In Barbary

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The journey described in the following pages was first suggested to me by a dear and deeply lamented friend, the late Hugues Le Roux, senator of France and a noted African explorer, who had taken an active and highly helpful interest in my preceding expeditions into the Dark Continent. Through the kindness of Senator Le Roux and of his charming American wife I met at their dinner-table many persons, some of them high in the French political world, who were of immense assistance to me.

M. Albert Sarraut, then minister of the colonies, and General Nollet, at the time minister of war, placed at my disposal all the facilities of their departments of the government. M. Jean Jules Jusserand, former French ambassador to the United States; his successor at the Washington embassy, M. Berenger; the Hon. Myron T. Herrick, American ambassador to France; Christian Gross, Esq., secretary of the American embassy in Paris; M. Marcel Knecht, the famous editor and publicist; M. Joseph Perret, director of the French Government Tourist Information Office in New York; and my old friend, James Hazen Hyde, Esq., all aided me with valuable advice and letters of introduction.

In Tunisia my path was made pleasant by the French resident-general, M. Lucien Saint; in Algeria by the governor-general, M. Théodore Steeg; and in Morocco by the resident-general, Marshal Lyautey. General Vicomte de Chambrun, commanding the French troops in Fez, from whom I have always received the warmest of welcomes upon my visits to that city; General Daugan, commanding the forces in Southern Morocco; Colonel Paul Azan, commanding at Tlemcen, in Algeria; and Vicomte Louis de Trémaudan, of the civil administration at Marrákesh, were all largely responsible for the pleasure and interest of my journey by making it possible for me to visit districts not as a rule open to Europeans. It was my great good fortune to have as my guide to the ruins of Carthage the Rev. Father Delattre of the Order of the White Fathers, who is one of the foremost archæologists in the world; while Miss Sophie Denison, who has been a medical missionary in Morocco for a third of a century, was of great assistance to me in Fez. Two voyages on the S.S. La France were made delightful by the thoughtfulness of her commander, Captain Blancart, and the second captain, M. Vogel. In fact, throughout a journey of nearly fifteen thousand miles we were shown unfailing hospitality and kindness by every official with whom we came in contact, from his Imperial Majesty the sultan of Morocco, who received me in audience in his palace at Marrákesh, to subalterns in command of lonely desert outposts.

That the long journey, much of it in desert regions, was so replete with material comforts, was due to the great kindness of M. Jean dal Piaz, president of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, and to his able assistants, M. Maurice Tillier, director-general of the company in Paris; M. Robert Hallot, Chef du Services des Auto-Circuits Nord-Africains, and M. Georges Paignon, manager of the North African Tours Department in New York, who generously placed at my disposal all the facilities of their vast organization. It will be noted that in the following pages I have repeatedly called attention to the services provided for the traveler in North Africa by the “Transat.” Not to mention the part played by this company in the opening up of Barbary would be equivalent to ignoring the work of Fred Harvey and the Santa Fé in the development of the American West.

I also welcome this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to C. F. and L. S. Grant, authors of “African Shores of the Mediterranean”; to L. March Phillips, Esq., author of “In the Desert”; to Norman Douglas, Esq., author of “Fountains in the Sand”; to Frances E. Nesbitt, author of “Algeria and Tunisia”; to Charles Thomas-Stanford, Esq., author of “About Algeria”; to the late Budgett Meakin, Esq., author of “Life in Morocco”; and to Sir Harry H. Johnston, Frank E. Cana, Esq., and Edward Heawood, Esq., authors of monographs in the “Encyclopædia Britannica” on Tunisia, Algeria, and the Sahara respectively. From all of the above works I have obtained historic and economic data and many valuable suggestions.

E. A. P.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

IN BARBARY

CHAPTER I I NEVER SEE A MAP BUT I’M AWAY

Beyond the East, the sunrise.

Beyond the West, the sea.

And East and West, the wander-thirst that will not let me be.

The wander-thirst is like the drug-habit. Once you acquire it you are done for. It will never let you rest. There is no mistaking its symptoms: a hatred of the prosaic, the routine, and the humdrum; an aversion to staying long in one place; an insatiable craving to move on, move on—to see what lies beyond yonder range of hills, around that next bend in the road.

It is as persistent as it is insidious. There comes the stage when you think that you are cured of it. You delude yourself into believing that you have had enough of discomforts and privations and that it is high time you settled down and had a home. You weigh the respective merits, as a place of residence, of Long Island and Southern California; you even consult an architect and subscribe to “House and Garden” and “Country Life.”

But one day you casually pick up a list of steamer sailings, or stumble on your battered luggage plastered over with foreign labels, or whiff some exotic smell which brings back memories of the hot lands (there is no sense which stimulates the memory like that of smell), or see a vessel outward bound, or idly open a map, whereupon the old craving suddenly grips you like an African fever, and, almost before you realize it, you are on the out-trail once again.

The symptoms usually recur with the approach of winter, when the northern days grow short and gloomy, when the shop-windows are filled with fur coats and mufflers and galoshes, when the wind howls mournfully beneath the eaves o’ nights. But the attacks which are hardest to resist come in the early spring, when the snow has disappeared, and the smell of fresh earth is in the air, and the country-side is already green in spots. That is the time when it is most difficult to control one’s restless feet.

For a quarter of a century the urge of spring had perennially sent me packing to the Far Places. But when I came up from Equatoria, after a year spent beneath the shadow of the Line, I said to myself that I was through with wandering as a vocation—that I was going back to my own country and my own people and on an elm-shaded street in some tranquil community buy me a long, low, rambling house—a white house with broad, hospitable porches and green blinds. I had carefully planned it all out on the long African marches or during sleepless nights beneath the Southern Cross. I would join the local golf-club, and amuse myself with my horses and my dogs and my books, and keep my house filled with friends over the week-ends, and even go into politics in a mild way, perhaps. In fact, I proposed to do all the sensible, prosaic things for which I had never had the time before.

But, before sailing for America to put these laudable resolutions into effect, I met at a Paris dinner-table the gentleman who was at that time charged with the conduct of France’s colonial affairs. We had much in common, it developed, for he too had been on those distant seaboards of the world where the Gallic empire-builders are creating a new and greater France. Lingering over the coffee and cigars we talked shop—the future of Indo-China, Madagascar’s need of harbors, Miquelon and its fisheries, the Syrian mandate, the control of sleeping-sickness in the Congo, cotton-growing in the country round Lake Tchad.

“Why don’t you round out your survey of our possessions,” the minister suggested, “by taking a look at what we’ve accomplished in North Africa?”

“The North African tour?” I asked, laughing. “Algiers, Constantine, and Tunis, with a side-trip to the Garden of Allah? Thank you, no. After what I’ve seen I’m afraid that I’d find that sort of thing pretty tame. Besides, I’ve already been to North Africa any number of times. I once spent a winter in Tunisia, and Algeria and I was in Morocco back in the bad old days when unsuccessful pretenders to the Shereefian throne were carried about the country in iron cages lashed to the backs of camels.”

“I’ll wager that I can name some places in North Africa that you haven’t seen,” the tempter said persuasively. “How about a visit to Djerba—the island of the lotus-eaters, you know—and the desert sky-scrapers of Medenine and the troglodyte dwellings of the Matmata Plateau? Then you could push down into the Sahara, cross the sand-dunes of the Grand Erg by twelve-wheeler to Ouargla and Ghardaia, keep on to the Figuig Oasis, and so over the Atlas into Morocco.”

“Yes,” I remarked speculatively, “if I were going to do it at all I should certainly include Morocco. There are some parts of it which I have never seen, and it has rather worried me. I’ve always had a hankering to have a look at some of those kasbahs in the High Atlas, where the grand caïds live like the marauding barons of the Middle Ages, I am told. And, while I was about it, I should like to get into the forbidden Sus, and even to see a bit of Mauretania and the masked Touareg, perhaps.”

“That can all be arranged quite easily,” the minister assured me. “If you decide to go, I’ll write to Marshal Lyautey, who runs the show for us in Morocco, and instruct the officers commanding in the Saharan military provinces to give you every assistance.”

“Suppose we have a look at the map,” I suggested, half capitulating. (I could feel the old familiar symptoms coming on; already my feet were growing restless.)

We appealed to our host, who led us into his library and on the table spread a large-scale map labeled “Afrique du Nord Française.” There they lay before me, tempting as jewels, those glowing lands of sun and sand, of Arab, Berber, and Moor, of mosque and minaret. Set in the Mediterranean shore-line like great fragments of colored mosaic were the Barbary States—Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. Below them, sweeping southward to the Great Bend of the Niger and the swamps around Lake Tchad, was the yellow expanse of the Sahara, crisscrossed with the thin black lines which I knew for caravan-routes and sprinkled with the patches of green which stand for palm-shaded oases. And far to the westward, where Africa almost rubs shoulders with South America, lay Mauretania, land of the Blue-Veiled Silent Ones, The Forgotten of God.

Now I maintain that it is as unfair to unroll a map before a man who is striving to overcome the wander-thirst as it is to offer cocaine to a reformed drug-addict. For how, I ask you, could one be expected to resist the lure of those magic names—Kairouan, Gafsa, Touggourt, Ghardaia, Laghouat, Sidi-bel-Abbès, Oujda, Fez, Mequinez, Mazagan, Mogador, Agadir? At sight of them my resolutions crumbled like Mexican adobe. Almost before I realized it my carefully made plans had been tossed into the discard, and instead of poring over plans and specifications with an architect I was overhauling my travel-gear and ordering riding-breeches from my tailor and making inquiries about the sailing-dates from Marseilles.

Yes, it was the map that was my undoing, for

I never see a map but I’m away

On all the errands that I long to do,

Up all the rivers that are painted blue,

And all the ranges that are painted gray,

And into those pale spaces where they say,

“Unknown”....

There are three routes from France to French North Africa, and they are all served by the steamers of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, or, as it is better known to Americans, the French Line. The first is from Bordeaux to Casablanca, the chief seaport of Morocco; a four-day voyage, this, half of it in the Bay of Biscay. Speaking for myself, I have never found that ill-reputed body of water anything save smooth, but doubtless that has been my good fortune. The second route is from Marseilles to Algiers by the Mediterranean greyhounds, swift, luxurious vessels which make the crossing in something under four-and-twenty hours, so that you have scarcely said good-by to Europe before you are being greeted by Africa. The third route, and the one which we took, is from Marseilles to Tunis—a two days’ voyage if the steamer is not detained at Bizerta.

Of course there are other roads to Africa; roads which are more picturesque and interesting, perhaps, provided that speed and comfort are not essential. Thus one may travel by the Sud Express from Paris to Algeciras, a charming little Spanish coast-town across the bay from Gibraltar, whence small and rather dirty vessels cross the straits thrice weekly to Tangier in Morocco. The chief objection to this way is that, in order to reach French Morocco and the main lines of travel, it is necessary to traverse the Spanish zone by motor-car, a somewhat arduous trip and one which has heretofore been subject to interruption because of the troubles in the Riff.

There is an even more out-of-the-ordinary route to Barbary, but it is uncertain and in parts exceedingly uncomfortable, so, unless the traveler is prepared to put up with delays and discomforts, I cannot recommend it. This is by the fortnightly Italian boat from Syracuse, in Sicily, to Tripoli and thence by narrow-gage railway along the coast of Tripolitania to the present end-of-steel at Zuara. Here, by making arrangements well in advance, it is usually possible to obtain a motor-car for the two-hundred-mile journey across the desert to the French rail-head at Gabés, in southern Tunisia.

In deciding to enter Barbary through the Tunisian gateway we were influenced by reasons historical, climatical, and sentimental. To the historically minded traveler the east-to-west journey is more satisfying than the reverse route because, going westward, he follows the march of history, the hoof-prints of the Islamic invaders who, sweeping out of Asia behind their horsetail standards, carried fire and sword and the green banner of the Prophet along the northern shores of Africa until, halted by the Atlantic, they swung northward into Spain. To travel in the opposite direction would be equivalent to reading history backward.

Again, should you go to Barbary, as we did, in the late winter, the weather is more likely to be favorable in Tunisia than in Morocco, where cold, rain, and mud usually prevail until well into the spring. If, moreover, you purpose striking southward from Tunis into the desert, it is well to get that portion of the journey over with before spring is too far advanced, as after mid-April the heat becomes intolerable in the Sahara and the sirocco season begins.

From the dramatic point of view, as well, it is infinitely preferable to follow the journeying sun, for, whereas Tunisia is as civilized and well-behaved as Egypt, Morocco, save in spots, remains not far removed from barbarism, so that the peoples, customs, and scenes, instead of decreasing in novelty and interest as you press westward, become increasingly romantic and strange.

In making preparations for a journey in Barbary one should never lose sight of the fact that North Africa is a cold country with a hot sun. Most people, I find, labor under the delusion that Africa is synonymous with heat. This is due, I imagine, to our careless habit of generalization, of taking things for granted. Just as Canada was given a wholly undeserved reputation for frigidity by Kipling’s “Our Lady of the Snows,” so the pictures of sun-scorched deserts made so familiar by steamship-lines and tourist-companies have led to the assumption that every African country has, perforce, a torrid climate. Such misconceptions would be less general if people were more prone to consult the family atlas. There they would see that Tunis is on the same parallel as the city of Washington and that Algeria and Tunisia correspond in latitude to Virginia and North Carolina. The truth of the matter is that in the countries lying along Africa’s Mediterranean seaboard there are few evenings between November and May when a warm overcoat will be found uncomfortable, and even far south in the desert in the late spring I have shivered beneath three heavy blankets.

Yet an astonishingly large proportion of American visitors to North Africa appear to be wholly ignorant of the climatic conditions which prevail in that region. Staying in Biskra while we were there was a motion-picture company from California. While “on location” the actors wore pith helmets and white drill riding-breeches and shirts open at the neck and the other garments associated in the popular mind with life in the tropics, but, once the day’s filming was over, they wrapped themselves in sweaters, overcoats, and mufflers and huddled, shivering, about the open fire in their hotel. Those who saw that picture on the screen—it was called “Burning Sands” if I remember rightly—little dreamed that the actors who made it spoke their lines through chattering teeth and gesticulated with hands blue from cold.

There is one other popular misconception about North Africa which might as well be corrected now as later on. Save in the extreme south, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco are not flat, desert-like countries, as is frequently assumed. On the contrary, they are distinctly rugged and in parts extremely mountainous. Perhaps it will astonish some of my readers to be told that the High Atlas has a greater average height than the Alps and that at least one of the Moroccan peaks is higher than any mountain in the United States outside of Alaska. Though the Algerian ranges of the Atlas are not so lofty as those further to the westward, I have seen several inches of snow on the passes of the Grande Kabylie a few days before Easter.

I always like sailing from Marseilles. Perhaps it is because I have set out from there on so many long and fascinating journeys, but to me it has always been, along with Constantinople and Port Said and Singapore and Panama, a gateway to adventure.

On those sparkling blue-and-gold mornings for which the Côte d’Azur is famous I like to sit over my coffee beneath the striped awning of one of the restaurants along the Cannebière and watch the human panorama unroll itself before my eyes. Here one sees picturesque types from the Near, the Middle, and the Farther East; representatives of all of France’s far-flung colonial possessions. The gaunt, stooped man with the yellowed skin and tired eyes, in his buttonhole the red rosette of the Legion d’Honneur, is a colonial administrator, home on a much-needed and all too brief leave of absence from some God-forsaken outpost of empire in Syria, Somaliland, Madagascar, Indo-China. Here is a group of zouaves, boisterous, sun-bronzed fellows in tasseled fezzes and baggy scarlet trousers, fresh from service with the Army of Africa, who ogle every pretty girl they pass and pause for a round of drinks at every café. Tunisian marchands des tapis, gaudily colored rugs draped over their shoulders, shuffle along in heelless yellow slippers, urging their wares upon the patrons of the sidewalk restaurants until the exasperated waiters harshly order them away. A trio of bearded, grave-faced men, very dignified and aloof in their white hoods and flowing white burnouses, pace by unhurriedly, concealing their wonder at the unaccustomed scenes behind masks of Oriental imperturbability; they are powerful caïds from one of the Saharan provinces, visiting France for the first time as guests of the Republic. Down the center of the street, under the watchful eye of a grizzled sergeant, briskly marches a platoon of down-at-heel, out-at-elbow nondescripts—recruits for the Foreign Legion, with five years of iron discipline and heartbreaking desert service before them. Sauntering along beside a pretty woman is an officer of chasseurs d’Afrique, a light-opera figure in his flaring scarlet breeches, wasp-waisted sky-blue jacket, and képi piped with gold and silver braid. Staring with childlike curiosity at the displays in the shop-windows are yellow men from Annam, brown men from Tripolitania and the Red Sea countries, black men from the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Hulking negro stevedores rub shoulders with greasy, furtive-eyed seamen from Levantine coasters and Lascar stewards from the P. & O. boats in the harbor. Zigzagging along the pavement, arm in arm, comes a row of rollicking sailors from the fleet, scarlet pompoms on their rakishly tilted caps and the roll of the sea in their gait. And everywhere, seated at the café tables, mingling with the moving throng, are the filles de joie, the ladies of easy virtue, bold-eyed and carmine-cheeked, who find in the streets of the great seaport a happy hunting-ground.

When in Marseilles I like to make a little pilgrimage by funicular to Notre Dame de la Garde, the church of those who go down to the sea in ships, and, strolling through its dim, hushed transepts, to read the inscriptions, some naïve, some pathetic, on the hundreds of votive tablets placed there in gratitude and thanksgiving by those who have been saved from storm and shipwreck. I like to dine in the quaint little restaurants which fringe the waterfront on the delicacies for which Marseilles is famous—langouste, homard, crab, scallops, oysters, fish, and, of course, bouillebaisse. But particularly I like to stroll along the edge of the harbor, with its forest of masts and funnels, and watch the ships, flying the flags of many nations, coming from or setting forth for strange, far-off, outlandish ports on all the Seven Seas.

The short winter’s day was drawing to a close when the Duc d’Aumale nosed her way cautiously between the arms of the Marseilles breakwater and lifted to a choppy sea. From her lofty pinnacle above the city Our Lady on Guard seemed to bid us a benign farewell. Atop the cliffs off our port bow the Corniche Road twisted and wound and doubled upon itself like an uncoiled lariat tossed carelessly upon the ground. Further to the north, the peaks of the Maritime Alps reared themselves majestically skyward, purple-cloaked and ermine-caped. To starboard rose the rocky islet, crowned by the grim Château d’If, where Monte Cristo sought to ease his solitude by proclaiming, “The world is mine!” And before us, its foam-flecked surface turned to a field of dancing gold by the westering sun, stretched the Mediterranean—the road to Africa.

Ah, “outward bound!” The words beget

A dream of mosque and minaret

And golden dalliance

In orange gardens redolent

Of nights of stars and wonderment.

“Down Channel!”—down the foam-besprent

Blue highway to Romance.

---

CHAPTER II THE GATE TO BARBARY

Bizerta, the great naval base and fortress on the northern coast of Tunisia, is a French pistol aimed straight at the head of Italy—or perhaps it would be a closer simile to say the toe. It commands the narrowest part of the Mediterranean, where the Middle Sea contracts to a width of less than four score miles. In fact, were the French to mount on Cape Bon a gun having the range of the one with which, in the spring of 1917, the Germans shelled Paris, they could drop their projectiles on the shores of Sicily.

It will be remembered that when, in 1881, the bey of Tunis was forced to acquiesce in a French protectorate, the most violent resentment was aroused in Italy, which had long regarded Tunisia, with its large Italian population, as within her own sphere of influence and was only awaiting a propitious moment and a plausible pretext to bring that country under the rule of Rome. Even to-day, indeed, after more than a third of a century of French occupation, Mussolini and his fellow-imperialists regard Tunisia as a sort of African terra irredenta, which, when a favorable opportunity offers, they purpose to “redeem.” So, when the French began the construction of an impregnable stronghold at Bizerta in 1890, they made no secret of the fact that it was intended as a warning to Italy that the tricolor which had been raised over Tunisia nine years before would not be hauled down, and as a reminder to Britain that, Gibraltar, Malta, and the Canal notwithstanding, the Mediterranean was not a British lake.

During recent years the French government has poured out money like water in the development of Bizerta until to-day it is one of the strongest fortresses in the world. The Lake of Bizerta, which forms the inner harbor, accessible through the outer harbor and a canal, is nine miles from the sea and contains fifty square miles of anchorage for the largest vessels. A great arsenal has been created at Sidi Abdallah, at the southeastern extremity of the lake, with dry-docks for repairing the largest battle-ships, wharves, workshops, and warehouses, while at Ferryville, a few years ago a sandy waste, a modern town with well-built dwellings for the thousands of laborers employed in the dockyard has sprung up as though at the wave of a magician’s wand. Barracks have been built for the housing of the garrison, and the muzzles of long-range guns peer menacingly from the elaborate chain of fortifications which encircle the approaches to the harbor and the town. If, as has been hinted, Mussolini occasionally turns an acquisitive eye toward Tunisia, he should not overlook Bizerta. It would be a hard nut to crack.

My daughter, Bettie, had never been to Africa before, and so, when the steamer docked at Bizerta, she was naturally eager to go ashore and see the sights despite my warning that it was a colorless, uninteresting town, and that, as her first glimpse of Africa, it would be a disappointment. Now it is a curious fact that new-comers to a country frequently have more thrilling experiences in the first few hours of their visit than befall old-timers in a lifetime. For example, Sir Theodore Cook, editor of the “Field,” once told me that during his first day in New York, while drinking a glass of beer in a saloon in Park Row, the glass was shattered in his hand by a gangster’s bullet intended for the bartender.

It was a Sunday morning when we went ashore at Bizerta, and the town was as peaceful as a rural community in France. But as we were strolling through the tortuous byways of the picturesque Andalusian quarter—founded by the Moors driven from Spain—a pistol barked in a doorway, and the report was echoed by a woman’s scream. French gendarmes, native goumiers, and military police came on the run, followed, it seemed, by half the population of the town. In less time than it takes to tell about it the narrow thoroughfare was packed from wall to wall with an excited mob.

“What’s the trouble?” I inquired of a zouave who emerged from the press about the doorway.

“N’importe, m’sieur. N’importe,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders. “A rascally Senegalese has just murdered an Arab woman.”

“And you told me,” my daughter said reproachfully, “that I wouldn’t find Bizerta interesting!”

The dense gray fog, which had hung like a pall over the wintry Mediterranean since shortly after our departure from Marseilles, abruptly lifted as we left Bizerta, and thence onward to La Goulette the Tunisian coast unrolled its panorama bright and clear under the February sunshine. As I leaned on the rail, my glasses trained upon the shore-line, which slipped past as on a motion-picture screen, a White Father emerged from the smoke-room and joined me.

Shortly he tapped me upon the shoulder.

“Look, my son! Look! Over there....”

With my glasses I followed the direction of his outstretched finger. But all that I could discern was a range of distant violet mountains and in the middle foreground, rising somewhat abruptly from the plain which sloped down to meet the shingled strand, a low, isolated hill. Its lower slopes were clothed with vegetation—fields of barley, vineyards, patches of cactus—broken here and there by what appeared to be huge rubbish-heaps and excavation mounds. Higher up, amid dark clumps of cypress-trees, I could make out some scattered, white-walled buildings, one of them, judging from the gilded cross which surmounted it, a church. At the foot of the hill, near the margin of the sea, the sun was reflected dazzlingly from the surface of two small, curiously shaped ponds.

“Delenda est Carthago,” quoted the priest.

“There is all that remains,” he continued, “of what was once the most famous and powerful city in the world. The horseshoe-shaped lagoon with the island in its center is a vestige of Hamilcar’s military harbor, where the war-galleys were moored. On the summit of yonder hill Dido’s palace is believed to have stood. On that narrow neck of land to the eastward the army of Regulus was annihilated by the Carthaginians under Xanthippus, and there, a century later, the victorious forces of Scipio Africanus pitched their camp. The white chapel atop the plateau marks the spot where St. Louis died while leading the Last Crusade.”

It was as though he had uttered an incantation. At his words the scene seemed to change before my eyes as one stereopticon picture dissolves into another. The fog-banks which had lifted were the mists of centuries. Now I was looking down the vista of the ages. In my mind’s eye a mighty, glittering metropolis crowned that green and russet hill. A hot African sun beat down upon its massive ramparts, upon the gilded roofs of its towers and temples, upon its marble palaces and porphyry colonnades. Brazen chariots tore through its narrow, teeming streets; squadrons of horsemen maneuvered on the plain; elephants with jeweled trappings rocked and rolled along. The smoke of sacrificial fires rose from the altar before the great temple, where stood the statue of the horned god Baal. Relieving the masses of masonry here and there were patches of verdure, the sacred groves dedicated to the worship of the goddess Tanith. A vessel with billowing sails of Tyrian purple slipped along the shore. Out from the harbor-mouth shot a file of lean, long triremes, ostrich-feathers of foam curling from their bows as they leaped forward at the urge of the triple banks of oars. I was looking on the city which had been mistress of the Mediterranean for upward of half a thousand years; whose argosies had explored the unknown coasts of Africa and Gaul and Spain, venturing even beyond the Pillars of Hercules in their quest of the Hesperides; the city whose name is still synonymous with pomp and pride and power—Carthage, which had disputed the Empire of the World with Rome!

But the vision faded as abruptly as it had appeared when a French destroyer, inky clouds belching from her slanting funnels, fled across our bows. A sea-plane, bands of the tricolor painted on its under wings, went booming overhead. Fishing-craft with ruddy lateen sails appeared, swarthy, red-fezzed fishermen hauling at the nets. A puffing tugboat bustled officiously alongside, and the pilot nimbly climbed the swaying ladder. Bells jangled in the engine-room. And the Duc d’Aumale, slowed to half-speed, swept past the thickets of bristling masts which fringe the wharves of La Goulette and entered the throat of the buoyed channel which leads through the shallow lake of El Bahira to Tunis.

Though a seaport, Tunis, it should be understood, is not on the sea itself but some seven miles inland. The Tunisian capital occupies a most peculiar site, being built upon the narrow isthmus which separates the stagnant waters of El Bahira, “the little sea,” from the salt lagoon of Sebkhet es Sedjoumi. Notwithstanding the fact that, next to Algiers, Tunis is the largest and most important city in French Africa, it is only within recent years that it has been directly accessible to ocean-going vessels.

The project of creating a port at the very doors of Tunis was first entertained by the late bey, who in 1880 granted a concession for the purpose, but with the reorganization of the country after the French occupation the contract was canceled. Some years later, however, the enterprise was revived, the task of constructing the harbor, and of connecting it with the sea by dredging a canal, seven miles in length, through El Bahira, being undertaken by a French company.

With the completion of the port and the canal, La Goulette—or Goletta, as the English call it—lost its former importance, declining from a busy harbor, its roadsteads crowded with the ships of many nations, to a sleepy fishing-village. During the summer months, however, it regains a certain measure of its old-time activity, its population being almost doubled by the Tunisians who, unable to get away to Europe, go there for the sea-bathing and the breezes. Though La Goulette is of yesterday, its Venetian charm happily remains undimmed. Its houses, built with the stones of ancient Carthage, have been mellowed by time and the sun to ivory and terra-cotta; a reminder of its tumultuous past is provided by the fortress of Barbarossa, from which thousands of Christians taken captive by the red-bearded corsair were released when Charles V carried it by storm in 1535; the encircling waters of the Mediterranean and El Bahira are of a glorious blue, flotillas of fishing-barks with painted sails dot its placid surface and flocks of pink flamingos stalk sedately along its shores.

Darkness was close at hand when we steamed past La Goulette, and the purple African night had descended upon the land when we entered the harbor of Tunis. Dimly the old, old city loomed before us, its proportions clearly defined by twinkling street-lamps which grew fainter as they climbed the hill surmounted by the kasbah and the palace of the bey; while in the foreground danced the reflection of the riding-lights of the vessels in the harbor. I have always maintained that there are certain cities at which, in order to obtain the full flavor of their mystery and charm, one should arrive after nightfall, and Tunis is one of them.

While the steamer was being warped with aggravating deliberation into her berth, I looked down from the rail upon the picturesque scene and gave a sigh of contentment. It was good to sniff again the smell of Africa, to be back in the Orient once more. I breathed deep of the soft night air, laden with the fragrance of orange-blossoms, jasmine, and bougainvillea. After the glare of the sea, my eyes were rested by the dim outlines of the buildings, garish enough by day but of ivory and amber loveliness when bathed in the light of the moon. I reveled in the color and picturesqueness of the throng waiting on the wharf below.

Ranged along the edge of the quay, very gorgeous and self-important in their gold-laced jackets and voluminous trousers, were the dragomans and runners from the various hotels and tourist-agencies; alert, energetic fellows, speaking a smattering of many tongues, who spend their lives on steamship-wharves and railway-station platforms, welcoming the arriving and speeding the parting guest. Beyond them was a little group of wealthy young Tunisians, in immaculately ironed tarbooshes and spotless burnouses of the most delicate colors, one of them with a crimson blossom worn behind his ear, come to welcome some friend returning from Paris or Monte Carlo. A pair of bearded, hawk-nosed spahis paced slowly up and down, their enormous white turbans bound with ropes of camel’s-hair, long scarlet cloaks hanging to their booted and spurred heels. And well at the back, kept in their place by the whip of a native goumier, was a vociferous throng of Arab and negro porters, shouting and gesticulating for the first chance to make a franc by carrying ashore our luggage, and waiting, like sprinters on the mark, for the lowering of the gang-plank to storm the ship as their ancestors, the Barbary pirates, did of old.

Drawn up beside the customs shed was a powerful car of American make with a uniformed kavass from the residency and an alert-faced chauffeur in trim gray whipcord standing beside it.

“For Colonel Powell?” I asked the chauffeur in French as we set foot ashore.

“Yes, sir,” was the reply, in the unmistakable nasal twang of New England. “But you needn’t speak to me in French unless you want to. My name is Harvey Wilson and I’m from Providence, Rhode Island.”

Wilson, it developed, was a former member of the A. E. F. Instead of returning to America with his regiment after the Armistice, he had married a French girl and settled in Algiers as a motor mechanic and chauffeur. He drove us for upward of six thousand kilometers over desert roads, mountain roads, and across regions where there were no roads worthy of the name whatsoever. He had a profound knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of a motor; under the most trying conditions he never lost his patience or his temper; and his unfailing good humor won him the friendship of Europeans, Arabs, Berbers, and Moors alike. When we parted, months later, on the frontier of Morocco, I told him that it would give me genuine pleasure to recommend him to any one who contemplated motoring in North Africa, and I am now keeping that promise.

Mrs. Powell and I had been in Africa so many times that for us the drive through the brilliantly lighted streets to the hotel held little novelty. Our chief concern was whether we should find awaiting us a room with bath, for the hotels of Tunis are limited in number—the good hotels, I mean—and during the tourist season they are always overcrowded, so that it is the part of prudence to reserve one’s accommodations well in advance.

But my daughter Bettie was fascinated by the unfamiliar street scenes: the ceaseless stream of men wearing every form of head-covering—hats, helmets, hoods, tarbooshes, turbans; the stately Arabs, the elders looking for all the world like Old-Testament patriarchs; the bare-legged Berber porters in ragged garments of coarse brown camel’s-hair, sacks drawn over their heads to be used as sun-shades or overcoats according to the weather; the gaudily uniformed soldiers of the Beylical Guard, who might have stepped straight from a comic-opera chorus; the veiled women slipping silently along like sheeted ghosts; the groups of natives squatted about their cooking-pots, from which strange smells assailed the nostrils; the files of swaying, supercilious camels laden with the products of the South; the droves of patient little asses trotting demurely along beneath enormous burdens; the high whitewashed walls of the houses, broken by mysterious latticed windows, from which the eyes of unseen, jealously guarded women were peering down, no doubt; the fleeting glimpses caught through doors ajar of Oriental courtyards filled with color—to her this was one of the Thousand and One Nights. Ah, me ... what wouldn’t I give to again be seeing Africa for the first time through the eyes of youth!

Notwithstanding the French occupation, Tunis remains distinctly Oriental. The town is like a veiled woman of the harem wearing a pair of European shoes, incongruous and clumsy. And it is the shoes which the visitor arriving by sea sees first. For the district bordering on the harbor is Italian—an unlovely, odoriferous neighborhood of mean streets lined with squalid hovels where dwell some fifty thousand Sicilians and Maltese, who outnumber the French by more than two to one—while the quarter bisected by the Avenue Jules Ferry is characteristically French, with spacious, tree-planted boulevards, enticing shops, banks, theaters, cinemas, and electric tram-cars. This really imposing thoroughfare, with its fine stores and crowded open-air cafés, might be, indeed, a sort of continuation of the Cannebière in Marseilles interrupted by the Mediterranean. Its principal mercantile establishment, the Petit Louvre, is a creditable imitation of the mammoth Magazins du Louvre in Paris, with which, incidentally, most American women appear to be better acquainted than they are with the palace of the same name on the other side of the Rue de Rivoli. But all this, I repeat, is only that portion of Tunis revealed below the hem of her enveloping Eastern garments. The old Tunis, with its mosques and palaces, its labyrinth of bazaars rising gradually to the kasbah, is as Oriental as the Baghdad of Harun-al-Rashid.

Most Europeans seem to be under the impression that Tunis is a modern city—modern, at least, in comparison with Carthage. As a matter of fact, however, Tunis (or Thines, as it was originally known) had probably been in existence for some three or four hundred years when the fugitive Dido landed on the shores of the Gulf of Tunis and on the little hill of Byrsa founded Carthage. This view is accepted by no less an authority than the historian Freeman. But for centuries Tunis was overshadowed and eclipsed by the magnificence of her younger sister, sinking to the position of a poor relation, a country cousin, a mere dependency. Yet she had her revenge. Not only has she outlived her haughty neighbor, but she has incorporated her very bones, for there is hardly a column or capital in Tunis which is not of Carthaginian origin. Here, indeed, we see a ghost of Carthage, for the native city must very closely resemble what the commercial quarter of Carthage was five-and-twenty centuries ago.

The car came gently to a halt before the Hotel Majestic, a spacious hostelry whose architect had sought, without conspicuous success, to graft the Moorish style on the European. An Arab chasseur in red and gold flung open the door. A swarm of servants in green baize aprons hurled themselves upon our luggage. We were greeted by the director, a suave Frenchman, who might have been an undertaker, judging from his somber garments and excessive dignity. Rooms had been reserved for us by the residency, he said. I remarked that I hoped that we were to have a bath. Mais certainement, un grand bain—un bain de luxe. Would we ascend and view it? We crowded, the four of us, into an ascenseur which could not possibly have been intended to carry more than two, and the Arab lift-boy squeezed himself in after us. It creaked, groaned, hesitated, almost stopped, but finally drew level with the floor which was its destination. I gave a sigh of relief, as I always do upon completing an ascent in a French elevator. We were ushered down an echoing, marble-paved corridor, chilly as a tomb, to our rooms. Mrs. Powell tried the hot-water faucet and inquired about the voltage for her electric curling-iron. I sent the maid scurrying for extra blankets and softer pillows, and ordered a drink of Scotch. But my daughter Bettie stood on the balcony in the moonlight, looking out upon the white city and inhaling the subtle fragrance of the orange-blossoms. You see, she had never been in Africa before.

CHAPTER III THE FACTORY OF STRANGE ODORS

The extraordinary success which has marked the rule of the French in North Africa is in large measure attributable to their policy of scrupulously refraining from encroachment on native life. Instead of being ruthlessly mutilated to make way for boulevards and plazas, as Baghdad and Delhi have been by the British, the old cities have been left intact; and the French quarters, with their public buildings, theaters, shops, and restaurants, have grown up outside the walls; so that the Europeans and the natives really dwell apart, which is best for them both.

The happy results of this policy are particularly noticeable in Tunis, where the French have made no attempt to modernize the ancient city, the Medina, access to which is gained from the European quarter through the old water-gate, Bab-el-Bahar, now known as the Porte de France. Though electric tramways encircle the city and run far into the suburbs—the service between Tunis and Carthage, I might remark in passing, is surpassed only by that between Yokohama and Tokio—all proposals to disfigure the picturesque native quarter have met with a stern refusal from the authorities. Street-names, lighting, and sanitation have been introduced, however, and the old town itself is incredibly clean for an Eastern city; cleaner by far than many cities in Italy and Spain. In fact, Tunis merits the title of “The White,” which it has so long enjoyed, almost as much by virtue of its astonishing cleanliness as because of its snowy buildings, which mount, tier above tier, to the citadel, like “a burnous with the Kasbah for a hood.”

In these Moslem lands, where religious fanaticism goes hand in hand with suspicion of the foreigner, the French have had to exercise the utmost tact in effecting even the most urgent sanitary reforms. M. Jusserand, for years French ambassador to the United States, once told me that, when he was chief of the Tunisian Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the city of Tunis was threatened by an epidemic because the bodies in the local cemeteries were too near the surface. Instead of arbitrarily ordering the graves to be deepened, an action which inevitably would have aroused native resentment and perhaps have precipitated serious troubles, the French resident-general sent a politely worded message to the chief cadi, the head of the Moslem religious community, inquiring whether the depth of graves was specified in the Koran. He was informed that, according to Koranic law, graves must be deep enough to cover a standing man to his shoulders. Thus scripturally fortified, the resident-general called the attention of the chief cadi to the failure of the Tunisians to abide by the tenets of their own religion, whereupon the natives lost no time in deepening the graves themselves.

The principal approach to the old city is through the Avenue Jules Ferry, a wide and handsome boulevard lined on either side with shops, banks, cafés, and theaters and having a sort of park running down the center. With its broad pavements, its fine trees, its beds of brilliant flowers, and its throngs of promenaders, it is strongly reminiscent of the Rambla in Barcelona. It terminates in the Place de la Résidence, a spacious plaza flanked on one side by the cathedral, a conspicuous building of dubious architectural merit which is the seat of the primate of all Africa, and on the other by the palace of the French resident-general, so that the representatives of church and state directly face each other. The residency is a low, unpretentious building with fine gardens, before whose gilded gates pace sentries in the brilliant uniform of the Garde Beylicale. Forming a continuation of the Avenue Jules Ferry is the shorter and narrower Avenue de France, which terminates at the Bab-el-Bahar, the entrance to the Medina, or old town. Though the Medina was formerly encircled by walls, these have in large part disappeared, leaving the gates of the city isolated, like those of Paris.

To pass through the Bab-el-Bahar is to enter another world, to go back into history for a thousand years, to step from the Europe of to-day straight into the Orient of the Middle Ages. I can recall few, if any, places where so abrupt a change takes place within a few paces, where the contrast is so startling. The gate, in itself quite unimposing, opens upon a kaleidoscope of color, a chaos of confusion, a pandemonium of noise. Here wheeled traffic virtually ceases, not because it is forbidden but because it is impracticable by reason of the extremely narrow and densely crowded streets. Here the raucous honk of motor-cars is replaced by the imperative “Barek balek!” (take care!) of Arab muleteers. Here, instead of carts and camions, the draft work is performed by files of mangy, moth-eaten camels, as far removed from the graceful méhari of the desert folk as a work-horse is from a thoroughbred; by droves of diminutive donkeys, blue beads festooned around their necks for superstitious reasons, their ears and tails alone visible beneath their enormous burdens; and by brawny porters, twin brothers to the hamals of Turkish cities, who stagger along beneath bales and boxes which would cause an American express-man to go on strike were he asked to handle them, but which they seem to carry with comparatively little effort by means of a rope passed round the forehead, like the tump-line of an Indian guide. I saw one of these fellows, a bare-armed, bare-legged Hercules, walk off quite matter-of-factly with a grand piano on his back.

Guides, touts, and Jewish shopkeepers do their utmost to ruin the visitor’s enjoyment by their incessant importunities and whines. “Good morning, meester.... Good morning, madame.... How are you?... Look here.... I show you sometheeng ... sometheeng ver’ fine ... ver’ cheap ... no charge ... you come in quite free ... you not buy anything unless you wish.... No, sare, I not damn nuisance.... I ver’ honest fellow....” Cringing, impudent, and furtive-eyed, they are as pertinacious as flies and as irritating as fleas, the only wonder being that they are not occasionally murdered by Europeans who have been exasperated beyond endurance. On one occasion I saw a Frenchman kick one of these parasites the entire length of a souk, and I felt like shaking hands with him as a public benefactor.

Now and then a gorgeously appareled caïd, a figure out of the Arabian Nights, clatters through the narrow streets astride a snorting Arab, negro slaves trotting at his stirrups. Snake-charmers, fire-eaters, story-tellers, do their hackneyed stuff in the open spaces before the city gates, surrounded by spectators packed four-deep who applaud the performances with the naïveté of children. The faithful squat beside the fountains of the mosques, bathing their hands and feet and rinsing their mouths in running water, as the Koran prescribes, before entering the sanctuaries to prostrate themselves in prayer with their faces toward the Holy Places. Occasionally one sees a wild-looking scarecrow of a figure, a holy man from the desert, caked with filth, his hair and beard matted, his patchwork rags of many colors, beseeching the passers-by in a shrill whine for alms in the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful—and cursing them with enviable fluency if his importunities go unheeded.

The most characteristic and interesting feature of Tunis is the souks, or covered bazaars. Nowhere in the Nearer East are there any souks which can equal them; for in Constantinople, by virtue of the Angora government’s passion for westernizing everything Turkish, the men have been compelled to discard their turbans and tarbooshes for hats and caps and the women to doff their mystery-suggestive veils, more’s the pity! The bazaars of Cairo are not only deficient in architectural merit but, particularly during the tourist season, are not much better than the Oriental section of an exposition. In Damascus the bazaar buildings resembled railway-stations even before French shells laid in ruins the Street Which Is Called Straight. Indeed, one would need to go as far eastward as Tehran or Ispahan to find souks which can compare with those of Tunis in extent, beauty, color, and picturesqueness.

The bazaar quarter of Tunis is, as it were, a whole city under one roof—a city teeming with Oriental life; carrying on its trade in the traditional Eastern fashion; transacting its business without tables or chairs in doorless, windowless stalls, raised three or four feet above the ground and most of them only a few yards square, which their owners close at night by means of stoutly built, gaily painted shutters. In these recesses the merchants sit cross-legged, like so many Buddhas, with their merchandise spread about them, dozing, smoking, sipping black coffee, and gossiping with their neighbors.

The souks of Tunis cover an enormous area. They consist of a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous, wholly irregular streets, lanes, alleys, and passages; some of them vaulted, lighted only by shafts of sunlight falling through square apertures overhead; others roofed with sloping planks, uneven and rotting with age but highly picturesque, their gaping crevices permitting the street below to be flooded with sunshine or with rain. But most fascinating of all, at least in clement weather, are those bazaar lanes which are shielded from the elements only by vine-covered trellises, like pergolas, the sunlight, sifted and softened by the leaves, casting shadows of lace-like delicacy upon the worn, uneven pavement.

Each of the trades has its own souk, and each souk has its own distinctive character. Thus one street is devoted to perfumes, another to shoes, a third to jewelry, a fourth to saddlery, and so on; an arrangement which tends to make shopping easy, as the visitor in quest of a particular article is enabled to compare prices and quality and, not infrequently, to play off one merchant against another. Some of the souks contain only goods for sale, but most of them are workshops as well, the goods being made by native artisans on the premises. Here, if you require an article of special design, the merchant does not tell you that he will “order it from the factory,” but instead he cuts it, or carves it, or paints it on the spot and under your supervision. They are as enchanting as they are bewildering, these Tunisian souks—a source of unending novelty, a panorama of pure color, the dusky light which prevails beneath the vaulted roofs serving to harmonize the tints, to soften the harsher outlines, to fill the dark recesses with mystery.

And everywhere is the loot of Carthage. Those fluted marble columns, now striped in green and scarlet, like sticks of peppermint candy, may once have supported the roof of Dido’s palace. Those exquisitely sculptured capitals, their delicate tracery all but concealed beneath repeated coatings of whitewash, were in all likelihood executed by Phenician workmen, dead these twenty centuries and more, for the temple of the goddess Tanith. Yonder slab of polished stone, on which the shoemaker is seated, quite possibly stood in ancient times before the statue of the great god Baal, dripping with the blood of human sacrifices. Who knows?

On a first visit to the souks it seems impossible to think of finding one’s way unguided through this bewildering network of narrow, winding thoroughfares, this human rabbit-warren. Here, as in the even more extensive and confusing bazaars of Tehran, I felt like taking a ball of string along and unwinding it behind me, like an explorer of a subterranean cavern, so that I might find my way back to my starting-point again. But after a time the general topography becomes clear, and then it is easy to wander in and out at will, with the assurance that confusion, or even a total loss of bearings, means nothing worse than an extra turn or two and then the sight of some unmistakable landmark, such as the green sarcophagus which all but blocks the narrow way through the street of the leather-workers. It is the coffin of a marabout—an itinerant holy man—set there to confer a special blessing on the souks by its presence. It is painted a vivid green, ornamented with designs in red and yellow, and the garments of the endless stream of humanity which pushes past it have put a high polish on its edges. Personally, were I a merchant, I should not care to have a coffin resting permanently at the front door of my business premises, but the Tunisians seem to regard it very much as Grant’s Tomb is regarded by the dwellers on Riverside Drive.

Sooner or later every visitor to Tunis finds his way, or is led by his guide, to the Souk-el-Attarin, the street of the perfume-sellers. Architecturally, this is one of the finest bazaars in the city and probably one of the oldest. From its hole-in-the-wall shops drift the scents of all the world—attar of roses and ambergris, musk and incense, violet and orange-flower, jasmine and lily-of-the-valley. Before the shops stand sacks stuffed with the dried leaves of aromatic plants from which is made the incense used in the mosques and the henna with which the native beauties redden their hair and their finger-tips and the soles of their feet, for even the veiled women of the East are addicted to the use of war-paint.

The scents are very powerful, and for toilet purposes must be largely diluted with alcohol. Nor are they by any means inexpensive, even according to American standards, a tiny vial of certain of the rarer essences frequently costing several hundred francs. They are sold in slender, fragile bottles, charmingly decorated with gold and color, but, unfortunately, their glass stoppers rarely fit, and, as my wife and daughter learned by costly experience, the scent will evaporate unless the stopper is replaced with a cork. Here one’s nostrils are assailed not only by the old familiar perfumes but by the strange scents characteristic of the East—musk, amber, incense, attar of roses, and, of course, the celebrated parfum du bey. The last-named is the royal scent, a composite essence, the odor of which is alleged to change from hour to hour and which is unobtainable, at least in theory, save by those connected with the court or who are honored by the bey.

The perfume-sellers are the aristocrats of the souks, claiming to be descended from the Moors who were expelled from Spain and to possess the keys of the Andalusian castles owned by their ancestors. Be this as it may, they are very haughty and condescending, deeming it vastly beneath their dignity to haggle with their customers or to solicit the patronage of the passers-by. In fact, these small, luxuriously furnished shops, with their silken cushions, their seven-branched candlesticks, their array of slim, glass-stoppered bottles inscribed in gilt with mysterious Arab characters, and the hint of incense in the air, resemble shrines of Venus rather than places of business, the sleek, urbane proprietors exhibiting their wares with the reverence of officiating priests.

Here the purchase of scent is not a commercial transaction but a ceremony. The customer is seated upon a divan, piled high with cushions, and the turbaned merchant takes his place behind a table, on which are laid out fantastically shaped vials and vessels, like a sorcerer about to begin his mystic rites. The perfumes sold here, remember, are not the ordinary scents of commerce with which we Westerns are familiar, but concentrated quintessences, the merest drop of which upon a handkerchief or glove or sleeve confers a fragrance which will last for days. A silent-footed attendant serves tiny cups of coffee, thick, sweet, and black as molasses, and scented cigarettes. A charcoal brazier is smoldering in the corner, and from it rises a faint suspicion of incense. Daintily opening with delicate, tapering fingers the glass-stoppered bottles ranged before him, the perfume wizard runs through the whole gamut of odors; he plays upon the sensitive olfactory nerves as a great musician plays upon an organ. For, of all the senses, that of smell is most closely associated with remembrance. It can recreate a vanished vision on the human motion-picture screen we call the mind. It can arouse the emotions—pain, pleasure, passion, longing, sadness—and fan into flame the embers of the past. It can bring back, as at the wave of a magician’s wand, the thoughts and scenes of far away and long ago.

Perhaps I myself am more susceptible than most to the effect of perfumes ... I do not know. But the scent of roses brings back with overwhelming vividness the loveliness of a Capri rose-garden where I wandered with Her in the fragrance and the moonlight, long, oh, long ago. The redolence of cedar, and I see in my mind’s eye a carpenter’s shop which I passed daily when I lived in Syria, with the white-turbaned, patriarchal carpenter working at his bench amid a litter of shavings, and camels, laden with logs from the Cedars of Lebanon, kneeling patiently at the door. Sandalwood conjures up a vision of Indian temples, with shafts of sunlight striking through the murky interiors to be reflected by brazen buddhas, inscrutable of face; of twilight on the Ganges at Benares; of the pink palaces and towers of Jaipur. Geranium, heliotrope, lemon verbena—these show me once again the stately, white-pillared house in which I was born, with my grandmother bending lovingly over the flowers in her old-fashioned garden, the stretches of close-cropped greensward, the leaves of the old, old elms whispering ever so gently in the summer breeze.

Because I am a collector of weapons and curios in a modest way, and because I positively revel in colors, I lose no time when in Tunis in making my way to the Souk des Etoffes. To my way of thinking it is one of the most fascinating streets in the world, its tiny shops literally filled to overflowing with silks, damasks, velvets, brocades, embroideries, of every tone and texture—turquoise blue, pale green, amethyst, ruby red, old rose, burnt orange, purple, magenta, vermilion, saffron yellow—the fruit of looms all the way from India to Morocco. Stacked high are piles of carpets from Anatolia, Kurdistan, Daghestan, Persia, Afghanistan, Kairouan; the last-named a Tunisian product, surprisingly cheap but well worth buying, for it is as thick and soft as a fur rug, in lovely, mellow shades of ivory, red, and brown.

These Tunisian rug-merchants are past masters in the fine art of salesmanship; they will fling a silken carpet into the air with the hand of a magician and permit it to settle gradually upon the floor, not flat but in little hills and valleys of rich, tempting colors, the folds serving to reveal the intricacy of the design and accentuating the silky sheen.

I have no slightest intention of purchasing a carpet, no place to use one if I had it, but, for the sake of politeness, I feel constrained to ask its price.

“Twelve hundred pounds,” says the merchant, without batting an eyelash.

“Trop cher,” I remark, as though buying six-thousand-dollar carpets was with me an everyday affair.

The merchant shrugs his shoulders as though pitying my ignorance of values. It is a very fine carpet, he assures me earnestly, very old, very rare. The “ivory” in it is quite exceptional. Only last week he sold a pair of such carpets to the American millionaire, Meester Otto Kahn. By way of convincing me he displays the New York banker’s visiting-card.

“But I am not a millionaire,” I explain.

“Monsieur is pleased to jest with me,” says the merchant flatteringly. “Is he not an American?”

Realizing that to deny the imputation is worse than useless, I turn my attention to the other objects in the crowded little room—silver-mounted rifles with enormously long barrels, their stocks inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl, or turquoise matrix; poignards with jewel-studded hilts; exquisitely damascened simitars, their curved blades inscribed with verses from the Koran; Saracenic helmets with hoods of chain-mail; exquisite embroideries worked by the deft fingers of harem women; quaint pieces of enamel jewelry out of the Grande Kabylie; miniatures on ivory of ferocious-looking, fiercely mustached beys and pashas, their turbans the size of sofa-cushions; strings of perfectly matched amber beads, as large as cherries and as red.

These things fascinate me, not only on account of their intrinsic beauty but because they stand for romance and adventure. The diamond-studded hilt of that simitar hanging on the wall may once have lain in the palm of Barbarossa and run with Christian blood. It pleases me to imagine that Scheherazade wound that gold-and-silver girdle about her slender, supple form. It is within the bounds of possibility, at least, that the strand of pearls glowing against its velvet background belonged to a Spanish donna before it was torn from her white neck by the hand of a corsair chief. Who shall say with certainty that yonder gold-damascened casque did not once rest on the head of Saladin?

So I spend my money recklessly, for I revel in the possession of such things. True, they will find a resting-place for the present in an American museum, but some day, I trust, when I am old and the wander-fever does not surge so fiercely in my veins, I shall bring them together under a roof of my own and beguile the long winter evenings in their contemplation and in the memories which they evoke.

Doubtless more foreign money is spent in the Souk des Selliers—the saddlers’ bazaar—than in any other of the Tunisian souks. Not on saddles, however, but on the innumerable other articles manufactured from the vividly tinted leathers—sofa-cushions, pocketbooks, purses, portfolios, cigarette-cases, and the embroidered sacks which every Tunisian carries slung over his shoulder by a silken cord. For though it may be difficult to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear (even though silk stockings are commonly made from tree-bark), these Tunisian leather-workers produce the most fascinating things imaginable from the skin of a goat. Perhaps I should remark parenthetically, however, for the benefit of those purposing to visit Morocco, that the leather-goods of Tunis are far inferior in color, design, and workmanship to those of Fez and Marrákesh.

But the saddlery of Tunis is unequaled throughout North Africa, a veritable Tunisian saddle being as highly prized by an Arab as a Whippey is by an English hunting man. The city has been celebrated for its horse-gear ever since the Middle Ages, when caravans from Timbuktu, Darfur, and the Sudan brought slaves, gold, gum, ivory, and ostrich-feathers and took back costumes, embroideries, arms, and saddlery. And even to-day the merchants of the Souk des Selliers supply their wares to customers as far afield as Morocco, Algeria, Tripolitania, and the Saharan hinterland. For, like the American cow-puncher, the Arab loves his horse and is fond of displaying him to the best advantage, always being ready to lavish his money on richly ornamented and expensive trappings.

The Arab saddles, which are usually of scarlet leather embroidered with ornate designs worked in vividly colored silks, are immensely heavy, cumbersome affairs, so thick that the rider is perched several inches above the horse’s back, and so broad in the seat that it is torture for a European to sit them. The shovel-like stirrups are often of silver damascened in gold, their sharp edges being used by the rider in lieu of rowels. The housings used by the wealthy caïds and pashas are generally of velvet stiff with gold and silver bullion and in some cases ornamented with leopard-skin. In fact, the leopard-skin holsters on the state saddle of a maréchal de France are undoubtedly of African origin; a reminder, no doubt, of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign.

A sort of by-product of the Souk des Selliers are the enormous hats of woven grass, somewhat resembling Mexican sombreros, which are to be seen throughout Tunisia when the weather becomes really hot. They have huge crowns, thus permitting them to be worn over the turban, and, though very heavy, are as supple as Panamas. It is their extreme flexibility, in fact, which brings them to the saddlers’ bazaar, for before they can be worn the flappy brims must be stiffened by four leaf-shaped pieces of leather, which are dyed and embroidered to suit the fancy of the customers. They are fitted with a sliding chin-strap, which can be loosened so that the hat may lie on the back when not needed as a protection from the sun. In Tunis itself one sees these gargantuan hats only rarely, but during the hot season they are worn universally by the Arabs of the hinterland. Thus panoplied, on their little wiry horses, when seen from a distance they bear a striking resemblance to Mexican vaqueros.

Speaking of hats reminds me that the national head-dress of Tunis is not the high, cylindrical tarboosh of Egypt, nor the lower, more tapering fez which formerly proclaimed the Turk, but a round-topped affair of soft red felt, somewhat akin to a skullcap, known as a chéchia. They are provided with thick blue tassels, and wound about them, so as to conceal all save the top, is a snowy scarf. The making of chéchias was formerly an important industry of Tunis, but in recent years it has declined, as they can be manufactured more cheaply in England and Germany. A curious circumstance, is it not, that the decree of the Turkish government prohibiting fezzes should have brought hardship to hundreds of Manchester workmen? It goes to prove how closely the countries of the modern world are bound together economically.

The Souk-el-Blagdjia, the shoemakers’ bazaar, is a long narrow, winding thoroughfare somewhat reminiscent of the Street of the Shoemakers in Athens. It possesses no architectural attractions, but the dyed goatskins hung up before the shops form charming bits of color. Here are made the soft, heelless slippers of lemon or pomegranate color which the natives wear and which the Arab keeps on so easily, to the mystification of Europeans; of course it is only by shuffling that they can be kept from falling off. To see an Arab shuffling along in his saffron-colored slippers is to realize the true significance of the term “slipshod,” for they are utterly incompatible with energy or haste.

Leaving the bazaars by the Bab Souika, one finds himself in the narrow Rue Halfaouine. This thoroughfare might more appropriately be called the Street of the Barbers, for in no other city have I ever seen so many tonsorial establishments in so short a distance. This multiplicity of barber-shops is explainable, perhaps, by the fact that Tunisian barbers do not confine themselves to the duties customarily associated with that calling, but are likewise manicurists, pedicurists, dentists, and, on occasion, surgeons. They stand ready alike to trim your beard, to shave your head—taking care of course, should you be a Moslem, to leave the little topknot whereby, on the Judgment Day, the faithful may be jerked to heaven—to manicure your hands, to care for your feet, to extract your teeth, to cup or bleed you, and to perform any other minor operation. In warm weather all of these are performed in the publicity of the open street, thus giving the barber a better opportunity to gossip with his friends and providing entertainment for the passers-by. By way of giving confidence to his prospective victims and for purposes of advertising, the barber sometimes has before his place of business two glass show-cases lined with velvet. One is filled with the molars, canines, incisors, and bicuspids which he has extracted. In the other, arranged like a collection of white and yellow butterflies, are neatly mounted rows of corns!

CHAPTER IV MID PLEASURES AND PALACES

From the Porte de France, where Europe comes to an abrupt end and the Orient dramatically begins, the walls and roofs of Old Tunis rise like terraces, one above the other, to the Kasbah, which, as in the case of all Oriental citadels, occupies the highest point, so that in the event of a revolt its guns may sweep the city. In the days when Tunis was a corsair stronghold, its swift-sailing galleys the terror of the Mediterranean, the Kasbah was the seat of power, its massive ramparts inclosing the palaces of the beys, the barracks of the Janizaries, and the bagnios in which were confined the Christian slaves. To-day, however, there is little about the Kasbah to suggest its one-time importance, for only the exterior wall remains, and the old buildings have disappeared to make room for the casernes in which are housed the troops of the French garrison.

Yet few areas of like size in the world have witnessed so much bloodshed, cruelty, and suffering. At the height of the pirate power the Christian captives in Tunis alone numbered upward of ten thousand; they were treated like wild beasts; worked like draft-animals, and sold like cattle to the highest bidder. But they had their revenge, for when, in July, 1535, the Spaniards under Charles V besieged Tunis, the Christian slaves confined in the citadel suddenly rose in revolt, massacred their guards, and helped to secure the victory of the emperor.

This reverse was very far from crushing the power of the corsair chiefs, however, and a few years later found them again ravaging the seaboards of Italy, France, and Spain, exacting tribute from every seafaring nation. Even the European coastwise traffic was not immune. In the closing years of the sixteenth century a young Frenchman of a religious turn of mind, while voyaging from Marseilles to Narbonne, was captured by the corsairs, taken to Tunis, and sold at public auction. His heart stirred with pity by the sufferings which he witnessed during his two years of captivity in the city, he dedicated the remainder of his life to ameliorating the wretched lot of Christian captives and galley-slaves. In recognition of the great services which he rendered to suffering humanity, he was canonized by the Church of Rome, being known to history as St. Vincent de Paul.

Though vanished are its glories, the Kasbah is well worth visiting if for no other purpose than to view the superb panorama commanded by its ramparts. Seen under the morning sun, the Tunisian capital is a pearl-white city, though its whiteness is relieved from monotony and glare by numerous patches of green—the palms and orange-trees in the gardens of the Dar-el-Bey, the shade-trees along the Avenue Jules Ferry, the Avenue de France, and other thoroughfares, and the blue-green tiles used so effectively in the decoration of the mosques, particularly on their domes and pointed minarets.

The view from the Kasbah, especially in the late afternoon, when the shadows begin to lengthen and the fort-crowned hills which encircle the city are tinged with coral, is one never to be forgotten. To the southward, an opal imbedded in green velvet, lies the salt lake, Sebkhet-es-Sedjoumi. Two or three miles to the west the white palace of the Bardo rises from a sea of verdure. To the northward, beyond the Park of the Belvedere, with its sweeping drives and charming Moorish pavilions, the fir-clad peaks of Djebel Merkez and Djebel Ahmar rear themselves against the African sky. Eastward, across the turquoise-colored, flamingo-haunted lagoon of El Bahira, bask in the sunshine the ivory buildings of La Goulette; while somewhat more to the north, beyond the rose-brown arches of the Roman aqueduct, are the slopes on which Carthage once stood so proudly, the whole dominated by the twin peaks of Bou-Kornein.

Descending from the heights of the Kasbah, a few hundred paces bring us to the town palace of the rulers of Tunisia, the Dar-el-Bey, now seldom used as a royal residence save during the month of Ramadan, for during the rest of the year the bey dwells at his suburban palace of La Marsa, on the sea-shore beyond Cape Carthage. The interior of the Dar-el-Bey is an unhappy combination of Oriental taste and European tawdriness. Though some of the reception-rooms and the private apartments of the bey are as fine as anything in the Alcázar or the Alhambra, their walls done in tiles of exquisite design and color, their ceilings decorated with the delicately chiseled, lace-like plaster-work called nuksh hadida, the state apartments present a painful contrast, having been perpetrated in the early years of the Victorian epoch, when Turkey-red carpets, crimson brocade hangings, ornate crystal chandeliers, and an excessive use of gilt were considered the acme of richness and good taste.

Save, as I have already remarked, during the fasting month of Ramadan, when he finds his city palace more convenient for participating in the numerous religious ceremonies, the present ruler visits the Dar-el-Bey only once or twice a week for the transaction of official business and to sit in judgment on criminals. For, though the regency is French in pretty much everything but name, it has been deemed wise to maintain the fiction of Tunisian independence by permitting the bey a good deal of latitude so far as the punishment of his own subjects is concerned; his ideas of justice (la justice du bey it is called, in contradistinction to la justice française) usually working out in a fashion truly Oriental.

In Tunisia all death sentences must be confirmed by the bey in person, the condemned man being brought before him as he sits on his great gilt and velvet throne in the Hall of Judgment. Until quite recent years the condemned were put to death in the grounds of the Bardo, a hanging being one of the sights offered to European visitors, but of late this barbarous custom has fallen into desuetude, executions usually being carried out in the barrack-yard of the Beylical Guard at La Marsa.

In the days of the present ruler’s father the murderer was suddenly brought face to face with the members of his victim’s family in the presence of the bey, for such things are always done dramatically in the East. The bey then inquired of the family if they insisted on the murderer paying the death penalty, or if they were willing to accept blood-money, a sum equivalent to one hundred and forty dollars, which in theory was paid by the murderer to the relatives of the deceased as a sort of indemnity if he was permitted to escape with his life. If, however, he did not possess so large a sum, as was frequently the case, the bey made it up out of his private purse. Nine times out of ten, if the victim was a woman, the blood-money was promptly accepted—and praise be to Allah for getting it!—for in Africa women are plentiful but gold is scarce. In case the blood-money was accepted the murderer’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment for twelve months and twenty-seven days (which is a considerably severer punishment than murderers usually receive in certain American cities; say, Chicago), though I have never been able to ascertain the reason for adding the odd twenty-seven days.

