Algiers

“ His first impressions of Algiers, rising out of the Mediterranean like a white bubble in a sea of sapphire, will be the best he will have of this once Turkish city, now a vast commercial town and only a little less noisy than Marseilles. The sight of the Arab quarter, piling itself up in a pyramid of white and blue roofs above the European houses, with the fresh gardens of Mustapha away to the left and the Turkish forts in the foreground, is a vision of delight. ”

“ How much more real Algiers was than the rock on the Rigi where we sat, or the lake beneath, or the mountains beyond. Algiers is very real, though I have never seen it, and my friend is my friend for ever, though I have lost his card and forgotten his name. ”

“ If the weather is fine it is strongly recommended that one stay until the sunset, as the spectacle of the sun disappearing behind the hills of Algiers, making of it a great brazier of flame, compensates one for the drive back in the dusk. But really to appreciate Laperouse it must be visited on a summer day. The heavy atmosphere of Algiers is left behind, and one finds oneself in a sea of light and freshness. The water lazily laps the cliffs and ripples up on the golden sand. ”

“ We made Algiers shortly before midnight on Sunday. But our troubles were not over. Beautiful in the moonlight lay Algiers, the houses and mosques of the Arabs glistening in pearly whiteness above the long line of lights of the European quarter, and the whole shut in by a background of far-off hills of snow.{112} But we had to get there, and the ships don’t go up to the quays. ”

“ His women are mere beasts of burden, absolutely at the mercy of their lord. A whole world of progress lies between the Frenchman who works his fingers to the bone to give his daughter a dower, and the Arab who sells his to the highest bidder. And in love as in life the Arab is often a nomad, as the desert towns bear witness. But as he stalks haughtily through the streets of Algiers, he is an attractive and interesting figure. ”

“ Algiers, and the territory belonging to it, is governed by despotic Turks, the refuse of the Ottoman troops; who maintain their power over the Moors and Arabs of the plains (who are the [458] cultivators of the country) , and over the Berebbers (who are the aborigines of the country) , or inhabitants of the mountains of Atlas, which terminate this sovereignty on the south, and divide Algiers from Bled-al-Jereed. ”

“ Such, mingled with Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, Maltese, and a sprinkling of almost every European race, are the numerous types of diverse humanity which the streets of Algiers everywhere present. In so rich a scene the artist will find fruitful sources of inspiration, both of form and colour; the ethnologist will have scope for studying the features and carriage of different races, and for tracing the effects of their not infrequent intermixture; to the politician it will all give furiously to think. ”

“ At present Algiers holds the foremost position in Africa, not for its population, in which it is second to Cairo and probably also to Tunis, but as a centre for the diffusion of European culture throughout the continent. ”

“ It is only in its picturesque aspect, and as a winter residence for invalids, that Algiers will ever claim much interest for English people; and even in picturesqueness, it falls far short of other cities well known to Englishmen. There is nothing in costume to compare with the bazaars of Constantinople, or in architecture, to the bystreets of Trebizond; but Algeria is much more accessible from England, and that is our reason for selecting it. ”

“ If he seeks Europe in Africa, with perhaps just a dash of something oriental, he will be amply satisfied with Algiers, which is no longer a native city at all. It is as French as if it had risen from the soil entirely under French hands, and only the slums of the Arab town remain. ”

“ The fortifications of Algiers were barriers which separated the growing civilization of Europe from the barbarian nether world, and they{256} fell only with the coming of the French in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Such is the story of the entering wedge of progressive civilization in Algeria.
Algiers’ veiled women are one of the city’s chief and most curious sights for the stranger within her walls. On Friday, the jour des morts of the Arab women, they go to the cemetery to weep or to make gay, according as the mood is on. ”

“ Next to the province of Morocco, lies Algeria, and farther on is Tripoli, the farthest boundary of which adjoins Egypt.
Algeria, I learned, is five times as large as Pennsylvania. Algiers, one of the largest cities on the coast, is its capital. Walls of stone have been built across the harbor as fortifications. Algiers resembles an amphitheatre. Its streets rise on terraces. The streets are narrow; bazaars are everywhere. ”

“ In Algiers most of the native shops are in modern, Frenchified streets; here they line the ancient alleys. Merchants sit in the serene Eastern fashion beside their stores of merchandise; artisans ply their little trades in a very confined space. More than half the population appears to be occupied in making shoes. The general confusion is increased by the constant passage of animals, horses, mules, donkeys and camels. ”

“ The amateur will look in vain in Algiers for fine examples of Arab art, such as he may study at Cairo, at Granada, or at Tlemçen, in the province of Oran. The ravages of war, the stress of successive bombardments, amply account for this. The old minarets are gone; such work of the best period as may have 54existed has long disappeared; what the French have spared is chiefly of the Turkish domination. ”

“ TO get into the interior back of Algiers, you make your start from Maison Carrée. Here one gets his first glimpse of the real countryside of Algeria. These visions of the Arab life of olden times are quite the most interesting features of the country. Civilization has crept in and rubbed shoulders very hard here and there; but still the Arab trader, workman, and shopkeeper conducts his affairs much as he did before he carried a dollar watch and lighted his cigarettes with safety matches. ”

“ Their women are not veiled, and occupy a much more independent position than is usual in Mohammedan countries. Their men, to be seen in the streets of Algiers, may frequently be distinguished from the Arabs by their fair complexions, blue eyes and reddish hair. They have no inclination to a nomad life, and are naturally industrious, freely offering their labour to the French colonists. They would seem to present a more likely field for the spread of social progress according to European ideas than does the lazy indifference of the Arab; but in their case, too, religion is a bar. ”

