pitchers at the waterfall or bearing them in line to their village, in
the wood-cutter and the shepherd, Mr. Barclay has seen again the types
of ancient Greece when the world was young.
Fort National crowns a common ridge running east and west between the
two chief valleys of Khabylia. It looks southward to the great snowy
rampart of the Djurjura, here evident in all its glory. The road
westward follows the ridge to its extremity and then descends to the
vale in a series of abrupt and, to the motorist, rather alarming
zigzags. And so we come to Tizi-Ouzou and Algiers.
The magic carpet of our day has borne us in a brief space through
landscapes of astonishing contrast; through territories which are a
storehouse of conflicting yet commingled human interests; across the
vast cornfields which suggest man’s taming of a newly discovered
continent, to the siege-scarred cliffs of Constantine, the awe-inspiring
immensity of the Sahara, the speaking ruins of the Roman marches, the
Alpine gorges and sylvan sweetness of the Mediterranean shore. Perhaps
nowhere within so small a compass is the history of twenty centuries
writ so large, nowhere the evidence of man’s struggles, and especially
of his failures, more plain for him who runs to read.
[Illustration:
ALGERIA AND TUNIS
Extracted from the Michelin Guide to the Sunny Countries 1912
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_INDEX_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ain-Beida, 252
Algiers, 21 _seq._, 48 _seq._, 97, 103, 104 _seq._, 124 _seq._, 298,
302
Atlas, the Lesser, 28
Aurès range, the, 185, 197, 202, 205, 208, 245, 252
Bagai, 279
Batna, 197, 198, 201, 242, 248, 252, 285
Biskra, 43, 197, 198, 203 _seq._, 247
Blidah, 88, 133, 145
Bône, 72, 184
Boufarik, 89
Bougie, 56, 171, 287, 294 _seq._
Bou-Saida, 247
Chabet-el-Akhira, 286 _seq._
Cherchel, 88, 92 _seq._, 113
Colomb-Béchar, 240
Constantine, 83, 103, 136, 178 _seq._, 245
Djebel-Chénoua, 97
Djerba, 58
Djurjura, the, 28, 180, 298, 301
El-Eubbad, 171
El-Guerrah, 178
El-Kantara, 201
El-Mzab, 43, 234
Fort National, 298, 301
Foum-ês-Sahara, 201
Gouraya, 113
Guelma, 190
Isly, the, 142
Isser, the, 179
Jardin d’Essai, 104 _seq._
Kairouan, 60
Khabylia, 143, 178, 298 _seq._
Khenchela, 252
Kherrata, 288
La Macta, 135
Lambessa, 113, 247, 252, 279
La Sikkah, 137
Mansoura, 164 _seq._
Marengo, 88, 90
Mascara, 135, 136
Matifou, Cap, 61, 97
Medea, 59, 133
Medrassen, the, 198
Ménerville, 179
Metidja, the, 145, 179
Miliana, 136
Mustapha Supérieur, 27, 109 _seq._
Oran, 56, 59, 83, 103, 134, 143, 149, 172 _seq._
Oudjda, 59
Oued Atmenia, 257
Oued Fedhala, 198
Oued Rir, 232
Palestro, 179
Roumel, the, 180 _seq._
Sahara, the, 43, 82 _seq._, 144, 201 _seq._, 228 _seq._
Sahel, the, 82, 97, 179
Sbeitla, 31
Sétif, 178, 180, 285 _seq._
Sidi Bel Abbès, 150
Sidi Bou Medine, 170 _seq._
Sidi Ferruch, 129
Sidi Okba, 221 _seq._
Tafna, the, 138
Taguine, 141
Tchad, Lake, 239
Tebessa, 245, 247, 279, 280
Tell, the 82, 85, 143
Temacin, 232
Timbuctoo, 235, 239
Timgad, 187, 243 _seq._
Tipasa, 95 _seq._
Tizi-Ouzou, 298, 302
Tlemçen, 53, 59, 117, 136, 148 _seq._
Tobna, 223
Tombeau de la Chrétienne, 89, 198
Touggourt, 216, 232
Tubusuctu, 261
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
The following issues should be noted, along with the resolutions.
14.13 Timgad: Arch [at/of] Trajan Replaced.
143.8 and [raised] the whole province of Oran _sic_: razed
221.14 As we approach Sidi O[bk/kb]a Transposed.
279.3 They [rased] the fortifications _sic_: rased
End of Project Gutenberg's About Algeria, by Charles Thomas-Stanford