But it may have been that the victim was an only son, or the father of a large family, or a person of political importance, in which case the relatives invariably demanded the extreme penalty of the law.

“Do you insist on his blood?” inquired the bey, a portly, easy-going Oriental who was known to have a marked aversion to taking human life, even in the case of murderers.

“We do, your Highness,” the spokesman of the family would reply, salaaming until his chéchia tassel swept the ground.

“Be it so,” said the bey, shrugging his shoulders. “I call upon you to bear witness that I am innocent of his death. May Allah the Compassionate have mercy upon him! Turn him toward the gate of the Bardo,” which last is the local euphemism for, “Take him out and hang him.”

The Palace of the Bardo, a short distance to the north of the city, is the Tunisian Windsor, though nowadays it is seldom if ever occupied. Formerly the winter residence of the sovereign, it is the center of a congeries of villas, kiosks, pavilions, offices, barracks, and stables, which are grouped helter-skelter in the inconsequential Oriental fashion, without the slightest regard to harmony, order, or convenience. Though the French destroyed the fortifications which originally surrounded it, there is much that is majestic and beautiful about the place, its white walls, marble terraces, and fluted columns rising from well-kept lawns and hedged gardens ablaze with flowers.

The Bardo is divided into three parts: the private apartments of the bey, which, though almost never used, are as rigidly closed to the public as the dwelling of any other Moslem gentleman; the state apartments, which he occasionally uses instead of those in the town palace, the Dar-el-Bey, for holding courts of justice, official audiences, and receptions; and the Alaoui Museum.

Access to the Bardo is gained by the Staircase of the Lions, which is flanked on either side by numerous undersized and not at all imposing marble images of the Felis leo, couchant, rampant, and in attitudes suggestive of a well-trained poodle asking for a biscuit. Yet the general effect is pleasing, for the slender columns with their carved capitals are beautifully proportioned, and the Moorish ceilings, strongly reminiscent of those in the Alhambra at Granada, are superb.

Through porch and patio floored and colonnaded with white marble and paneled with glorious old tiles arabesqued in soft yellow, peacock green, and Persian blue, we enter a typical Oriental palace, with guards in tawdry uniforms dozing in the corners and with the atmosphere of a somewhat garish stage-setting. A purely Oriental interior is nearly always pleasing, for your Arab’s sense of the beautiful is generally well developed. But once Europe is permitted to intrude, everything is spoiled, for the Oriental’s taste in regard to things European is quite untutored and garish. Cut-glass chandeliers, gilt clocks, oil paintings, and Louis Seize furniture are as absurd and out of the picture when introduced into a room with marble floors, tiled walls, and exquisitely fretted Moorish ceilings as were the horrible “Turkish corners” found in nearly every American home a generation ago.

The principal state apartments of the Bardo are the Throne Room, the Hall of Justice, and the Salle des Glaces, so named, I suppose, from its mammoth crystal chandeliers. The last named is just such a room as may be found in almost any European palace, the walls lined with life-size paintings of Louis Philippe, Napoleon III, Victor Emmanuel of Italy—the first of the name, I mean—an incredibly ugly man with a pug-nose and enormous mustachios, Francis Joseph as a youth in a white uniform so tight at the waist as to suggest the use of corsets, and, of course, a whole portrait-gallery of the beys who have reigned in Tunisia ever since the Cretan adventurer, Hussein ben Ali, made himself master of the country at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The pictures of the present bey, Sidi Mohamed el Habib, and of his immediate predecessor on the throne, Sidi Mohamed En Naceur Bacha, show dignified, intelligent, amiable looking men; but the earlier rulers, with their fierce, dark faces, glowering from beneath enormous turbans, suggest the pirates that they were.

Adjoining the state apartments, in the rooms formerly occupied by the women of the royal harem, has been gathered a remarkable collection of antiquities and of Moorish and Arabic work under the name of the Musée Alaoui. As this is not intended to be a guide-book to Tunis, I have no intention of trespassing on the field of Herr Baedeker and Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son by enumerating the many beautiful and interesting objects—sculptures, faiences, arms, glassware, terra-cotta—which the museum contains, though passing mention should be made of its collection of ancient mosaics, which is one of the finest in existence. Occupying nearly half of the floor of the great hall, an apartment sixty feet in length, is an enormous mosaic in almost perfect preservation, “The Triumph of Neptune,” found at Sousse; while set in the walls are mosaics brought from various other parts of the regency—pagan mosaics from Zaghouan; representations of a circus from Gafsa; a mosaic unearthed at Tabarca depicting a Roman farm; and numerous other scenes. From these the visitor possessed of a little imagination can obtain a very graphic conception of the domestic life, recreations, and religious observances of North Africa under the Romans. What a pity, I thought, that these mosaics cannot be seen by the youth who is struggling with high school and college Latin! Then he would realize that the ancients were not the unreal, stilted figures portrayed in our dry-as-dust text-books, but that they lived and loved and fought and played games and went to circuses very much as we do, the chief difference being that they wore togas instead of trousers and shouted, “To the lions with the Christians!” instead of, “Kill the umpire!” But one of these days, perhaps, we shall teach Latin more intelligently.

When the French occupied Tunisia they announced that they would respect the religious prejudices of the Moslems in those cities whose inhabitants offered no resistance. Kairouan, the holy city of Africa, in sanctity inferior only to Mecca itself, disregarded this ultimatum, which explains why unbelievers have the privilege of entering its mosques and other sacred buildings. But the people of Tunis did not actively oppose the occupation and consequently its mosques and marabouts’ tombs, its Moslem schools and cemeteries, may not be polluted by infidel feet. In thus excluding from their places of worship the adherents of other faiths, the Moslems have the coöperation of the French authorities, the doors of the mosques bearing a warning printed in four languages: “Reservé au culte mussulman. Entrée interdite.”

To disregard this injunction, either by attempting to enter a mosque or to gain a surreptitious glimpse of its interior from without, is to invite serious trouble. Religious fanaticism runs high in Tunisia, and, even if the intruder escaped serious injury at the hands of infuriated natives, he would almost certainly feel the heavy hand of the French law; for the French have spared no effort to gain the friendship and confidence of the native population, and they have no intention of permitting the amicable relations which exist between the races to be endangered by the inquisitiveness of some irresponsible European.

Yet there are certain high points in the city accessible to Christians, from which, by not making themselves conspicuous, they can look down unmolested upon some of the mosques, catching distant glimpses of their marble-paved courts and richly tiled cloisters. There are one or two such spots in the Souk-des-Attarins, for example, from which can be seen the central court of the Djamaa-es-Zeitouna, or Mosque of the Olive Tree, the largest sanctuary in the city. From the lofty minaret of this venerable edifice close on thirteen centuries look down upon you, for it dates from the end of the seventh century, though its marble columns, spoils from Carthage, are at least a thousand years older. Like most of the great mosques of Islam, it is also a college, where several hundred Moslem youths receive instruction in literature, philosophy, mathematics, history, and religion.

On the birthday of the Prophet—June 7, according to the Roman calendar—the bey goes in state to the Great Mosque. On this occasion the souks unbar their gates at night and are ablaze with lights from end to end, and the effect is magical. By day the souks of Tunis are only narrow passages with holes in their vaulted roofs, through which the sun pours down on the flagged, uneven pavement. But on the Night of the Prophet they are turned into fairy-land, for hanging from the roofs are cut-glass chandeliers aflame with candles, supplemented by thousands and thousands of diminutive oil-lamps with glass shades of every hue, while the fronts of the shops are concealed beneath priceless silken carpets and wonderful old brocades and embroideries, so that the narrow, tunnel-like lanes are aglow with light and color. The painters have been busy too, the vaultings, pillars, and carven capitals being vivified by the lavish application of vermilion and emerald green; and set before the stalls on either side are rows of richly upholstered divans and benches, piled high with silken pillows, for the use of the merchants and their friends and the musicians whom they have hired. The covered ways resound to the throbbing of string and reed instruments, the chanting of priests, the shrill appeals of holy men and mendicants, and the deep, low hum of countless voices. The approach of the bey is heralded by a fanfare of trumpets and the wild, barbaric strains of a native military band, and, as he passes along the street, guarded by twin files of the Garde Beylicale in their picturesque uniform and followed by a throng of staff-officers, religious dignitaries, and officials, the spectators salaam to the ground, costly rugs are thrown down for him to walk upon, and the flowers which the natives wear behind their ears are cast beneath the feet of this portly, gray-bearded, benevolent-looking old gentleman, his blue uniform glittering with stars and crosses, who is venerated by his subjects as the descendant of the Prophet, the Shadow of God on Earth.

On the northern fringe of the bazaars, hard by the Bab Souika, rises the Djamaa Sidi Mahrez, a renowned saint of the fifth century of the Mohammedan calendar, whose tomb makes it a sanctuary for debtors. The mosque, which is the largest in the city, was built in the seventeenth century, having been designed by a French architect taken prisoner by the corsairs. This explains, no doubt, why it is so radically different in plan and general design from the other mosques of Tunis, the great central dome, surrounded by several smaller cupolas, suggesting, if not actually resembling, Santa Sophia in Constantinople. At twilight, when its domes, their outlines softened by an amethyst and violet sky, are transformed by the westering sun into great globes of rosy coral, the beauty of effect is positively startling. There are certain scenes—the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, the Taj Mahal by moonlight, sunset on the Upper Congo—which, by reason of their surpassing loveliness, are indelibly engraved upon the tablets of my memory, and the Mosque of Sidi Mahrez at nightfall is one of them.

Among the innumerable types forming the river of humanity which flows continually through the streets of Tunis, the women, whether Moslem or Jewish, are among the strangest and certainly are the most curiosity-provoking. Unlike the custom prevailing in other Islamic lands, where the women are usually veiled only to the eyes, the faces of the Moslem women of Tunisia are entirely covered with tightly drawn veils, usually black, but quite frequently blue, bright pink, or saffron yellow, so that they appear to be wearing the cheap cotton masks with which their sisters across the Mediterranean conceal their faces during the gaieties of carnival-time. They flit like apparitions between the high, blind walls or peer down from the latticed windows of the harems in which they are immured, as much prisoners as the Man in the Iron Mask. One wonders how much longer the women of North Africa will endure this intolerable tyranny; how many years must pass before, following the example of their Turkish sisters, they will refuse any longer to hide their pretty faces, to stay within their prisons, on days when the sun is shining and the sky is blue.

Even more fantastic of costume are the Jewish women, of whom one sees great numbers, for nearly one third of the city’s population is of the Hebrew faith. Though some of the young Jewish girls are quite slim and very pretty, with satiny skins, carmine lips, and lustrous, heavily-fringed eyes, most of the older women are of an enormous stoutness, their excess avoirdupois accentuated rather than camouflaged by their voluminous mantles and baggy pantaloons. Veritable mountains of flesh, they go waddling along on absurdly small and high-heeled slippers, only half as long as their feet, which go flap-flap-flap upon the pavement as they roll by like full-rigged sailing-ships wallowing in a heavy sea.

Many of the Jewish women still wear, set well at the back of the head, the old-fashioned pointed head-dress, shaped somewhat like a dunce’s cap, which bears a close resemblance to the “steeple-horn” hats worn by European women of rank in the Middle Ages. From the point of this depends a white silk haik which envelops the whole figure, a form of head-gear still further reminiscent of that worn by the great ladies of medieval Europe. Less frequently one sees the tight-fitting trousers or drawers, which have now been quite generally discarded in favor of the more comfortable if less picturesque pantaloons worn by Moslem women. These nether garments are cut somewhat like riding-breeches save that they fit more tightly to the leg, which is invariably a fat one, so that the effect is comic rather than alluring, particularly as the costume is usually completed by a short, loose, elaborately embroidered garment such as women wear when combing their hair. When arrayed in this costume a Jewish woman looks for all the world as though she had rushed from her boudoir at an alarm of fire without pausing to put on her skirt or take off her dressing-jacket.

On Fridays, and on the last day of the month, the Jews of Tunis make an excursion to the Jewish cemetery, which is about a mile and a half outside the town, to visit the graves of their relatives and to lament over the dear departed. For they believe that on those days the spirits of the dead revisit the earth, and hence their weekly visit to the cemetery to keep them company. On either side of the dusty, unshaded avenue which bisects the cemetery are acres of white marble slabs, raised a foot or so above the ground. They are all of the same shape and size, and all on the same level, so that they form what amounts to a vast marble pavement, which beneath the sun becomes as hot as the top of a stove. Seated cross-legged on this terrace are groups of portly Jewesses, their white haiks, supported by their pointed bonnets, giving them the appearance of so many cone-shaped tents. And when they rock themselves back and forth, prostrating their corpulent figures in what would appear to be an utter abandonment to anguish, they look like a whole encampment swaying in a heavy wind. It does not take the visitor long to realize, however, that these ostentatious genuflections and lamentations are largely a shibboleth, a simulation of sorrow, being no more indicative of real grief than the behavior of the mourners at the Wailing Place in Jerusalem.

Speaking of cemeteries reminds me that no American should leave Tunis without paying a visit to the little Protestant cemetery of St. George, now disused, which lies just within the inner city walls, here demolished, not far from the Bab Cartagena. It is a spot which holds poignant memories for every man and woman who speaks the English tongue, for here was buried John Howard Payne, author of “Home, Sweet Home,” who died at Tunis in 1852 while serving as American consul. Thirty years later the body was disinterred and removed to America, but the spot is marked by a cenotaph similar to that erected over the poet’s present burial place in Washington. As you stand there in the tranquillity of that forgotten back-water, with the teeming Eastern city flowing all around, it is not difficult to picture the longing for a cleaner, greener land of the lonely man who so truly voiced the thoughts of other homesick exiles when he wrote those immortal lines:

CHAPTER V CARTHAGO DELETA EST

Close on eight-and-twenty centuries ago (in 846 B.C. according to one historian) a young Phenician princess fled from her native country, Sidon, after abetting her brother in the murder of her husband, and, putting half the length of the Mediterranean between her and her pursuers, beached her purple-sailed galley on the shores of Africa, not far from the promontory which to-day we call Cape Bon. Her given name was Elissa, so tradition tells us, but she is better known as Dido—“the fugitive”—and from her day down to this a girl who indulges in capers of which her family do not approve is said to be cutting up didos.

Now it should be clearly understood that this region was already in a fairly civilized state when Dido landed on its coast, for Phenician adventurers, sailing westward in quest of the Hesperides, had established themselves there nearly four centuries earlier and had founded cities—Cambē, on the very site afterward occupied by Carthage; Outih, or Utica; Hadrumetum, later known as Sousse; Hippo Zarytus, the modern Bizerta; and Thines, which to-day we know as Tunis. So the fugitive princess and her followers, instead of being pioneers in an unknown land, found themselves hospitably received by settlers of their own race and by their ruler, King Iarbas, who quickly became a suitor for the young widow’s hand.

But she had had enough of matrimony, and, denying his pleadings to share his throne, she set about building a kingdom of her own. She chose for the site of her future capital a low hill beside the sea-shore, looking down upon a little sheltered bay, and guilefully induced its Berber owners to sell her as much land as could be covered by the hide of a bull. Thereupon—and for the sake of her reputation the less said about the ethics of the transaction the better—she proceeded to cut the hide into a long and narrow strip, as sometimes, for amusement, one strives to see how long a paring can be obtained from an apple. With the lengthy strand of rawhide thus ingeniously obtained, she inclosed an area of sufficient size on which to build her city, which, it is to be assumed, was in the beginning a mere collection of wattle-and-daub huts. At first the settlement was known as Byrsa (the name means bull’s hide), but later it took the name of Carthage, or Karthadasht, “the New City” in the Phenician tongue.

So much for the legendary version, which Virgil gave to the world in the Æneid and which has been so expanded and embroidered in the centuries which have intervened that even the men of science have been unable to determine with any certainty where the fable ends and history begins.

We have grown so accustomed to referring to the inhabitants of the city traditionally founded by Dido as Carthaginians or Phenicians that it is difficult to realize that the name by which they called themselves was neither of these, but Canaanite—a lowlander, a man of the plains. The Greeks gave the country at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, from which these people came the name of Phœnike, the Land of Purple—so called, no doubt, from the purple dyes for which the Tyrians were famous; the Romans in their turn corrupted the name into Pœni; yet well into the Christian era the farmers of Libya, which roughly corresponded to the Tunisia of to-day, were wont to speak of themselves as being of the land of Canaan.⁠[1]

The Carthaginians, be it understood, never fought if they could help it. Essentially a commercial-minded, luxury-loving people, they had no lust for empire, save that of the sea, mastery of which insured them control of the ports and markets which were necessary to their commercial supremacy. But as the city grew in wealth, power, and population, territorial expansion became imperative, and they pressed forward gradually until they occupied, more or less completely, a territory roughly corresponding to modern Tunisia plus the Algerian department of Constantine. This gradual expansion of Carthage’s sphere of influence was effected not so much by the sword, however, as by treaty with the warlike native tribes, from which she recruited her armies of mercenaries. Even in Carthage itself, whose inhabitants at one period numbered close to three quarters of a million, but a small minority of the population was of pure Phenician stock, the bulk of the people consisting of the native Libyans with a sprinkling of half-castes, negro slaves, and traders of all races. The Carthaginians might be said, indeed, to have occupied a position somewhat analogous to that held by the French in the Tunisia of to-day.

The government of Carthage was a pure oligarchy, in which none save the old Punic families had any voice. All powers of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, were vested in the Council of One Hundred, whose decrees were carried out by officials known as “suffetes.” As these offices were for sale, the oligarchy eventually degenerated into a plutocracy, corrupt, vulgar, arrogant, and heartless, in which political dominance was exercised by one or another of the great families, as was the case in medieval Italy.

Save in the single field of agriculture, which they developed scientifically and with remarkable success, the Carthaginians have to their credit no achievements in science, literature, or art, even their architecture showing the effect of Greek and Egyptian influence. As has been said, they were first, last, and always traders, money-makers, possessing to an exceptional degree that Semitic aptitude for business and banking which has made the Jews the financiers of the world.

The religion of the Carthaginians was characterized by cruelty and lust. The state religion, the established church, as it were, was based on the worship of the deity called Eschmoun, identified by the Romans with their god of healing, Æsculapius, whose chief sanctuary was within a vast inclosure, half-temple and half-fortress, on the brow of the Byrsa Hill, from which an imposing flight of marble steps led down into the city. But there were other gods as well, the most venerated being Hammon and Tanith. That fear of their anger and faith in their power—they could hardly have inspired affection—was deeply implanted in the hearts of the common people is indicated by the fact that, whereas the worship of Eschmoun virtually ended with Punic Carthage, the other two not only survived the destruction of the city by the Romans, but, under the names of Saturn and Ceres, their cult was adopted, developed, and disseminated by the conquerors.

They were always dark and terrible, these gods of Carthage, worshiped with bestial and bloody rites which had their beginnings in the very dawn of time. Of his priests Hammon demanded the sacrifice of their manhood; of her priestesses Tanith required the sacrifice of their chastity. Though there can be little doubt that both had temples within the confines of the city itself, the principal sanctuary of Hammon was set in the saddle formed by the twin peaks of Bou-Kornein, which are clearly visible some miles to the southward, beyond the lagoon of El Bahira. It was in this macabre setting, consisting in all probability of little more than a sacred grove within an inclosure, that there took place the awfulest rites of all, the human sacrifices. Here the victims of Baal, who comprised not only slaves and prisoners of war but children of the most aristocratic families in Carthage—usually girls of marriageable age—were laid naked upon the brazen arms of the god to be roasted alive, their bodies dropping thence into a fiery furnace. Though we know that the worship of Hammon and Tanith was characterized by rituals so hideous and obscene as to stagger the imagination, their details—and it is well that it is so—can only be conjectured. Small wonder that the superstitious Arabs shun the slopes of Bou-Kornein after nightfall, asserting that the lonely spot is cursed with the evil deeds which were performed there, and that with the coming of darkness can be heard the shrieks of tortured men and maidens, can be seen the dull glow of the fires on the altar of the unclean god.

The Carthaginians first came into armed collision with their historic enemies, the Romans, 264 years before the Crucifixion. For nearly two centuries Carthage had been undisputed Mistress of the Mediterranean, dominant in the East and so supreme in the West that her ambassadors told the Romans that they might not even wash their hands in the sea without her permission. Her empire stretched from end to end of the Middle Sea: North Africa was fringed with her outposts and trading-stations; the south of Spain owed her fealty; her rule was accepted in Sardinia, the west of Sicily, Malta, the Balearic Islands.

But she was as an idol of brass with feet of clay; the foundations of her supremacy were rotten, for they rested upon her sea-power only. And history has shown, over and over again, that no nation can endure unless it can make its might felt upon the land. The Carthaginians, as has been said, were not a fighting race, so that when Carthage needed troops she had to recruit them from the warlike and barbarous Berber tribes which surrounded her. It is said that when Hamilcar Barca landed in Spain at the beginning of the Second Punic War he had not a single Carthaginian soldier in the ranks of his army, the officers of his general staff alone being Carthaginians. And, as Carthage discovered to her cost, it is not safe for a nation to trust to the very uncertain loyalty of a mercenary army.

In 264 B.C. began the series of tragic events known to history as the three Punic wars, which lasted 120 years, cost millions of lives, and terminated with the capture and destruction of Carthage by the younger Scipio, who left not one stone of the famous city resting on another.

As I have already remarked, Carthage’s supremacy rested on her sea-power, and her sea-power, in turn, rested on her vast armada of triremes—galleys with three banks of oars, each manned by ten soldiers and 130 rowers, the latter being slaves who never left the benches to which they were chained. It has been estimated that the average length of a trireme was about 130 feet, or approximately that of a small destroyer. The naval tactics of the Carthaginians, be it understood, consisted in sinking the enemy by ramming, not in boarding and hand-to-hand fighting. Now they turned their attention to the development of a much larger class of fighting ship, the quinquereme, its five banks of oars manned by 300 rowers, and each carrying about twenty marines. The Romans improved on this, however, for they not only copied the quinqueremes, but they fitted them with gangways which could be lowered upon contact with an enemy vessel, so as to permit the complement of 120 legionaries which each Roman war craft carried to gain access to the adversary’s decks. Relying on this combatant superiority of six to one, they endeavored always to get alongside and board the enemy by means of the “flying-bridges”; with the Romans, as with Nelson and John Paul Jones, it was always, “Broadside to broadside! Boarders up and away!”

The first sea-battle under these new conditions was fought off Lipara in 260 B.C. and ended in complete disaster for the Romans, their admiral and his entire squadron being captured. But shortly thereafter the fortunes of war were reversed, for in a second encounter, near Palermo, fifty Carthaginian vessels were captured or sunk. Four years later, off Agrigentum, was fought one of the greatest sea-battles of all time, in which upward of three hundred thousand men were engaged and in which nearly a hundred Carthaginian galleys, together with a like number of Roman, went down. Though the Carthaginian fleet was only temporarily put out of action, the Romans were enabled to bring their transports in safety across the narrow seas and to effect a landing on the eastern side of Cape Bon, their army under Marcus Attilius Regulus capturing Tunis and menacing Carthage itself. But the Carthaginians summoned to their aid the renowned Spartan general, Xanthippus, thanks to whose brilliant leadership the invaders were all but exterminated, Regulus himself being taken prisoner.

The Romans having been repulsed, the Carthaginians now carried the war into Sicily. The long series of reverses suffered by the Africans in this campaign, which lasted nine years, were somewhat alleviated by the genius of Hamilcar Barca, then a youth in his early twenties, who, had he been adequately supported, might have made by sea that attack on Rome which his son, Hannibal, was forced to attempt a quarter of a century later by the long and perilous overland route through Spain and across the Alps. But after the great Roman sea-victory at Ægusa the Carthaginians instructed Hamilcar to make peace on the best terms he could obtain. And onerous indeed were these terms. By them Carthage was compelled to evacuate Sicily, Sardinia, and Malta and to pay an indemnity of thirty-two hundred talents—about six millions of dollars. Thus ended, in 241 B.C., the First Punic War, which had dragged along for three-and-twenty years, greatly to the disadvantage of Carthage. She had lost the most important of her insular possessions; the Mediterranean was no longer a Carthaginian lake, a mare clausum; and her prestige as a naval power had been irretrievably shattered.

They were always poor losers, the Carthaginians, and so, despite the brilliant generalship of Hamilcar, when he returned to Carthage he was deprived of his command, which was given to his bitterest rival, Hanno. But, knowing the temper of his people, it is to be presumed that the famous leader did not complain, for he doubtless considered himself lucky to escape crucifixion, the fate usually awarded to defeated generals according to the pleasant custom of the Carthaginians. Their ingratitude quickly brought its own reward, however, for, within a few months after the disastrous end of her struggle with Rome, Carthage was called upon to suppress the revolt of her mercenary and barbarian allies. This bloody business, which lasted from 240 to 237 B.C., was precipitated by Hanno’s refusal to give the returned troops their pay, which was greatly in arrears. The conflict which followed was known as the War of the Mercenaries, or as the Truceless War, for no quarter was asked or given.

The mutinous mercenaries were now joined by hordes of barbarians from the hinterland, who saw in Carthage’s enfeebled condition an opportunity to overwhelm and loot the richest and most luxurious city in the world. From every quarter of North Africa they came, drawn by the prospects of rapine and plunder as buzzards are attracted by a dying animal. An unforgettable picture of the assembling of these Barbarian hordes has been given us by Flaubert in his “Salammbô”:

Because of the stubbornness and incapacity of Hanno, disaster followed on disaster. Tunis was taken by the mutineers, and Carthage was threatened. At length the situation became so critical that Hanno was superseded and the command restored to Hamilcar, who, enlisting the aid of the Numidian sheikhs, drove the mercenaries back into the mountains to the east of Bou-Kornein, eventually hemming them in a narrow pass known as the Defile of the Hatchet. Here forty thousand of them were trapped like wolves, encircled by a ring of unrelenting steel. When their food was exhausted they warded off starvation for a time by eating their dead and their prisoners. But even cannibalism could not save them, and in the end the mutineers, too weak to offer further resistance, were trampled by the ponderous feet of Hamilcar’s war-elephants until all that remained of them was chunks of bloody pulp.

In the very nature of things, a peace made after so inconclusive a struggle as the First Punic War could not endure, for the Carthaginians still despised the Romans and thought only of obtaining revenge. Thus it came about that only three years after the conclusion of hostilities an expeditionary force under Hamilcar Barca landed in Spain with the avowed purpose of checking Roman penetration of the peninsula and of building up there an empire which should more than compensate Carthage for the insular territories which she had lost.

In nine years Hamilcar brought under Carthaginian rule all the country south of the Tagus; then—229 B.C.—he fell in battle. He was succeeded by his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, who continued the course of conquest until, eight years after the death of Hamilcar, he met his own end by the knife of an assassin. Thereupon the command passed to Hamilcar’s son, Hannibal, then only twenty-six years of age. I doubt not that when the youngster was advanced to the supreme command the graybeards of the general staff shook their heads dismally, and said, “Too young; too young,” and prophesied failure and disaster. For how could they have dreamed that, when history should grant him the justice of perspective, this youthful Carthaginian would be recognized as one of the greatest captains of all time? For, in the whole history of the world, there have been only two other men—Alexander the Great and Napoleon—who approached him in military and administrative genius.

As a boy of nine, before the altar of the gods, Hannibal had taken an oath of undying hatred for Rome. And this oath he now proceeded to fulfil. Just as Sherman broke the heart of the Confederacy by his March to the Sea, so Hannibal determined to smash the power of Rome by carrying the war into the enemy’s territory, by sweeping across Italy itself. So audacious a plan of campaign depended for its success upon the rapidity with which it was executed. The Romans must be paralyzed by the speed of his advance. They must know of his coming only when they heard the trample of his elephants and saw the sun glinting on his spear-heads. What he planned was, in short, a great raid through Spain and Gaul and so down the whole length of the Italian peninsula, capturing Rome itself, if that were possible, and, if it were not, joining hands with Carthage across the narrow seas.

Intrusting the command of the troops he left in occupation of Spain to his brother, Hannibal left New Carthage (Carthagena), which had been founded by his father some years before, and, late in the May of 218 B.C., set out with an army of ninety thousand men and a great number of elephants, on one of the most daring enterprises recorded in military history. Crossing the Pyrenees, and evading the Roman army which had been set to watch the mouth of the Rhone, he made friends with the Gauls and pressed on unhindered to the foot of the Alps. Though the savage Alpine winter, with its deep snow and bitter cold, was already at hand, though the barbarians hung on his flanks like ravening wolves, and though his losses in men and animals from exposure were enormous, he crossed into Italy by the Pass of the Great St. Bernard, as it is known to-day, cutting his way through the snow-drifts and splitting the rocks which impeded the passage of his wagon-trains with vinegar, for, be it remembered, he had to make his own roads as he advanced. In the words of Napoleon, “Hannibal forced the Alps; I turned them.”

Smashing Scipio on the Ticinus and Sempronius on the Trebua, he went into winter quarters on the Upper Po, where he contracted the ophthalmia which cost him an eye. In the following spring he resumed his southward march, annihilating the army with which the consul Flaminius sought to check him. Rome he did not venture to attack, deeming his decimated force too weak to justify the venture, and therein he committed his fatal error. But at Cannæ, on the second of August, 216 B.C., he turned suddenly upon Quintus Fabius Maximus, who had closed in upon his rear, and out of a Roman army numbering seventy-six thousand men, seventy thousand perished in the awful slaughter. Again the road to Rome was open to Hannibal, but without the reinforcements which he had asked from Carthage, he did not dare to attack, though he once stood within three miles of the city’s walls. For thirteen years he held his ground in southern Italy, winning victories of which he was too weak to take advantage and straining his eyes seaward in quest of the troop-laden galleys which never came.

But, while Hannibal was being kept at bay near Capua, the arms of Rome had not been idle elsewhere. Under Publius Scipio—who in later years was destined to gain imperishable fame as Scipio Africanus—a Roman army had invaded Spain and, defeating the small Carthaginian force which garrisoned the peninsula, had undone all the work that Hamilcar, Hasdrubal, and Hannibal had accomplished.

Crossing over into Africa, Scipio sought to form an alliance with Syphax, king of the Massæsylians, whose capital was Cirta, the modern Constantine. But, thanks to the influence of his beautiful Carthaginian wife, Sophonisba, daughter of Hasdrubal Giscon (whom Scipio had defeated in Spain), Syphax remained faithful to Carthage. Sophonisba’s marriage to Syphax, however, cost Carthage the allegiance of another great Numidian chieftain, Masinissa, to whom she had been betrothed. Piqued by this rejection, the haughty Berber deserted Carthage, for which he had always fought, and became the stanch ally of Rome. Yet how strangely does history reverse itself! For some years later, when the kingdom of Syphax, who had been defeated and had died in captivity, had been given to Masinissa by the Romans, and that chieftain came riding into his new capital, Cirta, in triumph, there was the widowed Sophonisba, beautiful as ever, awaiting him at the entrance to the citadel. The lovely creature threw herself at the feet of the conqueror and begged with tears in her eyes that she be not handed over to her hereditary enemies, the Romans. So he married her, for he loved her still and doubted not that she would be safe under his protection. But when Scipio heard of it he bitterly upbraided Masinissa for having betrayed his Roman allies by marrying a Carthaginian. More, he demanded Sophonisba’s surrender, for he wanted her to grace his triumph when he returned to Rome. Whereupon Masinissa, who dared not keep her yet would not give her up to the Romans, escaped the dilemma by sending her poison. By drinking it Sophonisba saved herself from dishonor and degradation, her husband from humiliation, and the Roman Republic from an embarrassing situation.

But I am getting ahead of my story. So let us go back to the autumn of 206 B.C., when Scipio, having returned to Italy, persuaded the Senate to let him carry the war into Italy, the dwindling forces of Hannibal, who had been callously abandoned by Carthage, still being held at bay near Capua. Landing near Utica, Scipio was joined by his new ally, Masinissa, their combined forces making a night attack upon the camps of Hasdrubal and Syphax and burning them both. Two decisive battles followed. Syphax, as has already been mentioned, was utterly defeated and taken prisoner and his kingdom handed over to his rival, Masinissa. The Carthaginians, their capital invested, sued for peace. The terms imposed by Scipio were amazing in their moderation: Spain, already lost, and the Balearic Islands were to be formally ceded to Rome; the transfer of Syphax’s kingdom to Masinissa was to be recognized; all vessels of war, save ten, were to be surrendered; and an indemnity of five thousand talents—not far from ten millions of dollars—was to be paid the conquerors. These terms, which deprived Carthage of her battle-fleet and her remaining overseas possessions and exacted a huge indemnity, are strongly reminiscent of those which were imposed two thousand years later at Versailles upon the Germans.

The envoys of Carthage formally accepted the terms and an armistice was declared while they were being ratified by the two governments. Then, too late, Carthage repented her desertion of the one man who might have saved her and recalled Hannibal from Italy. When the hero of a hundred battles landed at Leptis with the remnant of his ever-victorious army, the hopes of the mercurial Carthaginians revived. The terms of peace which they had just accepted were brazenly repudiated. Hannibal, though disheartened and disillusioned, did his best to save a cause which was already lost and which did not deserve saving. Gathering an army consisting mainly of raw levies and undisciplined mercenaries, he met Scipio in battle at Zama, five days’ march to the west of Carthage, in the spring of 202 B.C. But Hannibal’s green troops were unable to withstand the assault of the Roman shock-battalions, and his defeat—the first he had ever known—was utter and complete. With a handful of followers he escaped to Carthage and advised the Council of One Hundred to make the best terms it could with the thoroughly exasperated Romans.

The conditions now imposed by the victors were far more humiliating than the original ones. In addition to the former demands the Carthaginians were required to pay an annual tribute of two hundred talents for a period of fifty years; they were not to wage war outside of Africa; and in Africa they were not to make war without the permission of Rome, or of Rome’s allies, and then only within Carthaginian territory. By the acceptance of these terms, which left the once haughty Mistress of the Seas little more than a Roman protectorate, there ended in 201 B.C., after seventeen years’ duration, the Second Punic War.

Just as, centuries later, the Allies believed that they had permanently crippled Germany by the terms imposed on her at Versailles, so the Romans congratulated themselves on having crushed their rival forever. But their gratulations were premature. Relieved of the burden of maintaining great military and naval establishments, free to devote themselves to the profitable pursuits of peace, the Carthaginians proceeded to come back with a rapidity which amazed and alarmed the Romans. Under the wise administration of Hannibal, Carthage set its house in order, reorganized its finances, suppressed its political abuses, and paid off in less than half the allotted time the enormous war indemnity which had been imposed upon it.

Ere long the anxiety of the Romans turned to something not far removed from panic. Though Hannibal had scrupulously observed the terms of peace, with such a man at liberty, Rome could not sleep o’ nights and the Senate peremptorily demanded his surrender. Carthage was powerless to refuse the demand; so Hannibal, who had no illusions as to the fate his malignant and unchivalrous enemies, smarting from their long series of defeats at his hands, had in store for him, fled from the city which he had served so long and brilliantly and to whose arms he had brought imperishable fame. At first the illustrious fugitive sought refuge on the Kerkenna Islands, off the eastern coast of Tunisia, near the modern Sfax; but, when the long arm of Rome reached out to pluck him thence, he again sought safety in flight, this time to Asia Minor, where he found a welcome at the court of King Prusias of Bithynia. But even there he was not safe from the hatred of Rome, and in 183 B.C., rather than bring disaster on those who had befriended him, the great captain died in exile by his own hand.

Though Rome and Carthage remained outwardly at peace for fifty years, Carthage, in spite of the numerous restrictions with which her rival sought to cripple her, so waxed in prosperity and wealth that the Roman leaders, despairing of wresting from her commercial supremacy, determined on her destruction. This ruthless decision was inspired by both jealousy and fear, and, in some measure at least, by the eloquence of the celebrated orator Marcus Cato, who, as chairman of a commission sent to Carthage to settle a boundary question, had been so impressed by what he saw there that thenceforward he devoted himself to inflaming the passions of his countrymen against Carthage. It is said that after his return from Africa he never failed to conclude a speech with the impassioned declaration, “Delenda est Carthago!”—“Carthage must be wiped out!”

History has shown that, when one power has determined to attack another, it has never been found difficult to invent a plausible pretext. In this instance, however, no pretext was necessary; in deliberately forcing war upon a people with whom she was at peace, and who wished to remain at peace, Rome was scourged by the lashes of those terrible sisters, Hatred, Jealousy, and Fear. No demands, no ultimatum, no declaration of war preceded the outbreak of hostilities, the news that the Roman fleet was approaching being the first intimation the Carthaginians had that they were again to undergo the horrors of war. The expedition landed unopposed at Utica in 149 B.C., where the Roman commander was waited upon by peace commissioners sent by Carthage to learn the city’s fate. They were informed that peace terms would not even be discussed until the complete disarmament of the city had been effected. Whereupon all military and naval stores, all arms and armor, whether owned privately or by the state, even the insignificant remnant of the once all-powerful fleet, were surrendered.

Now that the city was apparently helpless, and even a semblance of resistance was out of the question, the Roman commander informed the Carthaginian envoys of the brutal sentence which had been passed by the Senate and which he had been ordered to carry out. Carthage was to be utterly destroyed! But the Romans had made one serious miscalculation; they had failed to take into account the fighting spirit which can be aroused in the most unwarlike of peoples, as in the most timid of animals, when driven to desperation. In fact, the Roman ultimatum had precisely the opposite effect to that which was intended, for, instead of paralyzing the Carthaginians with fear, it fanned their smoldering resentment into a fierce flame of heroism; it inspired them with a determination to sell their city and their lives at a price which would stagger Rome.

Now it must be kept in mind that, though the Carthaginians had surrendered their arms and engines of war, there remained intact the remarkable system of defenses which made Carthage the most strongly fortified city of its time. The city, whose population at this period numbered something over seven hundred thousand, was built upon a fan-shaped peninsula surrounded on three sides by water, the handle of the fan corresponding to the narrow isthmus, barely three miles in width, which afforded communication with the mainland. The sea-front, naturally precipitous, was rendered virtually impregnable by massive ramparts, while across the neck of the isthmus, so as to afford protection by an attack from land, ran a tremendous wall, thirty-three feet in thickness and forty-five feet high, broken at frequent intervals by lofty towers from which a withering cross-fire could be brought to bear upon besiegers.

That they had surrendered their catapults—the heavy artillery of the ancients—did not weaken the determination of the Carthaginians to defend their beloved city to the bitter end. With beams obtained by tearing down public buildings, they hastily constructed new engines of war; to provide the ropes for these, the women (since this was before the vogue of the boyish bob) sacrificed their hair; for ammunition they tore up the great stones which paved the Forum. So, when the Romans jauntily advanced to take possession of a presumably defenseless city, they found the Carthaginians prepared for a last desperate stand, a hopeless but heroic defense whose epic story was destined to reverberate down the endless corridors of time.

The Roman commander, belatedly realizing how formidable had become the undertaking on which he had embarked so confidently, sat down before the city walls. For two long years the siege dragged on, the occasional attacks delivered by the Romans doing more harm to the besiegers than to the besieged. But Rome’s determination to end for good and all the threat offered by her great rival never wavered, and in 147 B.C. she intrusted the command of her armies in Africa to her most brilliant general, Scipio Africanus the Younger, then only thirty-seven. Scipio was quick to realize that his most powerful ally in the taking of the city was famine. Up to this time the Carthaginians had succeeded in obtaining supplies both by sea and by land, but Scipio now proceeded to build across the neck of the isthmus a great fortification which effectually cut off the city’s communications on the land side. His next step was to block the entrance to the commercial and military harbors by throwing across the entrance to the little bay on which they opened a gigantic jetty of hewn stones, thus making impossible relief from the sea. Then, the enemy completely hemmed in, he sat himself down and waited with such patience as he could summon for famine to do its ghastly work. So passed the terrible winter of 147-6 B.C. When, early in the spring, Scipio renewed his attacks, he was confronted by an enemy gaunt with hunger and decimated by disease but indomitable still.

Every stronghold, no matter how formidable its defenses, has its weak point, and Carthage’s, as Scipio discovered, was at the entrance to its harbors. This, he decided, must be his immediate objective; here he determined to deliver his grand assault. So, utilizing the jetty which he had built, he poured his storm-battalions of seasoned legionaries upon the breakwater and so by the harbor-mouth into the edge of the city itself. Hurling his troops forward in the mass formations for which the Romans were famous, gaining ground foot by foot and then only by sheer weight of numbers, he slowly drove the defenders back upon the Cothon, or military harbor. This also he stormed, and that night his weary legionaries bivouacked in the Forum, within the innermost of the city’s triple walls.

From the Forum to the foot of the precipitous Byrsa Hill, from the brow of which the citadel frowned down upon the city, is barely a quarter of a mile, yet so desperate was the house-to-house fighting in the maze of narrow alleys and crowded, high-walled buildings which formed the lower town, so frenzied the resistance of the Carthaginians, that it took the Romans six terrible days to cover that short distance.

Street fighting is always a savage business; in this labyrinth of lanes and passages and culs-de-sac it was terrible beyond description. Quarter was neither asked nor given. Women and children were slaughtered as remorselessly as the men. The streets were carpeted with dead and dying; their entrances were barricaded with cadavers; the pavements were slippery with blood; the waters of the harbor and the bay beyond were reddened by the sanguinary torrent which descended from the city’s gutters. Huge paving-stones, hurled by the improvised Carthaginian catapults, crashed into the Roman ranks, crushing their victims into masses of reeking, quivering flesh which resembled nothing human. War-elephants, trumpeting with rage and fear, tore through the teeming thoroughfares, trampling the soldiers underfoot or dashing their brains out against the walls of the buildings. From the housetops disheveled, wild-eyed women poured molten pitch upon the attackers, who shrieked in agony as the flesh was scalded from their bones. Other women, armed with knives, slipped from their hiding-places as the storming-columns passed to cut the throats of the wounded and to hideously mutilate them. Men fought breast to breast with swords and daggers and battle-axes and spears, and when these were shattered they used their naked hands, gouging their enemies’ eyeballs from their sockets, tearing out their throats, even biting each other to death like famished wolves.

Hanging low over the stricken city was a dark pall of dust and smoke, beneath which the grim specters of lust and hatred went about their dreadful work. Women were raped in the presence of their dying husbands. Children were transfixed with spears or torn asunder before their mothers’ eyes. The priests were murdered on their own altars and sobbed out their lives at the feet of their gods. Houses were sacked and set aflame. The barbarian allies of the Romans, with their braided hair and painted bodies, flitted through the inferno, intent on loot and rapine, like creatures escaped from the Pit.

The din of battle was terrific; the deep-throated roar of the charging legionaries, the answering war-cries of the defenders, the shrieks and groans of the wounded, the shrill imprecations of frenzied women, the wailing of terrified children, the trumpeting of the war-elephants, the clash and clang of metal, the thunderous concussion of the catapult stones, the twang of bowstrings, the whine of arrows, the sickening plunk as they sank in human flesh—all these combined to make a hurricane of horrors, a very hell of sound.

Then, at last, came a pause in the slaughter, but not until the proudest city in the world had been transformed into a shambles, a human abattoir. Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian commander, agreed to surrender on the sole condition that the lives of the survivors should be spared. Scipio accepted, and fifty thousand half-naked, starving wretches—all that were left alive out of the city’s seven hundred thousand—emerged from the citadel to claim such mercy as the blood-drunk victors might show. They were sent to Rome in chains and sold in the market-place as slaves. But nine hundred fighting-men, deserters to whom Scipio sternly refused amnesty, barricaded themselves in the great temple and, setting it on fire, perished in the flames. With them died Hasdrubal’s wife and children, Hasdrubal himself, a prisoner of the Romans, being an eye-witness of their heroic end.

The work of Scipio was accomplished, and he returned to Rome. When consulted by the Senate as to the future of Carthage he declined to express an opinion, though he is said to have opposed the wanton destruction of what remained of the city. But the Romans closed their ears to the counsels of moderation and reason. Too proud to admit it, they knew in their hearts that fear would haunt them as long as one stone of Carthage remained upon another. It was decreed, therefore, that the city should be razed to the ground, the ruins plowed under, and a solemn curse laid upon any one who should venture to build upon or cultivate the site. Ten commissioners were appointed to execute the decree. But they were forestalled in this final act of spite and hatred, in their craving to wreak vengeance on a corpse, for when the residents of the suburb of Megara learned that the obliteration of the city had been determined upon they themselves set the torch to what remained. The conflagration raged for seventeen days, and when at last it died for want of something further to consume the once-proud Empress of the Seas lay in ashes. Cato’s demand had been complied with. Carthago deleta est.

But the site of Carthage was too important to remain unoccupied for long, or to be permitted to fall into other and perhaps hostile hands, and, within less than a quarter of a century of its destruction by Scipio, Caius Gracchus was despatched with six thousand settlers to establish there a Roman colony. The project failed to meet with success, however—perhaps the curse of Rome was still in working order—and, though Julius Cæsar, sleeping on the Byrsa for a night after the battle of Thapsus, dreamed of rebuilding the city, the work was not undertaken until Augustus had ascended the imperial throne.

Then arose upon the Punic ruins a great metropolis which took rank as the third city in the Roman Empire, rivaling in her opulence and glory Antioch, Alexandria, even Rome herself. The new Carthage was richer, more beautiful, more luxurious than the old, the repository of the arts of Greece and the sciences of Rome, and the cradle of early Christianity. Whereas the Phenicians had sought merely to produce an effect of massive weight, the architecture of the Roman city was characterized by beauty of outline and an almost unequaled wealth of sculptural detail and richness of decoration. During the second century A.D., Carthage, its material prosperity now greater than ever, was the scene of the persecution and martyrdom of thousands of Christians, even women of the noblest birth, such as Perpetua and Felicitas, being devoured in its amphitheater by the lions.

Notwithstanding the immense importance of Carthage, the Romans, curiously enough, made but little attempt to expand their African frontiers, their trans-Mediterranean territory at this period consisting of little more than that portion of the modern Tunisia which lies to the east of a line drawn from Tabarca to Sfax. This formed the Provincia Africa, and it was from this little triangle of land that the whole of the vast continent took its name.

But the haughty spirit and iron will of the Romans were broken by Alaric the Goth, who sacked Rome in 410, so that the empire was already tottering to its fall when the terrible Genseric, deformed in body and in mind, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar with his barbarian hordes, swept like a cyclone along the northern shore of Africa, took Carthage in 439, and made it a Vandal stronghold. But the African empire which the Vandals had built in a day perished in a night; for less than a century later, in 533 to be exact, the barbarians were defeated and Carthage occupied by a Byzantine army under the leadership of the famous soldier Belisarius—or Beli-tzar, the White Prince, to give him his proper name. Within three months of his landing Belisarius was able to send word to his master Justinian, at Constantinople, that the Provincia Africa was once more a part of the empire of Rome.

For a hundred years the Greek emperors kept a precarious hold on what is now Tunisia; then the flood of Arab conquest broke upon the shores of North Africa, Roman civilization was swept away along with Christianity, the priests were murdered on their own altars, the crescent replaced the cross above such towns as were permitted to remain standing, and Carthage was stormed by Hassan, who laid the afflicted city in ruins for a second time, everything that was left above ground being carried away to be used in the reconstruction and adornment of Tunis, Kairouan, and other Arab cities. Thenceforward Carthage was to be but a quarry for Arab and European builders, the Genoese sailors boasting that they never returned from an African voyage without a ballast of Carthaginian marbles, great quantities of which, it is said, were utilized in the construction of the cathedral of Pisa. Only once more does Carthage make its bow to history, when Louis IX of France, leading the Last Crusade, died from the plague while encamped upon its site.

For upward of twelve hundred years Tunisia suffered under Arab barbarity and misrule, and the shores of the Western Mediterranean from Arab depredations. Then the troop-laden transports of a regenerated France dropped anchor off La Goulette, and the harassed, war-torn country entered on a new era of civilization and prosperity under the tricolor.

All this is history, of course, and to my readers doubtless already familiar, but I offer no apologies for repeating it here, because, without the background of the Punic Wars, of the Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine occupations, and the Moslem conquest, it is impossible to realize the tremendous significance of that sun-drenched hill-slope, littered with heaps of débris and dotted with excavation mounds, strewn with the rubble of crumbling walls and shattered marbles, where the Mistress of the Mediterranean once sat enthroned in her pomp of pride and power.

CHAPTER VI ASHES OF EMPIRE

Just as we make the mistake of studying geography with the aid of large-scale maps, so we are prone to use a magnifying-glass in the study of ancient history. We envision the classic sites as being far larger than they really were because we see them through the eyes of the classical writers. To the stages on which the ancients enacted those mighty dramas, which shook the world and shaped the course of history, we have attributed a spaciousness they did not possess. We think of them in the terms of our own far-flung, mushroom cities, we measure them by modern municipal standards, when, as a matter of fact, they were comparatively insignificant in extent according to present-day ideas. Compared to Greater London, with its area of seven hundred square miles, or to New York, with its three hundred, the famous cities of antiquity—Troy, Tyre, Jerusalem, Nineveh, Palmyra, Babylon, Athens, Rome—would be reckoned to-day as little more than medium-sized communities and classified as cities of the second and third class by the Post Office Department at Washington.

And Carthage, despite her wealth and world-power, was no exception, for the Empress of the Seas never had as great a population as has Baltimore, and her area, as delimited by the city walls, probably did not equal that of Camden, New Jersey. The city, as has been said in the preceding chapter, stood on the outer edge of a small, fan-shaped peninsula bounded on the north by a large salt lake, the Sebkha en Rouan, on the east and southeast by the Gulf of Tunis, and on the south and southwest by the lagoon of El Bahira; while on the west a narrow isthmus, barely two miles in width, afforded communication with the mainland. The entire area of this peninsula does not exceed half a hundred square miles, if that, and considerably less than a fourth of this was contained within the ramparts, which are said to have measured twelve and a half miles in circumference.

Of none of the famous cities of antiquity do we possess a more careful description than that which Appian has given us of Carthage as she stood at the outbreak of the Third Punic War. In its wealth of facts and figures it is worthy of Herr Baedeker himself.

The side of the city toward the isthmus was defended by a wall forty-five feet in height (Diodorus says sixty) and thirty-three in thickness, interrupted at intervals of two hundred yards by lofty towers; the “topless towers,” no doubt, for which the city was famous. The seemingly unnecessary thickness of these tremendous ramparts is explained by the fact that they were hollow and contained four floors of rooms or casemates. On the ground floor were stables for three hundred elephants; on the second, stalls for four thousand cavalry-horses, together with space for the storage of vast quantities of fodder; while in the two upper stories were quartered twenty-four thousand fighting-men, who had with them supplies sufficient to last through a siege of several years’ duration. This single landward wall was, in short, a great fortress, containing more men and animals than are comprised in two modern army divisions.

Carthage within the walls—I am referring, of course, to the Punic city—consisted of three distinct districts. Atop of a small hill, six hundred feet in height, from which it dominated the entire city, stood a vast walled inclosure, half-citadel, half-temple, known as the Byrsa. From this, three broad thoroughfares and an imposing flight of marble steps led down to the Cothon, or military harbor, which lent its name to the entire mercantile quarter of the city. To the northward, climbing part way up the mountain slopes, lay the vast suburb of Megara, where the wealthy merchants had their villas.

Perhaps the most singular features of the most singular and interesting city of its time were the two great harbors, both artificial, which together covered an area of seventy acres. The outer, or commercial, harbor, a long quadrilateral in shape, had direct access to the sea, or rather to a sheltered bay, by a canal, the entrance to which was closed by enormous chains. From the commercial harbor another cutting led into the Cothon, or naval port, which was circular and fringed by 220 slips, each large enough to accommodate a war-galley. Flanking the entrances to these slips were massive Ionic columns, the effect produced being that of a vast circular arcade. In the center of the Cothon, connected with the shore by a narrow jetty, was a small round island, on which stood the Admiralty Palace, surmounted by a lofty lookout tower from which the grand admiral could obtain an unobstructed view of the harbors, the city, and the sea. At the back of the slips lay arsenals, storehouses, workshops, and the barracks of the marines and galley-slaves, the whole encircled by a wall so high that no inquisitive eye in the outer harbor or in the city could see what was going on within. In these two great harbors were respectively fitted out the argosies which made Carthage the greatest commercial power of her time and the armadas which threatened Rome with destruction. When, in the seventh century, Carthage was destroyed by the Arabs under Hassan, he filled up the harbors for fear the city should rise from its ruins to rival his capital at Tunis. In recent years, under the direction of French archæologists, they have been dug out, but only in part, so that to-day the sites, but not the size, of the original ports are indicated by two insignificant-looking ponds.

A few paces to the west of the Cothon, between it and the Byrsa, lay the Agora, or Forum, within whose precincts the legionaries of Scipio bivouacked on the night preceding his final onslaught on the city. It was one of the most important public buildings of Carthage, frequented by orators, politicians, merchants, and bankers; a combination, as it were, of the House of Representatives, the New York City Hall, the Law Courts, and the Stock Exchange. In its spacious colonnaded courtyard were crucified the admirals and generals who, in accordance with Carthaginian custom, paid the price of defeat with their lives. From his lofty watch-tower in the Cothon the grand admiral could look down upon the scene, could see quite plainly the stark figure of his unfortunate predecessor gasping out his life upon the cross.

In the Forum, under Roman rule, numerous Christian martyrs died by torture, though the great amphitheater was probably the scene of the wholesale executions of the followers of the Nazarene which took place in the third century of the Christian era. And from the Forum started the great trade-routes which led into the far interior.

Now it should be clearly understood that the meager remains which the archæologists have thus far unearthed on the site of Carthage are almost wholly Roman or Byzantine, and that, barring a number of archaic Phenician tombs, some enormous blocks of stone which were probably used in the construction of the Admiralty Palace, and a miscellaneous collection of objects—vases, votive tablets, inscriptions, utensils, sacred images, fragments of sculptures—which have been brought together and arranged by the White Fathers in the little museum they have established on the Byrsa, almost nothing which can positively be identified with the Punic city has been found. This is scarcely a matter for surprise, however, when it is remembered that the Carthage of the Phenicians was literally wiped out—not merely laid in ruins, you understand, but the ruins plowed under—upward of two thousand years ago, and that the great Roman city which later rose upon the site was in its turn razed to the ground, so that the remnants of Punic civilization must be buried under many feet of débris, earth, and ashes.

These russet hill-slopes, patched with grass and sprinkled with wild flowers, present, indeed, an epitome of human history, for they have been built upon, over and over and over again, by Phenicians, Romans, Vandals, Greeks, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks, and French. To drive a shaft straight downward through this blood-drenched soil to a depth of, say, a hundred feet, would be equivalent to retracing the march of mankind for three thousand years—from the Tunisia of the French to the Karthadasht of Queen Dido.

It was a perfect spring morning—one of those mornings when one congratulates one’s self on being alive—when we motored out to Carthage. Fleecy clouds drifted lazily across the sky, like newly washed sheep browzing on a hillside pasture. Under the brilliant African sun the placid surface of the Mediterranean gleamed and glittered as though strewn with diamonds. The weather was warm, but not too warm for comfort, and the gentle land-breeze brought to us the fragrance of the wild flowers which lay in bands of the most vivid colors—scarlet, purple, bright blue, yellow—across the lower slopes of the encircling ranges.

It is rather less than a dozen miles from Tunis to Carthage, and during nearly the whole distance the road runs within sight of the great Roman aqueduct, whose rose-brown arches stride in an undeviating line across the plain. This titanic work was constructed by the Emperor Hadrian at a time when the country was threatened by a devastating drought in order to bring water to Carthage from Zaghouan, eighty miles away. Some idea of the immensity of the undertaking may be gained from the fact that it delivered six million gallons a day, part of the way by means of underground canals, and over the intervening valleys by thousands of magnificent arches, hundreds of which are still standing. The aqueduct was destroyed by the Vandals, who appear always to have justified the modern significance of their name; was restored by the Byzantines; was again destroyed by the Spaniards; and in 1859 was rebuilt by the reigning bey in order to supply Tunis, as well as Carthage and the other suburbs, with pure water. Though iron pipes were used to replace the arches which had been demolished, the Roman route was followed, and wherever possible the European builders utilized the ancient masonry channels constructed by Hadrian’s engineers. They built well, the Romans. I wonder if two thousand years hence the Croton Aqueduct will be utilized in some form to supply water to New York.

Of all the famous sites of antiquity, save only Troy (and I speak as one who has seen all, or nearly all, of them), Carthage is at first view the most disappointing. It is not difficult to identify the principal features at Nineveh and of Babylon, both of which probably antedated the Phenician city by many centuries; but of Carthage literally nothing remains above the level of the ground, its obliteration having been so methodically carried out, first by Scipio and then by Hassan, that it is only within very recent years that the archæologists have succeeded in obtaining even a general idea of the ground-plan.

Particularly disappointing is the Byrsa, the six-hundred-foot hill on which stood the citadel and the great temple of Eschmoun. Instead of being an abrupt, clearly defined eminence, like those on which the Italian hill-towns stand, it gives the impression, when approached from the land side, of being not much more than a low ridge topped by a rather insignificant knoll, so gradual is the ascent from the plain. Its seaward face, however, falls away quite abruptly.

Looking down from the summit of the Byrsa, one’s attention is immediately attracted by two small, curiously shaped ponds which lie within a few yards of the shore. Seen from above, they bear a striking resemblance to a sickle, the elongated lagoon corresponding to the handle of the implement and the crescent-shaped one to the blade. And, in a manner of speaking, a sickle, is what they were; the sickle with which the Carthaginians reaped the sea-trade of the world and all but mowed down the Roman sea-power. For the larger of the two ponds is the sole remaining vestige of Carthage’s great commercial harbor; the smaller, of the naval port, or Cothon.

It requires a sturdy and well-oiled imagination, however, to recreate on the grassy shores of these two insignificant ponds the wharves, slips, dockyards, workshops, storehouses, walls, and watch-towers which made this now tranquil spot the greatest naval base of ancient times; to realize that this was once the emporium of all the sea-borne trade of the world from Syria to Cornwall; that here were launched those terrible war-galleys, with their brazen prows and bristling banks of oars, which enabled the Carthaginians to keep the Mediterranean for centuries a Punic lake. But cross by the narrow isthmus to the little island—an island no longer—on which the Admiralty Palace stood, and look down into the great pit dug by the excavators, and any lingering doubts you may have as to the authenticity of the site will disappear; for on the huge hewn blocks which lie tumbled pell-mell in the bottom of the cavity is still plainly discernible the Tanith in red paint which was the Punic sign manual and crest.

Of the excavated, or partly excavated, remains of Roman Carthage, the most interesting are the Odéon, the Amphitheater, and the Circus. The Odéon, or opera-house, a semicircular building with a roof, was erected in A.D. 204, when the Carthaginians obtained permission to hold the Pythian Games. Little of it now remains, but its ruins have yielded two of the finest statues yet unearthed at Carthage, those of Juno Regia and Venus.

The Amphitheater, judging from what is left of it, must have been a structure of enormous size—it measured a fifth of a mile in circumference—and of extreme magnificence, for it was built when Rome was intoxicated by her wealth and power. Here, during those blood-drenched years when pagan Rome sought vainly to stamp out the steadily spreading cult founded by the Man of Nazareth, that “white-robed multitude” of martyrs died horribly—some on the cross, some at the stake, others by the claws and fangs of snarling beasts. How little could their executioners have dreamed that, in the fullness of time, one of the dungeons in which the martyrs awaited death would be transformed into a Christian chapel dedicated to two of the most illustrious of them, the twenty-two-year-old Perpetua, who, accompanied by her friend Felicitas, left her parents and her baby-in-arms behind, and walked unafraid into the arena to meet the lions! No wonder that Tertullian of Carthage wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” For the simple, loving faith preached by the humble peasant of Judea has spread around the world and is to-day a living force, while the men who sought to stamp it out are remembered only by virtue of that fact.

Doubtless because of its tragic associations with the early days of Christianity, more excavating work has been done in the Amphitheater than anywhere else in Carthage; the dens for the wild beasts, the dungeons in which were confined the Christians who were sentenced to fight them, and a portion of the vast arena in which these dreadful ordeals took place have been laid bare. They were terribly unequal, those combats between naked men and savage animals, but, despite the fearful odds, a Christian occasionally emerged from them alive, as is testified by the inscription found upon a marble column in one of the subterranean chambers, probably a dungeon. It was scratched with some sharp instrument—perhaps the point of a sword—and consists of the single pregnant word, “Evasi”—“I have escaped.”

The Circus, of which only the outline remains, was an enormous structure, twenty-three hundred feet in length and accommodating nearly a quarter of a million spectators. The Yale Bowl, the Harvard Stadium, the stands at the Polo Grounds, are insignificant in comparison. In the Circus were held the chariot-races to which the Carthaginians were as whole-heartedly devoted as Americans are to baseball; for if a passion for racing was ingrained in the character of the European Romans, even more was such the case with the peoples of their African possessions, where the love of horses was indigenous.

The colorful and stirring scenes presented by these great race-meetings need not be left to the imagination, for they are illustrated with a wealth of detail in the mosaics which have been brought together in the Musée Alaoui at the Palace of the Bardo, and are described at great length by the writers of the period. How thoroughly human, how like a similar event to-day, is the description given us by Ovid, who relates how he took a girl to the races, how he shielded her face from the sun with his race-card, how he admired the shapeliness of her leg, and how he wished that he might see more.

The racing world was divided into four great parties or factions: the Reds, the Whites, the Greens, and the Blues. The members of each party regarded those of the others with deep-seated animosity and suspicion, and, when they eventually developed into political factions, their rivalries shook the Roman world. Four chariots, each of one color and each drawn by four horses, raced in a heat. The “racing silks” of the charioteers consisted of round vizorless caps with floating ribbons and cloth jerkins in the colors of the faction for which they drove. Round their bodies were tied the ends of the reins, an arrangement which added greatly to the excitement of the races by insuring the death of any one who was thrown, for no Roman holiday was considered complete without its quota of fatal accidents.

Down the middle of the elliptical course ran the spina, a marble barrier 330 yards in length, adorned with statues, carvings, and columns. At either end of the spina stood the metæ, the turning-points for the chariots; on these were placed marble dolphins and eggs, seven of each, corresponding in number with the laps of the race, one being removed by the attendants as each circuit was completed, very much as signals are hoisted for the information of the spectators at the conclusion of each lap of an automobile race. Judging by this, and by the length of the spina, each heat must have been close to three miles in length.

The charioteers received from their enthusiastic adherents the admiration and adulation which is to-day accorded to a famous baseball player, a champion prize-fighter, or, in Spain, to a successful matador. Though they did not earn as much, perhaps, as a Babe Ruth, a Jack Dempsey, a Red Grange, or even a Tod Sloan, they were lavishly rewarded according to the standards of the time; for it is recorded that in ten years an African driver named Crescens won prizes totaling upward of a million and a half sesterces, or about seventy-one thousand dollars in our money. And one of the handsomest residences unearthed at Carthage is that of Scorpianus, one of the most famous charioteers of his time.