“ The French colony of Algeria, as every one knows, stretches along the African coast from Morocco to Tunis, and from the Mediterranean southward to the desert. It is divided into three provinces—Oran, Algiers and Constantine, the central one being the most important and that from which the whole country takes its name. From either of these provinces it is possible to penetrate inland to the Sahara, but this is done most easily from the eastern settlement, Constantine. We therefore made choice of this route, and on a bright morning early in April started from Algiers for Philippeville. ”

“ In spite of its strangeness, Algiers is not at all Oriental. The Arabs of Algiers themselves lack almost totally the aspect of Orientalism. The Turk and Jew have made the North African Arab what he is, and his Orientalism is simply the Orientalism of the East blended and browned with the subtropical rays of the African sun. It is undeniably picturesque and exotic,{252} but it is not the pure Eastern or Byzantine variety which we at first think it. To realize this to the full, one has only to make the comparison between Algiers and Cairo and Tunis. ”

“ The French, who had formerly felt that the Spaniards were getting no more than their deserts, and had even afforded Kheir-ed-Din a temporary refuge in the port of Marseilles during a storm, were naturally hurt at the ingratitude of these proceedings. They went so far, in the reign of the Grand Monarque, as to bombard Algiers on two occasions,—with the customary result. Their fleets sailed away; Algiers rebuilt itself, and proceeded upon its piratical way. No one has ever rivalled the Deys in the art of taking a beating, and coming up again with a smile,—unless it be their ultimate conquerors. ”

“ Leaving the camp of the alchymist, our traveller proceeded to Algiers, where the famous Barbarossa then exercised sovereign power. This city, originally built by the native Africans, was at first called Mesgana, from the name of its founder; but afterward, for some reason not now discoverable, it obtained the appellation of Geseir, or the “island,” which European nations have corrupted into Algiers. Its population in the time of Leo was four thousand families, which, considering how families are composed in Mohammedan countries, would at least amount to sixty thousand souls. ”

“ The population of the city of Algiers, about 100,000, is composed principally of Moors, Arabs, Negroes, and other African nationalities, but with a large number of French, and many Hebrews, some Spanish, English, and other Continental representatives, and a few Americans. ”

“ Counting those natives who, though alive, did not long survive, and those who could not be reached, it has been roughly estimated that about eight hundred must have perished. Some had been suffocated, others trampled to death by the maddened cattle which had been confined in the cave with their owners.
The capital of Algeria is Algiers. It was built some nine hundred years before Christ. An Arab chief was its founder. It rises from the sea coast up the sides of a bald, rugged hill. ”

“ The Penon, the islet which, being connected with the shore by a mole, forms the present inner harbour of Algiers, the old harbour of the corsair fleet, is intimately connected with this period. Some good Arab work is to be seen, notably a magnificent doorway in the Bureau de la Marine, carved in white marble, or ornamented 55with inscriptions and with tigers,—an infringement of the Moorish law which perhaps indicates its Persian origin. [1] A small and very charming Arab house with good carving and many tiles is used as the residence of the Admiral. ”

“ In the neighbourhood of Algiers, things have a very European aspect; and the Arabs themselves, from constant intercourse with the city, have lost much of their nationality. The appearance of a flourishing colony is, however, confined to this district. ”

“ There are, of course, many pretty drives involving part of the day, such as the Gorges of Palestro and the entrance to the Kabyle country, the Ruisseau des Singes, beyond Blida, Dellys, and the Phœnician city of Tigzirt, on the coast, but as they form part of the greater journey to be dealt with in the next chapters their description is purposely omitted. Suffice it to [169] say that all the neighborhood of Algiers is enchanting, and that life in Algiers itself, lived in one of its old Moorish villas surrounded by a lovely garden, would be as delightful if it were not for the relaxing climate. ”

“ All the houses are built round a spacious court, which, in the dwellings of the rich, is paved with marble and adorned with a fountain. The only difference is, that the Spanish cities were evidently built during the most flourishing times of the Moors, as the style of the houses in Spain is far grander and more ornate than of those in Africa.
Algiers contains a population of about forty or fifty thousand souls, two-thirds of which are Jews and Arabs, and the rest Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians. ”

“ A mountain-range in Latium, Italy, where Cincinnatus defeated the Æqui in 458 B.C.
Algiers (now Algeria, Northwest Africa) . Part of the ancient Mauritania, which was conquered by the Romans, 46 B.C.; by the Vandals, 439; recovered for the empire by Belisarius, 534, and subdued by the Arabs about 690. The city of Algiers was bombarded a number of times, and finally taken by the French in 1830. Algeria at present belongs to France. ”

“ If, therefore, the visitor is not seeking gossip and bridge in overheated drawing-rooms, or the company of summer boarders from Bexhill and the relics of our great Indian Empire, he will do well to stay just long enough in Algiers to collect his breath, and then penetrate into the interior and see the real life of the country. ”

“ The Mauresque partner de convenance of a wealthy indigène or European may have her own horses and carriages, perhaps by this time even her own automobile; and rolls off the kilometres in her daily promenades on the fine suburban roads of Algiers, in company with the haute société of the city, and the thronging American, English and German tourists from Mustapha. She even dines at the cabarets of Saint Eugène, Pointe Pescade or the Jardin d’Essai, and no one does more than look askance at her. Algiers is very mondaine, and its morals as varied as its population. ”

“ The administration of Algiers does not worry itself about such a thing as road-making or road-sweeping. The mayor is a learned professor, and the council probably join with him in learned discussions on abstruse questions. They never do anything for Algiers.
To take a good drive in the neighbourhood you want nerves of iron. One Sunday I drove a roundabout way to our Lady of Africa, the church that stands on the summit of the high hill of Bou Zarea. Two little Arab horses drew me, and the driver left the path to them. ”