The Carthaginians were confirmed gamblers, and enormous sums were frequently wagered on the outcome of a chariot-race. This, as might have been expected, gave rise to the bitterest jealousy between the adherents of the various factions and to demonstrations of hostility toward a charioteer who was a favorite in the betting. Many curious exemplifications of this spiteful spirit may be seen on the tabulæ execrationis which have been discovered at Carthage. These, as the name implies, were tablets, usually thin sheets of lead, on which were scratched execrations or curses directed against those to whom the authors wished evil. In order that they might speedily gain the attention of the gods of the underworld to whom they were addressed, they were either tied by leathern thongs to the gravestones in the cemeteries, or dropped down the funnel with which each grave was provided so that libations could reach the ashes of the dead. Of the thousands of such tablets, dealing with matters of love, lust, war, politics, and sport, which have been found in the cemeteries of Carthage, one of the most interesting, as it is one of the most venomous, runs, in part, as follows:

As a really polished and comprehensive example of high-class cursing, I don’t know of anything which can compare with that effort unless it is the outburst of the exasperated golfer, who, after spending ten strokes in a sand-bunker, damned “everything over a minute old and an inch high.”

It is a curious and disappointing fact that the largest and most conspicuous monument on the site of Carthage, the Cathedral of St. Louis, is not even remotely associated with the great city of antiquity, but was erected during the eighties to commemorate the achievements of a French king, Louis IX, who, as has been remarked elsewhere, died in 1270 of the plague when encamped on the Byrsa plateau while leading the eighth and last crusade. Louis who was canonized in the fullness of time, sleeps in the church of Monreale, above Palermo, but some relics of the royal crusader have been brought from Sicily and enshrined in the cathedral which bears his name. Not far away a small and unimposing chapel, not much better than the koubba of some Arab marabout, built by Louis Philippe in 1841, marks the spot where the monarch actually expired while murmuring the words, “Jerusalem ... Jerusalem....”

But in a tomb under the high altar of the cathedral rests the body of another fighter for the Faith, who, though as yet uncanonized, deserves sainthood if the word has any meaning. I refer to Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie, cardinal-archbishop of Carthage and Algeria, primate of all Africa, superior of the Order of White Fathers, successor to the see of St. Cyprian, who at Algiers, in 1892, hung up his red hat forever. Of all that remarkable company of courageous men who have entered the Dark Continent on missions of exploration, civilization, colonization, or proselytism, none rendered a greater service to suffering humanity than this devoted missionary-statesman. He founded the Pères Blancs, that remarkable order of African missionaries whose humanitarian activities extend from Morocco to Mozambique; in his relentless war against the slave-trade he established a chain of missions right across the Sahara and the Sudan; his tactful and statesmanlike handling of native problems so raised the prestige of France in North Africa as to draw from Gambetta the celebrated declaration, “L’anticlericalisme n’est pas un article d’exportation.” Though he has been dead these thirty years and more, the name of Cardinal Lavigerie is still one to conjure with among those strange and barbarous peoples who inhabit that vast region which stretches from the Mediterranean to the Congo, from the Atlantic to the Nile.

The scientific researches on the site of Carthage, though under the official supervision of the Department of Antiquities and Arts of the beylical government, are being mainly conducted by a small group of White Fathers under the personal direction of the celebrated archæologist and explorer, Père Delattre. With his powerful frame, his ruddy cheeks, his twinkling eyes, and snowy, patriarchal beard, Father Delattre is one of the most picturesque and interesting figures whom I met in Africa. In accordance with the highly sensible custom of the order, he wears a modified form of the native costume—a flowing burnous of creamy white and the red chéchia with its long blue tassel—so that he resembles a jolly old Moslem mollah rather than a Christian priest. An octogenarian, he is as robust and agile as most men of half his years, and I must confess that as he strode across the rugged terrain where the work of excavation is being carried on it taxed my endurance to keep pace with him.

Father Delattre’s chief interest is the Lavigerie Museum, housed in a modest building on the Byrsa, where, thanks to his indefatigable effort, there has been brought together an absolutely unique collection of columns, statues, sarcophagi, mosaics, amphoræ, stellæ, inscriptions, bas-reliefs, jewelry, and utensils of various kinds illustrative of the various phases of the city’s long and varied history. Here, brought from the early Punic tombs behind the Byrsa, are tear-glasses of Phenician glass, fragile and iridescent as the wing of a butterfly, in which the great ladies of Dido’s time carried their cosmetics just as American women carry “compacts” to-day. In this glass case is a necklace of as exquisite design and workmanship as anything that Tiffany or Cartier could show; perhaps—who knows?—it once encircled the white neck of Sophonisba. Over there is an extraordinary collection of lamps, the finest and most complete in existence: cheap little lamps of terra-cotta which gleamed from the windows of humble dwellings; elaborately carved lamps which shone on the sumptuous dinner-tables of great nobles and rich merchants; lamps of porphyry and marble which guttered on the altars of the gods. And there are thousands and thousands of bas-reliefs and inscriptions, on which appear such familiar religious symbols as the fish, the lamb, the anchor, and the crown, associated with the worship, persecution, and martyrdom of the early Christians.

The most interesting objects in the museum, however, according to my way of thinking, are three or four sarcophagi, some of them dating back to seven hundred years before the Christian era, which have been brought here from the ancient tombs. Their immense significance to the student of history lies not so much in their great age, or in the tolerable state of preservation of the bodies which they contain, but rather in the recumbent figures of the dead which are carved upon the lids and which enable us to know how they looked in life. For, as careful comparison with the bodies has shown, they are unquestionably portraits of the deceased. One of them represents a priest of Eschmoun, a man with serene and dignified features, an abundance of curling hair, luxuriant mustaches and beard. So benign is his expression that it is difficult to conceive of him as having laid the quivering bodies of little children on the brazen, white-hot arms of Baal. Another, judging by the richness of the dress and the extreme refinement of the features, is evidently that of a lady of the aristocracy, her hair combed back from her brow and braided into two long plaits which fall down to frame her face, her slender figure clad in a girdled robe of some soft, diaphanous material which sweeps down in stately lines to her little sandaled feet, half concealing, half revealing, her exquisitely proportioned figure. A third, which has been identified as that of a priestess of Tanith and is the finest of all, shows a grandly modeled woman in the prime of life clad in a semi-transparent garment of rose-color. In one hand she holds a dove, in the other a bowl of offerings; the Egyptian head-dress which enframes her graciously beautiful face is surmounted by a vulture, the symbol of Isis. They must have been, on the whole, a fine-looking race, these people of Punic Carthage, the innate dignity which stamps their faces causing one to overlook the over-prominent Semitic noses and the sensual Eastern lips.

Throughout our visit to Carthage we had been pestered almost beyond endurance by a horde of Arab ragamuffins who clamorously besought us to purchase coins of bronze and silver of whose authenticity I was more than a little doubtful, but which they claimed to have picked up on the site. One of these importunate youngsters, bolder than his fellows, followed us into the museum garden. I was about to purchase his wares in order to get rid of him when Father Delattre intervened.

“Would you care,” he asked, “to have a genuine Carthaginian coin?”

I assured him earnestly that few things would give me greater satisfaction, whereupon he presented me with a sesterce of the Roman period bearing on its face in high relief a portrayal of a chariot drawn by four horses; one of the very sesterces, it pleases me to think, which were flung into the arena of the Circus to reward the famous charioteer Scorpianus, the Pop Geers of his time. I carry it in my purse, along with a coin of Alexander the Great which I picked up in Macedonia, and another, minted during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, which I acquired in Babylon. They serve to remind me, these tiny pieces of silver, that there have been other civilizations than those epitomized by Fifth Avenue and Piccadilly and the Rue de la Paix; that there were great cities, mighty empires, culture, luxury, in those dim and far-off days when history was beginning and the world was very young.

Before he would say good-by Father Delattre insisted on presenting us with his picture, to obtain which he ran as nimbly as a boy up the steep Byrsa Hill on which the monastery of the Pères Blancs stands. With my fountain-pen he wrote his name across it; then we shook hands with the grand old man and stepped into the waiting car.

“Just a moment,” I said to Harvey, as we breasted the brow of the plateau and the road to Tunis unrolled its twenty kilometers like a lariat tossed idly upon the ground. “Stop the car. I wish to take a final look.”

Standing in the tonneau, I looked down upon that stage on which has been enacted so much of the history of the world—the little bay where Dido landed; the harbor in which the galleys of Hamilcar were moored; the slopes up which the legionaries of Scipio fought their bloody way; the site of the Amphitheater in which the martyrs died; the traces of the Forum which was turned into a stable by Genseric’s Vandal horsemen; the rolling plain across which surged behind their green standards the Moslem hordes of Hassan; the little knoll on which St. Louis pitched his final camp.... “Sic transit gloria mundi,” I thought.

But my reflections were rudely interrupted as, with a great wheezing and puffing, a little covered motor-van came rocking toward us. It was driven by a fresh-faced, blue-eyed youngster in khaki trousers and a flannel shirt, bare of head and neck and arm. Beside him on the narrow seat sat two other youngsters similarly clad. They waved their hands in friendly fashion and shouted greetings to us in our own language. As the car plunged past on its way to Carthage we could see the legend, painted in staring black on its gray sides:

Department of Archæology
Carthaginian Section
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, U. S. A.

CHAPTER VII TO KAIROUAN THE HOLY

It is a fortunate circumstance for foreigners of an inquiring turn of mind that the French occupation of Tunisia met with armed resistance from the fanatical inhabitants of Kairouan. Had they peacefully accepted the protectorate, the beautiful and highly interesting religious sanctuaries of the Holy City of Africa would be rigidly closed to unbelievers, as is the case in all the other cities of the regency. But they did resist and were punished in a fashion peculiarly humiliating to the proud spirit of the Moslem by having their sacred places thrown open to the inspection of infidels, Kairouan being the only place in all of French North Africa where non-Moslems enjoy this privilege.

Personally, I always feel a sense of embarrassment upon entering a mosque; to do so is an affront, whether intentional or not, to another people’s religion. To see hordes of tourists, guide-book in hand, camera under the arm, over-size slippers flapping from their heels, shuffling about an edifice where men are engaged in their devotions, peering inquisitively into venerated shrines, commenting in audible whispers on the genuflections of the pious, always strikes me as a rather sorry spectacle, a breach of good manners and good taste. Were a party of Moslem visitors to enter a Christian place of worship and behave precisely as I have seen Christian tourists conduct themselves in Moslem mosques in Egypt and Turkey, a scandalized sexton would promptly ask them to leave, if, indeed, no worse befell them.

As the motor goes it is about six score miles, over a tolerably smooth highway, from Tunis to Kairouan, the route which we followed being the one taken thirteen hundred years before by the Arab invaders of Tunisia, though in the opposite direction. It has been in turn a highway of history, a course of conquest, a path of piety, a trail of torture, a thoroughfare of travel, a track of trade, a route of romance, this great trunk-road which leads from the Mediterranean to the desert. It has shaken to the ponderous tread of Carthaginian elephants, has been rutted by the tires of Roman chariots, has felt the padded feet of Numidian camels, has been trampled by the hoofs of Arab chargers, has known Berber slippers and Byzantine sandals, the calloused soles of monks and friars, the spurred heels of knights and men-at-arms, the dragging footsteps of slaves and captives, the measured tramp of modern soldiery. He who can travel that road without being stirred by thoughts of the mighty events which have taken place along it has no poetry or imagination in his soul; the only thing that would give pause to such a person is the upraised hand of a traffic-cop.

Strange figures flit past us in endless panorama as the big car hurtles southward, its siren roaring a hoarse warning. A group of Berber women, their garments of home-dyed blue cut in graceful, classic lines, their foreheads tattooed with the cross which is a reminder that the natives of this country were once Christians. A wealthy Arab, wrapped in a burnous of palest blue, astride a handsome mule with gold-incrusted saddle-cloth and scarlet leather trappings. A party of desert nomads, lean, hawk-nosed men, their mouths and nostrils swathed in blue veils against the suffocating dust, rock by atop of camels, driving before them a herd of other, camels, destined for the Tunis market. Close to the road a peasant is tilling his fields with a yoke of snow-white oxen, his plow an iron-shod beam of wood, as in the days of Abraham. On yonder hillside a slim, dark-eyed Bedouin girl tends her flock of painted sheep. We roar through straggling, mud-walled hamlets, before whose coffee-houses lounge turbaned, white-robed sheikhs—bearded, patriarchal figures who might have stepped straight from the pages of the Old Testament. Droves of produce-laden donkeys scatter suddenly at the sound of our horn, the cursing muleteers sometimes throwing the stubborn little animals bodily into the ditch to give us room. We pass a compact column of khaki-clad, dust-caked tirailleurs, rifles bristling on their shoulders, sweating beneath their packs, foot-slogging over Africa. Herds of foul-smelling goats kick up tornadoes of yellow dust as they stampede across the plain. We take the narrow bridges, spanning the deep gorges which the mountain streams have gashed as with a knife in the soft soil, like a frightened cat on the top of a back-yard fence. And away to the southward, in the far blue distance, towering above Tunisia, rise the wild crags of the Djebel Zaghouan.

For hour after hour we traverse waterless and treeless wastes, their yellow-brown expanses broken here and there by patches of bright green where peasant farmers are striving to wring a meager living from the arid soil. The hills which fringe the horizon have been stripped of their forest clothing by fire and wanton destruction, and now they rise, naked and grim, against the hot blue sky. It is hard to conjure up a picture of those golden days when to Horace an African farm was a synonym for boundless fertility, luxury, and wealth; or to accept the assertions of the early chroniclers that, before the Arabs laid the country bare, one could ride from Tripoli to the Atlantic with trees to shade him all the way.

Yet, if the ancient writers are to be believed, what is now an exception must have been at one period the rule. Vast areas of plain and mountain, now destitute of tree or shrub, must have been green with forest or jungle. Great numbers of savage beasts once roamed a region which to-day can show no wild animals save prowling jackals and occasional gazelles. From the Tunisian forests came the wild beasts which were used not only in the arenas of Roman Africa but in the Colosseum of Rome itself. Elephants roamed the land in herds and were used as the first wave of attack by the Carthaginian armies; it is recorded that Juba lost the Battle of Thapsus because his war-elephants, recently captured in the forests, were untrained. The Roman mosaics preserved in the museums at Sousse and the Palace of the Bardo depict hunting scenes in which the game were lions, tigers, leopards, deer, and wild boar. In “Salammbô” Flaubert tells us how the mutinous mercenaries, marching upon Carthage, found the road through Sicca Veneria (the modern Kef) lined with crosses bearing crucified lions.

Insufficient rainfall, a scarcity of springs and streams—these always have been and always will be the chief problems of the Tunisian farmer. The soil itself, even the sand of the Sahara, is amazingly fertile; make no mistake about that. All that it needs is water to cause it to blossom like the rose. This difficulty the Romans overcame with astonishing energy, patience, and success, as is attested by the ruined waterworks which to-day strew not only the plains but the high, desolate plateaus. They did in Africa two thousand years ago what we are doing to-day in New Mexico and Arizona, transforming deserts into gardens by the miracle of water. Not a gallon of the precious fluid was permitted to go to waste. Every stream was dammed at frequent intervals, just as we have dammed the Colorado, the Rio Grande, and the Gila, the water thus impounded being distributed by a vast network of canals and aqueducts. Every farmstead had its wells and tanks, every city and town its elaborate water-system.

The land thus systematically watered was cultivated with a science and thoroughness which many of our own farmers might profitably emulate to-day. Horses and cattle, sheep and goats, found rough but ample pasturage upon the hills. Vineyards covered the lower slopes with their ordered rows. Figs, dates, apricots, and pomegranates flourished in the warmer districts. In the spring the alluvial plains became a sea of waving grain, which was produced in such quantities that Tunisia became the granary of Italy, and it was commonly said that he who held Africa could starve Rome.

Nestling in the shadow of the rugged Djebel Zaghouan, from whose summit, forty-two hundred feet in height, can be obtained a view which embraces half Tunisia, is the unkempt little village of Zaghouan. One’s first impression is of a pleasant, restful place, for in the outskirts are many gardens, and the air is heavy with the fragrance of roses, lilies, violets, and orange-blossoms; but the town itself, dirty, unpaved, and squalid, reeks with odors of quite a different kind. Zaghouan is the Danbury of Tunisia, having a virtual monopoly of the manufacture of chéchias, the tasseled caps of red felt which are the universal head-gear of the natives. A mile or so above the town are the ruins of the Nymphea, the colonnaded temple built by the Romans over the famous spring which eighteen hundred years ago supplied Carthage with water as it now does Tunis. Here commenced that remarkable system of conduits and aqueducts, constructed in the reign of Hadrian, whose mammoth arches still march across the Carthaginian plain.

Another hour or so of dusty motoring, and the domes and minarets and turreted ramparts of the Holy City rise to view. What induced the Arab conquerors to choose such a site for their capital and chief sanctuary passes the comprehension, for Kairouan lies in the middle of a dreary, waterless expanse, thirty-odd miles from the sea and even farther from the mountains, without an adequate water-supply or natural resources, swept by cold winds in winter and scorched by the pitiless summer sun. It does not even have military strength to recommend it, for it has never withstood a siege successfully, having been taken and retaken at least a dozen times. Though it is on the road to nowhere, so far as its geographical situation is concerned, the followers of Mohammed regard it as a half-way stop on the road to heaven, seven pilgrimages to Kairouan being deemed equivalent to a hadj to Mecca itself.

A distinctly medieval appearance is lent the city by its massive crenelated wall, pierced by five gates and broken by numerous bastions and towers. The essentially religious character of the place is immediately made apparent by its most fantastic sky-line, which is broken by the domes and minarets of the hundred or more zaouias and mosques, the whole dominated by the enormous tower of the Djamaa Sidi Okba, which, visible for many miles, rears itself skyward like a great brown finger pointing to heaven.

Bear with me for a single paragraph while I give a thumb-nail sketch of Kairouan’s history, which is the history of Arab rule in North Africa. Twelve years, then, after the camel-driver of Mecca who became the Prophet had gone to join the houris in the Moslem paradise, his son-in-law Othman ibn Affan (his son-in-law twice over, in fact, for he had married two of Mohammed’s daughters) was elected Khalifa, or Successor. To him fell the congenial task of carrying on the work of invasion and conquest which had been prosecuted with such success by the preceding khalifas, Abou Bekr and Omar, who, having subjugated the decaying empires of Byzantium and Persia, had turned their attention to the Maghreb—“the West.” When, in 644, Othman assumed the green mantle of the Prophet, Egypt had already been conquered by the Arab armies under Amr ibn al Asi, who, by way of celebrating his victory, destroyed the Alexandrine library, which contained the finest collection of books and manuscripts in the world. He gave as a reason for this utterly inexcusable act of vandalism—an act which at one stroke wiped out unique and authentic records of the ancient world covering many hundreds of years—the naïve explanation, “If these books contradict the Koran, they are false; if they agree with it, they are useless.” In the year of Othman’s succession, Amr ibn al Asi occupied Tripolitania, and three years later the Arab hosts poured through the south of Tunisia into Ifrikya and drove out the Byzantines. The administration of the new province was intrusted by the khalifa to that fiercest of all Moslem warriors, Okba ibn Nafi, better known as Sidi Okba, who, in the year 670, founded the city of Kairouan, which became in time the capital of all the Moslem possessions in the Maghreb, and, by virtue of the sanctity conferred upon the place by the saints who were buried there, a religious focus which drew pilgrims all the way from Egypt to Morocco.

By getting an early start from Tunis, one can lunch at Kairouan, spend the afternoon in visiting the principal mosques, and sleep that night in the really comfortable hostelry at Sousse. For the casual traveler this is perhaps the best plan, for the accommodations at Kairouan, though tolerable enough, are remarkable neither for cleanliness nor comfort, the Hôtel Splendide—named with a singular lack of appropriateness—being one of those cold, gloomy little hotels, so common in North Africa, where the sheets, table-cloths, and napkins are always damp, and where, between courses, the guest produces a fictitious warmth by sitting on his hands.

To visit the mosques of Kairouan an order is required from the controleur civil—a mere formality. That, together with a pair of red slippers large enough to pull over one’s shoes, and a handful of small coins with which to reward the numerous attachés of the ecclesiastical buildings and to bestow on the holy men and mendicants who crouch at their entrances, and we are all set for a tour of the sacred city.

On arriving in Rome for the first time, one’s footsteps turn instinctively in the direction of St. Peter’s; the visitor to Kairouan makes directly for the Great Mosque, the Djamaa Sidi Okba. As befits the premier sanctuary of Africa, it is of enormous size, covering an area of three acres. Next to nothing of the original structure remains, however, for it has been rebuilt four times, that which we now see dating from the early part of the ninth century. Just as the Campanile at Venice overshadows and dwarfs those two most beautiful buildings, St. Mark’s and the Doge’s Palace, so the tremendous height and bulk of the square minaret of the Great Mosque reduces the lovely cloistered building at its feet to comparative insignificance. As is the case with most of the famous sanctuaries of Islam, the mosque is built about an enormous court, surrounded by a very imposing double colonnade, paved with marble, and provided with fountains in which, as prescribed by the Koran, the pious must bathe their faces, hands, and feet before entering the place of worship. Rising from the center of the court is an ancient stone sun-dial. As the hour of prayer approaches a venerable employee of the mosque intently watches the creeping shadow, and from the summit of the lofty tower another attendant watches him. When the edge of the shadow touches the proper meridian, the man by the sun-dial abruptly raises his arm, like a semaphore, whereupon a large white flag is broken out from the gallows-like staff on the tower, and the musical drone of the muezzin floats out across the city summoning the faithful to prayer: “Ash hadu illa ill Allah, wa ash hadu inna Mohammed an rasool Allah!”

Though the exterior of the Great Mosque leaves much to be desired from an architectural point of view, the interior, with its maze of horseshoe arches supported on a forest of marble and porphyry columns, is a very miracle of form and color. At the end of the central nave, orientated, of course, toward Mecca, is the mihrab, or sacred niche, flanked by two magnificent columns of variegated marble from Cæsarea in Algeria, which, it is said, one of the Byzantine emperors offered to buy for their weight in gold. The mihrab is lined with glorious old tiles in the “lost shade” of Persian blue, brought from Baghdad by one of the princes of the Aghleb dynasty, who contributed them to the mosque, along with the rare Eastern woods which form the mimbar, or pulpit, as an act of penance for having defiled the sacred precincts by a drunken orgy. The endless vistas of columns and arches; the rich, mellow tints of the tiles, woods, and marbles; the soft light which filters in through the colored glass of the windows in the great dome—these combine to produce an effect of beauty, dignity, and solemnity unsurpassed by any religious edifice in the world.

Very imposing, with its five great domes, is the Djamaa Amor Abbada, or, as it is better known, the Mosque of the Saber. A purely modern structure, with an interior which has little to recommend it, it takes its name from the enormous saber, as long as a man and almost as heavy, which hangs against the mimbar as a reminder, I suppose, that Islam is a religion of the sword. It is venerated as the work of the founder of the mosque, Amor Abbada, an illiterate blacksmith saint, who, doubtless bored to extinction by the austere life expected of a marabout, amused himself by forging these huge clumsy swords. Another of his efforts took the form of a great pipe, fully five feet in length and painted a vivid green, which, so the attendant gravely informed us, the saint was wont to smoke. When my daughter flippantly remarked that it must have required two strong men to hold it and a five-pound sack of Bull Durham to fill its capacious bowl, the priest replied reprovingly that Amor Abbada was a giant and that such things were trifles to him. Which serves as an illustration of how quickly legends grow in the credulous and superstitious East, for Amor Abbada, far from being a figure of remote antiquity, died only a few years before the outbreak of our Civil War. As a matter of fact, it has never been very difficult to acquire sainthood in Moslem countries; almost any one can do it who has a well-developed sense of the dramatic.

By far the most interesting and important of all the religious edifices of Kairouan is the Djamaa Sidi Sahab, more usually referred to as the Mosque of the Barber. In it rests, within a richly decorated catafalque, the body of Sidi Sahab (the Companion), or, to give him his own sonorous name, Abou-Zamat Obeid Allah ibn Adam el Beloui, who earned his title by being one of the original ten disciples of Mohammed. Mortally wounded during the storming of Sbeitla in 656, he found his last resting-place in the soil of Kairouan. The frequently repeated assertion that El Beloui was the Prophet’s barber is absurd, as every student of Islamic history knows, for his nearest approach to the tonsorial trade was in shearing off the heads of unbelievers when he took part in the conquest of Egypt and the invasion of Ifrikya. Here is how the ridiculous legend arose. (It is Mr. Cyril Fletcher Grant who tells the story.) At the last solemn interview when the Prophet bade farewell to his Sahabs—his Knights of the Round Table—he gave El Beloui three hairs from his beard, that by them he might be recognized on the Day of Judgment. El Beloui directed that the precious relics should be buried with him, one to be laid on his lips, one on his heart, and one under his right arm, in token that his eloquence, his love, and his strength had all been devoted to the service of his adored master. And, as his reward for a loyalty which reached beyond the grave, he is to-day referred to as a barber!

“But,” exclaimed the American flapper whom we met in the hotel in Kairouan and to whom I repeated the story of El Beloui, “I always supposed that the mosque was named after the Barber of Seville. I thought he was one of those Moors who were driven out of Spain by Queen Elizabeth. But history is so hard to remember, isn’t it?”

The architectural glories of the Djamaa Sidi Sahab I shall leave to those who are better qualified than I am to describe them, and lead you straight through the bewildering series of tiled atria, colonnaded courts, and marble cloisters to the holy of holies itself, the shrine in which the Companion lies sleeping. He rests beneath a splendid catafalque covered, as is the Moslem custom, with magnificent shawls, brocades, and embroideries. Crossing the floor one’s slippered feet sink deeply into the soft mellow-toned carpets with which it is overlaid, and for the manufacture of which Kairouan is famous. The tomb is surrounded with an elaborately wrought iron grille on which tiny lamps, ostrich-eggs, glass balls, and little sacks of earth from the sacred soil of Mecca have been hung by the pious. From above droop, in folds of red and green, dozens of religious banners, sent by the rich and powerful from all corners of the Moslem world in tribute to this great Islamic hero.

The sun, a dazzling sphere of reddish gold, was sinking behind the Djebel Zaghouan when we left the Holy City by its eastern gate and took the road to Sousse. The multitude of towers and minarets and domes which proclaim afar the city’s sacred character rose, as though hewn from amethyst and coral, against the painted sky. To our ears, borne faintly on the night breeze, came the Angelus of Islam, the muezzin’s quavering call to evening prayer.

Though the regency of Tunisia barely exceeds in area the State of New York, it has an amazing variety of scenery, soil, and climate for so small a country. I can recall no other region where one can see so many of North Africa’s physiographical characteristics in so brief a time. In a journey no longer than from Albany to Buffalo, a journey which can be made quite comfortably by motor-car between dawn and dark of a single day, the traveler can see the sun rise out of the Mediterranean from the heights of Carthage; traverse a highly cultivated country-side checkered with prosperous farms and thriving gardens; plunge into great forests of cork and oak and pine; follow through leafy glens and rocky gorges the course of a river longer than the Hudson; climb a mountain range whose peaks tower for a mile into the blue; drop down upon treeless steppes carpeted with fields of grain; whirl through endless orchards of olive, fig, and orange; and dine on a desert oasis, amid a grove of date-palms, while the sun sinks behind the Saharan sand-dunes.

Tunisia may be divided into five districts, each having its distinctive topography, climate, and products. In the extreme north, in that little triangle formed by the Tunisian Atlas, the frontiers of Algeria, and the sea, is a mountainous, well-watered region with fertile, highly cultivated valleys and, on the slopes of the mountains, great forests of cork and pine. The northeastern corner of the regency, including the peninsula of Cape Bon, the country around Tunis, and the Carthaginian plain, has a soil and climate peculiarly adapted to the growing of citrus fruits—the land of the orange and the lemon. Extending from the Atlas southward to the fringes of the desert are the grain lands of Tunisia—a bleak, treeless, monotonous expanse of high plateaus and rolling steppes, normally arid but fertile under irrigation, known as the Tell. Lying to the east of the Tell, bordering the eastern coast of the regency from the Gulf of Hammamet to the Gulf of Gabés, is a slender strip of well-watered, highly fertile land, nowhere much over a dozen miles in width, called the Sahel. And far to the south, below both the Tell and the Sahel,

are the sand-dunes, shats, and oases of the Tunisian Sahara.

Of these five districts, the most important from an agricultural point of view is the Sahel. This narrow coastal plain, whose chef-lieu is Sousse, is a region of almost inexhaustible productiveness, a fat land, a land of live stock, grain, fruit, and vine. For ages past the rich earth has been washed down from the hills to collect along the shore in deep layers of alluvial soil, which, scratched and watered, becomes a Garden of the Lord.

That portion of the Sahel in the vicinity of Sousse is one vast forest of olive-trees. For miles we motored between the ordered gray-green rows, the trees so old, so bent, so gnarled, so twisted, that they might well have been planted by the Romans. Nor, indeed, is that at all improbable, for olive-trees frequently attain enormous age. In the Garden of Gethsemane, above Jerusalem, the monks reverently point out two venerable olive-trees beneath which, they assert, Christ was accustomed to converse with His disciples.

Sousse, the second most important city of Tunisia, is a charming place. Its buildings, white as though cut from chalk, are set on the slopes of a natural amphitheater which rises quite sharply from the harbor, so that, seen from the sea, it bears a certain resemblance to Algiers. The Hadrumetum of the ancients, it was already old when Dido ruled at Carthage; it was hoary with antiquity when London was a cluster of wattle huts inhabited by painted savages, when Paris had yet to be founded amid the swamps beside the Seine. In the beginning a Phenician commercial outpost, established by merchants trading out of Tyre, it become a Roman colony under Trajan and so remained until the second century of the Empire, when the Vandals came. But the Vandals were driven out by Belisarius the Byzantine; and the Byzantines, in their turn, gave way before the fierce onslaught of the Arab hosts; whereupon the crescent replaced the cross, its churches were destroyed or converted into mosques, the Citadel was renamed the Kasbah, and Sousse became a corsair stronghold, one of its rulers being the terrible Dragut, the most feared sea-rover of his time.

At Sousse, as elsewhere in French North Africa, the modern city, the European quarter, has sprung up outside the walls of the old town. And in no other African city that I know is the contrast thus presented so striking. La ville française, with its broad boulevards and double rows of shade-trees, its banks, consulates, hotels, churches, brasseries, cinemas, and ornate public buildings, its numerous little parks and its inevitable Grande Place, is just such a provincial town as may be found by the dozen in the south of France. But stroll through one of the ancient gateways which give access to the Arab city, and you step backward a thousand years, for crowded within the bastioned and crenelated ramparts is a tangle of tortuous lanes and dim bazaars lined by hole-in-the-wall shops (here not a figure of speech, for many of them are actually built in the wall itself), while, high above the noisy, noisome town, rise, slender, serene, and snowy, the minarets of the Great Mosque and the frowning battlements of the Kasbah.

One of the most conspicuous buildings of the old town is the Ksar-er-Rabit, originally a Byzantine stronghold, but upon the Moslem conquest transformed into a rabit, one of the military outposts, half-monastery and half-fortress, established by the Arabs along the frontiers of their far-flung empire. These rabits were garrisoned by a sect of militant monks, somewhat akin to the Knights Templars, known as Mirabits, who were praying when they were not fighting, and from their name was derived the word marabout—a religious ascetic, a fakir, a holy man.

The traveler in Tunisia cannot but be impressed by the evidences which he sees on every hand of the enormous population and amazing prosperity of this region under the Romans. The whole country-side is strewn with reminders of this vanished civilization, for Byzacium, as the Romans called this region, supported a numerous agricultural population and was dotted with flourishing cities and towns. Everywhere rise the ruins of cities, buildings, aqueducts, and arches, monuments, monoliths, and heaps of sculptured stones. Yet, despite these indisputable proofs of a one-time wealth and greatness, it is difficult, nay, almost impossible, to realize that dense forests once spread themselves over yonder naked hills, that great cities stood on their flanks, and that from these arid steppes came the grain which fed the mouths of Rome.

Of all the monuments of this departed glory, the most impressive, the most astounding, is the amphitheater at Thysdrus, or, to give it its Arab name, El Djem. Set in a solitude of orange sand, where the Sahel runs out in the Sahara, it is one of the most remarkable structures that I have ever seen. It rises from a shallow, saucer-like depression in the plain, as grandly as the pyramids at Gizeh, as abruptly as the walls of the Grand Cañon. As we topped a rise in the road we could see its towering, rose-brown walls, honeycombed with arches, twenty kilometers away. From a distance it is profoundly imposing; close at hand it is positively overwhelming. The grandest Roman monument in all Africa, it is perhaps the best preserved building of its kind in the world, scarcely inferior to the Colosseum at Rome. There is nothing to compare with it in the monumental architecture of modern times. It is so large that it completely conceals the native town which lies behind it. Though used by the Arabs for centuries as a quarry, it was so colossal, so strongly built, as to defy their attempts at destruction. The achievement of building it is the more astounding when one realizes that the stones used in this mountain of masonry were hauled by gangs of slaves and teams of elephants and yokes of oxen, over roads specially constructed for the purpose, from quarries twenty miles away. The mere sight of that tremendous structure, rising solitary, majestic, and time-defying from the lonely plain, does more than all the histories ever written to impress one with the might of Rome.

Of Thysdrus, the splendid city which once stood upon the site of El Djem and which gave to Rome three emperors named Gordian, nothing remains save the amphitheater and some stones and marbles built into the wretched native dwellings. The construction of the amphitheater is attributed to Gordian the Elder, who sat on the imperial throne in the first half of the third century A.D. During the blood-stained years which followed its erection its arena was the scene of the torture and martyrdom of thousands of Christians; the dungeons in which the condemned were confined and the dens of the wild beasts may still be seen.

Perhaps the most dramatic chapter in the long history of the great building took place, however, shortly after the Arab invasion, when the Berbers, under the leadership of Koceila, rose in revolt against their Moslem conquerors. When, toward the close of the seventh century, Koceila fell in battle on the Medjerda, his place was taken by a remarkable woman, an African Joan of Arc, known to history as El Kahena, the Priestess, for her real name is unknown. Convinced that the Arabs were fighting only for booty, she met and defeated them in a great battle near Gabés and then proceeded to lay desolate the whole Sahel, razing the cities, destroying the water-systems, burning the forests and the orchards. But in 703, realizing that a further prosecution of the war was hopeless, she intrenched herself in the amphitheater of El Djem. Here she sustained a long siege, but, driven by starvation to lead a forlorn hope, she was killed in battle, her head being sent to the khalifa as a sign that Berber resistance to Arab rule was at an end.

It is a little over two score miles from El Djem to Sfax, and, providing you have sufficient horse-power under the hood of your motor, you can cover the distance in as many minutes, for the road, like all of those which the French have constructed in Tunisia, must have been laid out by the simple method of laying a ruler down on the map and drawing perfectly straight lines from town to town. It utterly ignores such things as grades and contours, sometimes driving straight ahead for twenty kilometers at a stretch. There was no traffic to speak of, and, once clear of the town, Harvey pressed his foot hard upon the gas. The big car leaped forward like a thoroughbred at the raising of the starting-gate. As we topped the rises in the road its wheels seemed to leave the ground completely; it was like taking off in an airplane. With horn a-blare we went booming down into little valleys, sky-hooting across narrow bridges, and roaring up the opposite slopes. The country-side became a blur of green and brown. The white kilometer-posts seemed as close together as the beads of a necklace. The telegraph-poles slid past like the palings in a picket-fence. The needle on the dial of the speedometer rose to seventy ... eighty ... ninety ... one hundred kilometers.... Africa was slipping away beneath us at the rate of sixty miles an hour.

CHAPTER VIII TROGLODYTES AND LOTUS-EATERS

The white city which the Carthaginians built on the northern shores of the Gulf of Gabés was called Taparura by the Romans, but its Arab conquerors, finding that the fakous (cucumber) grew there in great abundance, changed its name to Sfax. It may strike a European as somewhat curious to name a large and flourishing city after a vegetable, but that is because the European fails to realize what a gift from heaven a cool and juicy cucumber is to a parched and dusty land. In Mesopotamia cucumbers are sold everywhere and munched like apples, while in the desert they are considered a rare luxury, being regarded by the Arabs very much as we regard hothouse grapes and alligator-pears. Indeed, I have always maintained that, when I was captured by the Bedouins on the Upper Euphrates in 1920, it was the basket of cucumbers I presented to the sheikh which effected my release.

Though named for a vegetable, Sfax does not vegetate. On the contrary, it is one of the most up-and-doing places in Tunisia, its eighty thousand inhabitants, of whom six thousand are Europeans, driving a prosperous trade in fruit, cattle, olive-oil, wool, and sponges. The Arab town, surrounded by a crenelated wall and dominated by the lofty tower of an ancient mosque, is noisy, busy, and dirty; but the European quarter is characterized by broad, scrupulously clean streets, a spacious tree-planted square, and new and handsome public buildings, including a really fine hôtel de ville and a municipal theater, all built, appropriately enough, in the modified Moorish style of architecture which the French have used so successfully throughout North Africa.

The people of Sfax are as justly proud of their water-system as are the inhabitants of Poland Springs. In addition to two enormous reservoirs or fesquias, owned by the municipality and supplied with water from the wells of Sidi Salah, ten miles away, there is, just outside the town, a large walled inclosure containing five or six hundred bottle-shaped reservoirs called nasrias, given by wealthy Arabs to the town. These cisterns are maintained by the municipality, and the water is supplied to those who prefer it to that from Sidi Salah.

Sfax is the most important olive-growing center in Tunisia, for the beylical government has wisely encouraged the industry by liberal concessions, and it is estimated that there are upward of a million and a half olive-trees in bearing on the Bokaat-el-Beida plateau. What with its countless olive-groves and oil-presses, its almond-orchards, cucumber-gardens, henna-plantations, soap-factories, and sponge-fisheries, this remote African city plays a not unimportant part in supplying toilet accessories to the bath-rooms and beauty-parlors of the world. Its name might appropriately be changed to Cosmétiqueville.

Instead of wearing the flowing burnous which is the universal costume of the natives elsewhere in the regency, the Arabs of Sfax are distinguished by their short, hooded jackets of dark brown, hand-woven wool or camel’s-hair elaborately worked with light brown embroidery. These, with the troops of the garrison—officers of chasseurs d’Afrique in tight-waisted sky-blue tunics and enormously baggy scarlet trousers; spahis with great crimson capes, their enormous turbans bound with agals of camel’s-hair; black tirailleurs from Senegal whose high tarbooshes, trim uniforms, and smartly wound puttees are all of khaki—to say nothing of the strange desert types who drift in from the Saharian provinces and Tripolitania, lend to the streets and souks of Sfax a diversity and color not found in the more northerly cities of the regency.

A few hours by native sailing-boat off this storied coast are the Kerkenna Islands, Chergui and Gharbi, which in ancient times were joined by a bridge whose traces are still visible, but now separated by a channel of considerable width. They are interesting to every student of ancient history because of their tragic associations, for it was here that the fugitive Hannibal, seeking to escape the wrath of Rome, found refuge for a time, and from here that he fled to Asia Minor. The Kerkennas were the home, in later years, of another illustrious exile, that Sempronius Gracchus who dared to lift his eyes to Julia, daughter of the Emperor Augustus, and paid for his presumption with banishment and eventually with his life. But the Kerkennas, despite their hectic past, are to-day a pleasant, friendly, dolce far niente spot, the islanders, a mixture of many nationalities, being engaged in sponge-fishing and the manufacture of an inferior but very potent variety of date brandy.

Sfax is the “farthest south” for most visitors to Tunisia, but we kept on along the edges of the gulf to Gabés, which is the starting-point for those, prepared to put up with discomforts if not actual hardships, who wish to visit the cliff-dwellings of Matmata, the rhorfas of Medenine, the island of Djerba, and the military provinces which adjoin the Tripolitanian frontier. Though so difficult of access, so far removed from the beaten paths of travel, as to be rarely visited by Europeans, these regions are by long odds the strangest and most interesting in Tunisia, if not, indeed, in all North Africa. Not to see the underground city of Bled Kebira and the desert sky-scrapers of Medenine is to miss two of the most extraordinary communities on earth.

Gabés, the Tacape of the Romans, is to France’s Saharan frontier what Fort Leavenworth was to our own frontier in its wild and woolly days. In the edge of the desert, close to the borders of Tripolitania, it is the most important military outpost in the South, a large garrison being maintained there to hold in check the lawless nomad tribes. The town itself is wholly without interest, merely a collection of mud houses set in a large oasis amid a forest of palms. But the Hôtel de l’Oasis, run by a stout and jovial Frenchwoman, was tolerably comfortable, and the cuisine was surprisingly good, considering the difficulties of obtaining supplies, provided one did not object to the use of goat’s milk and butter, whose rancid taste and revolting odor I myself detest.

The officers and men of the garrison are saved from ennui by the constant drills and occasional punitive expeditions which form the life of frontier posts; they have their little cercles, where they hold occasional dances; twice weekly, in the dusty jardin public, the band of the tirailleurs plays the latest pieces from Paris; and on the beach, about a mile away, a ramshackle pavilion and a string of unpainted shacks, called by courtesy cabines des bains, make a pathetic attempt to bring to the frontier the distractions of Dinard and Deauville; but I felt sorry for the handful of Frenchwomen who had accompanied their soldier husbands into exile and who were dragging out an inconceivably dreary and monotonous existence in this lonely spot. I have always maintained that, whether in Africa, India, or the Philippines, it is the women who are the real builders of empire. They spend their lives far from home and friends, often separated for years from their children, yet they serve their countries no less faithfully than the men, but, unlike the men, without the stimulus of recognition or reward.

Along with their other legends and superstitions, the ancients had a vague tradition of a curious, semi-mythical people, dwelling in an inaccessible region near the Syrtes, who made their homes in the bowels of the earth. They were said to live upon the flesh of snakes and lizards, to practise customs strange beyond belief, and to speak some outlandish language which Herodotus compared to the cry of a bat. As Africa was gradually opened up to civilization these fantastic tales were set down as unfounded myths and were accounted but examples of the folk-lore which accumulates about a mysterious and unknown land. But there the scientists were wrong. For when, in 1869, the first French columns penetrated the great mountain ranges to the southwest of Gabés in their initial attempts to conquer the Sahara, they found the Troglodytes of the ancient tales in the strange inhabitants of the Matmata Plateau.

The Matmata region consists of an isolated, winding, highly mountainous ridge, with numerous rocky spurs, upward of a hundred and twenty-five miles in length. Commencing a score of miles or so to the south of Gabés, it winds southward and eastward across the desert like an enormous snake. On the backbone of this ridge, a quarter of a mile above sea-level, is a vast upland plain completely hemmed in by mountain peaks. Here, in a region of appalling loneliness and desolation, cut off from the outer world by leagues of mountain land and desert, is the home of the Troglodytes, among the strangest of the strange peoples who inhabit this earth.

Provided your car is powerful enough to negotiate the precipitous ascents, and you are prepared to sacrifice its tires and springs, the Troglodyte capital, Bled Kebira, can be reached from Gabés in a long and exceedingly arduous half-day. But this means getting started at the crack of dawn. Until the foot of the mountains is reached the going is good enough, the road zigzagging in long salients across a dusty russet plain. An hour or so of rapid traveling amid clouds of suffocating dust, and then, reaching the foot-hills, the ascent begins. As the car pants upward, the terrain steadily becomes more stoney and broken, the country-side more desolate and forbidding. One moment the tires are gashed by beds of knife-sharp flints; the next they sink deep into patches of yellow sand. The way is not only steep and rough but very narrow, so narrow in places that there is scarcely room between the outer wheels and the edge of the sheer precipice for a starved cat to pass. Barring occasional patches of barley or small groves of discouraged-looking olive-trees, there is no vegetation, and the mountain slopes are as barren as the walls of the Grand Cañon. No people, no houses, no animals, unless we except a few stray goats, are to be seen. Solitude and desolation reign supreme.

Now the ascent becomes so steep that Harvey is compelled to stop at frequent intervals to cool his engine. The rapid reports of the exhaust echo in the still mountain air like the clatter of a machine-gun. Still the interminable trail leads on, dropping down into the beds of dried-up rivers, crossing by narrow bridges the arroyos cut in the soil by smaller torrents, crawling cautiously around rocky shoulders, skirting the brinks of chasms whose walls drop away from our wheels half a hundred fathoms sheer, scaling the face of towering cliffs by a series of narrow shelves hewn from the living rock, but climbing, climbing, always climbing, that portion of the road which is yet to be traversed unwinding itself before us like an endless yellow ribbon as it reaches toward the higher levels. It seems as though we would never reach our destination; but at long last, topping a final rise, we debouch upon a lofty table-land, sprinkled with palms and sparsely covered with ill-nourished grass, with the great peaks of the Djebel Matmata rising in a rocky rampart all around. Bled Kebira, the largest of the troglodyte towns, is on the plateau, just ahead, but to reach the far older and fortified village of Gelaa Matmata, now deserted, we must leave the car and climb another half a thousand feet or so, for it is perched on the very summit of the mountain. Even when we gain this fortress in the clouds there is no sign of human habitation, barring a few fortifications, now in ruins, but the flanks of the mountains are pitted with what appear to be the entrances to gigantic rabbit-burrows, which are in reality the doorways to the former homes of the cave-dwellers.

Though the Matmatas are unquestionably of pure Berber stock, a fine, upstanding people possessed of extraordinary tenacity and courage, their origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. They themselves claim to have been led to this mountain refuge by that remarkable woman, El Kahena, the African Joan of Arc already mentioned, who made her last desperate stand at El Djem after defying for years the Arab invaders of her country. That the Matmatas were originally lowlanders, pasturing their flocks and tending their olive-trees on the rich plains bordering the Syrtes, there is good reason to believe. But, constantly harassed by bands of Arab raiders from Tripolitania and the desert, who burned their towns, drove off their flocks, and killed those whom they did not carry into slavery, the Berbers realized that their only hope of existence lay in seeking refuge amid the wild fastnesses of the Matmata Mountains. Here, within sight of the fertile plains which they had been forced to abandon, they intrenched themselves, and, resisting all attacks of their enemies, succeeded in eking out a precarious existence for centuries, though how they managed to obtain sufficient food remains a mystery. As the years passed, however, they grew weary of their enforced seclusion upon the mountain-top; so, coming to terms with their hereditary enemies, the nomad tribes, they abandoned Gelaa Matmata and descended to the arable plateau, five hundred feet or so lower down, where, in the soft, porous soil, half-clay, half-sandstone, which forms the sides of the hills, they built, or, rather dug themselves, the present town of Bled Kebira.

They continued to live in their subterranean dwellings partly because they had become accustomed to them, no doubt, but primarily because they were still necessary as a defense against marauding bands, for it was not until the French bayonets came that this much persecuted people acquired even a speaking acquaintance with peace and security. Now, their stronghold on the mountain-top long since abandoned, the Matmatas have their chef-lieu at Bled Kebira, where some twelve thousand of them live like moles beneath the surface of the earth. Though Bled Kebira has a population equal to that of many an American community holding a city charter, there is nothing to suggest its presence, for a small, whitewashed mosque and the caserne occupied by a handful of French troops are the only structures above ground.

The troglodyte dwellings of Bled Kebira are extremely difficult to describe because I can think of nothing which will serve as a satisfactory basis of comparison. The method of digging one of these ghars, as they are called, is as follows. Selecting a site where the soil is firm and where there is good drainage, the home-builder proceeds to sink a shaft, perhaps twenty feet square and from twenty to thirty feet deep. The bottom of this shaft is leveled off and forms a patio or courtyard. The next step is to excavate the rooms, the doors of which open on the shaft; some are on the same level as the courtyard, others are higher up and reached by ropes. Finally, a tunnel, sometimes several hundred feet in length, is driven from the courtyard to the surface of the earth, its entrance, usually in a cranny of the hills, secured against intruders by a stoutly timbered door with enormous hinges of hand-wrought iron. Some of these massive doors, like the dwellings to which they gave admittance, were quite obviously of enormous age, possibly a thousand years or more.

The rooms, generally of good size, with vaulted ceilings, were astonishingly neat and clean, their walls whitewashed and decorated with primitive designs in vivid colors; the scanty furniture—beds, tables, and divans—cut from the rock itself. The disadvantage of this is that the furniture cannot be moved, but it has its compensation in the fact that dust cannot be swept, and refractory collar-buttons cannot be lost, under pieces of furniture which rise solidly from the floor, of which, indeed, they are a part. In one dwelling which we visited, that of the sheikh, the bed, which was about the size of a billiard-table, had been plastered over and the plaster whitewashed, and the whitewash, in turn, had been rudely frescoed in brilliant reds and greens. Ranged along one side of the kitchen, which was separated from the bedroom only by a calico curtain, stood great jars of pottery, recalling those in which the Forty Thieves were boiled alive, but here used for such prosaic purposes as the storage of water, olive-oil, and wine.

Though from the open patios, which served as stable-yards for camels, donkeys, goats, sheep, and chickens, a stench rose to high heaven, we were impressed with the scrupulous cleanliness which characterized the interiors of these underground dwellings: the earthen floors had been scrubbed and sanded; the beds were made up with spotless linen; the copper cooking-utensils hanging on the walls had been scoured until they shone like mirrors. Despite the fact that many of these troglodyte dwellings are thirty feet or more below the level of the ground, I should imagine that in dry weather they must be quite comfortable to live in—indifferently lighted, perhaps, but cool in summer and quite immune from the chilling winter winds. But I must confess that I should not care to live in one during the rainy season—and when it rains in Tunisia, it rains—for, though there is a certain amount of drainage, I could see no reason why a really torrential downpour would not transform the central courtyard, which is really nothing but a large well, into a cistern.

In their stooped shoulders and prematurely wrinkled faces the Matmatam women show the effects of their bitter struggle for existence; but some of the young girls were really lovely, with slim, supple figures, clear olive skins, and large, lustrous eyes. At the house of the sheikh, with whom the guide we had brought from Gabés was acquainted, we found his wives and numerous children assembled in the courtyard to greet us; but in most of the other dwellings the women fled into their burrows on our approach and remained concealed until my departure, though, once I had left, they were shyly eager to welcome my wife and daughter, crowding about them, fingering their clothes, and asking innumerable questions.

I had rather expected that the Matmata dwellings would contain some specimens of indigenous art, such as one finds among other very ancient peoples, as, for example, the Hopi. Yet, so far as I could discover, the Troglodytes possess no art of their own. The walls of the tunnel-like entrance to one of their houses, it is true, were decorated with a sort of dado of colored hand-prints, easily recognizable, however, as the hand of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, and hence an Arab form of decoration. The people seem to have an innate if quite undeveloped love for the beautiful, however, as is evidenced by the pride with which they display the paltry trinkets—bits of the cheap pottery common in North Tunisia, gaudy lithographs of Turkish origin, empty wine-bottles with flowers stuck in the necks, looking-glasses, cracked pieces of European chinaware, in one case a tin which had contained a well-known smoking-mixture—which are objets d’art to them. These things are not beautiful, it is true, but many of the objects which we treasure because of their rarity are not beautiful either.

A funeral was held in Bled Kebira while we were there, but on account of the presence of numerous women, and of the fact that the Matmatas object to having their religious ceremonies witnessed by non-Moslems, we could view it only from a distance. The services were conducted in one of the larger ghars, and at their conclusion the coffin, borne on the shoulders of several men, was carried through the winding tunnel to the open air and thence up a precipitous foot-path to the little unkempt cemetery, where deceased Matmatas are laid to rest beneath far less soil than they are accustomed to live under when alive. It was one of the most bizarre spectacles I have ever witnessed: the multitude of white-veiled, white-robed figures issuing in seemingly endless procession from a black hole in the ground, their voices raised in a plaintive, barbaric chant.

“It reminds me,” said Mrs. Powell, “of Doré’s picture of the Day of Judgment, when the sheeted dead arise from their graves.”

Just then there came from the French caserne on the hill the shrill notes of a bugle sounding the noon mess-call.

“Yes,” remarked my daughter, “and there goes Gabriel’s horn!”

Midway between the eastern slopes of the Matmata Plateau and the coast, close to the Tripolitanian border, is Medenine. It is one of the most extraordinary places in the world; I know of nothing even remotely like it. Here too the inhabitants are troglodytes, if by troglodytes are meant those who creep into holes, which is the classic definition. But, whereas the troglodytes of Matmata lives in holes beneath the ground, those of Medenine have their holes above it, in what might be termed desert apartment-houses, four, five, occasionally even six stories in height.

Medenine lies in a shallow depression in the desert, and you come upon it quite unexpectedly as you top a rise in the yellow plain. A curiously uncanny sensation is produced by the first sight of this most amazing city. You rub your eyes and wonder if you are not the victim of a hallucination. You feel that you are very near to the beginning of things. Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee was transported to the Age of Chivalry. But here you are back in the Age of Stone.

The town consists of some two thousand dwellings called rhorfa, which rise from the ground as abruptly as the chimney of a factory. These dwellings are not detached, as in most communities, but are closely packed together in rows and squares. It is next to impossible to find words which will adequately describe them, for, as human habitations, they are absolutely unique. Seen from a distance, they look as much as anything else like enormous sewer-pipes of grayish concrete, ten feet in diameter, a few ranged in rows on the ground, but most of them stacked in tiers which in some cases rise to a height of half a hundred feet.

Though there is no intercommunication, they are built side by side, their walls touching, so that a row of them looks like a series of inverted U’s—⋂⋂⋂⋂⋂⋂⋂⋂⋂⋂⋂⋂ But superimposed on the first row is a second, and on the second row a third, some of those primordial apartment-houses rising to a height of five, and, in a few cases, six stories, with a hundred or more rooms. Perhaps they might best be compared to the tiers of burial vaults which are to be seen in certain Italian campi-santi or, better still, to the cells of a honeycomb.

The walls, of enormously thick rubble roughly plastered over with a sort of adobe, are windowless, each rhorfa obtaining light and air only through the single narrow doorway, not much larger than that of a dog-kennel, about two feet wide and three and a half feet high, or just large enough to permit a man to squeeze through if he enters on his hands and knees. The doors are of wood very stoutly built and secured by enormous wooden bolts. To the right of the door, some two or three feet from it, is the keyhole, which consists of an aperture in the wall just large enough to permit a man to insert his arm. When a troglodyte leaves home his method of locking up the house is a most curious and ingenious one. His key consists of a piece of wood two or three feet long, its end fitted with pegs which exactly correspond in size, number, and position with holes sunk in the end of the bolt. When he is ready to leave he pulls the door to from the outside; then, inserting his arm in the keyhole, he gropes about until the pegs on the key drop into the holes in the bolt, which are spaced differently on each lock, the bolt thus being drawn forward to lock the door, or pushed back to unlock it. The system, though clumsy, is much more effective than it sounds, for the bolt is too far from the opening to permit of its being reached save with the key, and, unless the holes in the one exactly correspond with the pegs on the other, there is no way to gain admittance except by breaking the door down. His door locked, the householder slings his enormous key, as large and heavy as a policeman’s night-stick, over his shoulder by a leathern thong. He is not likely to lose it, or to forget it, and in it he has a formidable weapon. In Medenine, as has been remarked, we are very near the beginning of things, for this is the “key of the house of David,” which Isaiah saw resting on the shoulder of Eliakim, that, in the quaint phraseology of the Scriptures, “he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.”

Even when a Medenine householder returns home completely soused, to put it inelegantly, he has no difficulty in finding his keyhole, which is so large that he could scarcely miss it. But to find the stairs, and, once they are found, to avoid falling down them, is quite another matter, for reaching the door of one of these troglodyte apartments is as hazardous a performance as entering an upper-story window of an American hotel by means of a fireman’s scaling-ladder. Occasionally, but not often, these lofty dwellings are reached by flights of rude stone stairs, extremely steep and narrow and perilously slippery in wet weather. But in most cases the inhabitants have to climb up and down by means of small stones, barely large enough to afford a foothold, which project a few inches from the face of the house. A monkey would experience no difficulty whatsoever in gaining the top floor of one of these singular houses, and neither would an experienced mountain-climber provided he was accustomed to rock-work, but it required all my strength and agility to reach a fifth-floor doorway, and even then I had several narrow escapes from very nasty falls. How a troglodyte who has imbibed over-freely of palm wine manages to get home at all is a mystery, for some of the doors are fifty feet above the ground, and, if his foot slipped, there would be “more work for the undertaker, another little job for the casket-maker.”

What, you may ask, is the raison d’être of these extraordinary habitations? The best reason in the world—self-protection. For it has always been a savage, untamed region, here along the Libyan border, and life was one desperate, unending struggle for existence until the white helmets came. There was, it is to be presumed, a semblance of law and order under the stern rule of Rome, but when the Roman power collapsed the land was overrun by the Vandals, and after them by the Arabs, and in the wake of Arabs came veiled raiders from the desert and loot-hungry corsairs from the coast. Hence it was essential that the inhabitants devise a form of dwelling which could be successfully defended against marauders, no matter how numerous or how well armed. And the rhorfa answered the purpose admirably, for, being built of masonry, they cannot be burned down; the walls are of such thickness as to be proof against anything short of shell-fire; they are so arranged in squares and rows that a withering cross-fire can be brought to bear upon assailants; and they are easy to defend, for the ground floors are used only as granaries and storehouses, and the householder, living high above the ground, has only to shoot down through his keyhole, or to batter out the brains of the first enemy who attempts to enter, in the unlikely event that the stout door should be broken in.

Not far from Medenine is the smaller community of Metameur, which is a fortress rather than a village. Here all the houses are built in the form of a hollow square, inclosing a spacious courtyard, from which they rise to a height of five or six stories. As has already been mentioned, none of the houses have windows, and so the outside of the square is merely a blank wall of rough stone covered with cement, too lofty to be scaled and too thick to be breached except by modern artillery. In the center of the courtyard is a well, which insures the inhabitants of a water-supply should they be besieged. Access to the courtyard is gained through a tunnel-shaped entrance, so low that one has to crawl through it almost on all fours. But once inside the inhabitants were perfectly secure, as long as their food and water held out, for there was no means by which an enemy could dislodge them. To me these troglodyte towns were particularly interesting because they illustrate how, even in a region wholly destitute of natural defenses, a primitive but ingenious people can protect themselves when dire necessity compels.

As, even to-day, the southern marches of Tunisia are not wholly immune from attacks by bands of raiders from the desert, Medenine is garrisoned by a considerable force of méharistes, tirailleurs, spahis, and chasseurs d’Afrique, whose trim white barracks are in the outskirts of the town. Rising beyond the squat, vault-like rows of rhorfa, perhaps the most primitive dwellings in the world, and in striking contrast to them, are the slender masts and cobweb-like aërials of the military radio station—the last word in twentieth-century civilization.

Circumstances made it necessary for us to lunch at Medenine. It was the last place on earth where I should have expected to get a decent meal, for the single European café in the town was at first sight anything but appetizing. But appearances are sometimes deceiving, for, as it turned out, the proprietor had once been a chef in a famous Paris restaurant, and he set before us one of the best-cooked déjeuners that we had in Africa. My recollections of it are particularly vivid because for the modest sum of ninety cents I obtained a bottle of fine old Château Yquem!

In pushing so far southward into Tunisia we had a double-barreled motive: to see the troglodyte communities which I have just described, and to visit Djerba, the Island of the Lotus-Eaters. This fabled isle, so alluringly described in the Odyssey, was known to those mariners of ancient Greece who ventured beyond the rim of their world before the dawn of history, and the reports which they brought back served as foundation for the epic tales of Jason and Ulysses. There the Argonauts dwelt for a time in happy idleness; there they ate of the lotus and the sweet fruit of the date-palm; there they found a land where it was always afternoon and life passed like a dream.

Djerba, which in ancient times was connected with the mainland by a causeway, lies within cannon-shot of the Tunisian coast. It can be reached in a few hours from Gabés by a coasting-steamer, small and none too clean; but we chose the longer and more interesting land route, through Medenine and Zarzis, once an important seaport of the Romans, to the tip of the peninsula, whence there is a ferry service across the narrow strait, here barely four miles wide, to El Kantara.

The French resident-general at Tunis had notified the controleur civil at Houmt-Souk, the island capital, of our intended visit, and had obtained the promise of a launch to take us across the strait to El Kantara and a motor-car to take us across the island. But when we arrived at the place of embarkation, marked only by a police post and a small stone pier, no sign of a launch was to be seen. After several hours spent in fruitless attempts to reach Houmt-Souk by telephone, we arranged to be ferried across to El Kantara by an Arab boatman, a swarthy, black-browed ruffian who, if appearances count for anything, must have been descended from the pirates who once terrorized this coast. Judging from the price demanded, I had assumed that we were chartering the whole boat, a broad-bowed, clumsy craft with an enormous lateen-sail, but, once we had paid our passage-money, the skipper insisted on taking aboard not only a varied assortment of lousy native passengers but donkeys, goats, sheep, chickens, even a camel, as well, crowding them in until the boat looked—and smelled—like Noah’s famous vessel. But eventually the tawny lateen-sail was hoisted with much shouting and we got under way, a leaning boat on the tranquil turquoise waters, with a palm-fringed strip of shore to lead us on. As a matter of fact, we could almost have walked across, for the water of the strait is very shallow, and the stones of the great Roman causeway which once connected the island with the mainland were plainly visible, a foot or so beneath the surface.

We landed at El Kantara (the name means “bridge”), the ancient Meninx. Once a magnificent city, as attested by the sculptured stones, broken columns, and fragments of marble sarcophagi which still strew the site, it is now a mere cluster of mud hovels inhabited by native sponge-fishers, the sole Europeans in the place being the French douanier and his young and pretty wife. The controleur civil had telephoned from Houmt-Souk that a car had been sent for us, but as it had not shown up and as it was now long past noon and breakfast ancient history, the douanier took pity on us and invited us into his little house, bringing out for our entertainment a plate of biscuits and a bottle of the rather pungent cordial called Cap Corse. When at last the car sent by the controleur made its appearance—it belonged, as might have been expected, to the ubiquitous Ford family of Detroit—the plate had been emptied, the bottle had been drained, and the hospitality of our host and hostess had been strained to the breaking-point, I fear.

It is about five-and-twenty kilometers across the island, the smooth white road skirting the edges of venerable olive-groves or running between the walls of prosperous farms. I had expected to find a rugged land, with lofty peaks and brawling streams and leafy glens and lush green valleys, for Homer speaks of the “three mountain peaks” and the “gleaming river” and the high cascades of “downward smoke”; but there was not a hill or valley worthy of the name; not a single stream of any sort, let alone a river; nor was there a mountain anywhere in sight. Physiographically, Djerba is, as might be expected, merely a continuation of the mainland, but, unlike the mainland, every foot of its gently rolling surface has been irrigated and cultivated and fertilized until its naturally arid soil has attained an amazing degree of productiveness. Numerous palms give it a semi-tropical appearance; the fields are carpeted with wild flowers; the climate is delightful; and the vast groves of old, old olive-trees provide ample shade; so it is easy to understand how the Hellenic mariners, coming here from the bleaker shores of the Ægean, thought it was a paradise indeed.

The villages are immaculately neat and clean; the little white-walled houses rise from blazing gardens whose fragrance fills the air; the fortified farmsteads, built for defense, are cultivated with meticulous care; half a million olive-trees and three times that number of palms cover the island with a sea of verdure; and in the spring, when we were there, the poppies overlaid as with a scarlet mantle the green of the sprouting grain. Barring only central Morocco, I have never seen any country where wild flowers grow in such amazing variety and profusion. During a brief halt while our driver was changing tires Mrs. Powell gathered specimens of twenty different kinds in half as many minutes. In places they were so thickly intermingled that the country-side seemed to be covered with a gorgeous Oriental rug.

The islanders are a simple, friendly folk, willing, industrious, and hospitable. They have numerous industries, including sponge-fishing, the making of oil, the manufacture of a kind of white pottery, and the weaving of the silk and woolen tissues known as burnous stuffs, though agriculture is their chief pursuit. There are few evidences of poverty, the inhabitants being, on the whole, extremely prosperous, with quite a sprinkling of men who, according to island standards at least, are wealthy. In dress they are distinctive from their fellows of the mainland, the men wearing the short brown coats of loosely woven homespun which, being characteristic of the island, are called djerbas: the short but extremely baggy Cretan trousers, so loose in the seat that it is often used for carrying groceries, chickens, and other objects; the whole being topped off by the jaunty Tunisian chéchia with its long blue tassel. The women, when at work, wear dresses of blue cotton and broad-brimmed hats of braided straw with enormously high crowns, so that, seen from a little distance, they look like Chinese coolies. They are of Berber stock and commonly speak a Berber idiom, though the use of Arabic is rapidly increasing. Curiously enough—for in most things they are tolerant and easy-going—the islanders are Wahabis, the most fanatical of the various sects of Moslems. The Puritans of Islam, they practise a faith of the utmost austerity: they frown on all forms of religious pomp and circumstance; their places of worship are of the simplest character, destitute of all decoration; and they carry their insistence on “the only God” so far as to deny divinity to Mohammed.

Djerba has a large and prosperous Jewish population, Hara Srira, a little town in the center of the island, having been a place of pilgrimage for pious Jews for untold centuries. In the middle of the town is the synagogue, a very ancient building, its interior being most curiously decorated in marbles of various colors, crude but interesting tiles, and carved and painted wood. The chief rabbi, a white-bearded patriarch in flowing robes who might have posed for a portrait of Moses, met us at the door and conducted us through the semi-darkness of the nave to a sort of sacristy at the back of the high altar, where he proudly displayed the ancient manuscripts and massive silver plate which are the synagogue’s chief treasures. He showed me one splendid volume, a copy of the Talmud, I believe, its cover studded with semiprecious stones, which had been in this same synagogue for close on fifteen hundred years; others of the sacred manuscripts were engrossed on long rolls of vellum which were contained in cylindrical cases of silver, curiously chased and wrought. Across the street from the synagogue is the pilgrims’ house, a kind of religious hostelry, like those common in medieval Europe, containing hundreds of small rooms, not much more than cells, opening on a spacious inner court. Here, packed in like sardines, a dozen or more to a room, are lodged the thousands of pilgrims who, during the season of the pilgrimage, flock to Djerba not only from Tunisia and Tripolitania but from all of the Mediterranean countries. I once had the unforgettable experience of crossing the Mediterranean on a ship loaded with Russian pilgrims bound for Jerusalem, so I had no difficulty in imagining what the hostel at Hara Srira must be like—and smell like!—when, in the heat of an African summer, it is packed to the doors with the pious but unwashed.

Houmt-Souk, the island capital, is a charming, restful little town with fine, broad streets, white houses embowered in flowers, and a jardin public where a French horticultural expert does interesting things with shrubs and trees. On the beach, not far away, stands an old fort, a relic of the Spanish power, built some two hundred years before Columbus sailed westward out of Palos, with carronades still frowning from its bastions. But the rule of the Dons in Djerba came to a bloody end in 1560, when a Turkish squadron under Piali Pasha and the corsair Dragut annihilated the Spanish fleet and took the Spanish fort, along with five thousand prisoners. They were massacred to the last man, and with their bones was raised a great mound, twenty feet in height, Skull Fort, it was called, which stood nigh the beach until the middle of the last century, when it was pulled down at the instance of the Christian community and the bones given decent interment in the Catholic cemetery.

The single inn boasted by Houmt-Souk is quite impossible, but we were befriended by fortune in the persons of the controleur civil and his charming wife, who took compassion on us and invited us to stay at the residency. After dinner the caïd, who is the head of the Moslem community, the mayor, the doctor, and a few others dropped in for bridge, followed by music and dancing. The caïd, a swarthy, portly, black-mustached Arab in fez, dinner-coat, scarlet sash, and baggy Turkish trousers, was a most picturesque figure, somewhat reminiscent of one of the characters in Anthony Hope’s “Phroso.” He had been to Paris, could converse entertainingly on many subjects, and played a brilliant game of bridge, as I discovered when he bid six spades against my five no trumps—and made it.

I had not forgotten that we had come to Djerba because of its renown as the home of the Lotophagi, and I had determined to do a little lotus-eating myself, provided, of course, I could get some lotus. To leave Djerba without tasting its lotus would be equivalent, it seemed to me, to visiting Astrakhan without trying its caviar or Mocha without sampling its coffee. But getting the lotus was not so simple a matter as I had assumed. Neither the douanier at El Kantara nor the man who drove the car nor the landlady of the inn had so much as heard of it. The controleur ventured the opinion that the lotus described by Homer was nothing more or less than the date, which here grows in great profusion, and cited several authorities in support of his contention. The doctor reminded us that the lotus of the Egyptians was a variety of water-lily, and that there were no water-lilies in Djerba for the excellent reason that there was no water in which to grow them. But the caïd maintained that the ancients had reference to a prickly shrub, indigenous to the island, known to botanists as Zizyphus Lotus, but locally as jujubier, from whose sweet-tasting fruit the natives have been accustomed from time out of mind to ferment a highly intoxicating drink. He promised, moreover, to procure me a sample of it, and the following day he kept his word. A single draft of that fiery liquor did more than all the Homeric verse I ever read to give me an understanding of the strange actions attributed to Ulysses. No wonder that he forgot his friends in Hellas, that he lost all ambition to go back and build up ruined Troy, after having had a dozen gourds or so of that prehistoric white mule. All he wanted to do was to stretch himself in the shade of a palm and sleep it off.

Instead of returning to the Tunisian mainland as we had come, we chose another route, motoring to Adjim, on the southern coast of the island, and crossing thence by sailing-boat to Djorf. It was a holiday, and our fellow-passengers had evidently imbibed too freely of the juice of the lotus, for they were boisterous when we started, and when, half-way across, the skipper attempted to collect their fares, they became threatening and abusive. The argument culminated in a fair imitation of an old-time sea-battle—just such an episode, I imagine, as Ulysses and his companions would have loved—the shipmaster and his sailors beating the obstreperous passengers over the head with the oars, while the cargo of braying donkeys, bleating sheep, and cackling fowls contributed to the confusion. It was most entertaining for a time, for no one offered to molest us, but the boat was small and laden to the water’s edge, the wind was rising, and the sea, like the passengers, was beginning to get distinctly rough. Under the circumstances, I was glad to see Harvey and the faithful Cadillac awaiting us on the shore.

CHAPTER IX ACROSS THE SHATS TO THE SANDY SEA

To one who has been brought up in the belief that cleanliness is next to godliness, the most unpleasant feature of desert travel is the lack of facilities for bathing. You never appreciate the luxury of a tub, soap, and an unlimited supply of warm water until you find yourself in a hot and dusty land where they are unobtainable. The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique—or, as it is usually referred to in North Africa, the “Transat”—has supplied this need in the score or more of admirably equipped hotels which it has established along the main routes of travel, but, once you leave the beaten paths, a bath-tub, or the water with which to fill it, is as unobtainable as ice in Hades. In the Hôtel de l’Oasis at Gabés, and again at the residency at Houmt-Souk, we had been provided with large, circular receptacles of tin into which the Arab servants had poured an inch or so of tepid water, but these extremely sketchy ablutions had about as much resemblance to a real bath as the shivering damsel depicted in “September Morn” has to the surf-riders at Waikiki. So when I learned that the hot springs of El Hamma, a little oasis town on the route to Tozeur, had been famous as a bathing-resort ever since Roman times, I insisted that we spend the night there instead of at Gabés.

Though spring was now well advanced, and though we were in the edge of the Sahara itself, it was a cold gray day when we set out for El Hamma, and the biting, dust-laden wind which swept across the steppes struck through our heavy rugs and greatcoats and chilled us to the marrow. Shivering, I thought wryly of our friends at home who were doubtless picturing us as sweltering beneath the torrid sun of Africa. Why the Transat considers it worth its while to operate a rest-house at so remote a spot as El Hamma, where European visitors are few and far between, I cannot imagine. But there it was, a Mexican-like, one-story structure of adobe, quite unprepossessing as to its exterior but really charming within, its patio or inner courtyard inclosed by a sort of cloister with Moorish columns from which opened the rooms. In the center of the courtyard there was a small pool and fountain, flanked by palm-trees; and later on, when the weather became warmer, there would be a profusion of flowers. The place was in charge of a Frenchman who had received his culinary training in a Paris restaurant, an exiled Boniface whose sole object in life appeared to be to make his rare guests comfortable and contented. The sight of European faces and the sound of European voices must have been very welcome to him, for he was the only white man in the town.

The hammam, we learned, was about half a mile away, on the other side of the village. Guided by a domestic from the rest-house, we lost no time in starting thither, for we were tired, chilled, and thickly veneered with desert dust and looked forward eagerly to the luxury of immersing ourselves to the chin in steaming water. Remembering its fame under the Romans, I had pictured in my mind’s eye a rather imposing place, with comfortable dressing-rooms and, no doubt, a series of marble pools and steam-rooms such as one finds in native bathing establishments of the better class throughout the East. A rickety wooden door in a high mud wall was unlocked by an Arab attendant, who ushered us into a spacious inclosure, nearly the whole of which was occupied by a stone-bordered tank. Everything was in the state of untidiness and disrepair characteristic of Arab countries. The tank was filled with boiling water, it is true, from which rose clouds of steam, but its surface was covered with a thick green scum, and the place reeked with the noxious fumes of sulphur. The “dressing-rooms” consisted of a series of cubicles, floored with stone and thatched with palm-fronds and so cold and cheerless that the mere thought of disrobing in them made me shiver. Though, as it happened, no one was using the hammam at the time, the bathing was, I gathered, extremely mixed, Europeans and natives, any one, in fact, who could afford to pay the fee of a few francs, mingling in the pool in a state of complete nudity. I have spent too much of my life in frontier regions to be finical, but one has to draw the line somewhere. Our decision to abandon the idea of bathing was hastened when we saw three large gray water-rats furtively emerge from one of the dressing-rooms.

This was, we learned, the bathing-establishment de luxe of El Hamma, patronized only by the wealthier natives; the general run of Arabs utilize the numerous hot streams which meander in all directions through the town. These streams are supplied by springs which gush from sandy hillocks, and almost all of them are at a very hot temperature, often at the boiling-point. As in the case of the other hot springs found throughout Tunisia, most of them have medicinal properties and are said to be highly efficacious in the treatment of certain ailments, a fact which explains, no doubt, the Roman settlements in remote parts of the country, for, particularly during the luxurious and dissolute days of the empire, the Romans, as is well known, were subject to gout, rheumatism, eczema, and syphilitic diseases. The Arabs, who are extremely superstitious, assert that the springs of El Hamma were originally cold and devoid of medicinal properties, but that a beneficent marabout, a holy man of exceptional sanctity, was persuaded to spit into them one day, whereupon they became hot and mineralized!

In places the streams have eroded narrow gulches in the soft soil, and these the natives have here and there roofed over with palm-branches and matting so as to afford a measure of privacy, of which, however, they did not appear to avail themselves, for on every hand we encountered Arab men and boys splashing about and soaping themselves in the steaming waters, stark naked but quite unashamed. In a somewhat more secluded spot, where one of the streams broadened out into a fair-sized pool, was a bath reserved for the other sex, its banks dotted with women and girls in various stages of dishabille. Despite all that has been written about the excessive modesty of Moslem women-folk, who, when on the street, swathe themselves in shapeless garments and cover their faces to the eyes, the slim brown maidens of El Hamma disrobed themselves before us with utter unconcern, displaying their charms with as little reserve as the show-girls in Earl Carroll’s “Vanities.” Some of the younger ones were as graceful as the bronzes in a museum, with slim rounded bodies and firm pointed breasts, their clear olive skins suffused with pink and as smooth and lustrous as satin. They completely ignored our presence, disporting themselves in the pool with the abandon of water-nymphs, until I indiscreetly unslung my camera, whereupon a Cerberus in the person of a wrinkled crone suddenly appeared with a cudgel and, loosing a torrent of shrill Arabic invective, drove us away. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it struck me that the nymphs were sorry to see us go.

Dinner was awaiting us when we returned to the rest-house. It was a meal which prompted me to raise my hat, metaphorically speaking, to the genius and organization of the Transat, which feeds and lodges the traveler along the fringe of the Sahara as efficiently as Fred Harvey does along the line of the Santa Fé. We had vegetable soup, and fish fresh-caught in the Gulf of Gabés, and roast lamb (which is to all Moslem lands what roast beef is to England), and a crisp green salad, and for dessert such a soufflé as only a French chef can produce, the whole topped off by a cobwebbed bottle of Mouton Rothschild and the syrup-like Arab coffee. Then we huddled about a meager wood fire—for wood is a luxury which must be use sparingly in the desert—to smoke and sip our liqueurs and peruse two-months-old copies of “L’Illustration” and “Le Rire” until it was decently late enough to go to bed.

The bedrooms were as damp and chilly as a refrigerator, but, having in mind the tragic experience of three Americans at this same rest-house some weeks before, we did not insist on any attempt to heat them. The Americans in question had, despite the warnings of the Arab servants, ordered no less than four charcoal braziers lighted in their room. Then, in order still further to raise the temperature, for it was a bitterly cold night, they had proceeded to close all the doors and windows, thereby transforming the room into what very nearly proved to be a lethal chamber. When their chauffeur sought to arouse them the following morning there was no response. The door was broken down, and the travelers were found unconscious in their beds, overcome by the charcoal fumes and at the point of death from asphyxiation.

We breakfasted by candle-light and then set off into the chilly dawn. Harvey had urged on us the wisdom of starting early, for the way to Tozeur lies across the salt lakes of the Djerid, a dismal and treacherous morass which is none too safe by day and exceedingly perilous after nightfall. These salt lakes form one of the most singular features of the Tunisian Sahara, stretching in a charm which has only two short breaks right across the southern end of the regency from the Gulf of Gabés to the frontier of Algeria, which they penetrate for a considerable distance. They are called by the French (with their usual inaccuracy of spelling and pronunciation) chotts, whereas the word should really be the Arabic shat, the native term for a broad canal, a lake, an estuary. Strictly speaking, however, the shats are not lakes at all at the present day, but shallow depressions, some feet below sea-level, which during more than half the year are expanses of dried mud thickly incrusted with white salt, this saline veneer giving them at a little distance the appearance of broad sheets of ice or water. During the winter, however, when the effect of the rare rains is felt, the shats frequently contain several feet of water, which, by liquefying the mud into a quicksand, makes them quite impassable for man or beast. But during the other seven months of the year they can be crossed on foot or horseback, and, when the sun has baked the surface to a sufficient hardness, a motor-car may venture on them with reasonable safety.

Even during the dry months, however, the shats are exceedingly treacherous; surfaces which give every indication of solidity at a few yards’ distance are often but thin crusts which will give way without the slightest warning beneath the weight of animals or men, precipitating them into a sea of slime from which escape is frequently impossible. One hears innumerable stories of the tragedies which have been enacted in the shats. “A caravan of ours,” relates one Arab writer, “had to cross the shat one day; it was composed of a thousand baggage-camels. Unfortunately one of the beasts strayed from the path, and all the others followed it. Nothing in the world could be swifter than the manner in which the crust yielded and engulfed them; then it became like what it was before, as if the thousand camels had never existed.”

It seems probable that at no very distant period, as time is measured by geologists, the shats formed an arm of the Mediterranean, for, as has already been remarked, they are several feet below its level, and shell-fossils in great quantities have been found in them. Unfed by tributary rivers, this inlet gradually contracted and silted up. Meantime the sand-banks extended across its mouth until they joined, whereupon, cut off altogether from the sea, the waters rapidly evaporated under the fierce African sun, leaving the chain of saucer-like depressions which we see to-day. Confirmation of this theory is found in the legend which exists among the desert tribes, of a sea, with ports and ships, which once stretched across the northern end of the Sahara from the shores of the Syrtes to the foot of the Aurés; this Arab legend is corroborated by Greek myth; and support is lent to both by the findings of the scientists.

By some authorities this one-time Saharan sea has been identified with the semi-mythical Lake Tritonis, in whose foul depths dwelt the old sea-god Triton, who, it will be remembered, befriended Jason and his Argonauts. According to Greek mythology, the Argo, while on her homeward voyage from Colchis, was driven south by unfavorable winds to the coast of Libya, the little vessel eventually becoming entangled in the ooze of an inland sea. Here the Hellenic adventurers were entertained for a time by certain alluring nymphs of the neighborhood—ancestresses, no doubt, of those whom I saw disporting themselves in the pool at El Hamma—but were rescued by Triton, the patron deity of seafarers, who guided them to the open sea again. Merely a fable, you say? Well, perhaps. But don’t be too certain. For, when you stop to think about it, there is nothing inherently improbable in the narrative that has been handed down to us of the wanderings of a Hellenic sea-adventurer named Jason, who, with an equally adventurous crew, set out from Greece in quest of gold (the ancients were accustomed to gather alluvial gold in sheep-skins; hence, the Golden Fleece), just as the Argonauts of a later day set out for the gold-fields of California. Their frail craft driven from its course by a Mediterranean norther, the exhausted mariners eagerly availed themselves of the shelter offered by an arm of the sea which opened from the Syrtis Minor, now known as the Gulf of Gabés; but the waters grew shallower as they sailed eastward, the sand-bars more frequent, and finally the Argo went hard and fast aground. This much being admitted, surely it is quite within the bounds of probability that some wild-looking native fisherman, bearing the three-pronged fish-spear, or trident, which has always been associated with the sea-god, and which is commonly used in those parts to-day, offered his services as a pilot and helped them out of their difficulties. The truth of the matter is that most of the Greek myths, when stripped of the fanciful embroideries with which seamen of all periods have been prone to embellish their tales, will be found to have a very substantial substratum of fact.

Those of the elder generation will doubtless recall the scheme, widely discussed in the early eighties, which was deceptively styled “the flooding of the Sahara.” Its author, Colonel François Roudaire, maintained that, by connecting the shats with the Mediterranean at a point a few miles to the north of Gabés, it would be possible to create an inland sea with an average depth of seventy-eight feet and an area of more than three thousand square miles, or nearly twice the size of Great Salt Lake in Utah. Ferdinand de Lesseps reported favorably on the proposed enterprise, which was based on the following facts. The Gulf of Gabés is separated by a sandy ridge one hundred and fifty feet high and thirteen miles across from the Shat-el-Fejej, a depression which extends into the Shat-el-Djerid which in its turn is separated by a still narrower ridge from the Shat Gharsa. The Shat Gharsa is succeeded westward by a chain of smaller depressions, and beyond them lies the Shat Melrir, whose northwestern end is not far from the Algerian town of Biskra. Were these shats connected and flooded, the Algerian hinterland would be brought into direct communication with the sea. De Lesseps estimated that the work could be completed in five years’ time at a cost of about thirty million dollars, and on the strength of this a company was formed to carry the project out. But with the death of Colonel Roudaire and the odium attaching to all enterprises with which de Lesseps was associated as a result of the Panama scandals, the scheme fell into abeyance. The company became simply an agricultural concern, devoting its energies to the creation of oases by the sinking of artesian wells. In view, however, of the pronounced interest which the French are now taking in the development of their North African possessions, a revival of the enterprise may be looked for in the not far distant future, and the lost sea the Argo sailed long, long ago may again become a fact.

We sighted the shats when about a half-day out from El Hamma, whence our way had led across a most dismal and depressing land, sans inhabitants and sans vegetation. The stony plain which we have been traversing since daybreak now broke away in a long, irregular slant, sloping down to the banks of what appeared to be a broad river of ice. The illusion was perfect. Even in the Syrian Desert, famous for its mirages, I have never seen anything so deceiving. Sweeping in either direction in spacious curves to the horizon, its level surface twinkling and flashing in the sunlight until one is blinded by the glare, this amazing phenomenon looks for all the world like a mighty frozen river winding out of the nowhere into the unknown. The brooding silence, the utter solitude, the ancient myths associated with it, the feeling of eeriness and oppression—all these served to recall that other mystery-enshrouded region described by Matthew Arnold:

As we rolled cautiously out upon the surface of the shats the illusion of an ice-field gradually disappeared, and I would have taken an oath that we were approaching a broad sheet of water. Even Harvey was deceived and apprehensive, speculating uneasily on its probable depth and on whether we should be able to get through. Yet, like the lake-mirages of Arabia, the water seemed always to keep just ahead of us, receding as we advanced, tantalizingly beckoning us on. That others had preceded us across the shats was evidenced by the numerous imprints of camels’ feet in the yielding soil, and by the stakes with which the méharistes of the Camel Corps had marked the route. These we followed meticulously, as, in the Alps, one follows the red-painted stones which show the way across a glacier. Nor was it reassuring to note here and there the tracks of animals which had strayed from the beaten path; as there were no return tracks, it was to be assumed that they had been engulfed in the hungry quicksands. To venture upon the shats with so heavy a car as ours involved, as I knew full well, a certain measure of risk, and I experienced a distinct feeling of relief when we gained the other side.

Now we were in the Djerid, as the Arabs call the oasis-sprinkled region immediately to the south of the shats. Djerid is the Arabic for palm-frond, and, inferentially, for palm-grove, the name being given to this tract of sand because of the numerous oases which dot it, in the words of some old writer, like the spots on a leopard’s skin. To those who have obtained their ideas of the desert from motion-pictures (made in California) and certain popular but quite inaccurate works of fiction, the word “oasis” conveys a picture of a small patch of vegetation, some scattered clumps of palm-trees, a limpid pool, and, perhaps, a few striped Arab tents, the whole surrounded by a sea of yellow sand. The description is accurate enough as far as it goes, perhaps, but it should be understood that oases are not necessarily of small area. Many of them, on the contrary, are of the size of American counties, with numerous villages, extensive systems of lakes and streams, and vast forests of date-palms. Indeed, some of the great oases of the Inner Sahara, such as Gourara, Tuat, Tafilet, Tidikelt, and Timbuktu, are as large as the State of Rhode Island and support considerable populations, both sedentary and floating, for the larger oases are nearly always important centers of the caravan trade.

Our immediate objective, our jumping-off place for the country of the great dunes, was Tozeur, a sand-locked oasis town built on the narrow isthmus which separates the Shat-el-Djerid from the Shat Gharsa. Tozeur is one of the most beautiful, prosperous, and interesting oases in the Tunisian Sahara, its ten score springs supplying a perfect network of streams, rivulets, and irrigation canals, which in turn support upward of half a million date-palms. Seven little villages nestle amid this palm-forest, the tops of the trees, when seen from a little distance peeping above the intervening sand-dunes, looking like feathered bonnets on the heads of a savage army.

Though a site so lavishly supplied with water, and commanding the great trade-routes from Carthage and Cirta to the south, must have been occupied and cultivated since the very earliest times, the origin of Tozeur is hidden behind the misty curtains of antiquity. It was evidently a place of considerable importance in the days of Ptolemy, who calls it Tisouros; in the depths of its palm-groves one is shown the remains of what was once a Roman watch-tower, later a Byzantine campanile, then a Moslem minaret, and is now a crumbling ruin; it was the scene of many bloody and stirring incidents during the Fatimite wars of the ninth and tenth centuries; in 1068 the Arab geographer Bekri wrote that almost every day caravans of a thousand camels or more left Tozeur laden with dates. Then, for eight hundred years, it seems to have dropped from sight, “the world forgetting and by the world forgot.” But now it is coming into its own again. Already a narrow-gage railway has been pushed southward, across the steppes, across the shats, through Gafsa and Metaloui, and now the hoot of the tin-pot, ten-mile-an-hour locomotive is echoed by the palm-groves of Tozeur. In preparation for the expected tide of tourist travel the Transat has erected in the edge of the oasis a fine modern hotel, with French-made furniture, and porcelain bath-tubs with hot and cold running water, and excellent table d’hôte meals, and a spacious terrace where in the evenings the guests may lounge in deep cane chairs over their coffee, listening to native music and gazing dreamily into the brooding, star-lit desert. And from here set out the great Renault twelve-wheelers, which churn their way across the sandy sea to Touggourt, to Ourgla, to Ghardaia, and beyond. A few more years, a very few, and Tozeur, so long a wild and woolly frontier town, will be as sophisticated—and as spoiled—as Biskra.

I think I have already remarked that Tozeur has upward of half a million date-palms, most of them of the deglat variety, whose luscious, semi-transparent, amber-colored fruit melts in the mouth like so much honey. These date-palms form a veritable forest, along whose paths you may wander for hours and never weary of its beauty. And in your ears is always the pleasant sound of running water. Overhead the palm-tops interlace to form a continuous canopy of glossy green, through whose interstices the sun sifts to carpet the ground with shadows as delicate as lace. Beneath the palms, peach and apricot and almond trees blossom in pink and snowy clouds, and the brown earth beneath is thickly inlaid with the green patina of gardens and little patches of sprouting grain; for land is so scarce and valuable in the oases that every foot is cultivated with almost pathetic care, the owners grudging even the narrow paths which separate their holdings.

Quite unforgettable is the memory of my first excursion into the green depths of Tozeur. All about me the stately date-palms rose in a wilderness of vertical lines. Fascinating brooks gurgled across my path to lose themselves amid the trees. The air was heavy with the fragrance of peach and orange blossoms. Toiling amid the groves were bronzed, bare-limbed, brawny men in snowy turbans. Groups of tattooed women in flowing garments of blue homespun shuffled by, baskets of produce balanced on their heads, their heavy necklaces and anklets tinkling. Bathing in a secluded pool were some naked nut-brown maids who, uttering cries of feigned dismay, fled precipitately at our approach. From the leafy depths beyond came the plaintive strains of some reed instrument. My guide said that it was an Arab boy tootling on a native flute. But I knew better. The music I heard came from the Pipes of Pan.

CHAPTER X THE CONQUEST OF THE SAHARA

The ring of colonies, regencies, protectorates, spheres of influence, military districts, and mandated territories which comprise France’s colonial empire on the continent of Africa have the Sahara for their core. Their front windows overlook the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the Senegal, the Niger, and the Congo, but in every case their back doors open upon the desert. The linking of these distant and disconnected possessions, which have so long beckoned to each other across the enormous gulf, is, then, the ultimate aim of the French empire-builders; and every move which France has made on the checker-board of Africa during the last half-century or more has had in view such a consolidation. In other words, it has long since been realized by the government at Paris that the Sahara must be made a means of communication rather than of obstruction if the republic’s vast holdings in the Dark Continent are to be an empire in anything save name.

No nation was ever confronted with a task of such titanic dimensions nor one calling for such patience, energy, and courage; not England in India, nor Russia in Siberia, nor the United States beyond the Mississippi. But the reward is commensurate with the task, for if France succeeds in subjugating the Sahara, and thereby bringing into easy communication with each other those of her possessions which abut upon it, she will have created a continuous and homogeneous overseas domain, approximately equivalent in area to the continent of Europe, sweeping almost without a break from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Guinea and the Congo, from the Atlantic to the valley of the Nile.

Though the French had established themselves at the mouth of the Senegal about the same time that the Dutch founded their colony of New Netherland at the mouth of the Hudson, it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that they awoke to a realization of the opportunities which awaited them across the Middle Sea. The first step on the road to empire was the conquest of Algeria, which may be said to have been concluded by the submission of Abd-el-Kader in 1847. But even then France did not become alive to her imperial destiny, the colonization of the newly acquired territory across the Mediterranean at first appearing as little more than a means toward the extinction of pauperism in the mother-country. Not until the tribes of the Oued Rir rose in revolt was France introduced to the desert. Laghouat was seized by a flying column in 1852. The tricolor was raised over Ourgla the following year. In 1854 the victory of Meggarine brought about the submission of Touggourt. As the frontier had now been pushed nearly four hundred miles south of the Mediterranean, the work of sinking wells to revive certain of the decaying oases was immediately undertaken and met with conspicuous success. France was beginning to get acquainted with the desert, which was found to be not quite the utter void that had been supposed. In some parts oases dotted its surface, and its surface was crisscrossed by the routes of caravans, which in the old days had carried on a thriving trade between the Sudan and the cities of the Barbary Coast. Frenchmen of enterprise and vision began to see that the Sahara offered possibilities after all, and steps were taken toward a still wider occupation.

This movement was temporarily halted by the disastrous war with Prussia and the collapse of the Second Empire, but the echoes of the Commune had scarcely died away before the empire-builders were again at work, building up in Africa a new and greater France. In 1873 General Gallifet entered El Golea. And in 1881 the proclamation of a protectorate over Tunisia, which Italy had earmarked for her own, gave the world its first hint of the scope of France’s African ambitions.

Meantime a similar spirit of expansion was manifesting itself along the southern borders of the future colonial empire. Guinea and the Ivory Coast had been annexed in 1843. The expeditions of Savargnan de Brazza in the late seventies and early eighties won for France the vast territory which is now known as French Equatorial Africa. In 1887 the Binger expedition gave a decided stimulus to French enterprise in West Africa by linking together the hinterlands of Senegambia and the Ivory Coast. French gunboats were a-prowl up the Niger and the Senegal seeking further opportunities to plant the tricolor. Thenceforward the occupation of the interior was swift and uninterrupted, a long series of expeditions pushing the French frontiers northward and eastward until they occupied the whole bend of the Niger and flowed around the British colony of Nigeria to join, at Lake Tchad, with the French Congo advancing from the south. From all sides the French colonies, north, west, and south, were pushing forward in a simultaneous advance. The foundations of this vast colonial structure having thus been completed, the corner-stone was officially laid in 1890, when, by the signing of the Anglo-French Convention, England formally recognized France’s claim to all that portion of the Sahara lying between the Algerian-Tunisian frontiers on the north and a line drawn from Say, a town on the Niger, to Lake Tchad on the south. When, by this treaty, France secured her claim to the Sahara, Lord Salisbury remarked dryly that “the French cock seems to enjoy scratching in the sand.”

Though the territory lying within the great bend of the Niger, embraced in what is now the French Sudan, was occupied in 1893, and though two years later the tricolor was hoisted over the mud-walled citadel of Timbuktu, the great caravan-center and trade-mart of the south, it was not until the very close of the nineteenth century that the central Sahara was crossed by Europeans. This remarkable journey was made by Fernand Foureau, the greatest of all the long line of French African explorers, who, setting out from Algeria with a small military escort, succeeded in reaching Zinder, an important trade center on the Nigerian frontier, in November, 1899.

Foureau’s achievement was of immense value to France, not merely because it demonstrated that the desert could be crossed from one edge to the other, but because it proved the truth of the explorer’s oft-repeated assertion that the first step in the conquest and pacification of the Sahara was to break the power of the great Touareg confederation. These robber tribes occupying the oases which stretch from Ghadames in the east to Tuat in the west, formed a cordon which stretched right across the desert south of Algeria, completely masking the southern frontiers of that colony. The Touareg were to the central Sahara what the Sioux and the Apaches were to our Western plains. From their inaccessible strongholds amid the hills and oases of the mid-desert, they kept watch upon the trade-routes, levied blackmail upon or plundered caravans, murdered explorers and pioneers, sacked frontier towns, and preyed on the trans-Saharan trade as the Barbary corsairs had preyed on the Mediterranean merchantmen. Consequently the Sahara was in a constant state of turmoil and insecurity; theft, pillage, and massacre were so common as scarcely to evoke comment. Armed to the teeth, mounted on their swift méhari, bands of these masked riders would wipe out a whole caravan or swoop down upon some defenseless oasis-town, regaining their distant desert strongholds long before a force could be organized to pursue them. Fearless, arrogant, treacherous, and inhumanly cruel, the only law they recognized was that of superior force. Until the great robber confederation was smashed France could not hope to solve the Saharan question. “You will never traverse the Touareg country,” Foureau said in one of his reports, “with any kind of security except by depending on force and by establishing all along the route well-manned positions, the garrisons of which will police the road throughout. This you will have to do if you wish to open up communications between the Sudan and Algeria.”

The government at Paris accepted his advice and proceeded to the task with the utmost energy. A battalion of the Foreign Legion, transformed into mounted infantry by mounting the men on mules, formed one of the flying columns. Other punitive expeditions were composed of native troops, who were provided with méhari as speedy as the racing dromedaries ridden by the Touareg themselves, and accompanied by batteries of light mountain-guns. For, when the French once determine to do a thing, they usually do it well. From the outposts in Algeria, in Senegal, in the Sudan, the columns pressed forward relentlessly into the sandy wastes. The attacking hordes of tribesmen were mowed down by the withering fire of rifles and machine-guns; the strongholds which the Touareg had deemed impregnable hastily capitulated when they heard the terrifying whine and crash of the French shells. Soon the redoubtable Touareg confederacy was completely subjugated, its principal centers were occupied in force, a highly efficient police force was recruited from the tribesmen themselves—just as Porfirio Díaz recruited his famous rurales nacionales from outlaws and bandits—and travel was made possible, if not altogether safe, from one border of the Sahara to the other.

Shortly after France’s African empire had been completely reorganized in 1902, the effective area of French control in the western Sahara was increased to the extent of some 150,000 square miles by inducing the Moorish emirs of the Adrar, a fertile but sparsely inhabited region lying to the north of the Senegal, between the sand-wastes of El Juf and the Atlantic, to place themselves under the direct supervision of French officials. In the following year these regions were consolidated into a single territory to which was given the historic name of Mauretania.

France set the capstone to her African empire on March 30, 1912, when His Shereefian Majesty the Sultan Mulai Yusef, in his palace at Fez, set his signature to the document which formally accepted a French protectorate over Morocco. By that single stroke of the pen was added to the overseas dominions under the tricolor a territory larger than France itself. Be it clearly understood, that the control of Morocco was as vital a fact in the French scheme for acquiring the hegemony of Northwest Africa as the annexation of California was to the dominance of the North American continent by the United States. France’s style was cramped, to make use of a popular expression, as long as Morocco remained independent. Had the Shereefian Empire been a strong, well-governed country, the situation would have been different; but it was, on the contrary, a hotbed of disorder, unrest, intrigue, and corruption. To have attempted the pacification of the Sahara and the reëstablishment of the old trade-routes, with the hinterland of Morocco offering a secure refuge and recruiting-ground for all the lawless and unruly elements of desert life, would have been to court endless difficulties if not to invite complete disaster. For centuries Morocco had been a thorn in the flesh of all those European nations having political interest in Africa; this source of irritation and infection must be got rid of if France’s elaborate and carefully worked out plans for the consolidation of her African possessions were to succeed. That her action was justified has been proved beyond cavil by the striking success which has marked her administration of Morocco during the past dozen years.

The most recent additions to France’s African domain were acquired at the close of the World War, when Germany unconditionally surrendered her overseas possessions to the Allies. When the spoils of war came to be apportioned, France obtained control of about two thirds of the former German colony of Togo, and nearly the whole of Cameroon (both of which adjoined her possessions on the Gulf of Guinea), under mandates granted by the League of Nations.

Omitting the little enclave of French Somaliland on the East Coast and the great island colony of Madagascar, France’s African empire to-day consists of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, French West Africa (comprising the colonies of Senegal, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, the French Sudan, and the Upper Volta, and the civil territories of Mauretania and the Niger), French Equatorial Africa (in which are embraced the colonies of Gabun, Middle Congo, Ubanghi-Shari, and Tchad), and the mandated territories of Togo and Cameroon.

Every step in France’s African policy during the last half-century has been as carefully considered as the moves in a championship chess-game. The ultimate effect on the grand plan of every military movement, every expedition, every rectification of a frontier, every treaty, has been meticulously weighed and pondered in advance. They have all been parts of a sagacious and brilliantly executed scheme; nothing has been left to chance. There has been none of the “muddling through” which characterized the British policy in South Africa; little of the stupidity and blundering which marked our winning of the West. The French conquest has been marred by no petty or selfish or contradictory aims; it has been hampered by no irresolution, no moving forward and then turning back; energy in one quarter has not been counteracted by indifference in another; patriotism has not been subordinated to politics.

Since the conquest of Algeria, moreover, France’s course of empire in Africa has been obstructed by no great colonial wars and few wars of any kind; she has had no Indian Mutinies, no Adowas, no Omdurmans, no Modder Rivers. Wherever possible she has employed a process of pacific penetration—winning the confidence of the tribes instead of threatening them, granting broad measures of autonomy to the great sheikhs and the grand caïds, flattering their vanity with salutes, rewards, and decorations. The social gulf which separates the British officials in Egypt, the Sudan, and India from the native chieftains is unknown in French Africa, for the French tolerate neither racial discrimination nor the color-line.

Everywhere—north, south, and west—the advance has been gradual and general. The black-coated cabinet ministers in Paris, the administrators in the various colonial capitals, and the helmeted pioneers scattered along the frontiers have worked toward a common end, the pioneers keeping their superiors constantly informed of every fluctuation in local conditions and native sentiment, just as the intelligence officers of an army in the field relay the information they have gathered to the high command. Let it be added that no nation has been more faithfully served by its explorers and pioneers than France. Henri Duveyrier, the first of the French explorers, whose great journey into the Sahara dates from 1859; Victor Largeau, who reached Ghadames in 1875; Savargnan de Brazza, whose name will always be linked with the creation of the French Congo; General Faidherbe, founder of the French Sudan; General Dodds, conqueror of Dahomey; Montiel, who won for France the great country around Lake Tchad; Fernand Foureau, the hero of the march to Zinder—these, and many like them, were to French Africa what Lewis, Clarke, Boone, Crockett, and Frémont were to our own frontier. But of the intrepid company of French explorers who have carried the tricolor into the darkest corners of the Dark Continent, Africa has taken a heavy toll. Joubert and Dourneaux-Duperré were assassinated near Ghadames; Lieutenant Palet was murdered at Gurara; Camille Douls laid down his life for France at Tidikelt; the expedition led by Colonel Flatters was ambushed by Touareg in the central Sahara and wiped out to the last man; Louis Say, Lieutenant Lamy, Brière de l’Isle all died by Touareg spear; Coppolani was killed by tribesmen in the conquest of Mauretania; Colonel Bonnier was slain at the taking of Timbuktu. Such is the price of empire.

The most gallant and dramatic figure in all this company of courageous men is, however, the least known to fame. I refer to Vicomte Charles de Foucauld—“de Foucauld of the Sahara” as he was known—who left among the wild tribes of the desert a name which has already passed into tradition. A son of the nobility, he lost his parents when he was six and was brought up by his uncle, an old colonel of engineers, from whom he got a taste for the classics. When he left school, while still in his teens, young de Foucauld was a confirmed atheist, a fact which is of special significance in view of his end. Joining a hussar regiment, he saw active service in Algeria, an experience which left him with a deep affection for the common soldier, an affection which his troopers warmly returned. Fighting against the Arabs had imbued him with a keen desire to make a study of the race, and with this in view he obtained leave of absence for the purpose of making a journey into the interior of Morocco, which was then a forbidden country to Europeans. Disguise of some sort was imperative, so, deciding to go as a Jew, he applied himself to the study of Hebrew as well as Arabic. He went in rags and barefoot, apparently the poorest of the poor, and was often insulted and stoned; but he always carried in the palm of his left hand a tiny writing-tablet on which he surreptitiously noted all the features of the country or took compass bearings. When he returned to civilization after nearly a year spent in the unknown he had more than doubled the length of routes known and surveyed in the Shereefian Empire and brought back other topographical data of immense military value.

Some years after his return from Morocco de Foucauld embraced Christianity and became a devout Catholic, eventually resigning from the army in order to become a Trappist monk, a member of that sternly penitential missionary order which devotes itself to the salvation of the heathen. As a monk he lived for a time in Asia Minor, two days’ march from Alexandretta. After spending two years in the study of theology at Rome, he resolved, while in Nazareth, to become a hermit priest. For the field of his labors he chose the Moroccan Sahara, one of the most savage regions in all Africa, as it was one of the least known. His first post was at Beni Abbés, a desert town in the edge of the Grand Erg Occidental, four hundred miles to the southeast of Fez. Here he purchased a few acres of palm-sprinkled sand and built a mud-walled chapel in which he slept. He lived on coarse barley bread, a few dried dates, and “desert tea,” a beverage made from an herb. No European willingly ate twice at his board, and even the negroes whom he redeemed from slavery, though eager to work for him, found his fare too slim. He made no formal conversions, but both French soldiers and natives swarmed about him, knowing that he always stood ready to aid them with money or advice. On one occasion his little church was attended by General (afterward Marshal) Lyautey, who wrote: “A plank was the altar. The decorations were a calico sheet with the picture of Christ on it; two candlesticks on the altar. Very well. I never heard Mass as Father de Foucauld said it. I could have believed myself in the Thebaid. It is one of the things in my life which have moved me most.”

In the spring of 1905 de Foucauld set out on a still more extended journey among the Touareg, eventually establishing himself at Tamanrasset, a village of twenty hearths in the very heart of the Sahara, midway between In Salah and Timbuktu. Here he was alone among the veiled Touareg, “the Forgotten of God,” hundreds of miles from the nearest white man. The place he chose for himself was perhaps the loneliest and most dangerous ever occupied for any length of time by a European. Though the Touareg are suspicious and savagely intolerant of others, the lone priest so completely won their confidence and friendship that in 1913 he took with him to Paris the son of their sheikh.

Then came 1914—“l’année terrible.” The outbreak of the Great War found de Foucauld back among the veiled tribesmen, and although he burned to go to the front as a chaplain or stretcher-bearer, his ecclesiastical superiors urged him to stay at his post, advice which was strongly seconded by the French military authorities, who were well aware that German emissaries were at work stirring up discontent among the tribes of the hinterland. In December, 1916, a Touareg war-party, whooped on by the enemy, decided that de Foucauld would be a valuable hostage and laid plans to attack the mission station, which had been transformed into a rude fort. A traitor gave them the password, the gate was opened, and the Blue-Veiled Ones poured in. The hermit was overpowered, bound hand and foot, and propped against a wall while the place was looted of such poor things as it contained. While the plundering was in progress two natives whom de Foucauld had befriended approached to offer him a word of cheer. Whereupon a blood-drunk Touareg put the muzzle of his rifle to the priest’s head and pulled the trigger. In the words of Mr. Stephen Gwynn, his biographer: “There was no cry or word; gradually the corpse sank down. He had had his will; for many passages in his journals and his letters prove that he aspired to death by violence. That he should have been betrayed would undoubtedly to his strange nature have been welcome; it completed that imitation of Christ which was his life’s work. Soldier and Frenchman, he died uncertain of the war’s issue; Christian priest among the unbelievers, he died without converts made. Yet assuredly he was in his heart convinced that by such means he might make ready the way for others, and he asked no more, he refused to desire more.”

He was buried beneath the shadow of the little church which he had built, in the heart of that Sahara which he knew and loved so well. To paraphrase the lines of Matthew Arnold:

To those observers who may have thought that France’s policy in North Africa is inspired solely by the hope of adding to the military power of the republic, one of de Foucauld’s letters, as quoted by Mr. Gwynn, cannot fail to be of extraordinary interest. It was written only six months before his murder at Tamanrasset.

It would be interesting to know to what extent this strange, wonderful son of France represented the feelings of France as a whole.

After perusing the long list of those who have paid the price of empire with their lives, the thoughtful man may ask whether the reward has justified the sacrifice. The atlas gives the answer. Glance at a map of, say, 1880, and you will find the extent of French occupation marked by a few wedges driven into the coast-line of Northwest Africa, while as for the Sahara, it is merely an expanse of speckled yellow labeled “Unexplored.” But unfold a map of to-day and we find that, barring Libya, Liberia, and a few British and Spanish enclaves along the West Coast, the whole of that portion of Africa lying between the Mediterranean and the Congo, between the Atlantic and the valley of the Nile, is tinted the same color, is overshadowed by the same flag, is ruled by the same nation—and that nation is France. It is one of the most astounding achievements in the history of the world, this building of a colossal empire from savagery and sand.

Were a map of Africa to be superimposed on a map of North America it would be found that in area and dimensions the Sahara Desert very closely corresponds to the United States. Yet it is a singular fact that more misconceptions exist in regard to this vast region, the fringes of which are visited annually by thousands of tourists, than about almost any area on the face of the globe. Doubtless because the makers of maps were so long accustomed to painting the Sahara a speckled yellow, ninety-nine persons out of every hundred visualize it as an illimitable stretch of sun-scorched sand, flat as a floor, quite incapable of supporting life, and utterly destitute of vegetation. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The impression of flatness is an optical illusion. Were a region that is as rugged as, say, New England to be completely stripped of its cities, villages, and farmsteads, its forests, lakes, and streams, its trees and grass, I imagine that, despite the pronounced irregularity of its surface, it would appear to one traveling across it to be a dead flat plain. So it is with the Sahara. In reality it is not flat at all. It has its mountains, its valleys, and its plains. Topographically speaking, it is a region of the most varied surface and irregular relief, broken by lofty table-lands and deep depressions, massive buttes and fantastic crags, vast steppes covered with water-worn pebbles and loose stones, cañons winding between precipitous walls, seas of shifting yellow sand and oases green with forests of date-palms and other fruit-trees. Its surface is still further diversified by numerous and extensive mountain ranges, at least one of which, the Ahaggar, has an area greater than the Alps and several peaks higher than any in the United States east of the Rockies. Yet the children in our public schools are still taught that the Sahara is nothing but a waste of sand, flat as a school-room floor!

From this it will be seen that the Sahara has the makings of much picturesque and interesting scenery if it were properly upholstered. Its deadly monotony is due to a lack of diversity in color rather than to a lack of diversity in surface. The mountains, the plateaus, the crags, and the cañons are all there, but there is nothing to bring them out, to emphasize their presence. Since there is in that vast spaciousness nothing with which to compare them, they appear insignificant, hardly noticeable. Another thing. We of more favored lands are accustomed to what might be described as vertical scenery—trees, crops, church-spires, houses, fences—whereas the scenery of the desert is wholly horizontal. This still further makes for monotony, so, instead of examining the physical features of the country, the eye becomes wearied and is always looking off toward the horizon.

I trust that I have now made it amply clear that the popular conception of the Sahara as an expanse of sand—a conception which motion-pictures and novels of desert life, as well as the illustrations in the popular magazines, have done much to foster—is quite erroneous. There are broad stretches of sand, it is true, the most extensive being the Igidi of Mauretania, the Grand Erg Occidental to the south of Algeria, and the Grand Erg Oriental to the south of Tunisia; but the actual area of pure sand is relatively small, covering only about one tenth of the Sahara’s surface.

The remaining nine tenths of the desert consist of stony, wind-swept plateaus, known as hammada, vast tracts strewn with water-worn pebbles, called serir, and scattered highland regions. Of the latter the most extensive is the Ahaggar, or Hoggar Plateau, which lies in the center of the Sahara, nine hundred miles due south from Algiers. Covering an area considerably greater than that of the Swiss, French, Italian, and Austrian Alps put together, this mass of mountains is dominated by two great peaks, Hikena and Watellen, whose summits during five months of the year are covered with snow. To the northeast of the Ahaggar is the Tasili Plateau, and directly to the east, forming the southwestern boundary of Italian Libya, stretch the Tummo or War Mountains. In the extreme east, near the frontier of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, is the great table-land of Tibesti, with an average height of nearly a mile and a half above sea-level, the volcanic cone of Tussid rising eighty-eight hundred feet into the African blue. On the east and south the highlands of Tibesti run down to connect with the lower ranges of Ennedi and Borku, which merge, in turn, into the rich plains of Darfur and Wadai. In addition to the plateaus and ranges mentioned, there are several disconnected mountain masses, such as the rugged region in Mauretania known as the Adrar of the Iforas, and, to the north of the Nigerian frontier, the Hills of Air.

The country of the sand-dunes, which has provided so many fiction writers and motion-picture directors with highly romantic settings, consists of a broad belt which, starting on the Atlantic seaboard, in the vicinity of Cape Blanco, sweeps in a great arc northward and eastward, completely masking the southern frontiers of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, to the shores of the Gulf of Gabés. That portion of this sand-belt which stretches from the Senegal River to the Moroccan Atlas is generally referred to as the Igidi (the Berber word for sand-dunes); then, to the south of Algeria, comes the region known as the Grand Erg Occidental, separated by a narrow valley at El Golea from the Grand Erg Oriental, which sweeps right across the southern end of Tunisia. The Igidi and the Ergs can best be described as sandy oceans—the simile has been used many times before but I cannot think of a better—with waves of sand instead of water. The dunes of the Eastern Erg, which range in height from sixty to three hundred feet or more, lie in long parallel rows, with a gradual slope to windward and an abrupt descent to leeward, so that, particularly in the gray mists of early morning or at nightfall, they present a striking resemblance to a stormy sea. Generally speaking, the dunes maintain a state of comparative permanency, certain of the larger ones having been given names of their own, though it is by no means unusual for their contours to change almost beyond recognition in a single night under the influence of the wind. The oft-told tales of caravans and armies engulfed in the moving sands may be set down as imaginary, however, save, perhaps, in some instances in the Libyan Desert, where such tragic episodes are known to have occurred.

The investigations of French geologists have completely disproved the theory that the Sahara represents the dried-up bed of what was once a vast inland sea and that its dunes are composed of sand left there at that period. It appears, on the contrary, that the sand, instead of having been deposited by the sea, comes from the stony plateaus of the hammada. The soft Cretaceous sandstone, heated by the sun until it is as hot as the top of a stove, is suddenly chilled at night by rapid radiation. The rock, fractured by the abrupt change from heat to cold, disintegrates; and the sand thus produced, sifted and drifted by the wind, takes the form of dunes. The slightest breeze is enough to make the desert smoke with dust, while a strong wind produces a weird singing of the sands, a peculiarly eery sound which indicates that the dunes themselves are shifting.

The loose particles of sand which cover wide tracts of the Sahara are a cause of acute discomfort not only to the countries lying along the whole north coast of Africa but even to those on the opposite side of the Mediterranean, for the sand-laden wind from the Sahara, known in southern Europe as the sirocco and in Egypt as the khamsin (because during the spring it blows at intervals for about fifty days) frequently affects regions a thousand miles away, covering them with fine red dust.

Though to all intents and purposes waterless so far as rivers are concerned, the Sahara is thickly sprinkled with fertile spots, varying in area from a few acres to hundreds of square miles, where the water comes to the surface in the form of springs or is found in shallow wells. Thanks to the enterprise of the French government and the ability of French engineers, these oases have been greatly expanded during recent years, for experiments have proved that an unlimited supply of aërated water is obtainable from the great reservoirs which underlie the Sahara by the sinking of artesian wells, water generally being found at a maximum depth of two hundred feet. When one is in the midst of the desert, surrounded by blinding white sand-dunes which support no living thing, the very idea of water seems absurd and its existence impossibly remote, yet it is often only a few yards beneath one’s feet. In this fact of a secret water-supply lies the hope of the regeneration of parts at least of the Sahara, for, once it has been introduced to water, this seemingly hopeless region will blossom like the rose.

With the desert we are accustomed to associate the date-palm, of which there are upward of four million in the Algerian oases alone, and without which life in the Sahara would be virtually impossible; for they provide the natives not only with food, but with shelter, fuel, timber, building-materials, and even clothing. But do not get the idea that the soil of the oases is capable of supporting palms alone, for apples, peaches, oranges, lemons, figs, pomegranates, grapes, wheat, barley, and rice are all commonly and successfully grown. So comparatively limited are these areas of great richness and fertility, however, so precious is the land, that it is cultivated with almost pathetic care, the natives grudging even the narrow foot-paths which separate their holdings from those of their neighbors. Yet dates are, and always have been, so much the staple of food and commerce in the Sahara that, instead of computing the size of a village by the number of its inhabitants, it is always spoken of as having so many date-palms.

The eventual conquest of the desert depends not on the success of military expeditions, the establishment of trade-routes, and the building of railways, but rather on the expansion of the present oases and the creation of new ones. Pacification depends on fertilization. The Touareg and Arab nomads will be a source of trouble as long as they can find refuge in the desert, but, like the Indians of our own West, whom they so greatly resemble, they must eventually give way before the steadily advancing line of cultivation, either betaking themselves to remoter regions of the continent or becoming agriculturists themselves. What it comes to, as Mr. L. March Phillips has so aptly put it,⁠[2] is this: the tribes can only be subdued by subduing the desert; the desert can only be subdued by planting oases; and oases can only be planted by sinking wells. When all is said and done, it is not the soldiers but the well-drillers who are the real conquerors of the Sahara.

The French conquest of North Africa has shifted the southern frontier of Europe from the shores of the Mediterranean to the fringes of the Sahara. No longer is the sea a barrier between the continents; it has become a link. It may lash itself into a rage, but its rage is jeered at by the cable, the radio, the airplane, and the great steamers. The desert is now the true divide. And deeper and deeper into the desert the French outposts are being pushed, for the indomitable spirit of adventure—the spirit which led King Louis and his Crusaders to the Holy Land, Champlain to Canada and La Salle down the Mississippi, the armies of Napoleon to the Pyramids, which took Foureau down to Zinder, and de Brazza up the Congo, and Marchand to Fashoda—still runs hot and strong in the blood of France. Everywhere the Touareg raiders are being halted by the harsh “Qui vive?” of the French videttes. French well-drillers and agricultural experts are at work all the way from Libya to the Atlantic. The tribes of the far interior are becoming accustomed to the drone of the airplane and the panting of the motor-car. Twin lines of steel and festoons of copper wire have been flung far into the central wastes. The radio operators of Algeria gossip with their fellows at Lake Tchad and Timbuktu. France is striding southward in seven-league boots, carrying the frontier of civilization with her as she goes. In a much nearer future than most people dream of, her southern boundary will not be the Mediterranean, nor yet the Sahara, but the Equator.

CHAPTER XI THE LAST HOME OF MYSTERY

Tozeur, the ancient oasis town on the northern edge of the Grand Erg Oriental, is the jumping-off place for the desert; from here we were to plunge into the real Sahara. It was the end of the line, so far as Harvey and the Cadillac were concerned, and the day after our arrival he headed north again on the long detour, via Tunis and Constantine, to Biskra, in southern Algeria, where he was to await our arrival.

For our journey across the trackless sand-wastes of the Grand Erg, where travel is entirely by compass and the sun, the officials of the Transat had placed at our disposal one of the curious twelve-wheelers designed by Renault, the great French automobile manufacturer, to solve the problem of transportation in the desert. The huge, cumbersome-looking vehicle, which in general appearance is a cross between a five-ton truck, a military reconnaissance car, and an overgrown station-wagon, deserves a paragraph or so of description, for it gives promise of playing as important a rôle in the conquest of the Sahara as the prairie-schooner did in the opening up of the American West.

Surprisingly enough, it is not of excessive horse-power—only about 18 H.P., I believe, according to European rating, though more than double that by American methods of computation. Its limited horse-power, which appeared, however, to be amply sufficient for the purpose, is compensated for by special gearing, the car having six forward speeds and four in reverse. It is provided, moreover, with six pairs of twin wheels—that is, twelve in all—all six pairs being geared to the engine on the principle of the four-wheel drive used by certain American truck manufacturers. The wheels are fitted with enormous balloon-tires, studded with copper rivets as a protection against the flinty stones with which great areas of the desert are strewn, and inflated to a pressure of less than twenty pounds, thus obtaining a maximum of traction in the yielding sand.

The body, which is very stoutly built, resembles those of the reconnaissance cars used by staff-officers during the World War, its four leather-covered arm-chairs, and the broad seat which extends right across the rear of the tonneau, providing accommodation for five passengers in addition to the chauffeur and the native guide. Great speed could hardly be looked for in a vehicle of this type; over a smooth, hard surface eighteen to twenty miles an hour is the maximum, while in the dune country, where any speed at all is out of the question, eighty miles is considered a good day’s run.

Perhaps the most novel feature of this sand-wagon, however, is the highly ingenious device which has been contrived for enabling it to extricate itself from cups or pockets in the dunes, where the ascent is so steep and the surface so soft that it is impossible to obtain traction. This device consists of a metal hoisting-drum, about the size of a nail-keg, which is fixed between the forward springs just in front of the axle. Wound on this drum, which is operated by the engine, are some fifty feet of stout steel cable. When, as not infrequently happens, the car slides down into one of the craterlike cavities formed by the dunes and is unable to climb out because of lack of traction, the steel cable is unwound, carried up the slopes, and attached to a sort of steel anchor, which is driven deep into the sand. The driver then throws in the clutch, the drum revolves, winding up the cable, and the car lifts itself out of trouble by its own boot-straps, as it were.

The chauffeurs of these desert-going cars are carefully chosen for their skill as drivers, their mechanical ability, and their endurance, most of them having served as airplane pilots or mechanicians during the war. Accompanying each car is an Arab guide who is presumed to be thoroughly familiar with the baffling topography of the regions to be traversed, though even the most experienced frequently encounter difficulty in getting their bearings, so completely is the aspect of the dunes changed by a violent sand-storm. In order to provide against emergencies, each car carries a tightly rolled tent on the roof and a week’s supply of emergency provisions.

The cars originally used for the conquest of the Sahara were of quite a different type than the Renault. They were ten horse-power machines designed by André Citroen, the Henry Ford of France, and, in addition to the regular front wheels, were equipped with caterpillar treads, similar to those used on tanks and farm tractors. During the winter of 1922-23 a fleet of these cars crossed from Touggourt to Timbuktu, making the two-thousand-mile journey in twenty days. In October, 1924, a second Citroen expedition of eight cars traversed Africa from Algeria to the Great Lakes, where it divided, one group going on to Madagascar and another keeping southward to the Cape. The latter journey of fifteen thousand miles occupied nine months. Though it is generally admitted, I believe, that the tractor type of machine is able to negotiate country which would be quite impassable for the twelve-wheeler, it cannot attain the speed of the latter, its accommodations for passengers are far less commodious and comfortable, and, on account of the sharp stones which strew vast stretches of the central Sahara, its rubber-shod treads are quickly cut to pieces and cannot be replaced as readily as tires.

It is a far cry from the Chamber of Deputies in Paris to the Sahara, yet the repercussion of political feuds in the one are sometimes felt in the other. This close relation between politics and private enterprise in France was strikingly illustrated by a recent episode, which aroused considerable speculation at the time, but of which, so far as I am aware, the inside story has never been published. It will be recalled, perhaps, that during the early months of 1925 the American and European newspapers devoted considerable space to accounts of the automobile service which M. Citroen was about to establish between Algeria and Timbuktu. It was announced that preliminary expeditions sent out by the millionaire manufacturer had surveyed a route across the desert; that at frequent intervals along this route rest-houses, provided with all the comforts demanded by present-day travelers, had been erected; that a great fleet of tractors had been assembled at one of the rail-heads in southern Algeria; and that, for the equivalent of twenty-five hundred dollars, the tourist in search of novelty and adventure could purchase a round-trip ticket, rooms and meals included, from the French capital to the mysterious city on the Niger. In order to give the enterprise the necessary éclat, it was to be inaugurated by a distinguished party, including the King of the Belgians and Marshal Pétain. Then, only a few days before the date set for departure, the project was suddenly abandoned, the reason given being that the War Office had notified the promoters that the route was unsafe and that it was impossible to guarantee adequate military protection.

That, at least, was the ostensible reason. But the real cause for the abandonment of this highly picturesque project was not so much military as political. Citroen, one of the richest men in France, was allied with the political party then in the saddle. His great rival, Renault, was a stanch supporter of the opposition. But on the very eve of the departure of the inaugural expedition there occurred one of those sudden political crises so frequent in France; the government was overturned and the opposition came into power. Citroen suddenly found himself with the outs and Renault with the ins. A day or so later the new minister of war sent word to M. Citroen that because of trouble among the tribes conditions in the desert were insecure and that the government could not assume responsibility for the safety of the expedition. M. Citroen took the hint. He knew when he was beaten. The invitations to the distinguished guests were canceled; the chain of rest-houses which had been erected right across the Sahara were stripped of their furnishings and abandoned; hundreds of employees were recalled; the tractors were ordered to Oran, where they are now rusting in a storage warehouse; and an investment of more than fifteen million francs was written off. Political jealousy, the curse of France, had, for a time at least, turned back the hands of progress in the Sahara.

Though the Citroen project was, in its inception, a publicity stunt, a money-making scheme, its success indubitably would have proved the first step in the realization of a great imperial dream. For, as I have sought to point out in the preceding chapter, the consolidation into an empire of France’s scattered possessions in North, West, and Central Africa must hinge, when all is said and done, on the establishment of direct and rapid communications between them. Let us take a concrete case by way of illustration. The distance from Algiers to Timbuktu as the motor goes is, in round figures, two thousand miles. But the distance between the same points by the only route now open to travelers—Algiers-Marseilles-Dakar by steamer, Dakar-Kayes-Bamaku by rail, and Bamaku-Timbuktu by river-boat and launch—is upward of four thousand miles.

Not until its sprawling bulk has been fettered by some regular means of communication can the Sahara be considered as effectually subdued. There has been much talk from time to time of a trans-Saharan railway from the rail-head at Colomb-Béchar in Southern Algeria to Timbuktu, whence one branch would continue southward to link up with the Ivory Coast system, while another would swing sharply westward to Dakar, on the coast of Senegal, and a third branch might be pushed eastward to the Lake Tchad country. The chief advocates of such a scheme are the French imperialists and military authorities, who see in such a railway a means of rushing vast numbers of black troops from the trans-Saharan territories to the aid of the mother-country in the event of another war. Personally, however, I do not look for this ambitious project to be realized until some time in the distant future. True, there are no insurmountable obstacles from the engineering point of view, as preliminary surveys have shown, but there are numerous objections. First of all, of course, comes the question of cost, which would necessarily be enormous—an expense which France, in her present impoverished condition, is quite unable to bear. Serious difficulties would be encountered in finding sufficient labor and in providing adequate supplies of water and fuel. It is generally admitted that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, effectively to protect a desert railway of such length from attacks by Touareg tribes. Such a system could not hope to be self-supporting, for the length of haul would be enormous; most of the country through which it would run is uninhabited and unproductive; and there would be almost nothing in the way of freight or passengers to be picked up along the route. Moreover it is becoming a grave question among authorities on transportation whether, even under the most favorable circumstances, railways can successfully compete with motor routes, the initial cost of which is far less, and which can be operated far more economically. The truth of the matter is that the recent conquest of the desert by the motor-car has been a serious blow to the project for a trans-Saharan railway, and I am inclined to believe that passengers and goods will be borne across the Great Sands on rubber instead of rails for many years to come. I doubt not that the desert motor service projected by M. Citroen will shortly be revived, either by himself or others, and that, in a much nearer future than most people suppose, it will be as simple a matter to cross the Sahara to Timbuktu by automobile as it has become to cross the Syrian Desert to Baghdad.

When that day comes—and I repeat that it is not far distant—the merchants of Nigeria and the Sudan will run up to Algiers, or even to Paris, to do their buying, just as Mid-West merchants go to New York; the sons of the great Mohammedan chieftains of Darfur and Wadai will be sent to the Moslem universities of Fez and Tunis as the sons of Western ranch-owners are sent to Yale and Harvard; the products of French Equatorial Africa—the greatest untapped reservoir of raw materials on the continent—will go rolling northward to the factories of Europe in a steady stream, while the manufactured goods of Europe and North Africa will find their way in ever-increasing quantities to the rich markets of the South. Caravans of motor-buses, doing their twenty miles an hour, will bear merchants, drummers, students, soldiers, scientists, officials, tourists, across the great divide. The road is perhaps the most effective agency of civilization. As Mr. Hilaire Belloc has so admirably put it: “More than rivers and more than mountain chains, roads have moulded the political groupings of men. The Alps with a mule-track across them are less of a barrier than fifteen miles of forest or rough land separating one from that track.”

The sun was but a slender crimson arc above the horizon when we set out from Tozeur in the twelve-wheeler to push southward into what some one has aptly termed “the last home of mystery.” The early morning is always cold in the Sahara, and even our Arab guide shivered beneath the folds of his camel’s-hair burnous. For the first few miles our route led us across a rocky, stone-strewn plain, the big car rumbling and shaking like a motor-truck. Then, topping a rise in the hammada, we beheld the sand-dunes. Silent, mysterious, forbidding, they reared themselves across our path, their flanks as trackless, as destitute of vegetation, as the polar snows. I don’t know how high they were, for everything is enormously magnified in the clear air of the desert, but they seemed appalling as they rose abruptly from that bleak, monotonous expanse. As for climbing them in a motor-car, I should as soon have thought of driving up the side of the Great Pyramid. But I leaned back in my snug, leather-cushioned seat unconcernedly, confident that the chauffeur, a veteran at the business, knew a way to circumvent them.

But instead of making a detour, as I momentarily expected, he held his course straight for the largest dune. It grew larger as we drew near until it loomed above us like the Equitable Building. Still we kept on at steadily increasing speed. The man must have gone daft, I thought. We had at the wheel a lunatic. For anything on wheels to attempt that towering wall of sand was as crazy a performance, it seemed to me, as Don Quixote’s encounter with the windmill. We charged it like a tank attacking the Hindenburg Line. The lower slopes we took with a rush and a roar; then came a perceptible slackening of speed as we lost momentum. With a clash of gears the chauffeur went into second speed, then third ... fourth ... fifth. The exhaust barked like a machine-gun. The big car reared itself up until it seemed to be standing on its stern. I felt the seat tilting under me, as one does when an airplane goes into a steep climb. We went into sixth speed. The staccato crackle of the exhaust changed into a sustained roar. The sandy slopes slipped by us slower and slower—ten ... eight ... six miles an hour. Would we make it? Would the power hold out? By way of answering my unvoiced question the chauffeur jammed his foot hard upon the throttle, the car flung itself forward in a final surge of power—and we were at the top.

My sensation of relief died half born, however, for, though we were on the summit of the ridge, our front wheels rested upon the brink of a sandy precipice which seemed to drop away a hundred fathoms sheer. If the ascent of the windward slope had seemed perilous, the descent of this all but perpendicular leeward slope would, I felt certain, inevitably end in disaster. Yet to back down the declivity we had just ascended with so much effort was out of the question, while the space at the top was too narrow to permit of turning around. But our pilot showed no signs of perturbation. Nonchalantly lighting a cigarette, he shifted into lowest gear and gently nosed the cumbersome machine over the brink. The little flags out front, then the hood, seemed suddenly to drop out of sight, and I was thrown forward with great abruptness to find myself looking down upon the top of the driver’s head. Do you know the sensation of diving in an airplane? Well, it was like that, only more so. I would have sworn that no wheeled vehicle ever built could have descended that declivity and remained right side up at the bottom. But this one did. Indeed, it seemed entirely to defy the law of gravitation. If the ascent had been exciting, the descent was paralyzing. We went down with a rush and a roar, choked and blinded by the whirling sand, at a speed so terrific that it literally took the breath away. I gripped the sides of the seat until my fingers ached. You can see their imprints sunk in the steel arms to-day! Half-way down the driver shut off his power, and from there on we coasted. I glanced at the speedometer. The needle showed 130 kilometers an hour!

When we ran out upon the floor of the narrow valley which separated the range of dunes we had just crossed from the next one, I tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“Stop a moment,” I said.

“What is the matter?” asked my wife, as I started to clamber down. “Are you going to take a picture?”

“No,” I told her. “I am going to take my hat off to the car.”

Thenceforward, for hundreds of miles, we zigzagged, now up, now down, through a bewilderment of dunes, a hopeless confusion of sand hills and ridges, valleys and hollows, which stretched away on one hand to meet the mountains of the Aurés and on the other to vanish in the vast spaces of the mid-Sahara. It was like motoring over an unending succession of very steeply pitched and lofty roofs, roaring up one side, pausing for an instant on the ridge-pole, and then hurtling down the other. Under the midday sun the dunes were as dazzling as snow, and a few chimneys here and there were all that was needed to make me feel like an up-to-the-minute Santa Claus. Though tremendously exhilarating, it was also extremely fatiguing, for the constant swaying and pitching of the car like a small boat in a heavy sea, the necessity of hanging on for dear life, put a severe strain on every bone and muscle in the body. When we camped that night I ached as I have ached but once before, at the end of my first long camel-ride in Arabia.

Only once did we encounter serious trouble. We had charged an exceptionally steep dune, and, unable to arrest the momentum of the car when we gained the top, had hurtled down the reverse slope to find ourselves imprisoned in a deep pocket, or hollow, in the sands. The dunes rose so precipitously on every hand that there was no space in which to get a flying start. It looked to me as though we were going to have an opportunity to qualify as Shriners by a long, long march over the hot sands, for the nearest human habitation, so our Arab guide informed us, was a hundred kilometers away. But as soon as the chauffeur realized the hopelessness of trying to extricate the car by ordinary methods, he resorted to the windlass contrivance I have already described, which hauled us out of trouble as easily and almost as quickly as a steam-winch hoists cargo out of the hold of a steamer.

Though I indulged in a good deal of speculation as to the height of the dunes, I was unable to estimate their altitude with any degree of accuracy, for there was absolutely nothing with which to compare them. We saw a few quite imposing hills, which in certain localities would be called mountains, and which, so the guide told us, enjoyed names of their own; but, generally speaking, I imagine that the dunes are by no means as high as they appear in that wonderfully clear air—probably not much over four hundred or five hundred feet as a rule, though I have since been told that some of them are six hundred feet in height, which is considerably higher than the Washington Monument.

Because, in our school geographies, the deserts were invariably tinted saffron, we have become accustomed to speak of them as “yellow.” But the Sahara, though frequently tawny in spots, runs through the whole gamut of colors. In the early morning it is a dirty bluish gray, of much the same tone as the refuse from a soda-ash manufactory; but as the sun rises it becomes a dazzling white, like drifted snow, so glaring that the eyes must be protected with tinted glasses. Under certain atmospheric conditions, however, I have seen the outcropping rocks of the hammada become as red as the walls of the Grand Cañon. But the desert assumes its loveliest tints with the approach of nightfall, when it gradually changes from white to vivid orange, to blue, to amethyst, to deepest purple. Then, when the stars come out, it changes to gray again, an indescribably soft and misty gray, like smoky chiffon over silver tissue.

Far from being monotonous, the dunes present an infinite variety of form, their sweep of line and beauty of contour being in singular harmony with the wild, free life of the desert. I have remarked before that they can best be likened to a sea, for the wind which blows almost incessantly across these wastes has left the sand in waves and combers, arrested in the very act of breaking and stricken into immobility and deathly silence. But when the wind rises to a gale this paralyzed sea suddenly comes to life, for the dunes begin to move, or, as the Arabs term it, to “walk.” The word is highly descriptive, for the whispering of the sand as it tumbles along, and the rapid changes which take place in the shape of the drifts, their crests melting and smoking in the wind, give the impression that the whole landscape is in motion. When the dunes walk in good earnest, as in the case of a real sand-storm, nothing can arrest them. Whipped by a roaring wind, the sand rises in suffocating clouds; the sun is obscured; the hot blue sky changes to a murky red, then to an angry purple; the landscape is completely blotted out; it is impossible to see objects a hundred yards away; a sullen twilight descends upon the land, enshrouding it in gloom; the dunes heave and crumple; the surface of the earth flits past dizzily, as in a motion-picture taken from a moving train. It is one of the most curious, and at the same time one of the most terrifying, spectacles that Africa has to offer.

The second night out from Tozeur we experienced a sand-storm. I have seen far more violent ones in the Sudan and in Northern Arabia, but it was exciting enough while it lasted. During the late afternoon menacing purple clouds had been piling up along the southern horizon. As darkness fell the gentle breeze which had been blowing throughout the day suddenly died down, to be succeeded by an oppressive hush, like that which in Mexico generally precedes an earthquake. On the desert a great silence fell, deathly and oppressive. Then, without the slightest warning, came the wind, a veritable hurricane, driving the sand before it as chaff is scattered by the propeller of an airplane. The flying particles cut our faces like driven sleet. Our skins felt as though they had been rubbed with emery-paper. The stars were obscured; the purple velvet sky deepened to the blackness of ink. The tent-pegs had been too firmly anchored to be torn out, but the canvas billowed like the sails of a racing-yacht; the guy-ropes hummed like bowstrings. The air was dense with driven sand; though we wrapped our heads in blankets, the dust filled our eyes, our ears, our nostrils, producing a sensation not far removed from suffocation. The palm-trees of the little oasis where we were encamped bent before the blast until their plumed tops swept the ground. From the darkness came eery shrieks and wails—the cries, so say the superstitious Arabs, of the malignant afrits who let loose the sand-storms. Earth and sky seemed to mingle in a chaos of confusion, a pandemonium of sound. Then the wind subsided as abruptly as it had arisen, leaving a thick veneer of red-brown dust on everything. The air became fresh and clear again. The palm-fronds stirred ever so slightly in the gentle night breeze. One by one the stars came out, as at nightfall the lights are turned on in a great city. Peace and utter silence descended on the desert. The Sahara slept once more.

But the morning light revealed an astounding transformation. The whole landscape had been remade. Nothing was the same. Hills stood where hollows had been before, and ridges had been replaced by rifts. Even our Arab guide, who knew the desert as a housewife knows her kitchen, seemed to have difficulty in orienting himself and stood for some minutes alternately glancing at the sun and studying the transformed terrain. For the first time I understood how it was possible for caravans to lose their way when overwhelmed by a sand-storm and to perish in this dreadful land from thirst and exhaustion.

In order to lessen the chance of such disasters, however, the French government has undertaken the task of marking the main trade-routes across the desert with lofty signal-towers of stone, some of them fifty feet in height. Set on the highest eminences, about ten kilometers apart, they rear themselves above the sandy sea like lighthouses along a perilous coast. In places we could see them, through the glasses, rising at intervals across the desert, marking the courses of the great trade-tracks which run down to Tchad, to Zinder, and to Timbuktu.

Nefta, reputed to be the most beautiful oasis in all of Saharan Africa, lies almost athwart the Tunisian-Algerian frontier, and our driver insisted that it would be a thousand pities if we did not make the short detour necessary to visit it and to view its famous sunken gardens. The oasis occupies the bed of what was presumably once a small lake, and from the summit of the arid sand-hills with which it is ringed about we looked down into a circular vale so dense with verdure, so thickly set with palm and fruit trees, that it well deserves the name which the French have given it of la corbeille. The floor of the oasis is so much lower than the level of the encircling desert that, standing as we were on the rim of the depression, we were above the tops of the tallest palms. Here, in this sheltered spot, the deglat-nour date, the most delicious in the world, grows in supreme luxuriance, “its feet in the water and its head in the fires of heaven.” For the date-palm has this singular and apparently contradictory characteristic: it demands moisture but cannot stand rain. Those unfortunates who know the date only when it has been dried and pressed into a sugary viscous mass, covered with flies in a grocer’s window, can hardly imagine how luscious is the semi-transparent amber-colored fruit when eaten, fresh from the tree, beside one of the purling streams which meander through the green gardens of Nefta. It is an enchanting.spot, is Nefta, and I should have liked to dally there for several days, but the desert was calling and I had to go.

A quarter of a mile outside the wretched, mud-walled little town of El Oued, the Transat, we found, had established a semi-permanent camp in a sort of amphitheater formed by the sand-dunes. There was a spacious dining-tent before which had been laid out a sort of flowerless garden composed, appropriately enough, of hundreds of empty wine-bottles, up-ended and planted in geometric designs in the sand. Hard by was another tent, for lounging purposes, provided with comfortable cane chairs and lined with bright-colored native hangings; while at the back, ranged in a semicircle, were a dozen or more small sleeping-tents for the use of travelers and their servants. The encampment was in charge of a genial old Kabyle from the mountains of Algeria, whose astonishing proficiency in numerous European tongues had been acquired, so he explained, during a lengthy engagement with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. Though he was well on in years and held a responsible position, I think that the old warrior secretly hankered for the blare of brass bands, the roar of cheering crowds, and life under the “big top.”

After quite an excellent dinner, considering the remoteness of the place and the limitations imposed on culinary efforts, we ranged our chairs around the camp-fire—a mighty roarer fed with palm-logs the length of a man—and the ex-rough rider put on a very creditable variety show with local talent for our entertainment. The program opened with a plaintive Bedouin love-song by the camp cook, an Arab from the Tunisian Sahel. His two assistants, one of them a really remarkable ventriloquist, gave an extemporized skit which must have been highly amusing, judging from the roars of laughter with which it was greeted by the native onlookers. Four Arabs, armed with sword and spear, then gave a kind of war-dance, during the course of which they became so excited that I feared they would turn the farce into reality and do each other bodily harm. The program was concluded by a quartet of local prostitutes, unveiled, tattooed, and festooned with jewelry, who performed the strange and sensuous dances of the desert folk to the wail of flutes and the boom of tom-toms. The brooding desert, gray white beneath the stars; the purple velvet sky; the ghostly sand-hills; the little circle of natives, so closely cloaked and hooded that only their eyes were visible, squatting on the ground; and the slim, supple bodies of the dancing-girls twisting and swaying in the light of the leaping flames—all these combined to form a scene which is etched deeply on the tablets of my memory.

Because of the rapid radiation which takes place at nightfall, the temperature in the desert is subject to almost unbelievably sudden and extreme variations. This characteristic of the Saharan climate was particularly noticeable at El Oued, the thermometer registering a drop of nearly sixty degrees in not much over an hour. During the day the heat in the little hollow where our tents were pitched was so intense that we fairly gasped for breath; the stray currents of air which occasionally reached us, far from affording relief, were like blasts from the open door of a furnace; before the sun was an hour high the mercury climbed to 120 and stayed there; to stay within one’s tent was to invite suffocation, to stay without, where a thermometer probably would have registered 150, was to be broiled alive. Yet the sun had scarcely disappeared below the horizon ere we were shivering beneath our greatcoats, and that night I slept under three heavy blankets—and suffered acutely from the cold! That is why the climate of the Sahara must be treated with profound respect by Europeans, for exposure to the sudden chill which comes at sunset is frequently as deadly as exposure to the sun itself.

Oued is the Arabic word for river, and, when applied to a village or locality, presupposes the presence of a stream. I saw nothing about El Oued which even remotely suggested the proximity of water, however, until, climbing one morning to the summit of the range of sand-dunes which encircled the camp, I looked down upon a dozen acres or so of as prosperous looking a fruit-orchard as I have ever seen. I rubbed my eyes incredulously, so astonishing was it to see this patch of brilliant green set down in the heart of that arid, sun-scorched, apparently hopeless waste. Yet there it was, with its ordered rows of fruit-trees—pears, apples, peaches, apricots, figs, pomegranates—in full blossom; its long trellises of grapes, the stems of the vines as large as a man’s wrist; its ranks of towering date-palms with their huge clusters of rapidly ripening fruit; and, in the heart of it all, a really charming little bungalow embowered in flowers and vines. The place was, I learned, the property of a prosperous and progressive Arab, who had obtained an unlimited supply of pure water by sinking a number of artesian wells to a depth of not much over a hundred feet. El Oued was appropriately named after all, it seemed, for the river was there, even though it was below the surface. But the anxieties of a Saharan husbandman are not ended once he has obtained an adequate and assured supply of water, for he must still guard his hard-won area of fertility against the stealthy encroachments of the shifting sands, which can be held at bay only by maintaining along the edge of the oasis a sand-break composed of certain trees, shrubs, and grasses. And, if prosperity is to be maintained, that barrier must be guarded as vigilantly as a Hollander guards his dikes. For the desert, like the sea, never becomes discouraged, never gives in; you can never say that you have conquered it. It can be held in check only by unceasing vigilance.

Some hours after leaving El Oued we sighted across the dunes the walls of a small desert town called Guemar, the site of an important zaouia of one of the numerous sects of Islam and the seat of a powerful marabout. The term “marabout,” it should be explained, is of the widest application, and takes in every man who in any way devotes himself to religion, from dignified officials of the church to the demented creatures, clad in filthy rags, who frequent the bazaars and the courtyards of the mosques, eking out an existence on the alms they solicit from the charitable. Throughout North Africa the marabouts enjoy extraordinary influence, political as well as religious, being venerated as living saints and harkened to as prophets, soothsayers, and mediators. They are generously supported by alms, are listened to with awe by the ignorant and with respect by the enlightened, and are invariably consulted in family disputes, intertribal quarrels, and other matters of consequence or inconsequence. On the death of a marabout his sanctity is transferred to his tomb (also called a marabout), which frequently becomes a place of pilgrimage for the pious. The marabouts whom one sees shuffling about the streets of North African cities are generally mere charlatans, who have adopted a life of piety as the easiest means of gaining a living; but these should not be confounded with the great marabouts, some of whom, such as the Senussi, the head of the powerful secret fraternity whose headquarters are at Jarabub in Tripolitania, are extremely able men and exercise enormous influence in the Moslem world. The French, whose whole policy in Africa is based on winning the confidence and friendship of the natives, have never made the mistake of underestimating the power of the great marabouts, but, on the contrary, treat them with marked respect and frequently bestow on them honors and decorations.

When our driver learned that we contemplated passing through Guemar without stopping, he ventured to express polite but unmistakable disapproval. To do so, it seemed, would be to commit an unpardonable breach of etiquette.

“All strangers passing through the town must visit the grand marabout,” he informed us. “It is the custom.”

I still demurred, but the chauffeur was insistent.

“He has given orders that all visitors must see him; he expects it.”

Realizing that the man was evidently under orders to do nothing which might offend so powerful a chieftain, I consented to pay my respects.

Si Sayah Laroussi, who, according to the legend on his visiting-card, is grand marabout of the Tidjania, chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and commander of the Order of Nichan Iftikhar, is a very important person indeed in the northeastern Sahara, exercising political as well as religious authority. His residence, which fronts on a spacious square in the center of the town, is a substantial whitewashed building in the Moorish style, the entrance, with its horseshoe arches and bands of vividly colored tiles, being faintly suggestive of some of the palaces in Fez and Marrákesh. Si Sayah, an impressive and colorful figure in his vivid green turban, his caftan of pale pink silk, and his snowy burnous, on the breast of which gleamed the cross of the Legion of Honor, received us with some show of ceremony, surrounded by the officials of his miniature court, in the audience-chamber, a finely proportioned room whose decorations combined Oriental taste with European tawdriness.

After serving us with Arab coffee, some native cakes made from sickly sweet almond paste, and cigarettes, and displaying with much pride a series of photographs of Mecca, to which he had made the haj, Si Sayah conducted us through the gardens, which contained several gazelles and a flock of pink-legged flamingos, to the really impressive mosque which was being erected over the tomb of the late grand marabout, who, if I mistake not, was our host’s father. I was particularly interested in the architecture of the marabout (I am referring now to the building, not to the man), for its doorways, instead of having the Moorish horseshoe arches which are characteristic of religious edifices in French North Africa, were high and rectangular, with a curious serrated border, suggesting, without actually resembling, the doorways of the Temple at Karnak, in Upper Egypt. Upon my expressing surprise that a town as small as Guemar could afford so large and beautiful a place of worship, Si Sayah explained that the funds for its erection had been subscribed by the pious throughout North Africa, adding that generous contributions had been made even by unbelievers. Taking the hint, I begged the privilege of making a modest donation to the building-fund, which was promptly accepted in the name of Allah.

As we were saying our farewells I asked Si Sayah’s permission to take his picture, explaining that I wished to use it in my next book. This so gratified him that he urged us to remain in Guemar as his guests for a few days and join him on a hunting expedition, adding that he had the finest falcons and Salukis in North Africa. The Saluki, or gazelle hound (the French erroneously call them sloughi), is, I should perhaps explain, peculiar to the Sahara and Arabia, where the type has been carefully bred for sport by the great sheikhs for generations, some of these dogs having pedigrees which run back for a thousand years. Though of sturdier build, the Saluki bears a strong resemblance to the Russian borzoi. They locate their quarry not by smell but by sight, amazing tales being related of their sagacity, speed, and endurance. Falconry, like coursing, has been practised in Barbary for ages, the nomad tribes of the Sahara having developed a very large type of falcon—possibly a species of eagle—which is flown at partridges, wild fowl, cranes, bustards, and even gazelles. To gallop across the desert as the guest of the grand marabout of the Tidjania “astride a steed of the Prophet’s breed,” with a hooded falcon on my wrist, and a pack of lean gazelle hounds racing on before, would have provided me with material for many a dinner-table story, but time pressed, and I felt compelled reluctantly to decline the tempting invitation.

The mud-brown walls of Guemar lay far behind when we saw approaching us across the desert a rolling cloud of yellow dust.

“Une caravane?” I asked our Arab guide.

With his hand he shaded his keen eyes against the intolerable sun-glare, then shook his head.

“Non, m’sieu’,” he answered. “Les méharistes.”

A moment later there emerged from the enveloping dust-cloud a long line of grim fantastic figures, mounted not upon the lumbering dromedaries of commerce but astride the lean gray racing-camels called méhari by the desert folk. At the head of the column rode a slim, sun-bronzed young Frenchman in the uniform of a captain of chasseurs d’Afrique. As the cavalcade swept by us at a brisk trot, saddles creaking, accoutrements clanking, carbines thudding in their buckets, I noted that the riders were veiled like women, their faces muffled to the eyes with dark blue scarfs. By these I knew them for masked Touareg; raiders and robbers no longer, however, but camel cavalry, méharistes, in the service of the republic. Unlike the ordinary Arab, who invariably wears white, their gandourahs were somber in color—dark blue or black—and girt about with broad belts of camel’s-hair. The black lithams, or face-cloths—which, by the way, are worn not for purposes of disguise but in order to protect the throat and nose from the sand—permitted nothing save the fierce smoldering eyes of their wearers to be seen. Perhaps it was their reputation for cruelty, perhaps it was their black masks and somber apparel, but there was something awesome and impressive about these veiled riders and the stealthy, quiet tread of the great beasts they bestrode, as they sped southward into the infinite spaces of the desert. Possessed of a skill in desert-craft and tracking equaled only by the American Indian, mounted on their wonderful running-camels, capable of covering enormous distances in a day, these “People of the Veil,” some of them at least, have accepted the pay of France and are bringing security to the caravan-routes and the desert towns which they terrorized so long. They have not yet beaten their long, two-edged swords into plowshares, it is true, but they have turned them into policemen’s batons; and a policeman is a sure indication that civilization is not far away.

CHAPTER XII DOWN TO THE LAND OF THE MOZABITES

Linked to Biskra and civilization by the slender thread of steel which the French have thrown across some two hundred kilometers of dusty desert, Touggourt, the dark-green mass of its palm-groves floating betwixt the sky and the tossing dunes, suggested a boat moored to the shore by a long hawser. Cut that hawser, and Touggourt would, you feel, drift away upon the sea of sand, for it is the southernmost rail-head in the Algerine Sahara.

Until very recent years Touggourt was to all intents and purposes an island, a port of call for caravans plying between Algeria and the Niger territories, to be reached only by a five days’ voyage on a swaying “ship of the desert.” But with the completion of the railway its age-long isolation has become a thing of the past, and it is visited each winter by an increasing number of hardy tourists, who, foregoing for a time the bath-tubs, table-d’hôtes, and gaming-tables of Biskra, summon up the courage to brave the hardships of the eight-hour journey by narrow-gage railway in order that they may send picture post-cards to their friends at home from what it pleases them to term “the heart of the desert.”

When I first went to Algeria, more than twenty years ago, the journey to Touggourt was a real adventure, to be undertaken only with the consent of the French military authorities and with an adequate escort from the Camel Corps. The oasis was as remote from the beaten paths of travel as Baghdad, or Addis Ababa, or Khiva. But to-day it is only an excursion, to be made by unaccompanied women in comparative comfort and perfect safety. That is what comes from civilization. It is ruining the world for those of an adventurous turn of mind. The motor-car has crossed the Desert of Gobi to Urga; the mysterious mountains of Abyssinia resound to the hoot of the locomotive; seats in the Cairo-Baghdad mail-planes are booked for months in advance; the radio has become a commonplace to the sophisticated savages of the Upper Congo; motor-buses rumble through the jungles of Cambodia; Cooks sell through tickets, meals and rooms included, from Cairo to the Cape. For the Outer Lands are almost all exploited; the work of the pioneer and the frontiersman is nearly finished, and in a few more years, a very few, we shall see their like no more.

Forming a lofty hedge of green between the mud-brown town and the encircling desert is a vast forest of date-palms—nearly a quarter of a million of them—whose amazing luxuriance is due to the fact that Touggourt lies in the valley of the Oued Rir, the largest of that system of unseen rivers which drain the southern slopes of the Aurés and which has rewarded the efforts of the well-drillers with a supply of artesian water that has made this one of the most fertile and prosperous regions in the whole Sahara.

From an architectural point of view, Touggourt is one of the most curious towns in Africa, the labyrinthine native quarter being penetrated by long, dim tunnels, just large enough to permit the passage of camels, and running beneath the houses themselves. In places the walls of these subterranean passageways are honeycombed with little booths and shops, just as in New York establishments of a more pretentious order open on the subway. The houses, their walls unwhitewashed and unpierced by windows, are built of blocks of sun-dried mud, wisps of the straw used in their manufacture still protruding from them, with domed roofs of the same material. Seen from the top of one of the numerous minarets, the maze of tortuous lanes and alleys, the black mouths of the tunnels, the hundreds of earth-brown domes, and the mud walls, of the same monotonous color, give the impression that one has wandered into a town inhabited by some gigantic species of mole.

The native town is indescribably filthy, unkempt, and foul of smell, its streets littered with refuse, swarming with whining mendicants, scrofulous children, and great numbers of savage yellow dogs. But the French quarter is very neat and clean, with broad sandy streets lined by double rows of palm-trees; the inevitable Grande Place, deep in dust and with rather discouraged-looking vegetation; a sprinkling of European cafés and trading-establishments; and two hotels; a well-appointed and comfortable one operated by the Transat and a considerably less pretentious establishment called the Oued Rir.

For the blasé tourist, fresh from the casinos, dance-halls, and cafés chantants of Biskra, Touggourt holds few attractions, though one may take some really delightful rides through the extensive date plantations, the most fascinating vistas unfolding themselves at every turn of the road. The horses, however, far from being the beautiful Arab steeds of which the poets sing, are poor gaunt creatures, hard of gait and mouth, while the high, broad-seated native saddles, with their small stirrups and short leathers, might have been used with great effectiveness as instruments of torture by the Spanish Inquisition.

It so happened that we found ourselves in Touggourt in the fasting month of Ramadan, when no devout Mohammedan permits either food or water to pass his lips between sunrise and sunset for a period of thirty days. When the shadows began to lengthen with the approach of nightfall, we were wont to climb to the lofty platform atop the minaret of a disused mosque, from which could be obtained a superb view of the whole oasis and the adjacent desert. Just as the upper edge of the blood-red sun coincided with the western sky-line, an ancient field-piece, posted in the square below, crashed in smoke and flame. As the reverberations died away the white figures of the muezzins appeared on the balconies of their minarets, as the little figures pop out of Swiss clocks when they strike the hour, and over the waiting city rolled the high-pitched call to evening prayer: “Al-lah-hu il Al-lah ... Al-lah Ak-bar!” At the eagerly awaited signal the covers were tossed from the steaming cooking-pots, the sellers of cous-cous and sweetmeats were suddenly besieged by clamorous customers, and the entire population of Touggourt fell to with knives and fingers, ravenous after the day-long fast.

My daughter is passionately fond of animals, so, when she came upon two Arabs boys tormenting a desert fox cub which they had captured, she became its owner for a small consideration. It was an amusing little creature, as soft and furry as a chow puppy, and quickly became domesticated, following her about on a string. She announced at dinner that she intended taking it back to America with her, remarking that as a pet a Saharan fox would be much more chic than a sheep-dog or a Pomeranian. I did not attempt to dissuade her; I knew better. She retired happily, with the cub, a pile of blankets, and a bowl of milk. But when she appeared for breakfast it was obvious that she had passed a restless night.

“I didn’t sleep a wink,” she greeted us. “That fox is the most exasperating creature I have ever seen. He kept me awake until long after midnight with his barking. I fed him some milk, and he went to sleep for a time, but a little later I heard a noise under the bed. He was busy chewing the toes of my best dancing-slippers. I put him back in the blankets and tried to snatch a little sleep, but when I woke up he was gone. After looking everywhere for him, I finally found him hidden under the bath-tub. I’m through. A bull terrier for mine. It may not be as romantic as a Saharan fox, but it couldn’t possibly be as troublesome.”

One afternoon, for want of something better to do, we rode out to Temacin, a pretty little oasis, fifteen miles to the south of Touggourt, with white houses peering out from amid the palm-groves and the inevitable marabout’s tomb. Though it was an insufferably hot day, with the mercury hovering around 120 in the sun, the first two or three miles were delightful, for the road led through the date plantations, with the great leaves forming a canopy of green overhead and in our ears the pleasant sound of running water. But when we debouched upon the desert, to strike one of the seven main caravan-routes which cross the Sahara, it seemed as though we were riding upon the top of a stove at white heat and that we would be broiled alive.

The great trade-track on which we now found ourselves was very wide, a broad swath trodden below the level of the desert by the heart-shaped pads of the camels which have followed it since long before recorded history began. When half-way to Temacin we met a caravan coming up from the south; five months out of Timbuktu, our guide informed us after a brief colloquy with the leader; an endless file of men and animals plodding slowly across the burning waste. Some of the camels bore huge, round, tent-like arrangements, called bassourabs, in the privacy of which the women rode, protected alike from the sun and from the eyes of men. Atop of the bassourabs were curious wooden frameworks, six or eight feet high, resembling the lattice masts of battle-ships or miniature Eiffel Towers. The tops of these towers must have been fully sixteen feet above the ground, and from them fluttered colored rags or streamers, which were visible long before the camels themselves had appeared above the sky-line. I could not even hazard a guess as to their use, but the guide informed us that they were for purposes of identification, like the numerals at the bows of a destroyer or the emblems painted on the under wings of a battle-plane. His French was very sketchy, but, as nearly as I could make out, every tribe, or every caravan—I am not certain which—can be recognized by the shape of its camel-towers and by the color of the rags which flutter from them. This is a wise precaution, for in the vast stretches of the Sahara, where life is none too safe at best, it is essential that the leader of a great convoy, responsible for hundreds of lives and millions of francs’ worth of merchandise, should be able to determine before they come within rifle-shot whether those he sees approaching are enemies or friends.

When Nature fashioned the camel she must have had the peculiar requirements of the Arab in mind, for without the ungainly beast life in the desert would be impossible. It frequently attains an age of fifty years; it is capable of carrying a burden weighing up to half a ton, though six hundred pounds is usually the maximum; because of the structure of its stomach it can, as every one knows, go without water for several days on end; it finds ample pasturage in regions where a horse would die from starvation; and the fleet méhari, or racing-camels, such as are used by the Touareg, can, when pushed, cover incredible distances without resting. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, were it not for the camel, vast tracts on the maps of Africa and Asia would still be labeled “unexplored.”

The term “camel,” strictly speaking, should be used to designate only the single-humped dromedary of Africa, Arabia, and India, though it is also frequently applied to the two-humped Bactrian species found in Central Asia. Though motion-picture producers frequently use animals of both species in the same scenes, this is an amusing solecism, for their habitats are as widely separated as those of the bison and the buffalo. Of the Arabian camel there are almost as many breeds as there are of the horse; the clumsy, lumbering, moth-eaten beasts of burden made familiar to stay-at-home Americans by the circus have about the same relation to the slim, graceful, cream-colored méhari as a draft-horse has to a thoroughbred.

On desert journeys camels are expected to carry their loads about twenty-five miles a day for three days without drinking, being watered, however, on the fourth; but an animal of the fleeter breeds will carry its rider fifty miles a day for five days without water; while a Bedouin whom I once employed to carry an urgent message for me in Arabia covered 120 miles of desert in about eighteen hours.

The training of the camel as a beast of burden begins in its fourth year, when it is taught to kneel or rise at a given signal, and is gradually accustomed to bear increasing loads, which, in the case of exceptionally sturdy animals, sometimes weigh a thousand pounds. When too heavily laden, however, the camel, which can be as stubborn as a mule, refuses to rise—it was the last straw, you remember, which broke the camel’s back—but on the march it is exceedingly patient, yielding beneath its burden only to die. When relieved from its load it does not, like other animals, seek the shade, but prefers to kneel beside its burden in the full glare of the sun, seeming actually to enjoy the red-hot sand, a peculiarity which it shares only with the salamander. Overtaken by a sand-storm, the camel kneels with its back to the wind, and, stretching its long neck flat upon the ground, closes its eyes and nostrils and remains to all intents and purposes inanimate until the storm has passed, while its driver, muffled in his burnous, crouches in the lee of the beast, whose great hump affords some measure of protection from the blast.

The camel is the only animal in the world that provides its owner with transportation, food, drink, clothing, shelter, and fuel. The flesh of the young camel, particularly the fat of the hump, is considered a great delicacy, though camels are rarely slaughtered for eating purposes save on occasions of ceremony. The Arabs either drink its milk or curdle, strain, and press it into small balls, which are dried in the sun and provide a sour but sustaining beverage when crushed and mixed with water. Its long hair is made into the garments with which the folk of the desert clothe themselves, the carpets on which they sleep, and occasionally into tents, though goat’s-hair is more commonly used for the latter purpose; while the hide is tanned into an extremely durable leather. In those regions where wood is unobtainable, the camel’s dung is used for fuel, and from it the Arabs of Upper Egypt and the Sudan extract sal ammoniac for export. Given a camel and a date-palm, the desert holds no terrors for the Arab.

Though classified as a domestic animal, the camel is by nature a wild and savage beast. During the rutting-season male camels become exceedingly dangerous, evincing their anger by a curious bubbling sound, half-snarl, half-roar, engaging in fierce struggles with other males, and frequently attacking their drivers. Once, while crossing the Syrian Hamad, I saw a camel almost sever the arm of an Arab who had incautiously approached it; and on another occasion, in Mesopotamia, I was called upon to treat a Bedouin whose whole face had literally been smashed flat by a blow from the foot of an infuriated camel.

A great deal of sentimental nonsense has been written about the camel, which, as a matter of fact, is the stupidest, the most ungrateful, and the most ill-tempered of all domesticated animals. “If,” says Sir Francis Palgrave, “docile means stupid, well and good; in such a case the camel is the very model of docility. But if the epithet is intended to designate an animal that takes an interest in its rider so far as a beast can, that in some way understands his intentions, or shares them in a subordinate fashion, that obeys from a sort of submissive or half-fellow-feeling with his master, like the horse or the elephant, then I say that the camel is by no means docile—very much the contrary. He takes no heed of his rider, pays no attention whether he be on his back or not, walks straight on when once set a-going, merely because he is too stupid to turn aside, and then should some tempting thorn or green branch allure him out of the path, continues to walk on in the new direction simply because he is too dull to turn back into the right road. In a word, he is from first to last an undomesticated and savage animal rendered serviceable by stupidity alone, without much skill on his master’s part, or any coöperation on his own, save that of an extreme passiveness. Neither attachment nor even habit impresses him; never tame, though not wide-awake enough to be exactly wild.”

In the desert, about two hundred and fifty kilometers east-southeast of Touggourt, lies a group of seven small oases, the largest of which is Ghardaia. This archipelago is the home of a confederation of Berber tribes known as Mozabites, or the Beni-M’zab, to give them their proper name. The Mozabites, who number only about forty thousand, are not Arabs, but one of the ancient Berber races which lived in North Africa long before the Arabs came. Nearly all of them read and write Arabic, but in conversing among themselves they employ the Zenata dialect of the Berber tongue, for which, in common with the other branches of the old Berber stock, such as the Riffi and the Kabyles, there survives no written form. Though Moslems they belong to a sect of extreme dissenters, branches of which are also found in Oman and Zanzibar, being shunned by orthodox Mohammedans as the worst of heretics. Their creed is based on the precepts of Abdallah-ibn-Ibad, the assassin of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and hence the traditional hatred in which they are held by the conventional followers of the faith, who refer to them as Khammes, “the Fifth,” because they are outside the four great branches of Islam. In their form of government, their extreme austerity of life, and their intolerance of other beliefs, as well as in their energy, industry, and commercial integrity, they strongly resemble the Puritans who settled on the shores of New England three hundred years ago. Like the Puritans, they went into exile in a remote land for the sake of their faith, while still another point of resemblance is found in their form of government, which is by a body of elders, called the Assembly. The laws promulgated by this body are as strict and as rigidly enforced as were the Blue Laws of early New England, a Mozabite found guilty of drinking wine or coffee, of smoking, or of frequenting houses of ill fame being punished by flogging.

The most direct route from Touggourt to the country of the Beni-M’zab lies straight across the desert, via Guerrara, which is also a Mozabite community; but should you be traveling by twelve-wheeler, in which case a few score miles or less do not greatly matter, it will repay you to take the somewhat longer road through Wargla—or Ourgla, as the French spell it—which, barring breakdowns and sand-storms, can be reached from Touggourt quite easily in a day.

Ourgla, said to be the oldest town in the Sahara, has a curiously medieval aspect, due, no doubt, to its being encircled by a massive wall pierced by six bastion-flanked gates. For centuries it was independent, a sort of Saharan counterpart of the free cities of the Hanseatic League; but, unable successfully to resist the aggressions of the desert tribes, it eventually was driven to seek the protection of the sultans of Morocco. Moorish protection proved but nominal, however, and about the middle of the last century Ourgla was occupied by the forces of France’s Arab allies, though French authority was not effectively established in the oasis until 1872, since when it has been an important outpost on the Algerine frontier and a base for military operations against the Touareg. In the old, bad days, Ourgla was a thriving trade mart on the trans-Saharan route to the Niger countries, its slave-market crowded with blacks brought from Central Africa and with buyers from all parts of Barbary, but its importance rapidly declined upon France’s suppression of the trade in “black ivory.” In recent years, however, it has regained a considerable measure of its ancient prosperity through the efforts of the French engineers, who, by sinking numerous wells, have expanded the area and enormously increased the fertility of the oasis.

Ghardaia, the Mozabite capital, lies about a hundred miles to the northwest of Ourgla, in the middle of the Wadi M’zab, nearly eighteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is one of the most picturesque towns in the entire Sahara, its square, flat-topped houses, which are built on the flanks of a hill, rising in terraces, one above another, so that the place bears a certain resemblance to the New Mexican pyramid-pueblo of Taos. Crowning the hill is the kasbah, an ancient fortress with enormously thick ramparts, above which, like a slim white finger pointing toward heaven, soars the tapering minaret of the Grand Mosque. It is a profoundly impressive thing, this minaret, unusual in shape and clearly visible from every quarter of the city and from far off in the desert, as it rises in lonely majesty against the hot blue sky.

Unlike most Saharan towns, whose houses are built of sun-dried mud-blocks, the buildings of Ourgla are substantially constructed from sandstone. They are, as a rule, of a blinding whiteness, by reason of repeated applications of lime-wash, but the dazzling monotony is broken here and there by house-owners, more original-minded than their neighbors, who have painted their dwellings lemon yellow, pale pink, cobalt blue. Wandering through the narrow, tortuous lanes, one frequently notices, pressed into the plaster above the lintels of the doors, the imprint of a hand painted in red or blue; this represents the hand of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, an emblem which is supposed to bring good luck to the household, like the horseshoe in Occidental countries.

Ghardaia is divided by walls into three districts: the eastern quarter belongs to the Jews, of whom there are several hundred families in the town; the western is occupied by the Metabia, an Arab tribe from the Djebel Amur; while the central quarter, which contains the kasbah and the Grand Mosque, is the home of the ruling race, the Beni-M’zab, to whom the gardens also belong. The Jews and the Arabs are regarded by the Mozabites as inferior peoples and have virtually no voice in the affairs of the community, the government of which, as I have already remarked, is directed by an assembly composed of Mozabite elders.

Of all the Berber tribes the Mozabites have remained the freest from foreign admixture, their persistent refusal to have social intercourse with other tribes having produced so pronounced a type that even a Mozabite child is recognizable at a glance. They are usually of small and wiry figure, with very short necks, high, somewhat rounded shoulders, and under-developed legs which are frequently bowed. They are further distinguished from their Arab neighbors by flat faces, short noses, thick lips, and pale, almost sallow, skins, while one not infrequently sees a Mozabite with the red beard and blue or gray eyes which Genseric and his Vandal hordes left as a reminder of their visit to Berber Africa.

Unlike the Arabs, whose burnouses are invariably white or a dirty brown, the Mozabites array themselves in garments of many colors. The dress of the common people consists of a sleeveless woolen shirt, as short and full as kilts, called gandourah, with tassels of camel’s-hair hanging from their broad belts, their lower faces concealed by loosely bound haiks, a necessary precaution in that torrid country. The costumes of the emirs, caïds, and sheikhs are frequently of exceeding richness, however, their enormous turbans, containing yards and yards of fine material, bound with agals of gold thread; their high, soft boots of scarlet Moroccan leather; their delicately colored silk gandourahs girt with broad, silver-studded belts from which protrude the ivory and gold-inlaid hilts of a miniature armory of weapons. As they sweep by astride their splendidly caparisoned horses they seem to have ridden straight out of the pages of the Arabian Nights.

While wholly lacking the cleanliness, the sociability, and the charm of manner of the Arabs, the Mozabites far surpass them in industry, in commercial enterprise, and in dependability, their integrity being proverbial in matters where money is concerned. It is said of them, as it is of the Montenegrins, that their word, once given, is never broken, and that they will die rather than betray a trust. In consequence of this enviable reputation, though they are detested by the Arabs for religious reasons, the Arabs will unhesitatingly intrust them with their last franc.

A warlike tribe, one of the last to submit to France, most of them have now settled down as peaceful and prosperous agriculturists, cultivators of dates and breeders of live stock, though their other industries have not been neglected, the burnouses and carpets manufactured in the M’zab finding ready purchasers throughout North Africa. Industrious and enterprising, as successful at money-making as the Armenians or the Jews—it is said that a Jew has to work with his hands in the M’zab—they are prone to seek their fortunes outside their native land, finding ready employment in the cities along the Barbary coast all the way from Tangier to Tripoli, where many of them occupy positions of trust and responsibility in banks and mercantile houses or are engaged in businesses of their own. The men usually leave home to engage in commercial pursuits as soon as they attain their majority; but, once they have succeeded in amassing what passes for a fortune among the desert folk, they return to their wives and families in the M’zab, where they settle down to enjoy the fruits of their labors, while the eldest son goes north in turn to carry on his father’s business.

So strict are the rules of the caste that any intercourse with non-Mozabites, save in the way of trade, is rigorously forbidden; nor may a Mozabite take his wife, or a child under ten years, away from his own country; nor may he marry elsewhere for any reason whatsoever. Those of other cults, including orthodox Moslems, may not set foot within Mozabite places of worship, while Beni-Isguen, the holy city of the Mozabites, not far from Ghardaia, is held in such sanctity that no outlander, none but a born Mozabite, is permitted to sleep in it. Until the French intervened, the Mozabites refused to bury any member of their sect, no matter where he died, except in the sacred soil of the homeland, the bodies of those who died abroad being kept by their relatives or friends until there came an opportunity to ship them by caravan to the M’zab. The Arabs will tell you that, until the French authorities put an end to the practice for sanitary reasons, there was a corpse in the back room of every Mozabite shop in Biskra.

The market-place of Ghardaia, a great sun-baked square surrounded by whitewashed arcades, and packed with men and animals, is one of the most interesting spots in all North Africa, for to it are drawn caravans, merchants, and traders from all the countries bordering on the Sahara to dispose of their peculiar wares. Here come fat, greasy Jewish merchants to tempt the spendthrift, splendor-loving Arabs with the magnificent red saddlery manufactured in the souks of Tunis; commerçants from Oran and Algiers to purchase dates for the European market; furtive, shifty-eyed Moorish gun-runners, who, evading the desert patrols, have slipped through the passes of the Atlas with cases of rifles and ammunition concealed beneath bales of innocent merchandise; smart-looking cavalry officers in quest of horses for the Algerian remount stations; sun-darkened men who have come with caravans of salt from the far-off Hills of Air; masked Touareg with their brindled, white, or piebald camels, and, occasionally, a rare and valuable beast of the tawny reddish-buff variety, so prized for speed and endurance; hawk-nosed Arab horse-dealers from the Ziban and the slopes of the High Atlas; wild-looking shepherds of the Fringe, driving great flocks of sheep, their wool dyed in various vivid colors for purposes of identification; ubiquitous Levantines from the littoral, hawking the tawdry European articles which the desert people prize; and, mingling with these men of business, stalwart Senegalese tirailleurs; swaggering goumiers in enormous turbans and voluminous blue cloaks; hard-eyed soldiers of the Foreign Legion, whose pipe-clayed helmets and linen uniforms seem several sizes too large for them; dignified, richly appareled emirs from regions as widely separated as Tibesti and Mauretania; marabouts, clothed in rags and sanctity, pleading for alms; negro clowns from the Sudan, drums slung about their necks and ostrich-plumes in their fuzzy hair, who have accompanied some caravan across the dreary desert miles; dervishes, snake-charmers, sand-diviners, story-tellers ... all these, and many more, make of Ghardaia’s market-place a panorama of Saharan life inconceivably rich in interest, variety, and color.

Upon leaving the capital of the Mozabites, two routes offer themselves to the traveler bound for Algeria. If impatient for the food, the music, and the lights of the hotels of Mustapha Supérieur, he had best turn straight northward, through Laghouat, a prosperous border town of some size but no particular interest, to Djelfa, the southern terminus of the railway to Algiers. Djelfa, by the way, is the best starting-point for an excursion into the mountains of the Ouled-Naïl, the home of that highland clan from whose dusky, dashing daughters are recruited half the prostitutes and dancing-girls of French North Africa. Time permitting, I should have liked to visit these ladies of easy virtue on their native heath, but I knew that Harvey and the Cadillac had been for some days at Biskra and that awaiting us beyond the Atlas were peoples and places equally colorful and strange. So, bidding farewell to the Mozabites, we mounted our twelve-wheeled Pegasus and, turning our back upon Ghardaia and its tall white tower, purred out across the desert toward the dawn.

CHAPTER XIII BISKRA, DEMI-MONDAINE OF THE DESERT

Facing each other, though separated by four thousand miles of African desert, jungle, and veldt, stand two of the most significant and inspiring statues in the world.

From a little triangle of green set in the middle of the Rue Berthe, the principal street of Biskra, rises in marble the commanding figure of a priest, a bearded, vigorous, eagle-eyed man in the flowing vestments and pointed miter of an archbishop, who holds a primate’s cross aloft in one hand and with the other confers an apostolic benediction as he strides southward into Africa. Charles Martial Allemand Lavigerie was the priest’s name, cardinal-archbishop of Carthage and Algeria, primate of All Africa, founder of the Order of the White Fathers. His fairness, tact, and statesmanship in handling thorny native questions won for France the confidence and friendship of the warlike border tribes; he was largely instrumental in putting an end to the trans-Saharan slave-trade; and he and his Pères Blancs did more than all the French military leaders put together to carry the tricolor beyond the Great Sahara.

At the other end of the continent, in Bulawayo, in the dusty, sun-baked thoroughfare known as Main Street, stands another statue—the bronze image of a short, thick-set, carelessly clad man, his hands clasped behind him, his feet planted firmly apart, as he stares in profound meditation northward over Africa. The name of the dreamer was Cecil John Rhodes, and in his vision he saw twin lines of steel stretching from the Cape of Good Hope straight away to the shores of the Mediterranean; a railway, to use his own words, “cutting Africa through the center and picking up trade all the way.” Though the stupendous project which he envisioned is yet to be completed, it is due to him, more than to any single individual, that the eastern and southern portions of the map of Africa are painted red.

No two men were ever more unlike than Lavigerie and Rhodes. Both empire-builders, both apostles of civilization, one gained his ends by tactfulness, the other by ruthlessness; one stood for the mission-station, the other for the machine-gun; one relied on the power of prayer and proselytism, the other on the pick and the pound sterling. The Pères Blancs organized by Lavigerie carried the cross and the tricolor southward to the Ubanghi; the engineers employed by Rhodes carried the railway and the Union Jack northward to the Congo. As far as the poles apart in character and methods, they yet had this in common: both were inspired by deep patriotism, both were possessed of boundless imagination and inexhaustible enthusiasm. Between them they opened up a continent to civilization.

Whoever had the placing of the great missionary-statesman’s statue in Biskra must have known the man. For the eyes gaze eagerly out into the clean, wind-swept spaces of the desert, while the back is turned in contempt and aversion upon the gaming-houses, the dance-halls, and the brothels of the town. Perhaps because they are so avid for the extremely dubious entertainments which the place has to offer, the thousands of tourists who flock to Biskra every winter find time to bestow on the rapt white figure no more than a cursory glance. To most of these the name of Lavigerie means less than nothing, whereas that of Robert Hichens is familiar to them all!

In the old days, before the railway and the tourists came, before Hichens wrote “The Garden of Allah,” Biskra was no better and no worse than other desert towns. But the hordes of winter visitors which soon began to descend upon the place clamored for the Oriental forms of entertainment which the English author painted so alluringly, and these the avaricious Arabs, who always have an eye out for the main chance, were only too willing to provide, so that to-day Biskra spreads before her guests every form of vice to be found in Europe, and some varieties of which Europe never dreamed. Sensual, provocative, hot with desire, painted of face and barbaric of attire, she beckons from beneath her palm-trees, a demi-mondaine of the desert, a siren of the sands.

Biskra is the capital of the Ziban, or the country of the Zab, a people of mixed Arab and Berber stock, whose villages of sun-hardened mud, nestling amid groves of date-palms and fruit-trees and waving fields of grain, dot that portion of the desert lying between the Shat Melrir and the southern slopes of the Aurés. The water which keeps the oasis green, except a certain amount from wells, all comes from a single stream, the Oued Biskra, which, coming down through the Gorge of El Kantara, forty miles to the north, carries the melting snows of the Atlas to the Sahara and finally drops from sight amid the sands. Biskra itself consists of half a dozen villages, separated by large plantations of palm and olive trees, scattered through an oasis three miles in length by less than a mile in breadth. The native houses are of the usual Saharan type, earth-brown, thick-walled, and flat of roof; but dwelling in black tents along the outer edges of the oasis is a considerable transient population—nomads who have come in from the outer desert to refit themselves for another voyage, for Biskra is, in its way, as much a port as Algiers.

Strongly garrisoned and further strengthened by the fort of St. Germain, Biskra is a place of great strategic importance; the end of one of the fingers, as it were, with which France maintains her grip on the desert. Colomb-Béchar, the present terminus of the railway running south from Oran, is another. So are Gabés, and Tozeur, and Touggourt. Thanks to the chain of outposts which she has flung along the southern frontiers of Barbary from Libya to the Atlantic, France’s hold on the desert is now tolerably secure, but the French have not been lulled into a feeling of false security. They are fully alive to the possibility of one of those general conflagrations which sweep across these fiery regions with the suddenness and violence of a sand-storm, as is denoted by the significant number of uniforms—legionaries, tirailleurs, colonial infantry, spahis, méharistes, chasseurs d’Afrique—which fill the streets of Biskra with color. They are firemen, ever on the alert for an alarm.

The foreign settlement of Biskra, la ville européene, is toward the northern end of the oasis. Barring the Arabs and the camels, it does not differ materially from scores of other winter resorts in the south of France. In the center of the town is a beautiful public garden on which front cafés, restaurants, and small arcaded shops for the sale of post-cards, photographs, native curios, and European goods. Set well back from the broad, rather dusty main thoroughfare, the Rue Berthe, are several luxurious hotels, a pretentious casino in pseudo-Moorish style, where visitors may dance, drink, and engage in various games of chance, and numerous white villas embowered in flowering vines and surrounded by gorgeous gardens. During the season the town is gay with color and music and laughter. Long strings of stately camels stalk slowly through the crowded streets; on the pavements before the native coffee-houses groups of turbaned Arabs chat and smoke; hiverneurs from America and half the European countries lounge on the terraces of the hotels, lean over the green tables of the casino, or rub shoulders in the curio-shops; young men and girls in vivid sport-clothes dash madly about the tennis-courts or canter by on well-groomed ponies; lovely ladies, gowned in the height of the Paris fashion, saunter beside cavalry officers gorgeous in wasp-waisted jackets of sky blue and scarlet riding-breeches; from the cafés arabes come strains of the weird and plaintive music the desert people love; in the afternoons the band of the tirailleurs plays Sousa marches and Irving Berlin jazz in the public gardens.

In the crystal clearness of its air, the vivid blueness of its skies, the brilliancy of its sunlight, and the unbroken sweep of the encircling desert, Biskra reminds one of an Upper Nile town, such as Luxor, if one can imagine Luxor without the river and without the temples at Thebes. From November to April its climate is, generally speaking, delightful, but in the summer the thermometer often registers 110 in the shade during the day and 90 at night, though the absence of humidity makes even such excessive heat endurable. Yet Biskra can hardly be recommended for those who are actually ill, for its glorious winter climate is marred by high, bitterly cold winds which frequently bring the mercury down to the freezing-point and cause the shivering tourists to curse the person who assured them that the Sahara and heat are synonymous.

I find it somewhat difficult to analyze the charm of Biskra. That it has great charm is undeniable, but its charm does not lie altogether in the brilliance of its sunshine, the richness of its colors, or the novelty of its setting. It has no monopoly of these. I think that its peculiar appeal is to be found, rather, in its innate barbarism, for, beneath its thin coating of civilization, it is African to the core. This may seem rather far-fetched when one remembers that it is reached from the north by comfortable trains with wagons-lits and dining-cars; that its larger hotels compare very favorably with the great hostelries of Florida and the Riviera; that its casino is crowded nightly with men and women in evening-dress risking their money at petits chevaux or roulette. Yet the barbaric note is never wholly absent; it rings more shrill by force of contrast; one has the uneasy feeling that the veneer of civilization is none too thick, that one is walking on a perilously thin crust. The caravans which slip in so silently from the great wastes and steal out again with equal mysteriousness bound for God knows where; the hooded figures which crouch motionless in the dimly lit interiors of the native cafés; the tattooed harlots who flaunt themselves in the narrow streets of the Ouled-Naïl quarter; the wild-looking, sullen-eyed men from the depths of the desert who furtively whisper together in the market-place; the momentary flash of a steel blade as a burnous is carelessly thrown back; the eery wail of flutes and the muffled throb of drums; the moonlight gleaming on the bayonets of night patrols—all these combine to remind us that we are in Africa, a tiny island of white men amid a sea of mysterious, fanatical, menacing brown ones; and that out there in the brooding desert, under cover of the darkness, who knows what ominous plans are hatching. As in other places on the edge of the unknown, one is constantly oppressed by an undefinable sense of lurking peril, the uneasy feeling that something is about to happen.

Biskra, as every reader of modern fiction knows, is the Beni-Mora of Robert Hichens’s “Garden of Allah,” and to leave there without visiting the gardens of the Villa Landon which the novelist so graphically describes would be as unthinkable as to leave Versailles without seeing the Trianon. For the setting of his story Hichens chose the beautiful estate of Count Landon, a French nobleman who has devoted his life to a study of Arab life, which lies in the extreme outskirts of the oasis, on the very margin of the desert, its walls rising abruptly from the illimitable sea of sand.

The creators of northern gardens strive primarily for color; here, amid the glare of the sun and the desert, the chief object sought is shade. Almost wholly absent are the velvety stretches of close-cropped lawn, the brilliant “flower-beds,” the formal avenues and exactly trimmed hedges to which we are accustomed. There are flowers, of course—great clumps of geranium, hedges of red and white hibiscus, cascades of bougainvillea, purple and crimson, clambering roses, and unfamiliar plants and vines with gorgeous blooms—but instead of being set out in formal rows or geometrical designs, as European gardeners are so fond of doing, they peep out unexpectedly from amid a bewildering tangle of bamboos, palms of every known variety, and citrus-trees, for in that fierce heat they can exist only by taking advantage of the shade. Winding through the wilderness of verdure go broad white walks, stamped and rolled until they are as smooth as asphalt and then sprinkled with a thin layer of sand. Everywhere bare-legged Arab gardeners are at work preserving the immaculate tidiness of the gardens. So conscientious are they that a footprint on the sanded walks is instantly erased, not a dead leaf is to be seen.

Entering the cool green tunnels from the intolerable glare and heat of the sun, hearing the pleasant splash and gurgle of water coursing through the network of leafy channels, lounging beneath pergolas smothered in jasmine and bougainvillea, or from the outer promenade gazing across the illimitable sea of sand whose yellow waves break impotently against the retaining-walls of the garden, one marvels at the miracle which has wrought such surpassing beauty from a region so discouraging. Nowhere else have I seen such bold and successful defiance of the desert; here “the wilderness becomes like Eden, and the desert like the garden of the Lord.” The wonder and fascination of the place grow on the visitor hour by hour.

Hidden away in the heart of the gardens is the owner’s villa, a rambling, one-story building which lays no claim to architectural pretensions. The interior is a curious mélange of Moorish and mid-Victorian, the Oriental rugs and hangings, the marbles and paintings, the ornate crystal chandeliers, the broad divans piled high with embroidered cushions, the Empire tables and over-stuffed chairs upholstered in brocaded satin combining the unbridled opulence of the East with the dignity and restraint of the West. Not far away is a charming little pavilion, furnished in the Oriental style, where Count Landon takes his guests after dinner for coffee and cigarettes.

Reclining on a grassy bank before the pavilion was an Arab in a plum-colored burnous, a scarlet hibiscus-blossom thrust behind his ear, pensively engaged in the extraction of mournful music from a flute. We did not need to be told that this was the Larbi described by Hichens. He is a born actor and, if the stories one hears are to be believed, he has been highly successful in capitalizing the fame brought him by the book, for every English and American visitor to the gardens asks to see him and for the plaintive love-airs which he draws from his little reed rewards him generously.

In a charming glade beside a vine-clad kiosk we found another Arab, who offered, for a small consideration, to tell our fortunes in the sand. Ordinarily I should have passed him by, but the atmosphere of the Jardin Landon encourages such tomfoolery, and, at my daughter’s insistence, I told him to try his hand at prophecy. Drawing the hood of his burnous over his head, he spread white sand evenly upon the ground, traced cabalistic designs in it with a pointed stick, blew upon it, and, after a few moments spent in scrutinizing the result, informed me that I was about to undertake a long journey—a safe prophecy under the circumstances and, as it happened, a correct one. He did not prove such a good guesser in my daughter’s case, however, for, after the customary shibboleth, he announced that she was being pursued by a tall dark man who came from out of the South. This had the effect of shaking our confidence in the infallibility of the sand-diviner, for the youth who had pursued her across half North Africa in his big Minerva was a Belgian nobleman, short, fair-haired, and blond!

The gardens of the Villa Landon are intensely theatrical and one always has the feeling that he has inadvertently wandered upon a stage set for a play, which, to my way of thinking, adds enormously to their charm. They evidently did not make the same appeal to all my country-people that they did to me, however, for, while seated beneath a pergola, I heard a voice, with the unmistakable accent of the Middle West, coming from beyond the screen of shrubbery.

“This ain’t half bad,” the unseen speaker remarked condescendingly, “but saay, you just oughta see our back yard in Topeka when the sunflowers and the hollyhocks are out.”

In the desert, a dozen miles southeast of Biskra, is the town of Sidi Okba, the religious center, as Biskra is the commercial capital, of the Ziban. It owes its sanctity, which draws pilgrims from all parts of Moslem Africa, to the fact that its great mosque contains the tomb of Okba ibn Nefi, the soldier-saint of Islam, who, in the first century of the Hegira, conquered Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic and fell in battle with the Berbers near this place in A.D. 682.

It took the Atlantic Ocean to check Okba’s furious onsweep to the West. When he reached its shores he is said to have spurred his horse girth-deep into its waters and, raising his simitar to heaven, exclaimed, “Great God, if my course were not stopped by that sea I would still go on to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of Thy holy name and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other god than Thee!” He was a mighty soldier, and, had it not been for the providential interposition of the Atlantic, America might be Mohammedan to-day.

The last chapter of Okba’s stormy life was marked by one of those chivalrous episodes so common in Arab chronicles. While he was meditating on some plan for circumventing the Atlantic, the Berber tribes he had conquered on his westward march were rising in his rear. Finding his position hopeless, he sent for one of his chiefs, a man whom he had imprisoned for attempting to incite a mutiny in the army. Okba released him and advised him to fly while there was yet time. But the mutineer replied that he preferred to die by his leader’s side. So, embracing as friends, they drew their simitars, broke the scabbards, and turned to face the onslaught of the foe, falling at last, back to back, amid a ring of the Berbers they had slain.

To-day the great conqueror lies buried, not far from where he made his gallant final stand, beneath a splendid shrine within the precincts of the imposing mosque which bears his name. Carved on the sepulcher in Cufic characters is the simple but pregnant inscription: “This is the tomb of Okba, son of Nefi. May God have mercy upon him.” No older Arabic structure is known to exist in Africa.

In the minds of the tourist, Biskra is always associated with the women of the Ouled-Naïl, those dusky damsels of easy virtue who perform their strange sensual dances and ply their age-old trade in the cafés and brothels which line the narrow, dim-lit thoroughfare named, perhaps with a touch of sarcasm, the Rue Sainte. They are the daughters of a tribe which inhabits the mountains of the Ouled-Naïl, a wild, inaccessible, almost unexplored range which stretches from the western end of the Ziban to the vicinity of Djelfa.

From earliest childhood they are trained for a life of immorality very much as a promising colt is trained for the race-course. A girl is scarcely out of her cradle before, under the tutelage of her mother, who has herself been a danseuse in her time, she begins the arduous course of gymnastics and muscle training which is the foundation of their suggestive danses du ventre. Morning, noon, and night, day after day, year after year, the muscles of her chest, her back, her hips, her thighs, her abdomen are developed and suppled and trained until they will respond to her wishes as readily as her slender, henna-stained fingers. Her lustrous blue-black hair is brushed and combed and oiled and brushed again; she is taught to play the hautboy, the zither, and the flute and to sing the haunting love-songs of the desert people; to make the thick black native coffee and with inimitable dexterity to roll a cigarette. By the time she has entered her teens she is ready to make her début in the dance-hall of some Algerian town, a mistress of all the peculiar arts and accomplishments which make the successful courtezan.

After half a dozen years or so of a life which knows no moral scruples, during which she carefully hoards the money bestowed on her by her admirers, she returns, a-clank with gold pieces and jewelry, to the mud-walled mountain village from which she came, to marry some well-to-do man of the tribe and to bear him children, who, if they are boys, will perhaps don the scarlet burnous and white turban of the spahis and serve in the armies of France, or, if they are girls, will live the life of their mother all over again. The profession is, in fact, a hereditary one, which a very large proportion of the women of the tribe pursue without the slightest blemish to their reputations. It is an extraordinary custom, and one to which no other country, so far as I am aware, offers a parallel, for whereas the geishas of Japan, the nautches of India, and the ghawazi of Egypt are but classes, the Ouled-Naïl are a race, as distinct in features and characteristics as the Touareg, the Kabyles, or the Riffi.⁠[3]

European writers have been prone to envelop these demi-mondaines of the desert in a rosy veil of romance, which is, however, not wholly justified by the facts. Many of them, as I have just said, after earning their dowries in the dance-halls, return to their people in the mountains, marry a respectable young man of the tribe, and ever after lead strictly moral lives; but others, judging from their appearances, have been in no great hurry to reform and settle down.

The Ouled-Naïl, be it understood, are not common to Biskra alone, for they frequently make their way to Constantine and to Algiers, yes, and to Tunis in the east and to Tangier in the west, for they appear to be as popular with the Berbers and the Moors as with the Arabs. Though some of the younger ones are really pretty in a dark, barbaric fashion, with slim, supple bodies, hands and feet that are small and perfectly molded, piquant features, and eyes as large and lustrous as those of a gazelle, their beauty is evanescent, and by the time they have reached their early twenties they have become painted, leering harridans with mouths like steel traps and steely, calculating eyes. Yet, even after their youthful bloom has vanished, their dances continue to arouse the ardor of their native admirers, they are sometimes the objects of extraordinary munificence, and they often provoke furious jealousies which flare up in violent quarrels and not infrequently terminate in bloodshed and death. That is why the Rue Sainte echoes throughout the night to the measured tramp of tirailleur patrols.

The cafés maures which are the scene of the Ouled-Naïl dances are for the most part resorts of the most unsavory description, low-ceilinged, dimly lighted, and foul with smoke. The dancers give their performance on a small raised platform to the shrill of reeds, the clash of cymbals, and the incessant throb of drums played by Arab or negro musicians who squat in a semicircle on the earthen floor. There is no fixed charge for admission, but during the frequent intermissions one of the music-makers, or, perhaps, a dancing-girl herself, will pass among the spectators soliciting contributions.

In their dress, if in little else, the Ouled-Naïl have nothing in common with the Jewish and Moresque courtezans who on the stages of certain extremely disreputable dance-halls in the kasbah quarter of Algiers prance in a state of almost complete nudity for the delectation of visitors from the tourist steamers. Their costumes would, on the contrary, be considered actually prudish by the patrons of the Winter Garden and the Vanities, for, barring the exposure of a narrow band of flesh around the waist, they are so completely enveloped in loose flowing garments that virtually nothing of their figures can be seen. Past mistresses in the art of seduction, they have learned that sexual passion is aroused by suggestion rather than by revelation. The excessive modesty of their costumes is more than counterbalanced, however, by the licentiousness of their dances, which are the very essence of Oriental depravity, an unrestrained appeal to sexual desire. Yet every night the dance-halls of the Rue Sainte are crowded to the doors with European tourists—sober, self-respecting business men, staid matrons, yes, and young, carefully reared girls who view the scene in embarrassed fascination, only half comprehending what the dances mean.

In a narrow street at the back of the Rue Sainte is a zaouia where those visitors whose curiosity is strong enough to overcome their feelings of horror and repulsion may witness the terrible rites of the Aïssaoua sect. This fanatical order of dervishes takes its name from the Marabout Aïssa, a native of Morocco. Lost in the desert, he would have perished from starvation, so the tradition goes, had not the miraculous powers with which he was endowed enabled him to sustain himself on such unusual forms of food as fire, snakes, scorpions, and the spiny leaves of the prickly pear. The members of the sect imitate him, or pretend to imitate him to this day, even improving upon the traditional performances of their founder by eating broken glass, driving knives and skewers through their flesh, and undergoing other self-inflicted tortures. Whether the alleged “holy men” who stage their revolting performance nightly in the back street of Biskra are actually members of the Aïssaoua order is open to some question; certainly their exhibition is mere child’s play to some that I have seen in Inner Asia. Yet they are hideous and disgusting enough, heaven knows, and one wonders how Europeans, particularly European women, can sit through them. Numbers do, however, and become so fascinated that they forget to be horrified or to feel sick until they get home.

The performance takes place in a long, low room, its atmosphere heavy with tobacco-smoke, the fumes of incense, the reek of lamps, and the odor of human perspiration. Ranged against the walls are wooden benches for the accommodation of the European spectators, most of whom appear distinctly ill at ease and rather white about the gills, while the native onlookers seat themselves cross-legged on the floor. At the far end of the room are gathered the performers: some hollow-eyed, lean-framed, wild-looking fanatics of the true dervish stamp; others unbalanced, half-crazy individuals such as are to be found about the mosques and bazaars of every Moslem city; the rest perfectly normal men—butchers, porters, scavengers, and the like—who are always willing to endure a little pain for the sake of profit. These last are indubitably impostors; but of the others it is hard to determine just where religious frenzy ends and simulation begins. Music, if such it can be called, is provided by a trio of negro drummers, who thump their barbaric instruments—roum, roum, roum ... roum, roum, roum ... roum, roum, roum—until the fetid air of the place pulses with the sound.

The performance is in charge of a marabout, a dignified, patriarchal-looking Arab in a high thimble-shaped turban and a burnous of brown camel’s-hair, who acts as a sort of stage-director. Calling up the performers, one by one, he enfolds each in his arms and makes a few passes about him, whereupon the dervishes and the demented proceed to work themselves into an authentic frenzy of religious exaltation, rolling their eyeballs in their sockets, foaming at the lips, twitching their limbs, and shaking as though afflicted with palsy, while their confederates, employed for the occasion, imitate them with an attempt at realism which is not wholly convincing. Faster and faster the frenzied figures reel about the room, louder and faster throb the drums, while the “Al-lah! Al-lah! Al-lah!” of the native spectators, who rock themselves backward and forward in time with the chant, adds to the infernal din.

A few minutes of this and, at a signal from the marabout, the racket ceases as abruptly as it began. A word from the leader, and there staggers into the center of the circle a wild-looking, long-haired figure clad only in a breech-clout; his eyes are glazed, and he is thin to the point of emaciation. From a brazier he lifts between his thumb and forefinger a glowing coal the size of a large marble, places it upon his tongue, swallows it as though it were a bon-bon. In the air is the horrid odor of burning flesh; an American spectator gives an exclamation of disgust; a woman utters a faint scream; the natives emit a long-drawn “Ah-h-h” of gratification.

The next number on the program was even more revolting. A pseudo-dervish, who by day is a street-sweeper in the Rue Berthe, so I was informed, plunged his hand into a basket and withdrew a live green snake, perhaps eighteen inches long. The silence in the room was so intense that we could hear the serpent hissing. Holding the wriggling thing firmly, he inserted its head into his mouth ... his throat worked convulsively for a moment ... and it was gone! The florid American beside me mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. There was a little commotion among the spectators gathered near the door; the woman who had screamed was going out.

Now came the apogee of the evening’s entertainment. This time the actor was no neophyte but a real dyed-in-the-wool fanatic such as I had seen in the dervish monasteries of Anatolia and Persia. Him I recognized as the real thing. His eyes glowed with the fires of fanaticism, his nostrils quivered like a race-horse’s, little streams of saliva trickled from the outer corners of his lips. It was plain that he was at the very height of religious frenzy; a man in that condition might do anything to himself—or to others. But when the marabout made a few passes about him and whispered in his ear he quieted like an excited dog which hears its master’s voice. From the folds of his garments the marabout produced a number of steel skewers, about the length of hat-pins. Opening his mouth, the dervish drove one of the steels through the fleshy part of his cheek until a good four inches of it protruded from his face. A second skewer he forced through the muscles of his upper arm; a third through his thigh; two more through his breasts. In scarcely more time than it takes to tell about it the man was a human pin-cushion. Little rivulets of blood, welling from the wounds, coursed down his naked body to form a crimson pool upon the floor. By now the other performers and the native spectators had worked themselves up to a very high pitch of excitement. “Al-lah! Al-lah! Al-lah!” they howled, rocking like automatons and beating themselves upon the breast. The drums boomed and thundered until it seemed as though the wave of sound would lift the roof.

The dervish wrenched out the skewers and dropped, panting, on a mat. Two superbly developed negroes, all but naked, took his place. Beneath the light from the guttering lamps their brown-black skins gleamed like bronzes in a museum. They approached each other on all fours, crouching, circling, snarling, purring. This was the panther dance, an all too realistic representation of the amorous relations of two great jungle cats. Now the religious ecstasy which had provided a pretext for the preceding performances was at an end; this was sheer animalism, frankly obscene and wholly unashamed.

“I’ve had enough of this,” I said to my companion. “I think that I’ll go back to the hotel and take a bath and try to feel clean again.”

We went out into the soft African night. As we strode northward through the Rue Berthe toward the European quarter we could hear behind us the clash of cymbals and the wail of reeds from the cafés where the Ouled-Naïl were dancing, the throbbing of the negro drums. But from the desert a clean and gentle wind was blowing, and the stars shone very bright.

CHAPTER XIV FRONTIERS OF ROME

Some one has not inaptly compared the Barbary States—Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco—to an overseas cap perched jauntily on the bald head of Africa. This picturesque simile has, moreover, some scientific justification, for geological authorities have frequently advanced the interesting theory that when the world was young this region, which has a compacted and clearly defined physical system of its own, was not a part of Africa at all, but, cut off from that continent by an ocean which covered what we now know as the Sahara, formed a great peninsula attached to Europe by the isthmus which at one time unquestionably spanned the present Straits of Gibraltar. Not being a geologist, I am incompetent to pass an opinion on this theory, but its plausibility must be apparent to any one familiar with the topography of North Africa.

Barbary—I am here employing the term to designate the region lying between the Mediterranean and the main range of the Atlas—may be divided into two zones, wholly dissimilar from each other in character. Skirting the coast is a broad band of mountainous but, on the whole, fertile country, sprinkled with populous cities, watered by numerous streams, rich in forests and valleys, known as the Tell—the Arabic for “hill.” Behind the Tell, stretching southward to the barrier formed by the Great Atlas, is a region of lofty table-lands, or steppes, having an average elevation of three thousand feet, bleak and desolate in appearance, with a climate very different from the sunny warmth of the littoral, but providing fine grazing lands for cattle and bountiful crops of esparto grass and grain. Beyond the Atlas there occurs a still more sudden and startling change, as, descending its steep southern slopes, we come out upon the Sahara.

In many respects the country lying to the north of the Atlas belongs, as Mr. L. March Phillips has pointed out,⁠[4] more to the European than to the African system. It is distinctly European in aspect, in its variety of hills and valleys and rivers; it is European in its fertility, in its olive-groves and vineyards, its waving fields of grain, its forests of oak and pine; and it is European in climate, in the temperateness of its heat, which is no greater than that of southern Italy, and in the comparative abundance of its rainfall. The mighty barrier of the Great Atlas cuts it off completely from the Sahara, on which it seems to turn its back, while it faces the Mediterranean and the company of northern nations to which it feels related. Only when you have crossed the Atlas, when the verdure-clothed mountains and pleasant valleys give way to naked plains of sand, the pine-forests to occasional palm-groves, the houses of brick and stone to mud hovels and goat’s-hair tents, the settled agricultural population to nomadic sheep and camel-raisers, the light skins of the Berbers to the black ones of the negroes and the brown ones of the Arabs, do you fully realize that you are in Africa. And when, conversely, you turn your back upon the desert and emerge from the narrow defile of El Kantara upon the Algerian table-lands, you have the feeling that you are back in Europe again.

On leaving Biskra we headed straight north across the desert for El Kantara, forty miles away. Here the lofty wall of the Aurés is riven by a deep and narrow gorge, just wide enough to let the road, the railway, and the little rushing river through. It is called by the Arabs Foum-es-Sahara, the Mouth of the Sahara; but to us, coming up from the south, it was the gateway to the Tell. At the southern entrance to the gorge is the little oasis of El Kantara, which derives its name from a Roman bridge, much restored by the third Napoleon, for this was the site of Calcius Herculis, a fortress-town on Rome’s African frontier. Nestling amid the palm-groves of the oasis, or perched on the crags which mark the entrance to the pass, are three small villages, the Red, the Black, and the White, so named by the imaginative Arabs from the color of the bricks with which they are built, or, to be more exact, from the respective shades which they assume at sunrise and sunset.

When Nature planned the Foum-es-Sahara she was in a dramatic mood; a more fitting, a more impressive, or a more romantic gateway to the desert could scarcely be imagined. The gorge itself is so narrow that there is barely room for the road and the railway above and for the river beneath. Its perpendicular walls of red and yellow rock have been carved by wind-blown sand into the most curious and fantastic shapes—spires, pinnacles, gargoyles, flying-buttresses—one great monolith which rises abruptly from the flank of the Aurés bearing a striking resemblance to a medieval castle, with towers, battlements, and keep. But the most impressive view of the Foum-es-Sahara is to be had at nightfall, when that face of the Aurés which rises precipitously from the desert is transformed by the westering sun into a rampart of ruddy coral in the center of which yawns a mysterious purple aperture—the mouth of the pass itself. A caravan entering it seems to be swallowed up by the earth.

We lunched at Batna, a thoroughly Europeanized little town of low buildings and wide streets, which holds little of either interest or amusement. Commanding the pass at El Kantara, through which from time immemorial the desert tribes have invaded the settled regions of the Tell, it is a place of great strategic importance and has a large garrison, housed in casernes which are the most conspicuous buildings in the town. Batna is of interest to the tourist only because it is there that he turns sharply to the eastward on the ancient military road which leads to Lambessa, Timgad, Tebessa, and the other garrison towns which marked the line of Rome’s southern frontier.

Set on the slopes of the Aurés, three thousand feet above the sea, Timgad may be reached by motor-car from Batna, some thirty miles away, within the hour, the road passing within sight of the ruins of Lambessa. In Roman times Lambessa was an important military outpost, the headquarters of the Third Augustan Legion; but, with the exception of the Prætorium, a massive foursquare building which rises in lonely dignity from amid the crumbled masonry and toppled columns of what was once the Forum, its ruins are scarcely worth the prolonged attention of any one who is not an archæologist, particularly as such picturesqueness as they possess is marred by the proximity of a huge military prison.

A few miles more, across a bleak and treeless plain waist-high in ripening grain, and Timgad comes in view. A whole hillside is thickly strewn with the white bones of the city, which was built in the reign of Trajan, during the first quarter of the second century by the soldiers of the Third Legion, then stationed at Tebessa. From the inscriptions found in the Forum, Colonia Marciana Trajana Thamugas, as it was called, appears to have been founded thirty-six years after Rome burned to the strains of Nero’s fiddle and to have been completed in seventeen years. With the lesson of the great fire fresh in their minds, and with a determination to avoid such disastrous conflagrations, its architects built with almost unnecessary solidity, and, as a further precaution, saw to it that all the more important buildings should have a clear space all around them. Never very large, the town was yet of great importance strategically, having been garrisoned by the Thirtieth Ulpian Legion, composed of veterans who had served in Trajan’s campaigns against the Parthians.

Though Timgad has frequently been compared to Pompeii, which had been destroyed two decades before the other was begun, the two had as little in common as Palm Beach and Omaha. One was a lath and plaster city of pleasure; the other was a substantially built frontier town devoted to military purposes and to trade. While, like all Romans, the sturdy colonists who formed the population of Thamugas demanded a certain measure of magnificence, they could not be expected to rival the rich and luxury-loving Pompeians. Consequently, the statues which have been unearthed are not of the highest order, and the little museum contains few of the exquisite bronzes, pieces of jewelry, and frescos such as have been found in the ruins on the slopes of Vesuvius, but the excavators have laid bare some of the finest mosaics in existence, many of them in a perfect state of preservation.

For the first two hundred years or so of its existence Thamugas appears to have enjoyed a peaceful and highly prosperous existence, being one of the chief strongholds of Christianity in North Africa, but this happy state of affairs was rudely interrupted in the fourth century by the Donatists, fanatical schismatics who by their persecutions of the orthodox precipitated a religious struggle which wrecked Rome’s African empire. Occupied in the following century by the Vandals, its importance rapidly declined, and when, in 535, the Byzantine general, Solomon, drew rein before its gates, he found it in ruins, the Berbers from the neighboring mountains having destroyed it in order that it might not be used as a base of military operations against them. Though rebuilt and repopulated, it did not much longer endure, passing from history in the seventh century, when, during the great Arab invasion, it was stormed, sacked, and burned. For twelve hundred years it lay neglected and almost forgotten, but in 1880 its systematic exploration and excavation was undertaken by the Service des Monuments Historiques of the Algerian government, though even to-day, after nearly fifty years of laborious effort, nearly two thirds of the city remain unearthed.

The attraction of Timgad lies less in its turbulent history, however, than in the beauty of its ruins, considerable portions of which, thanks to the French excavators, now lie open like a book, from which even the casual visitor may obtain a graphic idea of what life was like in a frontier town of Roman Africa. Like all Roman camps, Thamugas was divided into four parts by two main streets—the Cardo Maximus and the Decumanus Maximus—which intersected at right angles, their pavements still showing the ruts of chariot wheels. At the junction of these thoroughfares was situated what would to-day be termed a municipal center, consisting of the Forum, the Theater, and other public buildings, which, judging from their remains, must have formed a group at once beautiful and imposing.

The Forum, a spacious and stately building with the same dimensions as those of the Pantheon at Rome, was originally surrounded by a double row of marble columns, forty-five feet in height, some of which are still standing. Here was the principal rendezvous of the people of Thamugas, for the Forum was a place for the transaction of mercantile, political, and judicial business as well as a public promenade; a combination, as it were, of a stock-exchange, a city hall, a law-court, a convention building, and a public plaza. On one side the merchants and bankers discussed commerce and finance; on the other the judges dispensed justice; at the far end was a rostrum from which officials, politicians, and others who possessed “the gift of gab” read official communications, delivered funeral elegies, or thundered political orations.

That even the Africa of those far-off days had its Andrew Carnegies is shown by an inscription which was found in fragments during the excavation of a building, the nature of which was uncertain, not far from the Forum. When the fragments had been pieced together the inscription read: “Out of the funds bequeathed by Marcus Julius Flavus Rogatianus, of senatorial memory, by his will to the colony of Thamugas his mother city, the erection of a library has been completed at a cost of four hundred thousand sesterces, under the direction of the city authorities.” It has been estimated by some one of a mathematical turn of mind that the shelves of the library which this Roman philanthropist gave to his home town contained upward of twenty-three thousand volumes—not books in our sense of the word, of course, but papyrus rolls inclosed in metal cylinders, which looked not unlike the music-rolls for a player-piano.

Thamugas had all the usual features of a Roman city and some which other Roman cities had not. They must have been a scrupulously clean people, the Thamugundi, for the remains of thirteen great public bath-houses have already been uncovered, together with the complicated underground arrangements for distributing heat to the various rooms, while even the dwellings of persons of comparatively modest means were provided with bathing facilities of astonishing luxury and completeness. The auditorium of the Theater held nearly four thousand persons, which suggests that Thamugas must have been a good “show town,” for the only playhouse in America with such a seating capacity is the New York Hippodrome. And it is an interesting commentary on modern progress that this frontier town of nineteen hundred years ago was far better provided with sanitary arrangements than are most of the cities of present-day Italy; in fact, the “comfort-stations” behind the Forum might serve as models for municipal planning commissions.

Beyond the Forum, astride the Decumanus Maximus, is the splendid Arch of Trajan, the outstanding feature of the whole city and the finest structure of its kind in Africa. In a state of almost perfect preservation, it rears itself in solitary grandeur above the stones of the ruined city. The arch is of pure white sandstone, its three openings flanked by fluted columns of colored marble. Set on a little eminence, as is the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, it can be seen from every quarter of the city—a thing of surpassing majesty and beauty against that hot blue sky.

But the thing that appealed to me most in Timgad was an inscription cut deep into a stone set between two columns of the Forum:

The dour-minded have seized upon this pleasing little inscription to point a moral, to illustrate the laxity, the unworthy ideals which prevailed among the Romans during the empire’s decadence and decline. But to me it bespeaks a joyousness, a candid love of harmless pleasures which in this strenuous age, when mere wealth is the chief goal, is most refreshing.

To most visitors, I suppose, Timgad is merely a picturesque and interesting ruin, but to my way of thinking it appeals less to the eye than to the imagination. It is a token of the dim and distant past. It brings to us across a chasm of close on two thousand years a message from a civilization not materially different from our own. It serves to remind us that the power and wealth and progress of which we are so prone to boast were to be found here on the edge of the desert when white man’s America was yet unborn; that the mighty nation which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific had a parallel in another nation which stretched from the Sahara to Scotland. Yet Thamugas, be it remembered, was never a Roman city of the first rank. Its architectural splendors notwithstanding, it was but a border town. It stood on the very frontier of an empire whose greatness is vividly illustrated by the fact that Septimius Severus, during whose reign Thamugas attained its greatest prosperity, was born in Africa and died at York.

Every traveler in India seeks so to time his visit to Agra that he may view the Taj Mahal by moonlight. The same should be done in the case of Timgad, and the visitor who does so will be richly repaid for his trouble—provided, of course, he has any imagination in his soul. Nor will he suffer any discomfort by doing so, for hard by the entrance to the ruins is a modest but well-kept hotel where he can obtain a clean and comfortable bed; or, if he prefers, he can dine there leisurely, spend the evening amid the ruins, and then motor back to Batna, which is but an hour away.

By day Timgad is only an interesting skeleton, but its bones become reclothed with flesh under the magic of the moon. Along the Decumanus marble columns rise again in stately rows; the flagstones of the Cardo resound once more to the clatter of hoofs and the rumble of chariot-wheels; the Forum becomes peopled with the white-clad forms of merchants and orators and statesmen; fires glow on the altars of Jupiter Capitolinus; from atrium and loggia float the sound of music and women’s laughter; along the narrow byways flit barbarians from the outer desert in paint and feathers; through the central opening of the great arch, dimly outlined against the stars, tramps in measured cadence a column of ghostly soldiery in the bronze helmets and leathern jerkins of the Thirtieth Legion ... Thamugas lives once more!

There is nothing very remarkable about the first part of the journey from Batna to Constantine, though the white road which smoked with dust beneath the tires of our Cadillac was, I recalled, the same highway which, twenty centuries before, the Roman legions trod. About half-way to Constantine, however, near two salt lakes which were alive with flamingos and other wild fowl, the road passes within sight of a large and curious sepulchral monument called the Medrassen, which resembles the so-called Tomb of the Christian Woman at Kolea, near Algiers, though it is somewhat smaller and considerably older. The Medrassen, which is sixty feet high, consists of a truncated cone encircled by sixty Doric columns, the whole standing on a cylindrical base 196 feet in diameter. Though its age, origin, and purpose were long matters for dispute among archæologists, recent investigations have confirmed the theory that it was the burial-place of one of the Numidian kings, perhaps of Masinissa, in which case it must have been erected about a century and a half before the Crucifixion.

Of all the cities I have seen in my peregrinations up and down the globe, none can boast a setting so romantic, a situation so utterly amazing, as Constantine. Nature must have intended it for a fortress, else she would not have guarded it with walls a thousand feet in height nor have encircled it on three sides with a moat which takes the form of a stupendous chasm, leaving the fourth side connected with the surrounding country only by a narrow isthmus. Constantine’s extraordinary aspect is due to the erosion of the soft limestone rock on which it stands by the River Rummel, which, roaring down from the heights of the Aurés, sweeps around three sides of the city through a deep and narrow C-shaped gorge, the sheer walls of which are at one point only fifteen feet apart. The lofty plateau-peninsula thus created is about a thousand yards square and so crowded with houses that many of them overhang the brink of the giddy abyss, their hold on the rock being so precarious that it seems as though a heavy wind would blow them off. But the grandeur of the gorge and the immense height of its walls dwarf the works of man into insignificance; the effect produced by this amazing pedestal of rock holding aloft a city is so overwhelming in its majesty and impressiveness that one scarcely notices the houses clinging to its brow or the river tumbling at its feet.

The Rummel, sweeping down from the sunny country-side to the south, from the grain-fields and olive-groves, from the wooded hill-slopes and the snowy peaks beyond, plunges suddenly into the shadows of the huge vertical cliffs which gird the town to thunder beneath a series of enormous natural arches or to lose itself for a time in gloomy bat-infested caverns, only to emerge into the dazzling sunlight again hundreds of yards further on, finally flinging itself recklessly over a lofty precipice, amid a smother of spray and spume, into the lovely valley below, down which it meanders, subdued and placid now, on its long journey through the Djurjuras to the sea.

From the town it is difficult and dangerous to peer into the depths, for the overhanging cliffs are exceedingly slippery and treacherous, as more than one Arab has discovered at the cost of his life, though hasheesh addicts will frequently descend these same precipices at the imminent risk of breaking their necks in order to enjoy the forbidden drug without interference from the police. On the other side, however, the gorge is followed for its entire length of the Corniche Road, a superb example of highway engineering, here consisting of a narrow shelf blasted from the living rock, there supported above the giddy chasm on buttresses of masonry, in places built around the rocky shoulders of the gorge, in others tunneled through them.

Deep down in the gorge itself winds and climbs the chemin des touristes, a narrow foot-path consisting for the most part of an interminable series of steep stone staircases or creaking iron bridges bolted to the face of the rock. Countless giddy steps, slippery with moss and dampness, lead down, down, down to the dark waters of the Rummel, which race madly between the grim, forbidding walls or swirl in seething caldrons as though stirred by a titanic unseen spoon. Turning up-stream, the way leads beneath four natural arches, none of them less than 400 feet in height (the celebrated Natural Bridge in Virginia is only 215); through dim and awesome caverns, strongly reminiscent of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, where the water forms black pools on the rocky floor and great bats flap overhead; and so into the deepest part of the gorge, where the walls rise sheer for a thousand feet on either hand. From here the sky is but a narrow jagged strip of vivid blue, infinitely remote; the girders of the great iron bridge which the French have thrown across the chasm at a point called El Kantara seem no larger than gossamer strands; of the city itself no sign is to be seen. Continuing to work our way around the base of the tremendous rock on which the city perches, we emerge at length, after two hours of arduous walking and climbing, into a gradually expanding valley, its steep, stone-strewn slopes dotted with stunted palms, aloes, and crimson poppies, and bathed in blinding sunshine.

The history of Constantine is in large measure the history of all North Africa. Originally called Cirta (the Phenician word for city), it was in ancient times the capital of Numidia and the seat of the Massylian kings, who first fought for Rome against Carthage and later for themselves against Rome. It attained its greatest prosperity about two centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, when it was able to place in the field an army of thirty thousand men, though no traces are now left of the splendid palace of Syphax, or of the stately buildings erected by his successful rival, Masinissa—whose wife, Sophonisba, it will be remembered, committed suicide shortly after her marriage rather than fall into the hands of the Romans; by Masinissa’s son, Micipisa; and by his grandson, Jugurtha, who led the Numidians in a revolt against Rome, was defeated, was led in chains behind the chariot of his conqueror, Marius, and died in “the bath of ice” in the subterranean prison beneath the Capitol. Roman rule left a deeper impress on the ancient city; but, barring the remains of the old bridge, dating from the time of the Emperor Constantine, the five remaining arches of the aqueduct built during the reign of Justinian, and numerous fragments of sculptures and inscriptions, little is left of the flourishing colony, founded by Julius Cæsar, which the Romans called Cirta Sittianorum.

Ruined in the wars which during the fourth century rent the Roman Empire, Cirta was rebuilt by Constantine, who gave it his own name. The religious struggles between the orthodox Christians and the Donatist schismatics did no material harm to Constantine, though they tore Roman Africa to shreds. The city escaped capture by the Vandals, but upon the Mohammedan conquest it was looted of its ancient treasures by successive Arab dynasties, such monuments of antiquity as escaped destruction at their hands being finally swept away by “municipal improvements” under the French régime. Through the long centuries when Arab rule lay like a blight upon the land, the history of Constantine is enveloped in darkness, rent, however, by occasional lightning-flashes of siege, assault, capture, and recapture, for it is said to have been besieged eighty times. Yet, despite its reputation for turbulence, it retained sufficient prosperity to attract merchants from Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, who were always willing to take a chance where there was a prospect of gain.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century Spain and Turkey, then at the height of their power, drove out the decaying Arab dynasties which had ruled in North Africa for five hundred years and divided between themselves the empire of the Mediterranean. The Spaniards occupied the African coast as far eastward as Oran, while Tunisia and virtually the whole of Algeria were seized by three enterprising Turkish sea-rovers, Arouj, Isaak, and Khizr (or Khair-ed-Din), better known as the Barbarossa brothers, the nickname being given to the family because of their red beards. Khair-ed-Din took Algiers and so firmly established himself in middle and eastern Barbary that he was made beylerbey of Africa by the Sultan Selim. Recognizing that he who would rule Algeria must hold the rock-girt Constantine, Khair-ed-Din captured it and lost it and captured it again. For upward of three hundred years the star-and-crescent standard of the Turks flaunted above the heights of Constantine, which became under their rule the seat of a bey, subordinate to the dey of Algiers. The job of ruling Constantine was not a healthy one, however, for during the first three decades of the nineteenth century twenty of its beys died with their slippers on, by the sword, poison, or the bowstring.

In 1826 the ruling bey, Hadji Ahmed, led a revolt against the dey of Algiers and proclaimed the independence of Constantine, but when the French invaded the country ten years later he made common cause with his former suzerain against the unbeliever. Upon the fall of Algiers Hadji Ahmed fled to Constantine, raised an army of Kabyles, and defied the French to dislodge him from his precipice-bordered stronghold. In 1836 Marshal Clausel advanced on the city with an army of eight thousand men. He attempted to storm it under cover of night by way of the old Roman bridge at El Kantara but was repulsed with great loss and fell back with his beaten army to Bône. But in the following year a stronger force under General Damrémont approached the town by the connecting western isthmus. To the French summons to surrender Hadji Ahmed sent the curt response, “He who would be master of Constantine must cut the throat of the last of its defenders.” During the course of the siege which followed, General Damrémont and his second in command General Perrégaux, were killed side by side while directing the operations from an exposed position, whereupon the command was assumed by Marshal Valée, who, in spite of enormous losses, carried the town by storm. In their efforts to evade capture, hundreds of Kabyles sought to lower themselves down the cliffs by ropes, but the ropes broke and the fugitives met their deaths on the rocks a thousand feet below. Hadji Ahmed evaded capture, however, and for eleven years defied the French from his stronghold in the Aurés Mountains, but he accepted the rule of France in 1848 and passed to the Moslem paradise two years later. With the unfurling of the tricolor on the heights of Constantine the turbulence and bloodshed which had marked the city’s history all down the ages came to an end. Numidians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Berbers, Turks, all tried to hold it and failed. But French for three quarters of a century it has been, and French it promises to remain.

Its towering heights crowded with palaces, temples, villas, and triumphal arches, dazzlingly white under the blazing African sun, Constantine must have presented a spectacle of surpassing beauty in Roman times. Yet astonishingly few mementos of its former grandeur remain; for, during the years immediately following the French occupation, the military authorities took no interest in preserving the monuments of the city’s colorful and hectic past, which were ruthlessly destroyed to make way for municipal buildings in the ornate style of the Second Empire, for huge and hideous barracks of red brick, for a whole system of streets and parks and plazas, and for the railway. The greatest vandalism was the destruction of the magnificent triumphal arch erected by one of the Roman emperors; but temples, colonnades, and baths were all swept away by the army engineers in their mania for “modern improvements.” Even the splendid bridge, built during the reign of Constantine, which stood intact until 1857, when two of its arches fell, instead of being restored was battered down by artillery and replaced with a hideous structure of iron. A curious commentary on our boasted modern civilization, is it not, that seventy-five years of peace have destroyed wantonly what was spared by two thousand years of warfare?

Of the public buildings, the most noteworthy is the palace built about 1830 by Ahmed Pasha, the last of the beys, which is one of the finest examples of modern Moorish architecture in existence. In its construction the Turks followed their customary method of tearing down other buildings in order to obtain fine old tiles and beautiful carvings, and by looting the Roman ruins which dot the country-side of their columns, capitals, and marbles. Its exterior, as in the case of so many Oriental buildings, is gloomy and forbidding, but within is a series of sun-drenched courtyards, flagged with marble, filled with orange and lemon trees, and surrounded by cloisters, their carven arches supported by fluted columns in porphyry of many colors, where the bey and his concubines were wont to pass the heat of the day. On the walls of the cloisters which border the central patio, is a series of naïve and crudely executed paintings of land battles and naval engagements, in which, of course, the Turks are depicted as uniformly victorious. They are said to be the work of an Italian shoemaker who, taken prisoner by the Barbary corsairs, painted them as the price of his freedom. Mellowed by time, the general effect of the pictures is not unpleasing, but it is to be hoped that upon his release the cobbler-artist stuck to shoemaking.

The gardens of the palace—which is now the residence of the French general who commands the garrison—more nearly approach those so glowingly described in Eastern poems than any others I have ever seen; for their lofty walls completely shut out the dust and turmoil of the city; the only sound is the gentle splash of water in the marble fountains; the sun, sifting through the foliage of the orange-trees, falls on the marble pavement in patterns of lace-like delicacy; and the air is fragrant with the scent of many flowers.

But when the shadows of night have settled down upon them I wonder if they are not haunted by the wraiths of the wretched Christian women who were torn from their homes and families by the corsairs and brought here to gratify the lust of the bey; if white figures do not flit distractedly through the cloisters or down the lanes of orange-trees; if from yonder latticed balcony do not come strains of ghostly music made by the flutes and fiddles of the poor blinded musicians whose eyes were torn out by order of the tyrant in order that they might not look upon the unveiled loveliness of the dancers for whom they played.

With what terrible memories are they filled, these enchanted gardens! They have looked on countless scenes of misery and horror, resounded to the shrieks of tortured men and outraged women, witnessed the dying struggles of captives who perished by poison, strangulation, or the knife. And all this, remember, was not in the dim and distant past but within memory of men who are still alive. Some of the tales of those days are incredible in their ferocious cruelty. Such is the story of the beautiful white concubine, who, having displeased her lord and master, was hurled by his orders over the cliffs of Sidi Rechad. Miraculously saved from death when her garments caught on a jutting rock, she was rescued with the utmost difficulty only to meet a still more hellish end at the hands of the bey’s torturers.

The remaining sights of Constantine which would appeal to the casual traveler are not numerous and can be visited quite easily in a single day. From the northwestern angle of the plateau rises the kasbah, or citadel, now used as barracks and military hospital; a massive structure dating from Roman times and preserving in its more modern portions numerous remains of other Roman edifices. The Great Mosque, or, as it is called by the natives, the Djamaa-el-Kebir, occupies the site of what was probably an ancient pantheon; like other Moslem places of worship in Algeria it is inaccessible to unbelievers. Hard by the palace, facing on a spacious square, stands the cathedral, formerly a mosque bearing the romantic name of Suk-er-Rezel, Market of the Gazelles, but now known as the Church of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. In the Mairie, a pretentious and highly ornate building decorated in beautiful native marbles and containing some interesting paintings of the military operations which ended in the capture of the city by the French, is a small and mediocre museum, its shelves and cases crowded with the usual collection of coins, vases, inscriptions, and fragments of sculpture. It is well worth visiting, however, for the sake of one real gem—a superbly executed statuette of a winged victory, twenty-three inches in height, which was discovered by excavators beneath the kasbah. Some hundreds of feet beneath the Hôtel de Paris, accessible by numerous flights of steep and slippery stone steps, is a very remarkable grotto, one of a series of caves and passageways which honeycomb the rock on which the city stands, and which, in the old days, were used by the inhabitants as storehouses and places of concealment.

The Arab town, or such part of it as has not been swept away by the march of progress, is tucked away behind a fringe of modern buildings, which is, perhaps, as well, for it reeks with noisome smells and possesses no architectural merits whatsoever. Its streets are steep and tortuous, the upper floors of the houses being built out on supports which look like inverted steps, thus bringing them so close together that their owners can almost shake hands from their second-story windows across the intervening thoroughfare. Here and there, set into the masonry, one recognizes a column, a capital, or a slab of marble looted from some Roman building, but, generally speaking, the quartier indigène is squalid and uninteresting.

The souks, though far smaller than those of Tunis and Algiers, are not materially different from the bazaars of other North African cities, the turbaned merchants sitting somnolently before little open-fronted booths whose interiors are stacked high with merchandise; while artisans, too poor to be lethargic, industriously ply their trades wherever they can find elbow-room and space for a work-bench. It is a busy place, is Constantine, the shopping center of the extensive province which bears its name, and widely known for the manufacture of the richly decorated saddlery affected by the Arab horsemen, for the embossing and engraving of copper and brass utensils, and for the weaving of the haiks and burnouses which form such important articles of native dress, and of other garments, called gandourahs, the best of which are made partly of wool and partly of silk.

The best way to obtain an idea of Constantine life is to take a seat before one of the numerous cafés which front upon the Place de la Brèche—so named from the breach that was here made in the walls by the French storming battalions in ’37—and over an apéritif watch the motley throng. Here East and West meet and mingle on equal terms, for the population of the city is about equally divided between natives and Europeans. French officers rub shoulders with Arab sheikhs; Greek and Maltese traders haggle with Berber farmers and Kabyle mountaineers; Catholic priests nod to Moslem mollahs and Jewish rabbis; fashionably clad women from the Paris boulevards glance askance at veiled women from the Turkish harems: white troopers of the chasseurs d’Afrique joke with tall black tirailleurs from the banks of the Niger.

The Jews of Constantine, who number several thousand, are the finest specimens of their race to be found in the entire East, showing a breeding and refinement rarely found among their coreligionists of the littoral. The Jewesses—many of whom, particularly the young girls, are strikingly handsome, with fine features and clear olive skins—retain their distinctive and highly picturesque costume, characterized by richly embroidered gowns of plush or velvet, gaily colored shawls, and, as might be expected, enormous quantities of heavy, ornate jewelry, which jingles at every movement of the wearer like the pole-chains of a four-in-hand. The older women wear a most curious and striking head-dress, consisting of a gilt-spangled veil surmounted by a high, pointed cone of velvet, in shape somewhat like a dunce’s cap, which, in the case of the rich, is held in place by massive golden chains. The girls and the younger married women, however, have modified this rather trying form of head-gear into a jaunty sort of bonnet, usually of pink, pale-blue, or emerald-green velvet, which they wear tilted rakishly above their raven locks in a fashion which is both coquettish and becoming.

One of the finest views of Constantine is to be had from the terrace of the Hôtel Transatlantique, a new and charmingly designed hostelry standing amid lawns and rose-gardens on a plateau to the northeast of the city, from which it is separated by the gorge of the Rummel. To sit at déjeuner in a perfectly appointed dining-room, surrounded by all the comforts and luxuries of the Ritz, looking out across the tremendous abyss to the white city perched upon its mighty rock, is to enjoy an experience which even the most blasé traveler does not soon forget. There are other hotels, it is true, whose windows command views of entrancing beauty—Bertolini’s in Naples, or the Villa Serbelloni above Bellagio, come to mind—but whereas from them one is gazing upon scenery only, he who peers across the gorge at Constantine is viewing history—he is looking across the yawning gulf of Time.

A two hours’ run by motor to the north of Constantine, along the route nationale, which leads to the coast and Philippeville, brings us to one of the wonders of North Africa, the hot springs of Hammam Meskoutine. They rise amid clouds of smoke and steam from a rocky plateau set in a region of soft outlines, a land of wooded hills and leafy glens and lush green pastures, suggestive of ancient Greece in its peaceful loveliness and sylvan charm. The water, which has a temperature of more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit, comes bubbling up through the gray crust to fall into numerous natural basins, in which it deposits thick layers of carbonate of lime, so that they look like enormous wash-bowls of creamy white porcelain. These pools the Arabs of the neighborhood use as open-air kitchens, boiling their eggs in them and cooking their vegetables; while strangers come from afar to drink and bathe in the healing waters, whose medicinal properties have been celebrated since Roman times.

The numerous rivulets which drain the pools meander across the plateau to unite in a stream of considerable volume which plunges over a series of rocky terraces of many colors—ocher yellow, orange, russet, red, pink, and green—into the sylvan valley two hundred feet below. The water, as it falls, leaves on the terraces a thick coating of lime, very much as in winter the cliffs at Niagara are coated with ice, the effect thus produced being that of a petrified cascade of cream. The sediment thrown up by the innumerable geysers at the foot of the cascade has in the course of centuries risen and hardened into a great number of gigantic, fantastically shaped limestone cones, or stalagmites, some of them nearly forty feet in height, which rise like gray ghosts from the plain. Some of the cones are quite bare, but on others sufficient earth has accumulated to provide a root-hold for a great variety of shrubs, grasses, and ferns. One group, distinguished by the size and the peculiar shape of its stalagmites, holds such terrors for the superstitious Arabs that they refuse to approach it after nightfall, holding that its waters are accursed—whence the name Hamman Meskoutine, Accursed Baths.

Back of the superstitions which cling to Hammam Meskoutine is a curious legend. There once lived on this spot, so the natives tell you, a young Arab sheikh named Ali, who was so jealous of his beautiful sister, Ourida, that, rather than see her in the arms of another, he determined to wed her himself. The elders of the tribe, scandalized by the contemplated incest, made violent protest, whereupon Ali had them beheaded before his tent. The wedding day arrived, guests came from afar to attend the nuptials, the festivities were about to begin, when suddenly the judgment of an outraged Allah descended upon the guilty pair; fire burst from the earth, the streams became filled with boiling water, a great cloud of smoke and steam descended upon the scene, and, when it subsided, lo and behold, the whole wedding party had been turned into stone! Perhaps, with the skepticism of the West, you may be led to question the truth of the tale, whereupon the Arabs will point out to you the two great cones, which, they will assure you soberly, are All and Ourida petrified, while the smaller cones scattered over the plain are the heads of the decapitated elders. With the proof of the story there before your eyes, there is nothing more to be said.

CHAPTER XV THE GRAND KABYLIA

“Travel,” Madame de Pompadour once remarked petulantly to her friend Louis XV, “is the saddest of all pleasures.” And, with two thousand miles of African desert and upland behind you, it will not be surprising if you are of the great courtezan’s way of thinking by the time you have arrived at Setif, a busy but colorless and uninteresting town some hours to the west of Constantine. If by now you have reached that stage of physical weariness and mental boredom which led a companion of mine to observe upon gaining the summit of the Grand St. Bernard, “Why, my dear fellow, there’s nothing to see here but scenery,” then I should strongly advise you to continue westward by the route nationale which leads across the Chaine-des-Bibans to Algiers; and on the evening of the second day after leaving Constantine you will be seated in evening dress at a perfectly appointed table in one of the great tourist hostelries which crown the heights of Mustapha Supérieur, with the lights of the Algerian capital twinkling at your feet and the boulevards of Paris only eight-and-forty hours away.

But, if you can stand a few additional days of traveling, I hope for your own sake that at Setif you will turn your car north instead of west, taking the wonderful road which runs through the Chabet Pass to the shores of the Mediterranean and Bougie and thence into the highlands of the Grand Kabylia. Unless you do this you will miss some of the grandest scenery the world has to offer, your friends in Algiers will listen to your explanations with ill-concealed astonishment, and you will regret it all your life. I am not urging you to make this detour, you understand; I am merely suggesting it. What? You are willing to follow my advice? Good! Let’s go!

For the first thirty miles after leaving Setif you will be disappointed, for the road runs between endless fields of grain. But upon crossing a chain of hills, from which we obtain a splendid view of the mighty range we are about to penetrate, the road drops rapidly to Kherrata and the little river which has worn for itself a narrow passage—the gorge of Chabet-el-Akhira—through the Djurjuras, which rear themselves in a tremendous rampart, in places seven thousand feet in height, between us and the coast.

Immediately after leaving Kherrata the road plunges suddenly into the mouth of the gorge, which is about four miles in length. The valley contracts until it becomes so narrow that one can toss a stone across it; the river, pent in between its walls of rock, rushes like a mill-race; the road alternately creeps along a narrow shelf cut in the face of the overhanging cliff, is borne by lofty arches above the rushing torrent, or by means of tunnels pierces the obstructing masses of rock. In places the precipice drops a thousand feet sheer to the river; at others one looks up between the narrow walls to peaks which tower nearly a mile and a half into the blue. Tributary streams come roaring down through leafy glens to hurl themselves over the edge of the abyss into the river below amid a smother of spray and spume. Yawning in the mountain-side are mouths of black, mysterious caverns. Troops of Barbary apes leap from crag to crag, or, looking down like gargoyles from the heights, chatter excitedly at the passer-by. Even this road has echoed to the tramp of the legions. Mr. Hilaire Belloc tells of a French general who, during the campaign against the Kabyles, succeeded in leading his column through the defile, which up to that time had been considered impassable even for an Arab on foot. Justifiably proud of the achievement, he sent a detail to inscribe a record of it on the face of the cliff. A few hours later the men returned to report that there appeared to be lettering on the cliff already. Upon examination the time-worn inscription read, “Legio III Augusta.”

After about four miles the gorge begins to widen, its walls become less abrupt, the mountains give way to hills covered with forests of oak and cork trees, and we emerge from the gloom of the defile into a lovely mountain valley drenched in the spring sunshine. So on down the ever-broadening valley, with occasional glimpses of the azure sea ahead, until, at a point about twenty-five miles east of Bougie, we reach the Mediterranean. For a time the road stays inland, traversing the rich coastal plains which lie between the mountains and the sea; but as we approach Bougie the increasingly mountainous nature of the country forces it to the very edge of the lofty cliffs which line the shore, along which it runs in an endless succession of curves and zigzags, contorting itself into S’s, U’s, and Z’s. In places, where the spurs of the mountains run down to the sea in precipitous headlands, the French engineers have jeered at Nature’s attempt to obstruct the road by carrying it on a narrow shelf blasted in the face of the sheer rock, so that the motorist has the somewhat alarming sensation of driving along a slender ribbon slung between sea and sky. Up and down it winds, round capes, promontories, bays, and inlets; it is flung across gorges on bridges as massively constructed as Roman aqueducts; sometimes it is tunneled, and one emerges from the semi-darkness upon views of bright blue sea and bright green mountain-slopes which are dreams of loveliness.

The African Corniche, as that portion of the coastal highway between Djidjelli and Bougie is called, fully equals, if it does not surpass, the famous road of the same name along the Riviera. I believe, indeed, that the day is not far distant when this strip of the Algerian littoral will rival the Côte d’Azur as a resort for winter tourists. It has a better winter climate than the Riviera; it is almost immune from the cold winds which at times set Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo a-shiver; it is surrounded, east, south, and west, by scenery incomparably grander than any in the Maritime Alps; its vegetation is richer and more varied, with more suggestion of the tropical, than that on the other side of the Mediterranean; hundreds of miles of splendid highway are open to the motorist—east to Tunisia, west to Morocco, south to the Sahara; it is no further from Bougie to Algiers than it is from Nice to Marseilles; and Algiers, thanks to the rapides of the P. L. M. and the swift steamers of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, has become only a step from Paris. Dredge the spacious harbor of Bougie to a depth which would permit the entrance of the great tourist steamers; erect a casino and a good hotel or two; line the sandy beach below the town with bathing-cabins, and the Kabyle Coast would ere many years, if I am not mistaken, put the Blue Coast out of business. For, apart from its innumerable natural attractions, it offers to the tourist a romantic and irresistible appeal, the lure of Africa.

Bougie, which is the natural seaport of Kabylia, is superbly situated on the slopes of Mount Guraya, which are so steep that the red-roofed, white-walled buildings of the town seem in imminent danger of sliding into the sea. Many of its streets, in fact, are too precipitous for vehicular traffic, being ascended, as in the case of certain Italian towns, by long flights of stairs. There is a theatrical air about the place, roofed with rose-red tiles and smothered in crimson bougainvillea, as it rises, tier on tier, above a U-shaped harbor on whose ultramarine waters ride at anchor vessels which bear beneath their sterns the names of half the ports along the Mediterranean, fishing-craft with hibiscus-colored lateen-sails, a French destroyer, slim and gray. Frowning on the heights above the town is an ancient Spanish fortress whose crumbling, mellow-tinted walls might have been built from papier-mâché by a designer of stage-scenery. At its back rises the great rock of Guraya, topped by a shrine which is a place of pilgrimage for pious Moslems; while behind that in turn tower skyward the mighty peaks of Babor and Tababort, dominating and dwarfing all else. As I breakfasted on the lofty, rose-embowered balcony of my hotel, the ruined corsair castle clinging to the hillside just above me, the red-and-white town sprawling at my feet, and the sun-flecked, bright blue sea as a back-drop, I always had the feeling that I was in a box at the theater, and that shortly the orchestra would strike up and a chorus of pirates and peasant maidens would come prancing out upon the stage.

Skirting the edge of the precipitous headland on which Bougie stands, or hewn from its face, is the finest cliff walk I have ever seen; a narrow foot-path, nearly four miles long and in places barely a yard in width, every turn of which reveals a view of sea or mountains which causes one to gasp with admiration and awe. The Strandweg at Abbazia, the pergola-covered walk of the Cappuccini-Convento above Amalfi, the path which borders the cliffs of Anacapri, all these are very lovely in their way; but I, who have seen most of the sights this world has to offer, assure you that none of them can compare in grandeur and beauty with Bougie’s promenade.

Bougie—which, because of its trade in wax, is said to have given the French their word for candle—is a place of great antiquity, probably owing its origin to the Carthaginians. Phenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Berbers, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks, and French—it has been occupied by them all in turn, and all have left their impress on its architecture, its customs, or the faces of its inhabitants. Upon the collapse of the Carthaginian power it became a Roman stronghold, and extensive remains of Roman masonry are still to be seen amid the olive-trees. During the reign of En-Nasr, the most powerful of the Berber dynasty of Hammad, it attained a high degree of civilization, being the greatest commercial center on the North African coast. As early as 1068 the heliograph was here in common use: by means of special towers, provided with mirrors, messages were flashed for great distances along the coast. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rich Genoese and Venetian merchants erected numerous fine buildings in the city, leaving so deep an impress that the place is more Italian than French to-day. Toward the close of the fifteenth century Bougie passed under the dominion of the Hafsides, whose empire extended from Tripolitania to the borders of Morocco, but in the fifteenth century it was seized by the Barbary corsairs, who used it as a base from which to harry the commerce of the Mediterranean. So heavy were the losses inflicted by the corsairs on the sea-trade of Spain that in 1510 Ferdinand V sent a squadron under Don Pedro Navarro to capture Bougie, and Spanish it remained for nearly two score years. The Spaniards built the great citadel that still looks down upon the town, which they succeeded in holding against two attacks by the Barbarossa brothers, only to have it wrested from them in 1555 by Salah Reis, the pirate-pasha of Algiers. Thenceforth until the landing of the French in 1833 the Turkish standard flew over the heights of Bougie, the town, which once boasted one hundred thousand inhabitants, rapidly falling into decay under the blight of Ottoman rule.

Forming the background of the rich coastal plain which stretches westward from Bougie is the great Djurjura range, its lofty peaks, some of them nearly a mile and a half in height, inclosing the highland regions known as the Lesser and the Grand Kabylia, with which for grandeur of scenery no other part of Algeria can compare. It is a wild and rugged country, a land of towering, snow-capped mountains and secluded valleys, of overhanging crags and leafy glens, of black forests and bright-blue rivers, of yawning chasms and dizzy precipices and sparkling waterfalls, a bright red village perched on the top of every peak and hill. “If all the artists in the world came to Kabylia,” writes one enthusiastic traveler, “there would be enough subjects to keep them busy for a year.”

A branch of that fierce and rugged Berber race which has occupied North Africa since history began, the Kabyles, despite a history of foreign conquest—Phenician, Greek, Roman, Vandal, Arab, and French—have preserved to an astonishing degree the physical characteristics of their race, its language and its customs. The Arabization of the Kabyles is limited to little beyond their conversion to Islam, for, instead of amalgamating with the Arab invaders, they retreated to their mountain strongholds, where they maintained their independence until taught by the French that undisciplined men armed with swords and flintlocks, no matter how courageous individually, cannot stand for long against repeating-rifles and field-guns.

Though the Kabyles, like the Arabs, are a “white” race, centuries of exposure to sun and wind have darkened their skins to the color of a much-used saddle. As a rule, however, they have brown hair and eyes, but blue-eyed blonds are sometimes found among those of purer stock and red or tawny beards are not infrequent. While most Kabyles are able to speak Arabic, those who dwell in the remote fastnesses of the Djurjuras cling tenaciously to various local forms of the ancient Berber tongue; it is a singular fact that in spite of the thousands of years during which these people have dwelt in isolation—or, perhaps, by reason of that fact—their dialects vary but slightly from the long-extinct Hamitic language from which they are all derived. As in the case of the Mozabites, the Kabyles have no alphabet, their legends, sagas, verses, and folk-songs being handed down by word of mouth, usually by priests or by the professional story-tellers who are found in every village. Of the numerous Berber dialects spoken in Kabylia, the most widely used is the Zouave; whence the term “zouaves,” at one time applied to Kabyles who enlisted in the French army, but now used to designate four infantry regiments, wearing the tasseled cap and baggy trousers of the mountaineers, which, though stationed in Africa, are composed entirely of Europeans.

The Kabyles profess to be Mohammedans of the Sunnite branch of Islam, but they are a source of scandalization to their Arab coreligionists by reason of their laxity in religious matters, their failure to obey the precepts of the Koran. They observe Sunday instead of Friday as their day of prayer; they eat the meat of the wild boar and drink a highly potent brandy made from figs, though the use of pork and alcohol is strictly forbidden to all True Believers; they honor the fast of Ramadan in the breach rather than in the observance and seldom take the trouble to perform the ablutions required of good Mohammedans; and, though tattooing is prohibited by Koranic laws, all the women have a cross tattooed in dark blue on the forehead between the eyebrows, and most of the men bear the same symbol on the arm or the palm of the hand—a survival, it is asserted by some, of the days when North Africa was Christian and the cross was a token which exempted its wearer from certain forms of taxation.

Alert, energetic, and enterprising, the Kabyle is immensely superior to the Arab in industry, as he is in honesty, reliability, and intelligence. He gives the impression, in short, of being, as he is, the descendant of men who have lived in sturdy independence, self-respecting, self-reliant, and self-governing. That he makes one of the finest soldiers in the world the French discovered to their cost during the great Kabylian revolt in 1871; indeed, he has never been fully subjugated, regarding with contemptuous indifference the grim French fort which now frowns down upon his villages from the mountains. The Kabyle is frequently found far afield—serving in the armies of France (on the battle-fields of the World War the Kabyle battalions covered themselves with German blood and glory), as a workman in the cities along the littoral, as a field-laborer in the Tell, as an itinerant trader or peddler laboriously earning the wherewithal to buy a bit of land and build himself a home in his native village. In their social tendencies the Kabyles are distinctly communistic; property is often owned by the family in common, and a man can call upon his fellow-villagers for assistance under certain circumstances, such as tilling a field or building a house. The Kabyle’s village is his state, the government being vested in an assembly composed of all adult males, the poorest inhabitants having as great a voice in village affairs as the richest. Kabylia consists, in short, of a great number of town democracies, each absolutely independent so far as its internal affairs are concerned, loosely bound together in a sort of confederation.

The Kabyle woman enjoys a vastly better social position than her Arab sister, being permitted far more power and treated with more consideration. True, her husband buys her as he would a cow and can dismiss her whenever it so pleases him; she performs most of the heavy work about the house and farm; and when she is old, particularly if she has not borne a male child, she is frequently abandoned. But she has a voice in public affairs; she manages the household; she has a right to the money she earns; she goes unveiled; and in time of war she has frequently fought in battle beside her husband. The Kabyle pays his wife the compliment of remaining monogamous, and female saints are held in the highest veneration. When young the Kabyle women are usually strikingly pretty and graceful, and when they are old they rarely become the mountains of flesh one sees waddling through the streets of Arab communities, perhaps because hard work keeps them thin, perhaps because fat women are not popular in Kabylia.

It is a half-day’s motor run, shortened by fine roads and enchanting scenery, from Bougie to Tizi-Ouzou—a fascinating name, isn’t it?—the capital of Kabylia, where begins the wonderful military highway, built by the French engineers, which leads to Fort National and to Michelet, the latter a charming little mountain village in the heart of the Djurjuras. Up and ever upward winds the road, now taking the steep ascent in a series of long zigzags, sometimes circumventing a particularly steep mountain by climbing it in endless spirals, again doubling back upon itself in perfect hair-pin turns, each of which discloses a panorama of breath-taking beauty and grandeur. Honesty compels me to admit, however, that it is not a road which a timid passenger or an inexperienced driver will thoroughly enjoy, for it is very steep, in places none too wide, and bordered by numerous giddy precipices, so that to negotiate it without disaster requires a cool head, good brakes, and a skilful hand on the wheel. Under Harvey’s experienced guidance, however, the big Cadillac skimmed up it like a swallow, though he had the paralyzing habit, acquired during the war, of charging the V-shaped corners at full speed and, when disaster seemed inevitable, suddenly jamming on the brakes, thus permitting the rear end of the car to skid around. This method doubtless saved time, but it was trying on the nerves and the tires.

Three hours of steady climbing from Tizi-Ouzou brought us to Fort National, a French stronghold, grim and formidable, erected after the revolt of ’71 as “a sword in the heart of Kabylia.” Perched on a mountain-top, from which it dominates a vast area of mountain and valley, it serves as a silent reminder to the warlike Kabyles of the power of France. Barring a quaint walled village, entered through a medieval gateway, there is little of interest there, however, and, pausing only long enough to view the superb panorama commanded by the ramparts of the citadel, we continued onward and upward to Michelet—an Alpine hamlet set down in Africa. Here the Transatlantique people have built a delightful little hotel—just the sort of place you dream of after a long, cold drive but seldom find—with great open fires and capacious leathern chairs and cozy, well-heated, chintz-hung bedrooms. Though it was late in April when we were there, the ground was white from a light fall of snow, and the chill mountain air pierced to the bone, but such minor discomforts were instantly forgotten at sight of logs crackling on an open hearth and, standing, on a table, a brown pinch-bottle whose label bore a once-familiar name.

When we awoke in the morning the mountains were covered by so dense a mist that it was impossible to discern an object a hundred feet away, but before we had finished our café au lait the mist had lifted like the curtain of a theater to reveal a scene which fairly took the breath away. The terrace on which we stood fell sharply away in a series of steep, sometimes precipitous, hill-slopes, and, dotted with red-roofed Kabyle villages, broken here and there by groves of olive, fig, and pine, to a long and narrow valley, lush with grass, through which meandered a lovely bright-blue stream. Beyond the little river the slopes again rose skyward until the grass was lost in a bank of stunted pines and the pines ran out in bare blue rock. For a time the ultimate heights were veiled in clouds of pale gray chiffon, but as the mist slowly rose peak upon peak was revealed—one of them, Lalla Kedija, upward of seventy-five hundred feet in height—each with a little village perched on its summit like a small red bonnet. Beyond the nearer mountains the higher peaks of the Djurjuras reared themselves against the cloudless sky in lonely majesty, wrapped in robes of green and crowned with snow.

From a distance the Kabyle villages are as fascinating as those imaginary fantastic hill-towns which Maxfield Parrish was wont to paint, but if you object to filth, squalor, and unmentionable stenches you should view them from afar. Seen close at hand their fascination quickly vanishes, and they prove to be but clusters of wretched hovels, one side of each dwelling—usually the better—devoted to the stabling of sheep and cattle, the other occupied by their owners. As the winters are bitterly cold in Kabylia, and as the houses are quite unheated, the close proximity of the live stock has certain advantages, however, for the heat from the crowded stables keeps the temperature in the rest of the house slightly above freezing, and, should the cold become unbearable, the family can always go in and sleep amid the animals! In some villages, I was told, the natives spend the winter nights in vaults beneath their houses, taking the sheep down with them to serve as living comforters. Most of the houses are of rough, flat stones, the crevices filled with mortar made from clay and cow-dung; they are usually chimneyless—for the cooking is done over primitive ovens in the open air—and sometimes windowless as well, for of what use are windows to an illiterate household save to admit undesired fresh air?

It was noticeable, however, that even the poorest villages were surrounded by well-cultivated fields and thriving orchards, for the Kabyles are highly successful agriculturists in spite of the discouraging nature of their country and the fact that they are handicapped by implements of the most primitive description. In arts and crafts they are not proficient, though an exception should be made in the case of the Kabyle jewelry, of which I saw some beautiful specimens, fashioned from silver and set with brightly colored native stones and colored enamels. The really fine pieces are becoming extremely scarce, however, the best examples, as is the case with Venetian glass, Turkish carpets, and Persian shawls, being found in the smart shops of the larger cities more readily than in the remote villages where they are made.

The lives led by the Kabyles of the mountains are but little different from those led by their remote ancestors, the original inhabitants of North Africa, untold centuries ago. They till their fields with plows identical with those depicted in the drawings of ancient Egypt. Grain is trodden out by oxen to be stored in osier baskets or in curiously shaped granaries of clay. The wheat is ground, as in Old-Testament times, between an upper and a nether millstone, turned by blindfolded donkeys plodding patiently round and round. The mountaineers extract the oil from their olives by means of clumsy presses of a model which was old when Moses was a boy. Fires are kindled by the aid of flint and steel. Their foot-gear is made from home-tanned cowhide. The cloth from which their garments are made is woven by hand, the manufacture of woolen stuffs being one of the chief occupations of the women when they are not milking the cows and goats, hoeing the gardens, cooking the meals, bringing water on their heads from the nearest stream, or helping to cultivate the rocky hillsides while yoked with a donkey or an ox to the plow. As might be expected, the life these people lead has set its imprint on their faces; there is something in the isolation, the loneliness, the drudgery, the unending struggle for existence, that makes them grave and melancholy and taciturn. In Kabylia one has the feeling that somehow he is very far from modern civilization, not merely in miles but in years—that he has dropped back through the ages to the very Dawn of Time.

CHAPTER XVI THE CAPITAL OF THE CORSAIRS

If you are of an imaginative and romantic turn of mind, if you have thought of Algiers as the Pirate City, the haunt of the Barbary rovers and the capital of the deys, rather than as a pleasant winter-resort, an African edition of Nice or Cannes, then you should by all means approach it for the first time from the sea, preferably at dawn, when the sun comes up like thunder from behind the purple mountains beyond the bright blue bay, gilding the spires and minarets and turning to mellowed ivory the crowded whitewashed buildings which rise, tier on tier, from the water’s edge to the citadel which crowns the lofty hill on which the city stands. Seen thus, the Algerine capital is but little changed from those distant days when the red-bearded sea-rover whom we call Barbarossa came sailing out of the east to make it the seat of pirate power; when its harbor sheltered the swift galleys of the corsair fleet; when thousands of Christian slaves labored in chains within its walls; and when its very name spelled terror to the seamen of every country in Christendom.

But on coming down from the heights of the Grand Kabylia, as we did, the approach to Algiers is extremely disappointing, for the road, which is of rough pavé, crossed and recrossed by tracks on which clatter hooting electric trams, leads through the sordid and unlovely suburb of Mustapha Inférieur, a noisy industrial district teeming with foundries, factories, belching chimneys, and monotonous rows of workmen’s dwellings. It is the difference between approaching New York by sea or entering it through Harlem.

Viewed from the deck of a steamer some distance out from shore, Algiers seems to be a great triangle of dazzling white framed in vivid green, the quays forming the base of the triangle and the kasbah its apex, with the verdure-clad hill-slopes of the Sahel for a background. For sheer loveliness its only rival among the seaports of the Nearer East is Constantinople, which is in a class by itself. But, as in the case of all Oriental cities, distance lends enchantment, for, as the steamer draws nearer, what had appeared from a distance to be wholly picturesque becomes in part prosaic, the modern French town, built on the level ground beside the sea-shore, masking to a considerable extent the ancient city of the deys, which climbs the steep hill behind the European quarter to the kasbah, or citadel, four hundred feet above the waters of the harbor.

Upon disembarking one has the uneasy feeling that somehow he has made a mistake, that he is not in Africa after all, for the streets and buildings which confront him are all aggressively modern, without a trace of that colorful Orientalism which the posters and pamphlets of the tourist companies had led him to expect. On the quays are the landing-stages, the custom-house, and the railway station, while, lined up outside, are taxicabs, private motor-cars, and luxurious motor-buses belonging to the various hotels. We are in Africa, at the gateway to the Magic East, yet a camel would be as much out of the picture here as at the Grand Central Terminal in New York. Forty feet above the quays, supported by a series of massive arches of masonry and reached by means of ramps, is the imposing Boulevard de la République, bordered on the landward side by rows of arcaded office-buildings and on the seaward side by a fine promenade, which forms a great balcony as it were, nearly three quarters of a mile in length, overhanging the Mediterranean.

A block or so back from the sea-front are the principal business streets of the city—broad, tree-shaded thoroughfares, crowded with tram-cars, motors, and carriages and lined with department-stores which are branches of the great establishments in Paris, specialty shops of every description, steamship agencies, consulates, news-stands (Sunday’s Paris newspapers are sold on Monday afternoon in Algiers), restaurants, cafés, and cinemas advertising the latest films of Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, and Charlie Chaplin. Barring the red tarbooshes of the Arabs, almost the only Oriental note is provided by the post-office, a new and imposing structure in neo-Moorish style, for throughout Africa the French have had the good taste to use a modified native style in the erection of public buildings instead of reproducing the monotonous ugliness of the Second Empire.

But behind the screen formed by the modern buildings of the French city, where the hillside begins its steep ascent, lies the picturesque Arab quarter, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous lanes, alleys, and culs-de-sac, turning and twisting like so many snakes. These thoroughfares are made to appear even narrower than they are by the peculiar architecture of the houses, whose second floors, supported on cedar poles, extend over the street until they almost touch, the space between being so narrow that it would seem as though a householder, by leaning from his second-story window, could shake hands with his opposite neighbor. A visit to the quartier arabe leaves one breathless—breathless because you hold your breath in order to avoid inhaling the stenches which rise to heaven; breathless because all the streets are in effect staircases, the longest, the Rue de la Kasbah, which leads from the harbor to the citadel, having 497 uneven stone steps. I know, because I counted them. The streets being so steep and narrow, there are, of course, no carts, carriages, cars, nor camels; all burdens are transported by porters or donkeys, and he who desires to explore the native town must walk, or rather, climb, which is good for the figure but hard on the lungs. Up and down these narrow ways moves an endless procession of colorful and interesting figures—Arabs in turbans and tarbooshes, brawny, big-muscled stevedores with bare legs and arms, spahis in crimson cloaks, gabardined Jews with patriarchal beards, shifty-eyed Levantines, French soldiers, caps cocked rakishly and about their middles broad red sashes, priests of the missionary orders in white cassocks and shovel-hats, veiled Moslem women, slipping along between the high walls like sheeted ghosts, and swarms of dirty, noisy, half-naked youngsters who thrive amid the filth of the gutters and importune the visitor for “Un sou, m’sieu.... Donnez-moi un sou!” It is not so easy for a stranger to lose his way in this maze of narrow streets as one might suppose, for he has only to keep ascending and he will eventually reach the kasbah, the old Turkish fortress which commands the town, while, descending, he will sooner or later find himself in the European quarter and civilization again.

The houses, built of stone and whitewashed and re-whitewashed continually, are square, flat-topped buildings, windowless save for a few narrow slits protected by iron bars or gratings. Occasionally a fine gateway breaks the surface of the walls, and, should the door be ajar, one may catch a fleeting glimpse of a marble-paved and colonnaded patio filled with sunlight, flowers, and palms. Thus encloistered, the Arab women spend their eventless days, the monotony of existence broken only by occasional shopping expeditions or the weekly visit to the cemetery. What takes place behind those mysterious green doors is a popular subject for speculation, but I imagine that the life within is not greatly different from that of Occidental households. Now and then one hears strange tales of European women, wandering alone through the dim and narrow streets, who have been seized and dragged within, to be heard from never more. Most of these stories are pure inventions, told by a dragoman or guide to whet the curiosity of the tourist; but that does not mean that it is wholly safe for foreign women to visit the native quarter unaccompanied, particularly toward nightfall, for the streets are none too well policed, and, even should a European woman disappear, it is extremely doubtful whether the French authorities would dare to institute a house-to-house search for her, for an Arab’s harem is sacred, and to invade it for any reason whatsoever might well entail consequences of the gravest character.

But the Oriental life is slowly dying out; the quaint charm of the East is giving way to the hurly-burly of Western civilization. The tide of modernization is gradually but inexorably engulfing the hill on which what is left of the old pirate city stands. The ancient walls are gone, the gates also; most of the old minarets have disappeared. The palace of the deys has become barracks for French soldiers, and the last time I was there the newly washed uniforms of the troops were flapping on a line within sight of the pavilion where the last of the corsair rulers slapped the face of a French consul with his fan. Of the numerous mosques, none of which may be entered by non-Moslems, perhaps the most picturesque is that of Sidi Abd er Rahman, whose venerated tomb is within its precincts. Facing on the Rue de la Marine is the Great Mosque, the Djamaa el Kebir, distinguished by its magnificent colonnade. It is said to be the oldest in Algiers, an inscription on the pulpit showing that it existed in 1018. In the Place du Gouvernement is the new Mosque, which was built in 1660 in the form of a Greek cross according to designs drawn by a European architect who had been captured by the corsairs and enslaved.

Though the almost total absence of any really fine examples of native art and architecture is due in part to centuries of warfare and the destruction caused by successive bombardments, it should be remembered that, even during the great days of Islam, Algiers was never, culturally speaking, of much importance. Such love of beauty as the Algerines possessed was fully satisfied by a beautiful woman; the building of a galley was far more important to them than the building of a mosque; the Christian captives who received the most consideration were not artists and architects but gunsmiths, ship-carpenters, and stone-masons; they carved their history with the sword rather than with the chisel.

Unlike most cities of Barbary, Algiers is lacking in historic background. In Roman times, it is true, there stood on what is now the city’s waterfront a small town called Icosium, but it was presumably a place of little consequence, for it is seldom mentioned in history. The present city was founded by the Arabs about the middle of the tenth century, but it remained comparatively unimportant until the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492, when large numbers of them settled here and adopted the profession of piracy with the double motive of profit and revenge. From that period dates Algiers’s importance as the chief stronghold of the Barbary pirates. Thenceforward, for nearly three hundred and fifty years, its harbor afforded shelter to the corsair fleets that terrorized both shores of the Mediterranean, ravaged the Atlantic coast of Spain, sacked Baltimore in Ireland, and even carried their depredations as far westward as the Canaries and as far northward as Iceland.

The amazing rise to power of the Algerine pirates may be said to have commenced with the struggle for the possession of the Penon, a small island, connected with the mainland by a mole, which provided a place of refuge for the corsair fleet and to-day forms the inner harbor of the great modern port. After their occupation of Oran and other towns on the coast of Africa, the Spaniards seized and fortified this island and held it for nearly twenty years, its position athwart the entrance to the roadstead enabling them to hamper, if not actually to control, the movements of the Algerine fleets. But in 1516 the emir of Algiers, Selim bin Teumi, growing weary of Spanish interference with the pleasant and profitable game of piracy, sought the aid of the celebrated Turkish sea-rovers, Arouj and Khair-ed-Din, better known as the Barbarossa brothers. They accepted the invitation promptly, and it was a sad day for Selim bin Teumi when they did, for scarcely had Arouj set foot in Algiers before he caused the emir to be assassinated and himself took possession of the city. After the death of Arouj in an obscure fight near Oujda, his brother Khair-ed-Din took up the reins of power at Algiers, and, in order to bolster up his position, offered the city to Selim I, sultan of Turkey, who accepted the offer and named Khair-ed-Din his viceroy, or capitan-pasha. Thus began the Turkish domination of Algeria, which lasted for upward of three hundred years and brought worries and woes innumerable to Europe.

Now that he had the might of the Ottoman Empire behind him, Khair-ed-Din turned his attention to the Spanish garrison on the Penon. Bringing up heavy artillery, he subjected the fortress to fifteen days of intensive bombardment, and, when all save a handful of the garrison had been killed, carried it by storm. The Spanish commander Martin Vagas, taken prisoner, was offered his choice between death or conversion to Islam. Being a stout son of the church as well as a gallant soldier, he chose the former, whereupon he was sentenced to die by flogging, and his dead body was dragged through the streets, cut into pieces, and thrown into the sea.

With the double-barreled idea of preventing any repetition of the Spanish occupation and of providing a securer harbor for his fleet, Khair-ed-Din conceived the idea of connecting the Penon with the city by means of a huge mole. For those days it was a herculean undertaking, but an ample supply of forced labor was at hand in the corsairs’ Christian captives, thirty thousand of whom were employed at the task, while an inexhaustible mine of building-materials was provided by the ruins of the old Roman city of Rusgania. The work was completed in three years, and thenceforward for more than three centuries the corsair fleets found refuge within, safe from the storms of the Mediterranean and the attacks of the enemies; for Khair-ed-Din mounted heavy batteries on the Penon and in 1544 erected a lofty lighthouse to guide his home-bound rovers. The present great harbor, covering 222 acres, was commenced by the French in 1836—the first time blocks of concrete were used in such an operation.

From about 1518 until 1587, Algiers was the capital of the beylerbeys, the Turkish viceroys of North Africa, whose rule extended over Tripolitania, Tunisia, and Algeria. From 1587 until 1659 the Barbary states were governed by Turkish pashas, sent from Constantinople for terms of three years; but in 1659 a military revolt in Algiers put an end to this system of government, reduced the pashas to nonentities, and greatly weakened the Turkish power in Africa. From 1659 onward the Barbary states, though still nominally parts of the Ottoman Empire, were in fact anarchical pirate republics which chose their own rulers, supported themselves by plunder, and made their own treaties—which they rarely observed.

During the first of these three periods, as David Hannay has pointed out, the beylerbeys were admirals of the sultan commanding great fleets and conducting serious naval operations for political ends, for at that time, it should be remembered, under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire was at the zenith of its power and glory, Turkish rule extending from Germany to Zanzibar, from Persia to the borders of Morocco. The beylerbeys were slave-hunters, and their methods were ferocious, but the reader should be reminded that their Christian enemies were neither more chivalrous nor more humane. Plunder, however, was the sole object of the pashas who succeeded them after 1587—plunder of all who went upon the sea and of the native tribes on land. The maritime side of this wholesale and systematic brigandage was conducted by the captains, or reises, who formed a sort of guild, a veritable pirates’ union. Cruisers were fitted out by capitalists, just as privateers were fitted out by private parties, both in the North and the South, during the Civil War, each being commanded by a reis. Most of the ships were built at Bougie, the timber being obtained from the forests of the adjacent hinterland. Ten per cent of the value of the prizes was paid to the Turkish ruler—variously known as pasha, agha, bey, or dey—of the Barbary state from which they came.

Until the seventeenth century the corsairs used galleys, long single-decked vessels propelled by fifty or more oars, the rowers being prisoners of war who were chained to the sweeps, sometimes even when their vessel was in harbor. The Algerines were eventually taught the superiority of sailing-ships, however, by a Flemish renegade named Simon Danser, and among them for a time was an English gentleman adventurer of the distinguished Buckinghamshire family of Verney—the original, perhaps, of Rafael Sabatini’s “Sea Hawk.” Though the fleets put into commission at Algiers were so much the most formidable that the name of Algerine became a synonym for Barbary pirate; the same lucrative trade was carried on, though on a smaller scale, from Tripoli and Tunis, as well as from various Moroccan seaports, the most notorious being Salé, which gave its name to the Sallee rovers. The introduction of sailing-vessels enabled the pirates greatly to extend the theater of their operations. The galleys, being unfit for the high seas, were confined to the Mediterranean coasts, but the sailing-ships passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and ranged far into the Atlantic, burning seaports in the Canaries, harrying the western seaboard of Spain; and in 1631 two private crews under the command of Murad Reis, a native of Flanders, landed at Baltimore in Ireland and carried off its inhabitants, who were sold into slavery in Algiers.

The first half of the seventeenth century was the heyday of the Barbary pirates. More than twenty thousand captives were said to be imprisoned in Algiers alone. Those possessed of property could redeem themselves, but the poor were sold at auction like cattle, though occasionally their masters would give them their freedom upon their professing Mohammedanism. But thousands died from fever, from exhaustion, or under the lash. The women were less fortunate: they were taken into the harems and became concubines of their masters. A long list might be compiled of persons—not only Italians, French, and Spaniards, but English, Dutch, and German travelers in the South—who were captives for a time in Barbary. Don Miguel de Cervantes, the author of “Don Quixote,” and his brother Rodrigo were captured by Barbary corsairs in 1575 off Marseilles and taken as prisoners to Algiers. As the letters found upon the former were taken to prove that he was a man of importance and in a position to pay a high ransom, he was put under special surveillance. Their father made every effort to effect their release, but the money which he sent to Algiers by two priests of the Order of Mercy was sufficient only to ransom Rodrigo. Miguel and his companions in misery made several daring efforts to escape, which were, however, invariably discovered or betrayed, whereupon he always chivalrously took the blame upon himself, being sentenced on one of these occasions to two thousand strokes of the lash; but the Turkish viceroy remitted the sentence, which was tantamount to death, and thereby rendered an inestimable service to literature. In 1580, just as Cervantes was being sent to Constantinople, two Trinitarian monks arrived in Algiers and effected his release by paying a ransom of two hundred gold ducats—equivalent to about a thousand dollars—not a high price, it would seem, for one of the greatest writers of all time. Speaking of authors, it will be recalled that Defoe’s immortal hero, Robinson Crusoe, before setting out on his voyage to the South Seas, was captured by a Sallee rover and worked as a slave in Barbary—an incident which was probably founded on one of the adventures of Alexander Selkirk.

When a prize was brought into Algiers the captives were required to declare their quality and condition, and a flagging memory was revived by a taste of the bastinado. The dey selected one prisoner in ten for himself, his preference being generally for skilled workmen and, of course, for young and beautiful women. The others were sold by public auction in the slave-market for the benefit of the owners of the galleys and their crews. Incredible as it may seem, the European powers tacitly accepted this piracy and slave-hunting by maintaining consuls at Algiers, through whose agency those of the captives whose friends could find the ransoms demanded were, after much delay, released, though it is said that they had to pay for the water they drank at the public fountains during their incarceration. Perhaps the most successful agency for the release of Christian captives, however, was the religious order of Trinitarians, or Redemptionists, as they are now called, who collected vast sums of money for the purpose, and, when other means failed, offered themselves in exchange for Christian captives.

Though for three hundred years and more the most powerful states of Europe paid tribute to the corsairs and tolerated their insults, they had only themselves to blame, for the continuance of African piracy was wholly due to European jealousies. France openly encouraged them during her long, fierce rivalry with Spain; and when she had no further need of them they were supported against her by England and Holland. Indeed, British statesmen of the eighteenth century saw no shame in asserting that Barbary piracy was deserving of British encouragement because it served to check the competition of Britain’s Mediterranean rivals in the carrying trade. (Which serves to remind us that even to-day British public men are supporting the opium trade with China for equally sordid reasons.) Yet, in view of the weakness of their fleets as compared with those of the European powers, it remains a matter for profound astonishment that the corsairs succeeded in playing their great game of bluff so long. When William Eaton, the American consul at Tunis, who himself in later years smashed the power of the Tripolitan pirates by his amazing desert march on Derna,⁠[5] was sent in 1799 to negotiate a treaty with the dey of Algiers, he wrote, “Can any man believe that this elevated brute has seven kings of Europe, two Republics, and a Continent tributary to him, when his whole naval force is not equal to two line-of-battle ships?”

But, though the various powers were ready enough to tolerate piracy when it affected their rivals, their complaisance quickly disappeared when it affected themselves. In 1655, as a result of repeated attacks on British shipping, Admiral Robert Blake was ordered to teach the corsairs respect for the British flag, which he did by administering a sound thrashing to the Tunisians. During the reign of Charles II a long series of expeditions against the pirates was undertaken by the British fleet, sometimes single-handed, sometimes in coöperation with the Dutch. In 1682 and again in 1683 the French fleet bombarded Algiers, and on the second occasion the Algerines repaid the little pleasantry by blowing the French consul from the mouth of a gun. In 1804 the United States took a hand in the game by sending a squadron under Commodore Preble to the Mediterranean. During a naval demonstration against Tripoli the frigate Philadelphia went aground in the harbor and was captured by the corsairs, but was burned a few days later, under the very guns of the city, by a daring expedition led by gallant young Stephen Decatur, who subsequently commanded with marked success all the American naval operations against the cities of the Pirate Coast.

When the dove of peace settled upon European soil after Waterloo, it was generally agreed that the time had arrived to bring the activities of the corsairs to an end. Accordingly, at the Congress of Vienna, Great Britain was delegated by the other powers to clean up the Barbary Coast, and in 1816 Lord Exmouth was ordered to exact promises of good behavior from the bey of Tunis and the dey of Algiers at the mouths of his guns. The negotiations proceeded amicably enough, but scarcely had they been concluded before a number of British subjects were attacked and brutally ill-treated by the pirates of Bône, whereupon the British government sent Exmouth back to exact reparation, and, acting in conjunction with a Dutch squadron under Admiral Van de Capellen, he administered a smashing bombardment to Algiers.

This recalls the romantic attempt at escape of Ida M’Donnell, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Admiral Ulric, consul-general of Denmark, and wife of the British consul at Algiers. When the bombardment was about to begin, M’Donnell was loaded with chains by order of the bey and thrown into a dungeon. Mrs. M’Donnell, cutting off her hair, attempted to reach the British fleet disguised as a midshipman, carrying on her arm a basket of vegetables in which her baby was hidden. She was detected and detained, but the child was sent out to the flag-ship under a flag of truce with the dey’s compliments.

Though the salutary lesson taught them by Lord Exmouth’s guns terrified the pirates both of Algiers and of Tunis into surrendering upward of three thousand captives, they were not reformed nor were they capable of reformation. The leopard cannot change its spots. Ere many months had passed the Algerines were again at their work of plundering, burning, and slave-hunting, though on a smaller scale; and in 1824 another British squadron under Sir Harry Neal had again to bombard Algiers, but the great pirate city was not thoroughly tamed until its occupation by the French in 1830.

Through one of those curious anomalies with which the musty pages of history are enlivened, the result which the European powers in concert had been unable to accomplish in spite of three hundred years of outrage and insult was brought about by the stroke of a fan. The incident which was destined to have such important consequences for North Africa and for civilization arose—as modern international incidents have frequently arisen—from a financial controversy. During the period of the Directory two Algerine Jews, Bacri and Burnach, had supplied the French government with large quantities of grain, but their claims were repudiated by the succeeding governments of Bonaparte and the Bourbons. The question of the debt would not in itself have been sufficient to produce a rupture, but the dey, Hussein—to whom the Jews had probably promised a substantial rake-off—pressed the claim as his own. Exasperated by the numerous delays, he sent for the French consul, M. Deval, whom he received at the kasbah in a sort of pavilion. The interview, which was exceedingly acrimonious, was abruptly terminated when, giving rein to his passion, the pirate chieftain struck the French envoy in the face with his fly-flap. France’s retaliation for this affront was more prompt than vigorous; it took the form of an ineffectual blockade of the port of Algiers by a squadron of war-ships. Though this action inconvenienced it did not particularly worry the dey, who showed his contempt by firing on La Provence, a vessel which entered the harbor of Algiers under a flag of truce in August, 1829. This ended the patience of the French government, which determined to terminate the intolerable situation by a punitive expedition, the minister of war, Marshal de Bourmont, himself taking the command. On June 14, 1830, the red-trousered battalions disembarked under cover of the war-ships at Sidi-Ferruch. Five days later they smashed the enemy at Staoueli. On July 4 the Fort de l’Empereur was blown up. On the following day Algiers capitulated, and the pirate standard which had flaunted so long above the kasbah was replaced by the tricolor. After terrorizing the Mediterranean and defying Christendom since the Middle Ages, the Barbary pirates had come to the end of the road.

Meanwhile the revolution of July, 1830, had broken out in France. The new government found itself greatly embarrassed by the situation bequeathed it by the preceding régime. Parliament, as a whole, was strongly opposed to the nation’s embarking on an African adventure; but French troops were, on the other hand, in possession of Algiers, and popular sentiment—which in France can never safely be disregarded—was opposed to their withdrawal. The situation was, in fact, not unlike that which confronted the American government in 1898, when Admiral Dewey had captured Manila. The administration at Paris did not want Algeria, any more than the administration at Washington wanted the Philippines, but neither of them was in a position to withdraw its forces. Fearing to arouse the jealousies of the other powers by following up its conquest, its freedom of action hampered by its treaty engagements with England, yet realizing that evacuation would mean a prompt resumption of piratical activities, the Paris government determined to pursue a middle course, called restricted occupation, which consisted merely in occupying the principal ports and waiting to see what would happen. The diplomats of the Quai d’Orsay were extricated from their embarrassing position, however, by the Algerines themselves, who attacked the French troops and gained some small successes. This was all that was needed. It now became necessary to avenge the honor of the flag. Reinforcements were rushed to Africa, columns were pushed east, south, and west, and the hinterland was gradually occupied and pacified. Thus was brought about the French conquest of Algeria, and, as time went on, of all North Africa.

Having proceeded thus far with my sketch of the conquest of Algeria, I might as well round it out here as to resume it later on. The five years, then, which followed the capitulation of Algiers were a period of anxiety and uncertainty for the French, who, undetermined whether to evacuate or retain the country, remained on the defensive, their dominion extending over only six coast towns. In Algiers, Bougie, and Bône their position was tolerably secure, but along the western littoral, at Mostaganem, Arzeu, and Oran, they found themselves menaced by a most formidable adversary in the person of the young Abd-el-Kader, who had been proclaimed emir at Mascara in 1832, when only four-and-twenty years of age.

Abd-el-Kader’s family were sherifs, or descendants of the Prophet, and his father was celebrated throughout North Africa for his piety and his charity. As a youth he received the best education attainable by a Moslem of princely rank, especially in theology and philosophy, in horsemanship and in other manly exercises. A born leader, a man of exceptional intelligence, a great soldier, an able administrator, a brilliant and persuasive orator, a chivalrous opponent, a skilled swordsman and a fearless horseman, Abd-el-Kader was one of the most remarkable figures which Africa, or, indeed, the whole Arab world, has ever produced. Of him, as of Bayard, it might be said with entire truth that he was sans peur et sans reproche.

For fifteen years he held in check all the forces which France, the greatest military power of the time, could bring against him, treating on terms of equality with the French government, which maintained representatives at his court. Undisputed master of the great province of Oran, he crossed the Shelif in response to the appeal of the natives of Middle Algeria, who flocked to greet him as though he were an emperor. He defeated the French on the banks of the Macta in June, 1835, and then all western Algeria belonged to him, his possession of it being confirmed by the Treaty of Tafna, by the terms of which the French surrendered several important cities in the west while Abd-el-Kader on his part vaguely recognized French sovereignty in North Africa.

This was a political as well as a military triumph for the young leader, who regarded the peace as but a truce which would give him a breathing-space in which to gain strength to renew the struggle under more favorable conditions. The capture of Constantine by the French in 1837, which, he claimed, was an infraction of the treaty, provided him with a pretext for reopening hostilities, and two years later he turned loose his hordes once more. Meanwhile his power had been steadily increasing. He was amply provided with materials of war, having magazines and arsenals scattered through the heart of the Tell. He had a regular army of ten thousand men, both horse and foot, to say nothing of the fifty thousand goums—irregular native cavalry—which the great chieftains brought to his standard. He was obeyed by a whole hierarchy of khalifas, aghas, and caïds. And the people, seeing in him not only a champion of their liberties but a man of transcendent piety, a soldier-saint, worshiped the ground beneath his charger’s hoofs.

Marshal Valée, who first opposed him, relied on defensive tactics, but in 1840 the conqueror of Constantine was replaced by General Bugeaud, who was destined to become Duke of Isly and a marshal of France. Bugeaud, who was first, last, and all the time a fighter, lost no time in adopting the offensive. Increasing the mobility of his troops by lightening their equipment—which they repaid by affectionately calling him “Père Bugeaud”—and forming a number of flying columns, he proceeded to carry the war into the province of Oran, from which Abd-el-Kader drew his principal resources. One after another all the strongholds of the emir were captured and destroyed. In the spring of 1843 the Duc d’Aumale made a successful surprise attack upon his camp at Tanguin, whereupon the emir retreated into Morocco and persuaded the Shereefian emperor to become his ally and declare war on France. Upon Bugeaud’s great victory at Isly in August, 1844, however, the Moroccan monarch lost no time in signing a treaty of peace at Tangier.

But the struggle was not yet at an end. Islam made a supreme effort in Algeria. The warlike tribes of the hinterland rose at the voice of a fanatic called Bu-Maza, “the goat man.” Abd-el-Kader reappeared in Algeria, which he overran with a rapidity which paralyzed resistance and baffled pursuit. He smashed the French at Sidi-Brahim, punished the tribes of the Tell Oranais which had deserted him, pushed as far eastward as the borders of the Metija, and even penetrated the Djurjura, where he sought to arouse the Kabyles. It was the refusal of these Berber mountaineers to make common cause with the Arabs against the French which led to his downfall. His eloquence offended rather than stirred these little democratic communities; his appeals fell on ears deaf to the sentiment of the common good. From that time Abd-el-Kader played a losing game. He again retired into Morocco, but the sultan, jealous of his popularity with the people and having no desire to again embroil himself with the French, drove him out. This was the end. Two days before the Christmas of 1847, the great Arab leader surrendered to General Lamoricière on the plains of Sidi-Brahim. His capitulation marked the end of the period of the conquest. It is true that the Grand Kabylia had to be subdued only ten years later, and that terrible insurrections still had to be quelled. But at the end of the reign of Louis Philippe the work of laying the foundations of France’s African empire had been accomplished. All that was needed was to complete and secure it.

In violation of the solemn pledge that he would be permitted to take up his residence in Syria or Egypt, on the strength of which he laid down his arms, Abd-el-Kader and his family were detained in France for five years, but in 1852 he was released by Napoleon III on taking an oath never again to disturb Algeria. For a time he made his home in Brusa, the quaint old town which was once the capital of Turkey, but later he removed to Damascus. In July, 1860, when the Moslems of that city, taking advantage of the Druse revolt, attacked the Christian quarter and slaughtered more than three thousand Christians, Abd-el-Kader helped to suppress the outbreak and saved hundreds of Christian lives. For this the French government, which had granted the emir a pension of twenty thousand dollars a year, bestowed on him the grand cross of the Legion of Honor—the highest distinction in the gift of France. He visited Paris and London and attended the Paris Exposition of 1867, where he was acclaimed as a national hero; when, in 1871, the Algerians again rose in revolt, he wrote them urging them to accept the rule of France. In the spring of 1883 he passed from Damascus to the Moslem Paradise—a gallant soldier, a chivalrous enemy, and a great gentleman.

Having shown in this rather lengthy historical interlude how Algiers came to be French, let us return to the city itself, or rather, to its environs. It is with a distinct sense of relief that one leaves la ville européene, with its crowded streets, its garish shops, the clatter and bustle of traffic over stone-paved thoroughfares, the honking of motors and the clang of tram-cars, and takes the road which ascends in long, steep zigzags to the lovely heights of Mustapha Supérieur and El Biar, where are situated the great tourist hotels and the enchanting, flower-smothered villas of the European residents.

It has been said that no one can know how beautiful a sunset can be unless he has lived in a villa at El Biar with a terrace facing toward the west. That the view is superb there can be no denying; it is one of the grandest in the world, I should say. Rising above the exquisite curve of the crescent-shaped bay is a long line of mountains, their peaks usually dim in a mulberry haze or purple and sullen when shadowed by storm-clouds, but in clear weather standing out against the soft cerulean sky like cameos. But the scene, enchanting as it is, attains true majesty only on those rare occasions when the clouds lift sufficiently to reveal, behind and beyond the shore range, the mighty snow-peaks of the Grand Kabylia towering thousands of feet into the African blue.

The walled gardens of Mustapha Supérieur are places of sheer delight, heavy with fragrance and aglow with color. They are crowded with plants and trees of every variety and clime—palms from the South Seas and Malaysia; Japanese bamboos, eucalyptus and blue-gums from Australia; Spanish oranges and lemons; dragon-trees from China; stately rows of dark Italian cypress; fruit-trees from the south of France. Splashes of vivid color are provided by great masses of crimson or magenta bougainvillea, by clusters of arum-lily, iris, and narcissus. As for roses, they are everywhere, clambering over the walls, festooning arbors and summer-houses, forming hedges of pink, yellow, red, or white. And the ground is covered with a purple carpet of long-stemmed Algerian violets whose perfume fills the air.

The suburb of Mustapha takes its name from one of the deys, who erected the palace now used as the official residence of the governor-general of Algeria. Few if any of the world’s rulers can boast such a residence, for it is built in the colorful Moorish style, rich in marbles, faiences, and mosaics, and stands amid gardens of fairy-like loveliness which look down upon the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean. It did not prove a good investment for its luxury-loving builder, however, for the vast sums he squandered on it so angered the Janizaries, whose pay was perpetually in arrears, as to bring about his disgrace and death. The ideal time to see the gardens of the palace is during an evening fête—one of those scented, languorous African nights when the moon throws a white beam athwart the darkened waters of the Mediterranean, when the fragrance of flowers intoxicates the senses, and the air is as soft as the cheek of a lovely woman. The trees are festooned with myriads of little colored lights, red, blue, and white; across the velvet lawns or along the marble terraces stroll men in brilliant uniforms, and bare-shouldered, bejeweled women; beneath a clump of palms the red-jacketed spahi band is softly playing....

If you are interested in seeing what the soil and climate of Algeria are capable of producing in the way of vernal loveliness, you should not fail to visit the Jardin d’Essai, an extremely successful attempt at acclimatization on a large scale, which was established by the government nearly a century ago on the flats of Mustapha Inférieur. If you expect something unusual in landscape gardening, however, you will be disappointed, for there is nothing here to compare with the superb effects which have been achieved at Peradeniya in Ceylon or in those most wonderful of all tropical gardens at Buitenzorg in Java. But the Jardin d’Essai has one feature which in itself well repays the trouble of a visit: a magnificent avenue of India-rubber trees which have attained gigantic size, in some cases twenty feet around and three times that in height.

When you have concluded your visit to the Jardin d’Essai, I hope that you will cross the road to one of the little open-air native cafés which are set amid groves of trees above the Mediterranean. You can have tea, or an ice, or the thick, sweet Arab coffee, but the chief thing is the view, particularly toward sunset, when from the tables, as from nowhere else, you can obtain a glimpse of the old Algiers, the city of the corsairs, the white terraces of the town glowing like ivory in the soft afternoon light, the masts of the shipping in the harbor mirrored in the calm opalescent waters.

On the slopes of Mustapha Supérieur, a few minutes’ walk from the Jardin d’Essai, is the Algerian Museum, which contains an admirably arranged collection of objects illustrative of the country’s varied history, including the flint instruments of primitive man, an assortment of Punic earthenware from Gouraya, Roman mosaics and sculptures, and numerous examples of Berber and Arab handicraft. It is laudably confined, as Mr. Thomas-Stanford remarks, to Algerian antiquities and native art; unlike so many American museums, it contains no irrelevant South Sea Island curios; it has not been used as a receptacle for the rubbish of the local collector, a dumping-ground for the perplexed widow and the embarrassed executor.

By far the most interesting object in the museum, though a very gruesome one, is the plaster cast of a young man, lying face downward, his hands and feet bound with cords, his torso arched, his muscles strained in agony. It is not a cheap replica of some celebrated statue, as most casual visitors assume, but a life-mask which depicts with ghastly veracity the agonizing death-struggles of a man who was buried alive! Were it that and nothing more it would merely be revolting, but it is in some measure redeemed from the horrible by its amazing history.

The cast is of the body of San Gerónimo, the discovery of whose remains in 1853 afforded striking confirmation of an incident recorded by a Spanish Benedictine monk named Haedo in an account of Algiers which he had written nearly two and a half centuries before. According to the priestly chronicler, a young Arab who had been captured by the Spaniards about the middle of the sixteenth century, had embraced Christianity, and had been baptized with the name of Gerónimo, was recaptured in 1569 by Algerine pirates and taken to Algiers. That one of their breed and creed should have become an apostate was an unforgivable offense in Arab eyes. When threats and pleadings failed to move him from his adopted faith, Gerónimo was condemned to death. Bound hand and foot he was thrown alive into a mold in which a block of concrete was about to be made and the liquid concrete poured in upon him. The block containing his body was built into an angle of the Fort of the Twenty-four Hours, then in process of construction. Nearly three centuries later, in 1853 to be exact, the fort was demolished by French military engineers, and in the angle specified by Haedo the block containing the skeleton of Gerónimo was found. Into the mold left by the saint’s body liquid plaster of Paris was run, and a perfect model obtained, showing the agonized features of the youth, the cords which bound him, and even the texture of his single garment. This model is now in the museum. But the block itself, that “noble sepulcher,” as the old chronicler calls it, has found a fitting shrine in the cathedral of St. Philippe, where the bones of the Arab youth who died a Christian martyr and was canonized a saint rest beneath a marble sarcophagus which bears the inscription, “Ossa venerabilis servi Dei Geronimo.”

High on the slopes behind Algiers, set on a shoulder of the Bou Zarea Hills, above a sea of almond-blossoms, is the church of Notre Dame d’Afrique, to which you should not fail to make a little pilgrimage, if from no more pious motive than to enjoy the sublime view. At our feet the white houses of Algiers run down steeply, like the seats in the gallery of a theater, to meet the blue waters of the bay; turning inland we look down upon the beautiful Valley of the Consuls, the favorite place of residence of the European representatives at the corsair court and but little changed since the time of the deys. Perhaps the most interesting time to visit Notre Dame d’Afrique is on a Sunday afternoon, when thousands of the pious and the curious make their way up the steep hill to witness the poetic ceremony of the blessing of the sea. Amid a reverent hush a procession of priests and choristers moves slowly across the terrace to the edge of the cliff, where, overlooking the Mediterranean, a cross has been raised to the memory of all those who have been buried in deep waters. Boyish voices rise in a sweet, shrill chant, and, after a brief prayer for those who go down to the sea in ships, the officiating priest sprinkles holy water out toward the Mediterranean, whose sun-kissed surface sparkles as though strewn with diamonds.

Within the church, above the high altar, is a statue of a black Virgin, and over it is the unusual inscription: “Notre Dame d’Afrique, priez pour nous et pour les Musulmans.”

It gratified me, that inscription; it bespeaks a tolerance, a freedom from bigotry, which one likes to associate with the faith founded by the gentle Man of Nazareth. Why, the words might have been spoken by Jesus himself!

“Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Mohammedans.”

CHAPTER XVII FOLLOWING THE PIRATE COAST

Bad news greeted us at Algiers. We were to change cars and drivers, so the officials of the company which had charge of our transportation informed us. Harvey, the young New Englander and veteran of the A. E. F., for whom we had formed a sincere affection, was to return with the Cadillac to Tunis, and we were to continue our journey Morocco-ward in a huge black Renault under the guidance of a youthful French colonial named Tomine, whose home town was Casablanca. Tomine—whose name we soon corrupted to Ptomaine—was an easy-going, devil-may-care lad without the slightest sense of responsibility. A safe and skilful driver, he was utterly regardless of sign-posts, which were of no more significance to him than trees or telegraph-poles. And he had, moreover, an incurable aversion to making inquiries as to direction and road conditions. Upon leaving Tlemcen, for example, he took the wrong roads three times running, following each of them a dozen miles or more before he was willing to admit that he might possibly be mistaken. Had I not interfered we would have ended up in the desert instead of at Oujda, and as it was we arrived long after midnight, just as the military authorities were about to send out a searching expedition on the assumption that we had met with an accident or had been waylaid by bandits.

There used to be a current saying in the East that the first thing the British build upon occupying a country is a custom-house, the first thing that the Germans build is a fort, and the first thing the French build is a road. And nowhere have the French been more painstaking or successful in their road-building than in Algeria. When they occupied the country in 1830 the interior could not boast a single road. The splendid Roman highways had long since disappeared. Wheeled vehicles were unknown among the Arabs, whose rough and narrow trails permitted only the passage of horsemen. In the Tell transport was by mules, in the desert regions by camels.

The French were quick to realize, however, that in a savage and hostile country, utterly destitute of roads, the heavily accoutred European troops, accompanied by artillery and baggage trains, could not hope to approach the mobility of the Arab light-horsemen. No sooner had the army landed, therefore, than the military engineers set about the construction of a great strategic highway system, which at first only linked the more important coast cities but was gradually expanded until it now consists of a main east-and-west artery running right across the country from Tunisia to Morocco with numerous branches which stretch southward to the towns along the edge of the Sahara. These highways, which now have a total length of nearly thirty-five hundred miles, comprise the routes nationales, the great state trunk roads, built and maintained by the government primarily for strategic purposes. In recent years the government has lent its aid in the construction of a number of other roads, partly of a strategic nature but for the most part built with a view to opening up new regions to commerce and colonization. These, with the ordinary country roads, make up a total of something over ten thousand miles, so that to-day there is not a single town of importance in Algeria which cannot be reached by motor over hard-surfaced highways.

The routes nationales of Algeria are like those of France as the latter were before they were ruined by the heavy traffic of the war: the curves and gradients scientifically worked out, planted wherever possible with shade-trees, the distances plainly indicated by kilometer-stones, and maintained in admirable condition. The Algerian highways are not so well posted as they might be, though the motorist rarely has any difficulty in finding his way; but in Morocco the French have erected the finest road-signs I have ever seen—great walls of whitewashed concrete, ten feet in height, with the route-numbers, the names of the towns, and the distances painted on them in staring black characters which can be seen a quarter of a mile away. In this respect, Morocco is far ahead of America. As a result of the general excellence of the Algerian roads the shipping of goods by motor-truck has been highly developed, transportation by roads being in most cases fully as rapid as by railway and considerably less expensive.

Algeria has, however, an excellent railway system of twenty-five hundred miles, its well equipped trains provided with sleeping and dining cars, on which one can travel in comfort all the way from Tunisia to Morocco, or from the Algerian coast towns southward to the edges of the desert; but I should strongly advise the prospective visitor to North Africa to do most of his traveling by motor-car, for which the roads, by reason of their open character and long straight stretches, are admirably adapted, and which, particularly where the cost is shared among several persons, is considerably less expensive than the railway, to say nothing of being infinitely more enjoyable and interesting.

The surface of the main roads is usually excellent, though not comparable, of course, to the wonderful concrete boulevards which now cover with a network the United States. Garages and repair-shops are to be found in all the larger towns, and the French mechanics are the equal of any in the world. Gasoline—or pétrol, as the French call it—is available almost everywhere and is no more expensive than in France. Algeria is the speedster’s paradise. It is true that Article 14 of the Règlements contains the provision that en aucun cas, la vitesse n’excédera celle de 30 kilomètres à l’heure en rase campagne et celle de 20 kilomètres à l’heure dans les agglomérations, but I have never heard of this or any other speed-limit being enforced, and in Algeria such joy-killers as speed-traps and traffic-cops are as yet unknown. I should advise those who are fond of stepping on the gas to proceed with extreme caution through the native villages, however, for the passions of the Arabs are easily aroused, particularly against Europeans, and, were a native child to be killed or injured, it might go hard with those who were responsible for the accident.

Beautifully appointed cars of all the better known American and European makes, with European drivers, may be hired very reasonably at Tunis, Algiers, or Oran; while for those who wish to avoid the expense of a private car, I can recommend the luxurious motor-buses operated by the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. In these great vehicles every passenger is provided with an arm-chair as roomy and comfortable as those in Pullman parlor-cars, nor is he encumbered by luggage, which is carried in a trailer. While in North Africa I met several Americans who had brought their own cars from the United States and were driving them themselves—not so costly a matter as might be assumed, by the way, for a touring-car of medium size can be shipped from New York to Algiers and back again to New York for something under four hundred dollars. One of my compatriots, a former ambassador and a gentleman of enormous wealth, was so delighted with the car and chauffeur he had hired in Algiers that he insisted on taking both across the Mediterranean for the sole purpose of motoring the hundred miles from Marseilles to Monte Carlo! Another American motorist, whom I met in Fez, was from Kansas City—a real Middle-Western hustler. He arrived late in the evening, driving his own car, and departed the following day immediately after luncheon.

“But aren’t you cutting your stay here rather short?” I protested. “Fez is a very interesting city.”

“Hell, no!” he exclaimed, tossing his bags into the tonneau. “I’ve been here all night and half of a day, haven’t I? I reckon to see the rest of Morocco in about four days and then spend a fortnight doing western Europe.”

Two days later we heard that he had been arrested for speeding on the road to Marrákesh. And I was glad of it. But he certainly must have been burning up the road to have been arrested in Morocco!

A score of miles or so beyond Algiers, near the little village of Kolea, the west-bound traveler comes within sight of one of the most remarkable sepulchral monuments in North Africa—the Kubr-er-Rumia, “the grave of the Roman lady,” as the Arabs call it, though better known by its French name, Tombeau de la Chrétienne. A huge circular stone building, surmounted by a pyramid and supported by sixty Ionic columns, it stands on the summit of a hill, some little distance from the highway and seven hundred and fifty feet above the sea. To visit it one must do a little climbing, but, if you have any imagination in your soul, it is well worth the trouble, for it is the tomb of Juba II, who ruled in Mauretania during the latter part of the first century B.C., and—what is far more important to most of us—of his wife, the beautiful Selene, daughter of Mark Antony and of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. It is an interesting circumstance that in 1555, when Salah Reis, the pirate-pasha of Algiers, having use for the stones which form the mighty sepulcher, set men to tear it down, big black wasps came swarming from the burial-chambers within the tomb and stung the vandals to death. How that must have delighted the imperious and relentless spirit of Cleopatra!

The Princess Selene presented an embarrassing problem to the government at Rome, for in her veins flowed the blood of the Ptolemies, the Cæsars, and possibly of the Pharaohs, and there were those who would have claimed for her the succession to the thrones of two great empires. So, in order to get rid of this potentially troublesome young person, the Emperor Augustus married her off to Juba II, a descendant of that Masinissa, king of Numidia, mentioned in an earlier chapter, who had been a stanch ally of the Romans in their conflict with Carthage. Crossing to Africa, the royal pair set about the creation of a capital on the site of the ancient Punic town of Jol, which they renamed Julia Cæsarea and which is to-day called Cherchel, seventy-five miles west of Algiers. Here, where the wooded hills come down to meet the curving bay, they raised a noble city, a seat of art and learning and a center of the best culture of the time. A theater, a hippodrome, palaces, temples, baths, and villas rose in gleaming marble upon the hill-slopes above the Mediterranean; and here, surrounded by artists, scientists, and philosophers, the daughter of Cleopatra lived with her student husband to a ripe old age, the two of them being buried, as I have already remarked, in the Kubr-er-Rumia, the splendid mausoleum near Kolea. The Arab invaders, the Algerine pirates, the French army engineers and archæologists, and the earthquakes have between them left little of the ancient city standing; but the museum at Cherchel contains some of the finest statues found in Africa, including the lower half of an Egyptian god in black basalt, bearing the cartouche of Thotmes I, which, according to some authorities, is an indication that there was an Egyptian settlement here as early as 1500 B.C. Cherchel makes a good midday stopping-place for west-bound travelers, who may have their déjeuner on the terrace of the small local hotel, but let me warn you in advance that the banal modern town contains no architectural reminders of the great days when it was the seat of the court of Cleopatra’s daughter.

It is a matter of only about three hours by motor from Cherchel to Tenes, a charming little seaside community on the site of the Roman colony of Cartenna. Here the ubiquitous Compagnie Générale Transatlantique has built the most enchanting traveler’s rest that I have ever seen in any country. On the thickly wooded slopes which rise abruptly from the crescent bay, the company has erected a score or more of white-walled, red-roofed, deep-verandaed kiosks, most of them containing two rooms and a bath and charmingly decorated, inside and out, with vivid tiles and gaily tinted Arab plaster-work, so that they gleam like jewels amid the foliage. The rooms are as comfortably furnished as those of the finest American summer hotels, and meals are served in a central bungalow. There is sea-bathing on the sandy beach, a few yards away, and delightful excursions may be made into the wooded hills behind the town, or to some ruined Roman tombs in the neighborhood, but I preferred to lie at ease in a chaise longue beneath the whispering pines, idly watching the blue sea at my feet and the hibiscus-colored sails of the fishing-craft which dotted it. We remained at Tenes only over the week-end, but I could have spent a fortnight there most contentedly.

As it is a long day’s run from Tenes to Oran, with nothing of particular interest to be seen en route, let me suggest that I beguile the tedium of the journey by telling you something of this Algerian land across which we have been motoring for so many days.

To begin with, Algeria is not a colony, strictly speaking, being regarded, rather, as a part of France. Unlike the protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia, which are respectively under the control of the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and both of which have been permitted to retain their native rulers and at least a semblance of native government, Algerian affairs are controlled by the Ministry of the Interior through a governor-general, and in the administration of the country the natives have very little voice. For administrative purposes the country has been organized in two great divisions—Northern and Southern Algeria. The Northern Territory, which, loosely speaking, comprises the coastal plain and the fertile highland region known as the Tell, is divided into three departments, Algiers, Oran, and Constantine, each under a prefect and each sending one senator and two deputies to the national Parliament in Paris. The Southern Territory, which comprises the more thinly populated and less civilized Algerian Sahara, consists of four military territories, Ain Sefra, Ghardaia, Touggourt, and the Saharan Oases (Tuat, Gurara, and Tidikelt), each under a commandant militaire who is usually a general of brigade or a colonel. The total population of Algeria is now probably not far from six millions, of whom nearly ten per cent are Europeans. The franchise is confined to “citizens,” in which classification are included all Jews and those natives above the age of twenty-five and monogamous who served in the Great War, who are landed proprietors or farmers, who can read and write, or who hold a French decoration. The balance of the natives, who form nine tenths of the population, are not “citizens,” however, but “subjects,” and consequently do not possess the right to vote.

That this disproportionate system, which grants suffrage to ten per cent of the population and leaves ninety per cent of the inhabitants without a voice in governmental affairs, should be provocative of deep discontent among the natives is hardly surprising. Far from unifying the population, it has but served to encourage racial hatred and political prejudice, for the “citizens,” native and naturalized, consider themselves immensely superior to the unfranchised, who bitterly resent the subordinate position that has been allotted them in the land which their fathers ruled for twelve hundred years. Looking eastward, the Algerians see their fellow-Moslems in Tunisia enjoying a considerable measure of autonomy, somewhat vague and limited, it is true, but an autonomy of sorts nevertheless. On the west they see the Moroccans, with whom they are closely allied racially, religiously, and historically, under a French protectorate, but a protectorate so mild and beneficent as to be scarcely felt. The bey of Tunis still sits on the throne of his fathers in the Palace of the Bardo; the sultan of Morocco is still the titular head of the Shereefian Empire; but in Algeria all power is vested in the governor-general, an alien and a non-Moslem, and the flag which flies over the country from Lalla Maghnia to the Mjerda is the flag of France.

The cause of this discrimination must be sought in history. The French came into Algeria as avenging conquerors during an age when European nations recognized only three methods of dealing with native populations: extinction, expulsion, and repression. At the time of the conquest France was still swayed by Napoleonic ideals, her military men were in the saddle, and the numerous native uprisings, particularly that led by Abd-el-Kader, had convinced her that she was standing on the crust of a volcano. Hence, in formulating her Algerian policy, she decided on repression; she determined to use the mailed fist without the velvet glove. Everywhere, even on the plains, where resistance was slight and conquest was easy, the natives were dispossessed. The land was allotted to Frenchmen or to those natives, comparatively few in number, who were able to qualify as French “citizens” and consented to take the oath of allegiance to France. Those who had fought for their fatherland, who had resisted the invaders, were deprived of their property, the villages were depopulated, broad areas of the country were laid waste. In the cities the mosques were in many cases desecrated or handed over to the religious orders to be used for what the Moslems considered idolatrous worship. Some of them have never been restored to their owners. The country was administered—and still is to a large extent—primarily for the benefit of Frenchmen. Those Algerians only have prospered who have entered the French army or government service, and formed affiliations which all but cut them off from their fellow-countrymen. Though in the ninety-odd years of her occupation France has gradually modified her initial policy in Algeria, though she has done away with many of the injustices to which it inevitably gave rise, nevertheless there exists among the natives much lurking resentment, the more dangerous because it is skilfully concealed.

The cases of Tunisia and Morocco are totally different. France wore hobnailed boots when she invaded Algeria; she changed to street shoes, however, ere she set foot on the soil of Tunisia; but she tiptoed into Morocco in soft-soled slippers. Tunisia, remember, was not conquered by force of arms. It was occupied under the terms of a solemn treaty, without any determined resistance on the part of the natives; indeed, almost without a blow. Despite specious assurances to the contrary, however, the French proceeded to undermine and destroy the power of the beys, rehabilitating them in name only as their puppets, a procedure which met with scarcely more opposition than the British encountered when they dethroned the Burmese kings. The result is a nominally native administration upon which is shouldered the blame for failures, and a masked French direction which assumes the credit for success. In Tunisia all that was best in Algeria has been repeated; moreover, native rights and prejudices have been, on the whole, scrupulously respected, and their mosques and shrines left unmolested save only in the case of Kairouan. The immense superiority of the Tunisian policy over that employed in Algeria is readily apparent to any one who takes the trouble to examine and compare the two.

The lesson earned in Algeria, and emphasized in Tunisia, was not forgotten when the French decided to declare a protectorate over Morocco. Here was a vast empire, with a large, virile, fanatical, and highly warlike population, and the French realized from the outset that unless they trod very cautiously indeed they would find themselves with a first-class war on their hands. So, though the tribes which opposed the protectorate had to be subdued by force of arms, Morocco is subjected to a minimum of dictatorial control, the French policy in that country being the last word in “pacific penetration,” as I shall show further on. In short, France’s policy in North Africa might be summed up by saying that in Algeria she has employed repression, in Tunisia conciliation, and in Morocco persuasion.

The truth of the matter is that, had Algeria been occupied yesterday, instead of nearly a hundred years ago, the Algerians would unquestionably enjoy a far greater measure of liberty than is their present lot. But forms of government, once established, are not readily changed, particularly where subject races are involved; and that of Algeria, as it happens, is a somewhat unfortunate inheritance from a harsher and less enlightened past.

Most visitors seem to be under the impression that Algeria is mainly peopled by Arabs, whereas, as a matter of fact, they form only a small minority of the inhabitants, seventy-five per cent of whom are Berbers, descendants of that rugged warlike race who had lived in North Africa for untold centuries before the Arabs came. As to the remainder of the population, the so-called Moors, generally of mixed blood, inhabit the towns and villages along the sea-coast. Negroes, originally brought from the south and sold as slaves, are now found chiefly in the larger cities, where they are employed as laborers and domestic servants. The Kabyles of the eastern highlands, like the Touareg of the Sahara, are both branches of the old Berber stock. The Turks, though for a considerable period the dominant race, were never very numerous in Algeria, and most of them were repatriated by the French after the conquest. The Jews, of whom there are more than seventy thousand, are in the main descended from those who were expelled from Cyrenaica in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, who fled from the Spanish persecutions, or who were banished from Italy in 1342. The purely “African” Jew is now found only in the oases of the M’zab. Mohammedanism is the nominal religion of all the native races save, of course, the Jews, but the faith of the Prophet is strictly observed only by the Arabs.

Ever since the days when what is now Algeria was regarded as the granary of Rome it has been noted for the fertility of its soil, so that it is not surprising that more than two thirds of its inhabitants are engaged in agricultural pursuits. It should be understood, however, that the greater part of the country is of limited value for agricultural purposes, the really profitable farming regions being confined to a comparatively small area of highly fertile plains and valleys in the neighborhood of the coast, which is cultivated scientifically, mainly by Europeans, and yields good returns in grain-fields and vineyards. The mountainous northern portion is on the whole better adapted to grazing and forestry than to agriculture, particularly as, in spite of the numerous excellent roads built by the state, large areas of it are still without adequate means of communication and very difficult of access. Most of the native inhabitants are, moreover, miserably poor, eking out a scanty existence by cultivating small olive-groves and fields of barley or raising herds of sheep and goats. Under French rule, however, the productiveness of the country has been enormously increased by the sinking of artesian wells in districts which required only water to make them fertile, and by the introduction of scientific methods and modern machinery, though the employment of these is largely confined to European settlers, the natives regarding such innovations with a mixture of curiosity, skepticism, and sullen apathy.

I have no intention of going into agricultural statistics, but for the information of those visitors whose curiosity is not confined to the more exotic aspects of African life, I might mention that the chief cereal products of Algeria are wheat, barley, oats, and corn. Flax, silk, and tobacco are also grown, the cultivation of tobacco being highly remunerative, though it must be confessed that American smokers are not likely to find much pleasure in the Algerian weed. It has been asserted by some enthusiastic writers that Algeria was the Garden of the Hesperides; certainly it produces an amazing variety of fruits, including the pear, apple, peach, apricot, plum, nectarine, pomegranate, orange, lemon, mandarin, almond, fig, olive, banana, and date, the deglat-nour of the Algerian Sahara being admittedly the finest date in the world. The production of olive-oil is an important industry. A considerable amount of cotton was grown during the American Civil War, and small fields are still cultivated in the southern oases, but, in spite of government encouragement, the industry has not met with much success. The soil of Algeria is particularly adapted to the cultivation of the vine. The country, in the words of an expert sent to report on the subject by the French government, “can produce an infinite variety of wines suitable to every constitution and to every caprice of taste.” Doubtless because of a certain harshness, a barely perceptible resinous tang, native wines have never become popular abroad, practically their only foreign market being found in France. One of the best brands of Algerian wine is that produced by the Trappist monks on the battle-field of Staoueli, perhaps because the soil was enriched by the blood of those who fell there in 1830, as is declared to be the case with the famous Swiss wine, Schweitzerblut, which is grown on the battle-field of Morat.

In minerals Algeria is undoubtedly very rich, though they have not yet received the attention which they deserve. They are found chiefly in the Department of Constantine, where iron, lead and zinc, copper, antimony, and mercury mines are worked with profit. Immense phosphate beds have been found in several parts of the country, and petroleum is being produced in small quantities in the Department of Oran. Algeria has been famous for its onyx and marbles since the dawn of history, the old mines, which are found everywhere, having provided the materials for the beautiful buildings erected by the Romans. It is believed that the beautifully translucent onyx marble, delicately clouded with yellow and brown, a quarry of which was discovered some years ago near Oued Abdallah, is identical with the “lost” Numidian marble which was so highly prized by the architects of Carthage and Rome.

Agriculturally and mineralogically, Algeria, despite a century of French occupation, is still a land of promise rather than of fulfilment, but the promise is great and the achievement already remarkable when it is remembered that the history of the French occupation has been the history of a struggle against renascent barbarism.

But it is time that I brought this somewhat pedantic sketch of the country and its people to an end, for over there, topping yonder line of hills, are the forts which guard Oran.

Oran, the second city of Algeria, the capital of a department, the headquarters of an army division, an important naval station, and the center of a busy trade, is built on the steep slopes of the Djebel Murjojo, which rises to a height of nineteen hundred feet above the pearl-blue waters of the gulf. The town was originally cut in half by a deep ravine, or wahran, from which it takes its name, but this is now largely covered by ramps, boulevards, promenades, and modern buildings. Oran is frankly modern and European, the most Oriental building in the city being the railway-station. Though the city is picturesquely situated, with some beautiful parks and lovely views, it is wholly lacking in the color and quaintness which are the charms of Tunis and Algeria. Perhaps this is due to the preponderance of Europeans, who, unlike the natives, dwell in the bustling matter-of-fact present rather than in the sleepy romantic past. Be this as it may, Oran has the air of a very busy and highly prosperous boom town, and the people whom we saw in its restaurants and hotels were more suggestive of the oil regions of Texas than of a former pirate stronghold on the coast of Barbary.

In its European population Oran is more than half Spanish (Cartagena in Spain is only 130 miles away); in its history it is almost wholly Spanish. Though attempts have been made to identify it with the Quiza of the Romans, no Roman remains have been found here, and its foundation is more properly ascribed to the Andalusian Arabs who settled here at the beginning of the tenth century and gave the place its name. Rapidly rising into importance as a seaport, Oran was taken and retaken, pillaged, destroyed, and rebuilt by the various conquerors of northern Africa. In the course of a half-century it changed hands nine times, attaining its highest prosperity at about the time Columbus was setting out to discover the Western World, when it became subject to the sultans of Tlemcen. The extent of its trade, the magnificence of its mosques, and the number of its institutions of learning spread the city’s fame; but wealth and luxury began to sap the energy of the Oronais, though the rapid decline of the city was primarily due to the piratical activities of the Moors expelled from Spain, who from Mers-el-Kebir, a strongly protected harbor four miles to the west of Oran, waged a relentless sea-war for booty and revenge against the Dons.

For a number of years the Moors harried the commerce, ravaged the coasts, and carried off the subjects of King Ferdinand, but their activities were brought to an abrupt end by the daring and determination of a churchman, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, archbishop of Toledo and inquisitor-general of Spain, who at his own expense equipped an expedition which in 1505 captured Mers-el-Kebir, and who four years later himself led a second expedition which took Oran by storm. This zealous priest, soldier, and statesman, for he was all three combined, introduced Africa to the terrors of the Inquisition—its palace may still be seen in the Place de l’Hôpital of Oran—and also restored and extended the fortifications, building on the heights above the town the massive Castle of the Saints, now replaced by Fort St. Philippe. Oran became the penal settlement of Spain, but neither the convicts nor the noblemen in disgrace who were banished thither seem to have been very rigorously treated, if contemporary accounts are to be believed.

Meanwhile the Turks under the Barbarossas had made themselves masters of Algeria, having ousted the Spaniards from all their possessions in Barbary save Oran, which was now besieged by a formidable force under the powerful bey of Mascara. The terrible earthquake of 1760, which killed hundreds of citizens and all but destroyed the town, provided the Spaniards with an excuse for withdrawing from a position which had become untenable, and a few months later the regiments of his Most Catholic Majesty marched out and the squadrons of Mascara came riding in. Oran remained the capital of the beys of Mascara for 140 years; but upon the capture of Algiers by France the ruling bey sent in his submission, and in 1831 the ancient city was treated to another military triumph and witnessed another change of masters, as France’s red-trousered soldiery entered its gates to the blare of bugles and the roll of drums. That it has prospered mightily under French rule is shown by the fact that a census taken in 1832 showed that it had but 388 inhabitants, two thirds of whom were Jews, whereas its present population is not far from one hundred and fifty thousand.

Despite its hectic history, there is not much in Oran to detain the traveler long, for one can visit the kasbah, the Château Neuf, the Grand Mosque (built with money paid as ransom for Christian slaves), and such other sights as the city has to offer, quite easily in a single day. Toward nightfall I would suggest that you sit for an hour or so before one of the numerous cafés and over an apéritif watch the unfolding of the human panorama. Though few interesting native types are to be seen, the place is filled with troops—spahis, Turcos, zouaves, tirailleurs légionnaires, colonial infantry, chasseurs d’Afrique—whose brilliant uniforms lend pleasing notes of color to the drab and dusty streets. Though Oran is doubtless well policed, it has certain districts in which I should not care to linger after dark, for it struck me that there was an unusually large rough element in evidence: soldiers who, judging by the unsteadiness of their gait, had imbibed too freely in the numerous grog-shops; half-naked negro stevedores; coal-heavers from the tramp steamers in the harbor; Spanish speculators in wines and esparto grass; greasy Jewish traders who supply the wants, legitimate and otherwise, of the seafaring population; furtive Levantines with no visible means of support, who looked as though they would commit any crime for a few dollars; impudent and precocious Arab newsboys selling the “Echo d’Oran”; sullen, mysterious Moors in flowing garments; grimy oil-drillers; boisterous colonials in from their farms in the back-country for a periodic spree; hard-eyed, highly painted women of many nationalities but of one profession, their virtue as easy as an old shoe; some figures straight from the Bible, others straight from the boulevards.

The hotel, though not a Ritz, was comfortable enough, and the cuisine excellent, as is always the case when there is a Frenchman in the kitchen, but the noise which rose from the cobbled streets put sleep out of the question. I was glad when morning brought to our windows the sound of Tomine’s horn, and, after a breakfast of rock-hard rolls and the execrable mud-colored beverage which the French insist on calling coffee, we took to the road again.

CHAPTER XVIII THE FOREIGN LEGION

Half a hundred miles southwestward from Oran, set in the middle of a fertile plain which is traversed by the Mekerra and overshadowed by the escarpments of Mount Tessala, is Sidi-bel-Abbès. You will pronounce it as though it were spelled Sidi-bella-bess, with the accent on the second part, if you please. This fortified garrison town is France’s watch-dog, which guards the west, for it occupies a strategic position of great importance on the railway from Oran to Colomb-Béchar and within striking distance both of Morocco and of the desert. The town is surrounded by a moat and by a tremendous bastioned and crenelated wall pierced by four gates, named after Oran, Daia, Mascara, and Tlemcen respectively. Starting from the gates, two broad streets, shaded by plane-trees, traverse the town from east to west and from north to south, the latter thoroughfare forming a dividing line between the civil and the military quarters.

When we arrived, late in the afternoon, an excellent military band was playing in the Place Sadi Carnot, and just beyond, through the bars of great iron gates, we could see a huge three-story building of ocher-tinted plaster rising from beyond a vast parade-ground. At first glance it seemed as though the population of the place was wholly military, so crowded were the streets and squares with loitering soldiery—some in the dust-brown khaki of the tirailleurs, others swaggering along in the scarlet cloaks and enormous trousers of the spahi cavalry, but by far the greater number wearing quaint-looking képis with broad flat leather vizors, and rather slovenly-fitting but immaculately neat white uniforms with scarlet fourragères festooned from their left shoulders and broad blue sashes bound about their middles. Then I suddenly remembered that I had seen this uniform before—in Morocco and Madagascar, in the Sudan and Syria and far-off Indo-China. Yes, and on a score of European battle-fields, all the way from the North Sea to the Dardanelles, during the Great War. How could I have forgotten that Sidi-bel-Abbès is the headquarters and recruit depot of the Ier régiment étranger, one of the four regiments of that celebrated corps, composed of adventurous spirits of many nationalities, known as the Foreign Legion, perhaps the most famous military body, as it is certainly the most romantic and picturesque, in the world?

La Légion Etrangère! The very name is a trumpet-call which stirs the hearts and makes the feet of the young men restless. Ouida, in “Under Two Flags,” has drawn an imaginative but somewhat exaggerated picture of the experiences of a gentleman adventurer in the Legion during the early days of the occupation, but it has remained for Percival Christopher Wren, in “Beau Geste,” to portray the life of a légionnaire with a pen equally facile and colorful and far more convincing. Nor have most of us forgotten the gusto with which, as boys at school, we were wont to declaim the opening lines of “Bingen on the Rhine”:

The Foreign Legion is popularly believed to be made up of broken men who, impelled by misfortune, misdeeds, unrequited love, or any of the other mishaps of life, have left their own countries—sometimes quite suddenly, between two days, and for their countries’ good—and who have enlisted in the Legion in order to find forgetfulness in action, or to place themselves beyond the reach of the law, or because they did not know what else to do with their lives. They come from all the European nations, from the Levant, and even representatives of the two Americas may be found within their ranks, and there are among them men of gentle birth, upbringing, and education; but I imagine that a very large proportion of them are simply penniless and friendless men who see in the Legion an opportunity of keeping body and soul together and a possibility, however slim, of rising to a commission by some desperate deed of derring-do.

The Légion Etrangère is the most rigidly disciplined, the hardest worked, and the most miserably paid body of soldiery in the world. Upon enlistment a recruit can give whatever name he chooses and no questions will be asked, for the Legion is not interested in the antecedents of its bleus and makes no effort to ascertain their history or to penetrate such noms-de-guerre as they may choose to assume. The term of enlistment is for five years, for service in Algeria or in any other of the French possessions, and the pay is a sou a day, which, when the franc stood at par, meant that a légionnaire received the princely remuneration of eighteen dollars a year for his services to a grateful country. A légionnaire can reënlist at the end of five years, and again at the end of ten, while those who have spent fifteen years with the colors are eligible for a pension, which varies according to rank, though there are not many who live to receive it. A foreigner, on completion of five years’ service, is entitled to naturalization as a French citizen.

But, once the engagement volontaire has been signed, the recruit belongs to the Legion, body and soul, until his term of enlistment is completed. For a condemned murderer to escape from the death-house at Sing-Sing were scarcely more difficult than for a legionary to make good his escape. Neither wealth, nor political pull, nor social influence, not the pleadings of his relatives nor the intercession of his ambassador can effect his discharge. Homesickness, the deadly monotony of life in garrison towns and desert outposts, the systematic brutality of the non-commissioned officers—all these have led légionnaires to make desperate attempts to escape, but those who have succeeded in evading the long arm of French military law are pitifully few. Sometimes the emaciated fugitives are dragged back at the end of a rope tied to the saddle-bow of an Arab police goumier to face a term of servitude in the bataillons d’Afrique, the terrible convict corps of the French army; but more often their mutilated bodies are found in the desert, where they have perished from starvation, sunstroke, or Touareg spear.

Though the officers of the Legion are as fine as any in the French service, the non-coms, who enjoy a measure of despotic authority inconceivable in the American and British armies, are nearly always harsh and tyrannical and in some cases brutal beyond belief. The légionnaires have little time for idling. They are worked like galley-slaves from five in the morning until five in the afternoon, and though they are permitted a few hours of relaxation at nightfall, their evenings are usually occupied in cleaning their kit and accoutrements in preparation for the morrow. The route-marches to which they are subjected, under an African sun and over burning sands, loaded with the excessively heavy equipment of a legionary, which includes half of a shelter-tent, fire-wood, a blanket, an overcoat, a spare uniform, emergency rations, and in the pouches a hundred rounds of ammunition, are of appalling length, frequently averaging thirty miles a day. Small wonder that throughout the French army the Legion is known as the cavalerie à pied!

The mess of the Legion is the most cosmopolitan gathering on earth. At the long bare boards are seated men who between them speak half the languages of the world and represent every grade of society; men who have spent their lives amid the slums of great cities and others who have been accustomed to all that goes with evening-dress; men who have worn the shoulder-straps of the Prussian Guard and of the Household Cavalry, who have raised their glasses to the toasts of “Hoch der Kaiser!” and “The King, God bless him!” Here are men who have plunged on the wrong horse, who have been short in their mess-accounts, have been jilted by the girl they loved, have signed to a check a name that was not their own, or have held one ace too many. Some of them have known the inside of Schönbrunn and the Winter Palace, some the inside of Moabit and Dartmoor. Families and friends are waiting and watching for some of them; detectives are waiting and watching for others. Here too are professional soldiers—Germans, Poles, Russians, Belgians, Italians, Greeks, even Turks—to whom the end of the Great War meant the loss of their livelihoods.

In all those distant corners of the world where France is engaged in “little wars,” the Legion holds the place of honor—and of death!—on the line of battle. The tunics of its veterans bear ribbons showing that they have fought all the way from Tongking to Timbuktu, from the Niger to the Yser. During the Great War the legionaries, having no votes, were time after time sacrificed in last stands and forlorn hopes in order to save their enfranchised and, therefore, politically influential fellows of the home army. The appalling sacrifices which they thus made on the altar of their adopted country were rewarded by authorization to wear the scarlet fourragère of the Legion of Honor, the Legion being one of the very few units of the French Army to win this coveted distinction. Yet, despite its hardships and perils, or perhaps because of them, it is a real military school and offers the good soldier frequent chances of promotion, decoration, and glory. Some of the most famous soldiers of France have found their marshals’ batons in the knapsacks of the Legion, and most of the officers of the Legion have begun their careers in its ranks. I have in mind the case of one légionnaire, an undergraduate at Harvard, who enlisted in the Legion at the outbreak of the Great War and rose to a lieutenancy. After the Armistice the French government sent him back to Harvard to complete his education at its expense, with the promise that upon his graduation he could choose between retiring with a pension or accepting a captain’s commission.

The story of the French occupation of North Africa is largely the story of the Legion. During the last hundred years the legionaries have not only fought the Turks, the Arabs, the Kabyles, and the Moors, the Touaregs of the Sahara and the Berbers of the Riff, but throughout Algeria and Morocco they have built roads and railways, strung telegraph-wires, helped in the construction of towns, established outposts, sunk wells in the oases, drained, tilled, and planted agricultural districts, and policed a region twice the size of France. To the legionary might aptly be applied the lines of Kipling:

When history grants it the justice of perspective, France’s reclamation of North Africa will be recognized as one of the most remarkable achievements of our time, and that achievement has been very largely due to the patience, energy, and courage displayed by the soldiers of the Foreign Legion. So, as I stood on the parade-ground at Sidi-bel-Abbès and watched the bronzed battalions swing past at a quick-step to the lilting music of the Legion’s splendid band, I thought what a commentary it was on civilization that so large a share of the great task of redeeming the Dark Continent from blood, bondage, and barbarism—a task to which saints and martyrs, cardinals and emperors, great statesmen and great captains have devoted their lives—should have been borne by these friendless men, these soldiers of misfortune, for whom society has no use and whom it has abandoned to their fate.

Far to the west, beyond Sidi-bel-Abbès and barely two score miles from the frontier of Morocco, the holy city of Tlemcen looks down from the slopes of the Lella Setta Hills toward the shimmering Mediterranean, twenty-five hundred feet below and thirty miles away. Once a seat of empire and of learning, a place of such sanctity that it drew pilgrims from the uttermost corners of the Moslem world, it has sunk to the status of a third-rate provincial town, its inhabitants more concerned with cereals than ideals, more engrossed in the exportation of esparto grass and olive-oil than in the dissemination of religion and knowledge.

Pomaria, the Roman town which once occupied a site near the present city, was so named from the profusion of fruit-orchards in the neighborhood, and these still exist, the whole country-side being in the spring a sea of snowy blossoms. But here, as elsewhere, the invading Vandals justified the modern implication of their name by ruining the Roman town, and the Arabs destroyed what little the Vandals left. For the next six or seven hundred years the history of Tlemcen is little more than a recital of the various Berber dynasties by whom it was ruled and who gave to the city which they rebuilt its present name.

Tlemcen reached the peak of its fame and prosperity in the thirteenth century under the Abd-el-Wahid sultans, a dynasty of Zenata Berbers which ruled the greater part of what is now Algeria and claimed descent from Goliath, king of the Philistines. At this period the city boasted 125,000 inhabitants, a thriving trade, a brilliant court, and a powerful army. The Berber rulers encouraged the settlement of Christians and Jews, as many as five thousand of the former dwelling peacefully in the city, and the sultan Yarmorasen had a Christian body-guard. Here died, in 1494, Boabdil, the last king of Granada, while fighting for his kinsman, the sultan of Fez. But the roaring trade which the Tlemcenites carried on with Pisa, Genoa, Catalonia, and Provence was wrested from them upon the Spanish conquest of Oran, to which Tlemcen became tributary for a time. Early in the sixteenth century the town was held for a few months by the corsair chieftain Arouj Barbarossa, who, with his usual ferocity, sought to wipe out the ruling dynasty by causing twenty-two of the Zenata princes to be drowned in the sahrij, or pool, which was built by the Moors for naval exhibitions. But Arouj met his end in a skirmish with the Spaniards near Oujda and a few years later the town was captured by Salah Reis, pasha of Algiers, and under Turkish rule it rapidly declined in importance. In 1835 the Algerian leader, Abd-el-Kader, sought to reëstablish the ancient empire of Tlemcen, and, though he was forced to evacuate it upon the advance of General Clausel, it was restored to him by the Treaty of Tafna in 1837. Upon the renewal of the war in 1842, however, it was reoccupied by the French, and there they have remained ever since. Under their rule the Meshuar, or citadel, formerly the palace of the sultans of Tlemcen, was turned into barracks for the troops; the glorious mosque of Abul Hassan became a museum; the inevitable system of boulevards was constructed; and the city was encircled by a wall, for the three ancient lines of fortification had been in great part destroyed. On a little knoll, a short distance to the west of the town, the Transat has built a small but charming hotel in the Indian bungalow style, where, particularly in the spring, when the fruit-trees are in blossom, one can spend a few days most delightfully.

Though not so extensive, the Moorish monuments of Tlemcen rank in architectural merit with those of Granada, both having been built, it should be remembered, by the Almoravide and the Almohade sultans. Of the sixty-four mosques which existed in the city at the time of the French conquest, a number have disappeared or fallen into decay. Of those that remain the most important is the Great Mosque, the Djamaa-el-Kebir, which was not the creation of a single person, but grew, like so many of the Gothic cathedrals, during the reigns of several rulers. The greater part of the present structure, including the magnificent minaret, was erected by Yarmorasen, the great Berber monarch who reigned in Tlemcen in the sixth century after the Hegira, which, as every one knows, took place in the year 622 of the Christian era. The minaret, upward of a hundred feet in height, is adorned with marble columns and incased in superb mosaics; in the center of the alabaster-paved inner court stands a fountain of Algerian onyx, where the pious perform their ablutions before going in to prayer; and the arches of the interior, which is richly decorated in the arabesque style, is supported by a forest of columns—seventy-two in all, to save you counting them. The beautiful proportions of the arches and columns, the mellow colorings of the ancient tiles, and the dim religious light make the Djamaa-el-Kebir one of the most impressive places of worship in the world.

Close by is the mosque of Abul Hassan, built in 1298 and now transformed into a museum. The exterior has been materially altered by the French, who have so covered it with modern tiles as to suggest a hotel bath-room; but the interior, which has two series of arches resting on alabaster columns and a ceiling which bears traces of polychromatic paintings, is charming. The building’s greatest glory, however, is the mihrab, the holy of holies, the recessed shrine which indicates the direction of Mecca, and toward which, consequently, the worshipers turn in prayer. Floored with glazed and lustrous tiles of great antiquity, gloriously rich colorings and its walls decorated in stucco-work of arabesque designs as delicate as the finest lace, and roofed with a painted and gilt stalactite vault of amazing intricacy, it has been described as the finest example of Mohammedan art in existence, and it very probably is. The surpassing beauty and endless variety of the conventional patterns which are employed in the decoration of Mohammedan places of worship is due, it should be remembered, to the fact that the representation of nature in any form is absolutely forbidden by the Koran, a restriction which applies not only to depictions of the human figure, and to animals or birds, but even to plants and foliage of all kinds. The only exceptions to this rule are the highly conventionalized representations of lions in the courts of the Alhambra and over the gateways of Cairo and Jerusalem. I might add, parenthetically, that the mihrab, in a more or less conventionalized form, appears in the patterns of nearly all Oriental prayer-rugs, which are spread upon the ground so that the apex of the design points meticulously toward Mecca.

The status of Tlemcen as a holy city, which still draws pilgrims not only from North Africa but from all parts of the Moslem world, is due to its association with the highly venerated Moorish saint, Sidi Bou Medine, who was born at Seville in 1126, wandered through the Mediterranean lands effecting cures and performing reputed miracles, was summoned to Tlemcen to stand trial on a charge of heresy, and died within sight of its gates, expressing with his last breath the wish that he be buried there. So his faithful followers laid him to rest on a lovely hillside near the little hamlet of El Eubbad, a mile outside the city, and beside the koubba which covers his grave they raised a mosque of incomparable beauty, one of the finest specimens of Moorish architecture in the whole world of Islam. Its columns are of many-colored marbles, and stucco lace-work so delicate that it might have been made under a magnifying-glass covers the arches which spring upward to the roof. The lofty portals are incased with ancient Moorish tiles of the lost luster, and the cedar-wood doors, covered with an intricately interlaced pattern in bronze, are said to rival those designed by Ghiberti for the Baptistery in Florence.

A mile and a half to the west of Tlemcen, without the gate which looks toward Fez, are the extremely picturesque ruins of Mansoura, a mushroom city of amazing beauty, solidity, and grandeur, which was built almost overnight by the Emir Abou Yakoub, sultan of Fez, while engaged in the siege of Tlemcen. The siege lasted eight years, and the sultan, who was of a luxury-loving disposition, turned his camp into a walled city covering two hundred and fifty acres, complete with the palaces, mosques, baths, barracks, and other buildings of an imperial residence. He named it El Mansoura, “the victorious,” but in this he was somewhat premature, for he was eventually compelled to raise the siege, though Tlemcen was taken some years later by his successor, Ali V, the Black Sultan, whereupon Mansoura was abandoned for good and all. Besides the forty-foot walls, and the massive towers, and the minaret, which is more than six score feet in height and one of the finest in existence, but little remains of this all-of-a-sudden city which was born on a monarch’s whim. But such portions as are still standing are very beautiful. Mellowed by time and weather to a glorious shade of pinkish brown, they rise in lonely grandeur above the almond-orchards, which, in the springtime, turn the hill-slopes on which Mansoura sits into a sea of blossomed snow.

Before taking our departure from Tlemcen, courtesy and etiquette required me to pay a call on the military governor. I found his residence with some little difficulty—a modest, red brick villa with a Senegalese tirailleur pacing up and down before the gate. My ring was answered by a soldier servant, and I was shown into a comfortable reception-hall, from whose walls hung, to my astonishment, an enormous Harvard banner and the Stars and Stripes. As I was staring at them curiously, wondering how these familiar emblems happened to be so prominently displayed in the quarters of a French officer in this remote Algerian town, the commandant himself entered the room—a trim, alert, slenderly built man, the breast of his sky-blue uniform ablaze with ribbons and in his hand a copy of the “Literary Digest”! Then I recognized him as Colonel Paul Azan, the distinguished French officer, wounded at Verdun, who during the closing years of the World War served as instructor in military science at Harvard.

He pressed me into a great leather chair, offered me an excellent cigar, and proceeded to bombard me with questions, phrased in Back-Bay English, as to conditions and happenings in the United States. Here we were, gossiping like two friends of long standing of things four thousand miles away, our conversation constantly interspersed with allusions to Commonwealth Avenue, Copley Plaza, or College Yard, while the bayonet of the Senegalese sentry’s rifle constantly passed and repassed the window, and, beyond the olive-groves and almond-orchards of Mansoura, the distant Moroccan mountains rose in purple majesty against the African sky.

Azan, it developed, was at the moment occupied with the equipment and despatch of troops to reinforce the French armies mobilized along the borders of the Riff, where, if the reports of the French Intelligence Service were to be believed, the harkas of Abd-el-Krim were preparing for war. In fact, a column was leaving for the west by road that very day. It was composed, so Azan informed me, of complements of tirailleurs, spahis, chasseurs d’Afrique, infanterie coloniale, and a battalion of the Foreign Legion.

“Are there any Americans in the régiment étranger at present?” I inquired.

“Just now,” replied the commandant, “we have only one of your countrymen. But his is a most interesting case. Let me tell you about him. He comes from somewhere in your Middle West, and I gather that his parents are absurdly rich. In any event, they spoiled him by giving him far more money than was good for him. Shortly after graduation—he attended one of the big Eastern universities—he married a girl of excellent family and they went to Paris on their wedding trip.

“A few days after their arrival in la ville lumière he ran across a party of college friends. They decided that they must celebrate their reunion by making a night of it. They went to Montmartre. Having come from America, which is very dry, they decided to make Paris very wet. They succeeded so well that day was breaking when our young friend returned to his hotel completely—what do you call it?—soused. His bride of a week was waiting up for him. She was a young woman of strong character and not afraid to speak her mind.

“‘If that’s what you think about me,’ the husband said when her reproaches ceased for want of breath, ‘I won’t inflict myself on you any longer.’

“He was very proud and haughty, being still quite drunk, you see. So he marched out of the room and out of the hotel. And she was too proud and hurt to call him back; perhaps she didn’t take his threat very seriously. In the street he accosted the first agent de police he met and demanded the way to the nearest recruiting station. The gendarme, being a patriotic fellow and seeing in our husky young American fine material for the French army, bundled him into a taxi and told the chauffeur to drive him to the Bureau de Recrutement of the Légion Etrangère in the Rue St. Dominique. Our recruiting officers, particularly in Paris, are accustomed to strange applicants, and, as our young friend had no difficulty in passing the physical examination, he was promptly enlisted.

“A week later he arrived at the recruit depot of the Legion at Sidi-bel-Abbès, not far from here. He was still wearing his evening-clothes, though the shirt-front that had once been so immaculate was rumpled and grimy, and his clothes appeared to have been slept in, as they had. In short, he looked considerably the worse for wear. But a bath, a shave, a close hair-cut, a baggy white uniform with a broad blue sash ... and, behold, he was a full-fledged légionnaire!

“That was nearly a year ago,” continued the colonel. “Our gay young romantic still has a trifle over four years to serve. Regularly, the first of every month, he receives a letter from his wife, assuring him that she will be waiting for him when his term of service is completed, and inclosing a small sum for wine, tobacco, and similar luxuries. It is a hard life in the Legion, particularly for a man who has been spoiled by luxury, but his officers tell me that he is standing up well under it—‘making good,’ as you say in the States. When we are through with him I think it is safe to say that he will be a better man, a better citizen, and a better husband.”

Two days later, near Oujda, we overtook the régiment étranger on its way to the fighting in the Riff—a dusty column of iron-hard, sun-bronzed men, loaded like beasts of burden, their long overcoats buttoned back from their knees, their forage-caps pulled low over their eyes against the blinding sun-glare. As we passed they were roaring out the marching-song which the Legion sings only when it is bound for battle. I wondered if my young compatriot, of whom Azan had spoken, was among these adopted sons of Madame de la République.

CHAPTER XIX THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN “THE FARTHEST WEST”

Those who are bored by history might do well to skip this chapter, for, though I shall do my best to brush away the accumulated dust of ages, so that the glittering romance of Morocco’s story may be seen, it is nevertheless a chronicle of past events rather than an account of present-day happenings and conditions. But a meal, to have any nutritive value, cannot consist wholly of sweetmeats; one must take a certain amount of meat and potato in addition to the dessert. And precisely the same holds true in the case of Morocco, for without the background of Moorish achievement, glory, and misrule, and of the French occupation, it is utterly impossible to understand the anomalous situation which exists in Maghreb-el-Aska, the Farthest West, as the Moroccans themselves call their country, where the descendant of five-and-thirty emperors still sits in state beneath the Shereefian umbrella, surrounded by visitors and eunuchs and concubines and all the pomp and luxury of an Arabian Nights court, while a quiet Frenchman, in a modest residency not a stone’s throw from the imperial palace, speaks with the voice of a ventriloquist and pulls the strings.

In order that you may have a clear understanding of the highly involved Moroccan situation, it would be well, it seems to me, were I to begin by clearing up several popular misapprehensions.

First of all, then, be it understood that the vast majority of the people of Morocco are not Moors at all, as most foreigners carelessly assume, nor are they Arabs. The very name “Moor” is a European invention, unknown in Morocco, whose inhabitants should properly be called Maghribin—that is, the people of Maghreb-el-Aska. The name that we apply to the country is but a corruption of that of the southern capital, Marrákesh, through the Spanish version, Marueccos.

Of the three races which inhabit the empire the most numerous and important are the aboriginal Berbers, who were already in possession of the land when the Carthaginians and the Romans came, and whose blood to a greater or less extent permeates the whole population. It was the sturdy Berber soldiery of Carthage which enabled the queen city of the South to hold at bay for upward of five centuries her great northern rival; it was an army of Berbers which, led by Hannibal, conquered Spain, devastated southern Gaul, crossed the Alps, and swept the whole length of Italy. It was the Berbers who thrice conquered Spain—once from the Visigoths and twice from their less stalwart coreligionists, the Arabs. Again, it was the Berbers, not the Arabs, who built those two immortal monuments—the Alhambra in Granada and the Alcázar in Seville. The popular description of the Moslem rulers of Spain as Arabs or Saracens (“Easterners”), is quite erroneous. The people who made themselves masters of the peninsula were Berbers, although their leaders often adopted Arabic names along with the religion of the Arabs. That Morocco, alone among the Barbary nations, should have succeeded in maintaining its independence for upward of eleven hundred years, and that in spite of piracy, brigandage, ferocious cruelty, misrule, and a defiance of all international obligations, was due in part, it is true, to the immense strategic importance of its position at the entrance to the Middle Sea, and to the jealousies among the European powers which sought its possession; but far more to its reinforcement by the virile and rugged Berber stock.

In spite of a history of foreign conquest, the Berber physical type and the Berber temperament and nationality have persisted since the Age of Stone. A common mistake is to regard them, or, indeed, any of the peoples of Morocco, as a black race, a very common misconception which owes its origin in part, perhaps, to the old English phrase, blackamoor; that is, black as a Moor. Racially they are not black, nor even brown. They are distinctively a white race, usually with brown and sometimes with blue eyes and not infrequently with tawny hair and beards, though their skins have been bronzed by generations of exposure to the fierce African sun. Their children and those who have lived in cities might, if clad in European costume, pass anywhere as Europeans.

It is commonly believed that Morocco was invaded by a great Arab horde which carried all before it, and that the Modern Moroccans are descended from these invaders. This is quite erroneous. It is true that in 682 the country was invaded by the great Arab conqueror, Sidi Okba, who gave it its name of Maghreb-el-Aska because it was to him the Farthest West. Though Sidi Okba’s stay in Morocco was of brief duration, it was long enough to have a profound effect on the country’s Berber inhabitants. Yet the Arabs and the Berbers, with a common religion, a common government, and with the same tribal groups, have failed to amalgamate to any great extent, the Arabizing of the Berbers being limited to little beyond their conversion to Islam. The Arab, transported to a soil which does not always suit him, and always a nomad at heart, so far from thriving, tends to disappear, whereas the Berber becomes more and more aggressive and yearly increases in numbers, at present forming at least four fifths of the population of Morocco. When Arabic is mentioned as the language of Morocco it is seldom realized how small a proportion of the country’s inhabitants use it as their mother-tongue. Berber is the real language of the empire, Arabic that of its creed and court.

The third race which may be considered native is the Jewish, consisting of two different branches: those settled among the Berbers from time immemorial, speaking their language and in addition Arabic in a hideously corrupted form; and those expelled from Spain and other European countries during the Middle Ages, most of whom have got little farther than the ports. These latter, who usually speak Spanish and Arabic with equal fluency, are the most progressive and prosperous of all the inhabitants of Morocco; they own banks and shops, they lend money at usurious rates of interest to the less thrifty Berbers and Arabs, and in their hands is most of the empire’s foreign trade.

To these white races—Berber, Arab, and Jew—constant additions of a negro element have been made as a result of the slave-trade which Morocco until very recently carried on with the western Sudan. The introduction of negro slave-girls into Berber and Arab harems has produced a certain proportion of mulattos, whose dark skins and negroid features tend to confirm the European visitor in his misconception that the people of Morocco belong to a non-Caucasian race.

“But,” you ask, and with good reason, “are there then no such people as the Moors?” Whether the term Moor can properly be applied to any race is open to grave question, for those Moroccans whom the word is used to designate are ethnically hybrids, with the blood of Berbers, Arabs, and Spaniards coursing in their veins. Morocco, as I have already explained, was overrun by the Arabs in the seventh century, but the subsequent conquest of Spain was effected chiefly by Berber tribes, which, however, always had a strong admixture of Arab blood and in most respects became Arabized. These Arabized Berbers, settling in the peninsula which they had conquered, became known to the European nations as Moors. The race was also influenced considerably by marriage with the natives of Spain—even to-day the haughtiest of the Spanish grandees proudly boast of their Moorish blood, just as many of the great English nobles trace their descent from the Normans who accompanied William the Conqueror—and when the Moors were finally expelled from Spain they had become almost entirely distinct from their Berber kinsfolk, to whom they were known as Andalusians. While the mountainous regions of Morocco continued to be occupied almost exclusively by people of pure Berber stock, their refugee coreligionists from Spain, the “Moors,” flocked to the coast towns and the plains of Morocco and Algeria, where their descendants, usually referred to as Moresques, are readily distinguishable from the Berbers and the Arabs by their Spanish features.

Though the sultans never saw fit to order an enumeration of their subjects, and though, under the French administration, the occupation of a census-taker would not be a healthy one in certain districts, the total population of the empire is estimated at about six millions, including one hundred thousand Europeans, the majority of whom are French and Spanish. By way of offering a familiar comparison, it might be said that Morocco is slightly larger than Texas in area and slightly less than our six New England States in point of population.

On those of my readers who have stayed with me thus far, but who are doubtless impatient to get on to Fez and Marrákesh, I shall inflict the merest modicum of Moroccan history—two thousand years of conquest, cruelty, and corruption compressed into a tabloid, as it were.

We know from ancient records that when the Carthaginians, those indefatigable sea-traders, first planted their trading-posts and colonies along this coast, they were opposed by savage and inhospitable tribesmen, some of whom dwelt in caves; but the dolmens discovered on Cape Spartel and the curious megalithic monuments at M’zorah point to a still earlier race—the men of the Stone Age, perhaps. At the beginning of the Christian era, and for some centuries thereafter, the country which we know as Morocco was the Roman province of Mauretania, its northern portion crisscrossed by Roman roads and dotted with Roman cities, the most important of which, perhaps, was Volubilis, the ruins of which, not far from Mequinez, are now in process of excavation. In the fifth century Mauretania became subject to the Vandals, and in the seventh to the Goths, both of whom, judging by the scarcity of Roman remains, fully justified their reputations.

The coming of the Arabs under Okba in 682 was of far greater moment, and instilled in the natives the greed for conquest, and laid the foundations for their conversion to Islam. The force of ten thousand Arabs and Egyptians with whom Tarik, the Berber general who commanded the Arab armies in North Africa, held the Moroccan side of the Straits of Gibraltar in 710 was trebled by the recruiting of Berber mercenaries, his augmented force being large enough by the following year to permit him to cross the straits and invade Spain, burning his boats behind him. By 714 Tarik had pushed as far northward as the foot of the Pyrenees. In 718 the Moslem invaders, having subjugated Spain, crossed the mountains into Gaul, but their triumphal onsweep was arrested by the solid power of the Franks under Charles Martel, the Hammer of God, at Poitiers, which might be called the high-water mark of Islam. While the invasion of Gaul was still in progress, the Berbers who had settled in northwestern Spain revolted against their Arab rulers, and in 739 the Berbers of Morocco followed suit with equal success, throwing off the Arab yoke and setting up one of their own chieftains, Maisara, as an independent ruler.

The recorded history of the Moorish Empire does not really commence, however, until half a century later, when an Arab missionary, Mulai Idris ben Abdallah, a direct descendant of the Prophet, a fugitive who had fled from Arabia during the bloody struggles between the rival claimants to the caliphate, settled in northern Morocco and founded a city on a hill within sight of the Roman ruins of Volubilis. Islam had already been established in these parts for eighty years, and so Idris, by virtue of the sanctity attaching to him as a relative of the Prophet, experienced no great difficulty in uniting the Berbers of the region into a confederation which was greatly extended by his son, Idris II, the builder of Fez, which became the capital of the Idrisi kingdom. Meanwhile there was being founded in southern Morocco what later grew to be the kingdom of Marrákesh. Toward the close of the thirteenth century the kingdoms of Fez and Marrákesh became united under one ruler, whose successor, after numerous dynastic changes, Arab and Berber, is the present sultan of Morocco.

The sixteen rulers of the Idrisi line, an Arab dynasty, controlled northern Morocco for nearly two hundred years, though they were in part supplanted by the Berber family of Miknasa in 922 and ousted altogether by another Berber dynasty, the Maghrawa, in 988. These last were exterminated in turn by a third Berber dynasty, the Murabti (or Almoravides, as they are better known), who added the remainder of Morocco, most of Spain and Portugal, and the sultanate of Tlemcen to their dominions. Their principal existing monument is the city of Marrákesh. In 1149 the Almoravide power was overthrown by the Muwahhadi (Almohades), another Berber horde. Under them the Moorish Empire reached its zenith at the close of the twelfth century, when it included, in addition to Morocco and the Iberian peninsula, what are now Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripolitania, its borders extending to the frontiers of Egypt, which the Moors were prevented from occupying only by the rise of Saladin. To them we owe the Alcázar, the Giralda, and the Torre del Oro in Seville, the Hasan tower at Rabat, the Kutubiya tower at Marrákesh, the castle of Gibraltar, and a portion at least of the Alhambra at Granada. Yet before the thirteenth century had reached the half-way mark the Almohades had been driven out of Spain and had lost all of their vast empire save what is now known as Morocco, whence they were finally ousted by the Marinides—a Spanish corruption of Beni Marin. The Marinides, Berbers like their predecessors, ruled in Morocco for something over three hundred years, yet they have scarcely left a mark upon the country. They were succeeded by the short-lived dynasty of the Wattasi, the chief episode of their reign being the expulsion of the Moors from Spain by the Catholic princes, Boabdil, the last king of Granada, and his followers taking refuge in Morocco, where they built themselves the city of Tetuan. The Wattasi was the last Berber line to reign in Morocco, being succeeded by the house of Sa’adi, whose members were Sherifs, or “nobles”—that is, descendants of the Prophet—and came originally from Arabia. This change of dynasties took place about the middle of the sixteenth century, and Morocco, though four fifths of its population is Berber, has been known as the Shereefian Empire and has been ruled by Arab sultans ever since.

Under the sway of the Sa’adi the Moorish dominions were pushed southward to Timbuktu, but the line ran out in drunkards and degenerates; another Shereefian family, the Filali of Tafilalt, was then invited to undertake the task of government and by 1649 they were masters of Fez. The reign of the Filali, more generally known as the Alides, who still hold the Shereefian umbrella, the present sultan being the twentieth of the line, has been, with very few exceptions, a record of cruelty, tyranny, debauchery, corruption, and revolution. The most beneficent of them, Mahomet XVI, had an Englishwoman in his harem, so that his successor, the wretched Yazid, whose reign was mercifully of short duration, was English on his mother’s side—a curious circumstance for an Oriental country. During the reign of Abd-er-Rahman II occurred the war with France, brought on by Morocco’s espousal of the cause of Abd-el-Kader, and as a result of this conflict the Moors renounced their claims to Tlemcen and France consolidated her Algerian possessions.

Upon the death of Sultan Hasan in 1894 there came to the Shereefian throne his son by a Circassian slave-girl: Abd-el-Aziz IV, then a lad in his teens. The young ruler showed himself sincerely desirous of bettering the condition of his distracted country by introducing foreign reforms, but lack of experience made him an easy prey for schemers and speculators, who pandered to his worst traits and squandered his fortune. This aroused the resentment of his people, and in 1902 the Berber tribes of the Algerian frontier rose in rebellion under the leadership of a fanatic named Jelali Zarhoni, popularly known as Bou Hamara, who claimed to be fighting on behalf of the imprisoned brother of the sultan. Finding himself powerless to subdue the rebellion, Abd-el-Aziz borrowed money from France to reorganize his army, thereby providing the French with an excuse which they used later on for intervention. To complete the demoralization of the empire, a local chieftain, Mulai Ahmed er-Raisuli, made himself master of the district round Tangier, terrorizing the country-side and holding even foreigners to ransom. His kidnapping from Tangier itself of a Greek named Ion Perdicaris, an American by naturalization, brought from President Roosevelt the brusque demand for “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead,” a demand which was backed up by an American naval demonstration in Moroccan waters.

By 1904 the situation in Morocco had become so chaotic and intolerable that it seemed as though nothing could prevent intervention by the great powers. Now it should be kept in mind that the European situation had become peculiarly delicate at this time as the result of the outbreak of war between Russia, the ally of France, and Japan, the ally of Great Britain. But for some time there had been a movement on both sides of the Channel to reduce to a minimum the possible causes of conflict between the two countries, and, largely by reason of the efforts of King Edward VII, there was signed in London in April, 1904, a series of agreements between the two countries which marked the opening of the era of entente cordiale. Here we are concerned only with the joint declaration respecting Egypt and Morocco. With regard to Egypt the French government declared that “they will not obstruct the action of Great Britain in that country by asking that a limit of time be fixed for the British occupation or in any other manner.” The British government, on its part, announced that “it appertains to France, more particularly, as a power whose dominions are conterminous for a great distance with those of Morocco, to preserve order in that country, and to provide assistance for the purpose of all administrative, economic, financial, and military reforms.” It was further agreed that by virtue of her geographical position, and from her territorial possessions on the Moorish coast, the interests of Spain in Morocco should be taken into special consideration, the government at Paris pledging itself to effect an understanding with the government at Madrid. By May day of 1904, therefore, everything was harmoniously arranged. England was free to continue in occupation of the Nile country as long as it suited her to do so. France was free to consolidate her position in North Africa by making French influence supreme throughout the Shereefian Empire; an operation which, so the Quai d’Orsay announced, was to be effected by “pacific penetration,” but which, as every chancellery in Europe knew full well, would in fact be effected by penetration with the bayonet. Spain, which was just beginning to recover from the effects of her disastrous war with the United States, was to be appeased with a few all but worthless enclaves along the Moorish seaboard. Though the Declaration of London affected six hundred thousand square miles of territory and twenty millions of human beings, the cynical diplomatists of Downing Street and the Quai d’Orsay in perfecting the arrangements for this colossal land-grab deemed it quite unnecessary to consult the opinions of the peoples whom it directly affected, the Egyptians and the Moroccans themselves.

The wheels of the chariot of empire were greased and it was ready to start on its course of conquest when, early in 1905, a monkey-wrench was suddenly tossed into the machinery by a gentleman now known as Mr. William Hohenzollern. Germany had viewed with jealous eyes the growing influence of France in Europe, had seen herself threatened with political isolation by the rapprochement between France and England, but she had bided her time until the disasters suffered on the battle-fields of Manchuria by France’s Russian ally had, by removing the threat of a Muscovite attack from the rear, led the statesmen of the Wilhelmstrasse to believe that the hour had struck for Germany to proclaim herself the arbiter of European affairs. The Moroccan situation provided them with the pretext that they needed. Here was Germany’s opportunity to gain “a place in the sun.” A firm of German bankers, the Mannesmann Brothers, had obtained from the sultan mining concessions in the Sus, and to “protect” them a German gunboat, the Panther, was rushed to Agadir. Shortly before this the imperial yacht Hohenzollern had dropped anchor in the roadstead of Tangier, and the German emperor—“Hadji Guillaume,” as his Turkish friends flatteringly called him—had gone ashore for a conference with the representatives of the sultan, assuring them that Germany would insist on the maintenance of Morocco’s integrity and on the equality of European economic and commercial interests in that empire. Germany’s solicitude for Morocco was, of course, only a pretext to embarrass France, but it served its purpose, for Abd-el-Aziz, who had all along protested the right of France to interfere in Moroccan affairs, was emboldened to reject the scheme of reforms suggested by the French government and at the suggestion of the kaiser invited all the powers to advise him as to the needed improvements in his administration. To this the French foreign minister, M. Delcassé, strenuously objected, but the German chancellor, Prince von Bülow, used such threatening language that Delcassé resigned from office in order not to plunge his country into war.

So far German diplomacy had triumphed. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say German bluff. The conference asked for the sultan and instigated by Germany met in January, 1906, at Algeciras, a little Spanish coast town across the bay from Gibraltar, where the representatives of the powers spent the remainder of the winter in the delicate task of reconciling French claims for predominance in Morocco with the German demands for equality for all. The British delegates gave firm support to their French colleagues, while Germany was stanchly backed by Austria. The deciding voice was really that of the United States, which on this occasion took a part in European affairs for the first time. (It is an interesting fact that the chief American delegate, Mr. Henry White, was again one of the representatives of his country at Versailles, just thirteen years later.) President Roosevelt once told me that, in his opinion, it was largely the moderating influence exercised by the United States at Algeciras which prevented war between Germany and France over the question of Morocco.

With great difficulty a scheme of reforms was finally elaborated, but not until France had agreed to a rectification of the German frontiers in the Cameroons and Togoland at her expense in return for a free hand in Morocco. It was eventually agreed that a Moorish gendarmerie under a Swiss inspector-general should be instituted, that a state bank should be established for the protection of foreign loans, that the acquisition of land around the ports by foreigners should be permitted, that the authority of the state over the public works and public services should be recognized, and that the customs administration should be more efficiently controlled. The pact containing these provisions, whereby the Moroccans ceased to be masters in their own house, was signed by the representatives of the powers in April, 1906, and reluctantly accepted by the sultan in June.

While the diplomats were wrangling at Algeciras, Morocco, only thirty miles away, was in a state of chaos. The weakness of the sultan’s rule was illustrated by Raisuli’s capture of the British soldier of fortune, Caïd Sir Harry Maclean, instructor-general of the Moorish army, who, after seven months in captivity, was ransomed by the British government for twenty thousand pounds. The activities of the bandit chieftain, who had long subjected the northern districts of the empire to a reign of terror, were brought to an end in 1906, however, by a Franco-Spanish naval demonstration off Tangier. The murder of a French physician at Marrákesh in 1907 provoked prompt retaliation by the French, who occupied the frontier town of Oujda. In July of the same year the Shawia tribesmen attacked the European laborers who were employed in improving the harbor-works of Casablanca and killed nine of them, whereupon French gunboats bombarded the town, and it was occupied by French troops, though thousands of townspeople were killed or wounded before order could be restored. The vigorous action of France at Casablanca fanned into flame the smoldering fanaticism and resentment of the tribes, and for the next year or so the French were engaged in constant fighting along the border.

While thus engaged on the eastern frontier and the Atlantic seaboard, France had been giving financial and moral support to Abd-el-Aziz, whose grasp on the Shereefian umbrella was threatened by his brother, Mulai Hafid, who had escaped from prison. Because of his acquiescence to the French demands and his failure to offer armed resistance to the foreign invaders, Abd-el-Aziz’s influence with his people had been steadily waning, and shortly after the bombardment of Casablanca the ulema of Marrákesh declared him deposed and Mulai Hafid sultan. There ensued a year of desultory fighting between the armies of the two brothers, but in August, 1908, while marching on Marrákesh, which was the hotbed of the rebellion, Abd-el-Aziz was defeated and fled for his life, taking refuge within the French lines. He talked vaguely of renewing the struggle, but ended by accepting a pension from his brother and comfortable exile in Tangier, Mulai Hafid being generally accepted by the Moroccans as their new ruler.

His rule was scarcely stronger than that of his brother, however, as was shown by his inability to control the Berber tribesmen of the Riff, who in July, 1909, killed a number of European laborers in the vicinity of the Spanish fortress of Melilla, on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. To vindicate her authority Spain sent across the straits an army of fifty thousand men, thereby embarking on a war which has cost her thousands of lives and millions of pesetas, has wrecked such military prestige as she possessed, and continues in sporadic fashion to this day.

Though powerless to enforce his will in the Riff, whose fierce Berber tribesmen have always regarded the Arab sultans of Morocco as interlopers and usurpers, Mulai Hafid did succeed in defeating the forces of his former partizan, Bou Hamara, who was now seeking the throne for himself, and in capturing that pretender, otherwise known as El Roghi. Atop of a camel, in an iron cage constructed for the purpose, so small that he was forced to assume a cramped position, Bou Hamara was exhibited in city after city like a wild beast—I was in Morocco at the time—and finally taken to Fez, where the fiendish tortures inflicted upon him and his fellow-rebels horrified even the natives and elicited vigorous protests from the representatives of the European powers.

By this time it had become obvious to every one that the intolerable conditions which existed in Morocco could not long continue. The country was in a state of anarchy. No European’s life was safe a dozen miles in from the seaboard. The sultan’s feeble authority was mocked north, south, east, and west, and a large force of rebellious tribesmen was mustering in the hills to sweep down upon the capital city. France’s ambiguous position in Morocco had by now become unendurable. French citizens were being attacked and murdered; the Algerian frontier was constantly being threatened; and a final outburst of affronts and outrages brought the republic’s patience to an end. In Morocco France was confronted by much the same problem which we were called upon to solve four years later in Mexico, and to restore order she invaded the one just as we invaded the other. But with this difference: France coveted the country beyond the Mulwiya and intended to keep it; we did not covet and had not the slightest intention of retaining a foot of soil below the Rio Grande.

A French force under General Lyautey, who was destined to become resident-general in Morocco and a marshal of France, advanced on Fez; and on March 30, 1912, in the throne-room of the imperial palace of Bou Djeloud, surrounded by his white-robed, white-hooded ministers of state and faced by a little group of French officials and army officers in brilliant uniforms ablaze with decorations, Mulai Hafid, with sorrow and reluctance, wrote his sprawling Arabic signature from right to left across the bottom of the parchment which the French minister tendered him.

“Inshallah! It is God’s will,” the sultan sighed resignedly as he laid down the pen.

By signing that treaty Mulai Hafid brought to an end the independence which Morocco had misused for eleven hundred years and gave to France an empire.

(A curious circumstance, is it not, that republican France, whose motto is Liberté, égalité, fraternité, should have become the most imperialistic of European nations? In a space of little more than ninety years she has extinguished the independence, and in some cases exiled the rulers, of Algeria, Cambodia, Tunisia, Annam, Dahomey, Madagascar, and Morocco. In every case, it is true, French rule has brought material benefits to the natives, but as an English statesman—I think it was Campbell-Bannerman—pithily remarked, “Most peoples prefer to be self-governed rather than well governed.”)

The ink on the Treaty of Fez was scarcely dry when the besieging tribesmen burst into the city and precipitated a massacre which cost three hundred lives, the murdered including more than three score Europeans. The fighting was fiercest in the narrow streets of the old city, where the French military mission and a company of Senegalese tirailleurs were beleaguered for some days by the tribesmen. After a desperate resistance—which is commemorated by a marble plaque set in the wall of the building—and after half of the tirailleurs were dead, the survivors were relieved by a force under Colonel Gouraud, now a general of division and military governor of Paris, who commanded the advance-guard of General Lyautey’s column. While Fez was being subdued another French force under General Alix crossed the Mulwiya and prepared to attack Taza, the stronghold commanding the pass which forms the gateway to eastern Morocco.

By this time the authority of Mulai Hafid had reached the vanishing-point, for his acceptance of the French protectorate had convinced his subjects that he had sold his country to the foreigners. The only course open to him was abdication, and he took it, being consoled for the loss of his throne with a lump sum of four hundred thousand francs and an annual pension of nearly as much more. In August, 1912, he stepped from the pages of Moorish history to disappear into the limbo to which so many other native rulers who had flouted the power of France had succeeded him, being succeeded by his brother, Mulai Yusef, the present sultan, an amiable and indolent gentleman of middle age who takes care to conduct himself as a well trained puppet should. From his mouth issue the suave words put into it by the resident-general of France, and he makes the proper gestures of friendship when the latter pulls the strings; but what he is thinking deep down in his Moorish heart is quite another question.

Under the direction of General Lyautey the systematic pacification of Morocco was vigorously undertaken. In the autumn of 1912 the harkas of El Hiba were smashed by the French, and the sultan’s standard—a green triangle on a scarlet ground—was raised over Marrákesh, the southern capital. Eighteen months later two French columns, one advancing eastward from Fez, the other westward from Oujda, effected a junction at Taza, thereby rendering secure for road and railway traffic the only practicable gateway between Algeria and northeastern Morocco. But the outbreak of the Great War in August, 1914, abruptly halted the ambitious plans of Lyautey, who was summoned post-haste to Paris to take the portfolio of minister of war. At the same time he received orders from the home government virtually to strip Morocco of European troops, every bayonet that could be mustered being desperately needed to protect the motherland.

To most observers it appeared inevitable that the protectorate must collapse in ruin, and that Morocco, evacuated by the French garrisons, would relapse into anarchy and barbarism. But, before he left for Paris, Lyautey summoned the Grand Caïds—the great native chieftains who are still all-powerful in the south—to Rabat. The precise terms of the bargain which he struck with them may only be surmised, but certain it is that he did not wave the tricolor and appeal to them on grounds of sentiment and patriotism, for most of them detested the French as invaders of their country and dogs of unbelievers. The shrewd old soldier-statesman, who understood the complex Moorish character as have few Europeans, realized that the way to reach the hearts of these men was through an appeal to their cupidity, by promise of power and wealth, for your Moroccan always has an eye out for the main chance. I imagine that he laid all his cards upon the table, for he is that sort of a man, admitting to his visitors quite frankly that the bulk of the French troops were to be withdrawn from the country, leaving the door wide open for a successful rising.

“If Germany should win this war,” I can picture him as saying, “nothing is more certain than that the Germans will annex Morocco; and their form of government will not be the benevolent protectorate which we French have given you, either. Ma foi, non! They will rule you with the iron hand, as they have ruled the natives of Togoland and the Cameroons, of East and Southwest Africa. They will enforce their ideas of discipline by wholesale seizures of property, by fines and floggings and hangings, as is the German fashion, until you, my brothers, will wish that Yazid the Bloodthirsty was back on the throne again. The best way for you to avert such a calamity, which could end only in your own loss of wealth and power, is to aid France instead of opposing her. If, with your own harkas, you will maintain law and order throughout the empire during the continuance of the war in Europe, protecting foreigners and upholding the authority of the sultan, I, speaking in the name of my government will pledge you that the broad powers you have hitherto enjoyed in your own territories shall not only be respected and increased, but that so far as gratitude can be expressed in terms of gold, your loyalty to France shall be lavishly rewarded. I have spoken.”

This proposal the great feudal chieftains accepted, and they faithfully kept their pledges, for throughout the four years of the great conflict beyond the Mediterranean law and order were maintained in Morocco by the Moroccans themselves, and this despite repeated attempts of German emissaries to instigate revolts and otherwise foment trouble. Not only this, but two divisions of tirailleurs were recruited in Morocco and sent to the battle-fields of Europe, where they were brigaded with American troops under General Daugan, and whence they returned covered with glory and wearing two fourragères—the only troops to win such distinction in the French army.

When, in the summer of 1917, Lyautey returned to Morocco bearing the baton of a marshal, he found the country, generally speaking, at peace, though the authority of France was still very shadowy in certain remote and troublesome districts beyond the Atlas. That this state of tranquillity was due to the lavish subsidizing of the native caïds and pashas, rather than to any deep affection they had for France, or any overpowering desire for a continuance of French rule, in no wise detracts from the great credit due to Marshal Lyautey, who, by his statesmanship, breadth of vision, sincerity, and knowledge of native character, held an empire for his country.

In the old, bad days, before the white helmets came, the form of government of the Empire of Morocco was an absolute despotism, unrestricted by any laws, civil or religious, the sultan—who is known to his subjects by the title of Emir-el-Mumenin, Prince of True Believers—being chief of the state as well as head of the church. As spiritual ruler, the sultan stands quite alone, his authority not being limited, as in most other Moslem countries, by the ulema—that is, the interpreters of the Koranic law—under a sheikh-ul-Islam. Since the establishment of the French protectorate, however, the sultan is required to follow in all matters the advice of the French resident-general, whose seat is at Rabat. In deference to native susceptibilities, le gouvernement chérifien remains, in form at least, substantially untouched, though the two most important portfolios are held by Frenchmen, the French resident-general being also Moroccan minister of foreign affairs, while the officer commanding the French troops in Morocco is likewise the Shereefian minister of war. In addition to the grand vizier, who also holds the portfolio of minister of the interior, the native members of the government include the ministers of justice, crown lands, instruction, religious foundations, and the president of the Shereefian High Court. These deal with the resident-general through the medium provided by the Bureau of Native Affairs, which consists of a large number of under-secretaries and technical advisers—financial, legal, agricultural, sanitary, and the like—all of whom are French. The final appeal in all matters relating to Morocco is not to the Ministry of the Colonies in Paris, as might be supposed, nor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but to the Ministry of War, for the administration of the protectorate remains wholly in the hands of the military. It is generally assumed, however, that the coming of M. Théodore Steeg, who became resident-general of Morocco in 1925 upon the retirement of Marshal Lyautey, means that military control will be replaced as soon as possible by civil control such as the former represented while governor-general of Algeria, whose affairs he directed with conspicuous success.

To save the face of the Moroccans, who are a proud, high-spirited people, the French have taken great pains to maintain the polite fiction that Morocco is still a sovereign state by official reference to it on all occasions as “the Shereefian Empire”; by requiring that all laws and decrees shall receive the approval of the sultan, who is their own passive instrument; by surrounding him with the pomp and circumstance which Oriental peoples expect of their rulers; and by permitting him to maintain a miniature, highly picturesque, and quite innocuous military establishment in the form of the famous Black Guard, or, as it is better known, the Garde Chérifienne. The solicitude displayed in safeguarding the sultan’s prestige, the constant catering by the French, in superficial matters at least, to native pride, serve to illustrate France’s administrative policy in Morocco, which is one of control as opposed to command, of direction instead of repression, of the velvet glove rather than the iron hand. The truth of the matter is that France occupies a highly delicate position in Morocco; she is seated on a volcano which, though quiescent, is not extinct; and in order to avoid stirring it into action she realizes that she must pick her steps with the utmost care.

In view of the disturbed conditions which still exist in certain districts, the country is at present divided into three administrative zones. In the first, military control has ceased altogether and the civil administration has been firmly established; in the second, which is in a somewhat less advanced state, the civil and military authorities work together; while in the third, which is closed to travelers and colonists, active military operations are still in progress and the army is in full control.

The purely domestic affairs of the country are under the Ministry of the Interior, nominally headed by a vizier, whose orders are executed among the tribes by caïds and in the cities by pashas. Criminal cases are now adjudicated in the French courts, which have set the natives an example of uprightness and justice undreamed of by them before; but civil actions are tried by native tribunals, a pasha sitting in judgment when the cases are of a secular nature, a cadi when religious questions are involved. The Jews have their own rabbinical tribunals, immune from Moslem interference; and the Berber hill tribes, with whose domestic affairs the French and native authorities alike wisely refrain from meddling, administer justice according to their own barbaric ideas and the customs of their fathers.

Finally there is a corps of controleurs civils whose duty it is to report on the condition of the country as a whole, on the crops, the roads, public health, and municipal administration, on the temper of the natives, the character and conduct of native officials. But the duties of the controllers go still further, for they are expected to educate and guide the native functionaries, to take a lively interest in agriculture and sanitation, to protect the peasantry from injustice and oppression, and to propose needed improvements and reforms. These French controllers are the eyes and ears of the Ministry of the Interior; they form what is in effect a bureau of civil intelligence, which keeps the central Maghzen constantly informed as to all that is being thought, said, and done in the districts under civil control, just as the officers of the army intelligence keep the general staff conversant with conditions in the regions under military administration.

It should be clearly understood, however, that the control of the southern districts of the empire remains almost exclusively in the hands of the Grand Caïds, those great feudal chieftains who even in the days of Morocco’s independence never gave to the sultans more than a perfunctory allegiance and who continue to exercise over their own half-savage peoples almost as harsh and tyrannical powers as they did in the worst days of the ancien régime. Such are El Glaoui, the khalifa of Marrákesh, and his two powerful colleagues, Mtouggui and Goundafi, overlords of the High Atlas and the Sus. In theory they are the khalifas, or viceroys, of the sultan, and are supposed to carry out his orders, but in reality they are virtually independent rulers, who regard the puppet-ruler at Rabat with a contempt which they take little pains to conceal and who treat on terms of perfect equality with the French. Their wealth is believed to be enormous; in their own territories their rule is absolute, and their decrees are ruthlessly carried out, for they exercise over their peoples the high justice, the middle, and the low. They have splendid palaces in the cities, filled with concubines, slaves, and guards; and in the inaccessible fastnesses of the High Atlas they have enormous fortress-castles, called kasbahs, where they dwell in a rude feudal grandeur reminiscent of medieval Europe. Undisputed lords of the southern marches, they make and administer their own laws, collect their own taxes, and maintain their own military establishments, it being said that between them they can place in the field an army of fifty thousand well armed fighting-men. Though on terms of amity with the French, who have bought their friendship with enormous subsidies, the Grand Caïds hold the whole Southland in their hands—and are perfectly aware of their power.

The negotiations between France and Spain as to their respective rights in Morocco came to an end in the Franco-Spanish Treaty of Madrid, signed in November, 1912. In this France acknowledged the right of Spain to certain spheres of influence in Morocco, the extent of which was clearly defined. The north Spanish zone, which is the only one of any importance, political or commercial, consists of a narrow strip of territory, about two hundred miles in length, with an average breadth of sixty miles, and having an area equivalent to that of the State of New Jersey. It occupies virtually the entire Mediterranean coast of Morocco and a portion of its Atlantic seaboard, stretching from the town of Alcázar (Al Kasar) on the west almost to the Algerian border. Forming the backbone of this peculiarly desolate and savage region, which is peopled by highly warlike tribes of Berber mountaineers, is a range of lofty mountains known as the Riff, which have been aptly described as Morocco’s balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. The zone is under the control of a Spanish high commissioner, being administered—mostly in theory, however—by a khalifa, or shereefian viceroy, chosen by the sultan from a choice of two candidates presented by the government at Madrid.

It was further agreed that, by reason of its immensely important strategic position on the Straits of Gibraltar, the city of Tangier and its immediate hinterland, consisting of 140 square miles, should be internationalized and its permanent neutrality guaranteed by Great Britain, France, and Spain. Its administration is carried on, accordingly, by two bodies: a committee of control and an international legislative assembly. The former consists of the eight consuls-general representing the powers, including the United States, which signed the Act of Algeciras; the latter of twenty-six members—four French, four Spanish, three British, and fifteen natives. The convention forbids the construction of fortifications of any sort, and the city is well policed by an international gendarmerie, but foreigners are subject only to their respective consuls-general, for the powers have refused to abandon their ancient extraterritorial rights.

Far down the Atlantic coast of Morocco is another Spanish zone, the little enclave of Ifni, with a population of some twenty thousand native farmers and fishermen and an area no larger than that of Rhode Island. Though ceded to Spain by Morocco in 1860, its occupation has been purely nominal, the small Spanish garrison having been exterminated in 1925 by tribesmen from the hinterland.

By the Franco-Spanish agreement of 1912 the frontiers of Ifni were extended southward along the Moorish coast to the River Dra’a, where they join up with those of the large Spanish territory of Rio de Oro, which has an area of 109,000 square miles but whose utter worthlessness is emphasized by the paucity of its population, which numbers less than five hundred souls. Rio de Oro, which is under the governorship of the Canary Islands but is administered by a sub-governor residing at Villa Cisneros, consists of three zones: the colony proper; the protectorate; and the occupied territory, whose northern boundary is the Dra’a, which likewise forms the southern boundary of Morocco, so that Rio de Oro is not within the confines of the Shereefian Empire.

Though France’s active rôle in the Riff was brought to an end in the spring of 1926 by the submission of the Riffian chieftain, Abd-el-Krim, the events which have been occurring in that portion of Morocco during recent years are of such deep political significance, and so thickly sown with the seeds of future trouble, as to require more than perfunctory mention.

Spain’s interests in northern Morocco are of long standing. Her first foothold on the African mainland was secured at Melilla, seven score miles to the east of Gibraltar, which she seized from the Moors two years before Columbus set sail for the west. In 1580, upon the subjugation of Portugal by Philip II, Spain obtained possession of Ceuta, the immensely strong fortress city which crowns the rocky promontory marking the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar, the two great rocks being known to the ancients as the Pillars of Hercules. Larache, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, was held by the Spaniards throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century. (Incidentally, tradition identifies Larache—El Araish, the natives call it—with the Garden of the Hesperides, ’Arasi being the Arabic for “pleasure-gardens,” and the “golden apples” being perhaps the oranges for which the place has long been famous.) In 1860, Spain seized Tetuan, an important town near the mouth of the Wadi Martil, forty miles southeast of Tangier. Between Tetuan and Melilla a Spanish fortress crowns one of the islands, occupied in 1673, in the fine semicircular Bay of Alhucemas, which forms the seaward end of one of the most beautiful valleys in the Riff, and within recent years the Spaniards have also appropriated the group of dry and barren islands known as the Zaffarines, or Saffron Islands, off the eastern extremity of the Spanish zone, by the seizure of which the French were cleverly forestalled. Most of these Spanish holdings are utterly worthless, Ceuta and Melilla alone being worthy of consideration.

As the years passed considerable numbers of Spaniards, not of the best sort, settled themselves along this littoral, where they have drifted into a semi-Oriental habit of mind and body, living more like natives than like Europeans. Yet they claim Spanish protection, either as subjects or protégés, and it is the existence of this utterly worthless element on Moroccan soil, plus certain mining concessions which Spaniards have obtained from local chiefs, which have provided the government at Madrid with a pretext for intervening in Morocco.

But, despite her alleged “interests,” despite the fact that she has held Melilla for upward of four centuries, Spain has never succeeded in pushing her effective rule more than a few miles in from the coast, for, looming like a purple storm-cloud above the narrow strip of littoral, rise the mighty mountains of the Riff. During the last century Spain made repeated attempts to conquer this savage region, and to impose her rule on its warlike and independence-loving inhabitants, but always without success. In 1922, however, the Spaniards made a real effort to occupy effectively the zone which had been allotted to them, an army of fifty thousand men being sent to Morocco for the purpose.

To resist the invaders there now arose in the Riff a very remarkable man, a tribal chieftain by the name of Abd-el-Krim. Incensed by the cruelty, corruption, injustice, and glaring inefficiency which had characterized Spanish rule along the coast, he raised the standard of revolt and called upon the people of the Riff to drive the Spaniards out of the country altogether. Though Spain replied by pouring troops across the Straits by the tens of thousands, her military record in Morocco for the next three years was one of almost uninterrupted defeat, retreat, disaster, and shame. Not only did a mere handful of Riffi succeed in resisting all the forces that the government at Madrid could bring against them, but they steadily drove the invaders toward the sea, until, by the summer of 1925, the Spaniards occupied only a few of the coast towns and fortresses, clinging to these only with the aid of their fleet.

That Abd-el-Krim was more than justified in his revolt no fair-minded person who is conversant with the facts can truthfully deny, for the Spaniards had been guilty in Morocco of exactly the same cruelties and excesses which had caused them to be driven out of South America at the beginning of the nineteenth century and out of Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines at its close. Had Abd-el-Krim been content to confine his operations to the Spanish zone, Spain might be without a foot of Moroccan territory, and he might be sultan of the Riff to-day.

But, elated by his comparatively easy successes over the Spaniards, he proceeded to turn his attention toward the south, where the French had pushed their outposts into the fertile valley of the Ouergha, a region on which the Riffian leader depended for his supplies. Whether the French were responsible for precipitating the conflict which ensued by entering the Riff, or whether the Riffi first invaded territory under French protection, is open to some question. In any event, the spring of 1924 found the warriors of Abd-el-Krim formed in two lines of battle, one facing the Spaniards on the north, the other confronting the French on the south. For many months the tide of battle ran in favor of the Riffi, for the Spaniards were discouraged by disasters at the front and by political disorders at home; while the French, who had vastly underestimated the strength of their enemy, were slow in bringing up sufficient men and guns.

Although, by the summer of 1925, the French and Spaniards had in the field between them a force which probably exceeded half a million men, under forty generals, two marshals of France, Lyautey and Pétain, and the Spanish dictator, Primo de Rivera, the outcome of the campaign, which had all but bankrupted Spain and was said to be costing France a million dollars a day, was by no means certain. In fact, so eager was France for encouragement, if not for reinforcement, that she accepted the services of a group of young American aviators who during the Great War had served with distinction in the Lafayette Escadrille. As the laws of France do not permit the enlistment of foreigners in any branch of her army save the Foreign Legion, the difficulty was solved by forming the American volunteers into a unit known as the Shereefian Air Guard and having them take service under the sultan of Morocco, against whose authority, as nominal sovereign of the whole empire, the Riffi were technically in rebellion. That these young Americans, in their thirst for excitement and adventure, should have seen fit to take service under an African ruler is surprising enough, but that they should have bombed and raked with machine-gun fire the defenseless villages of a people with whom they had no quarrel, a people who were fighting for independence, is incomprehensible to those who had been the first to applaud their achievements in the air during the Great War. They claimed to be fighting for France, yet France, with one of the most powerful air forces in the world, did not need them. In effect, then, they were fighting to perpetuate the rule in the Riff of Spain, a country whom the preceding generation of Americans had driven from her last foothold in the New World because her tyranny and cruelty stank in the nostrils of decent men.

By the late winter of 1926 France and Spain, by a lavish expenditure of their resources, had enveloped the Riff in a wall of steel, employing every device of scientific warfare against the embattled tribesmen. Even the Riffi recognized that further resistance was futile; the tribal chieftains, either bought up by French and Spanish gold or to save their skins, began to fall away from Abd-el-Krim, and before spring had turned to summer that gallant fighter came riding astride a mule into the French lines. The authority of his Shereefian Majesty the Prince of True Believers had been upheld; the tyranny of Spain in the Riff had been perpetuated; and France had won what the newspapers of Paris proclaimed une victoire glorieuse. But I imagine that those who viewed it, as I did, at close range and through glasses unclouded by rancor or propaganda, thought it a rather sorry triumph.

Could France acquire the Riff from Spain—as there is no question that she would like to do—and extend over that region the just and beneficent rule which she has given to her own protectorate in Morocco, there is no doubt that it would be the best thing for every one concerned, the Riffi themselves included. And there is good reason to believe that at one period of the conflict, when the gloom of discouragement and threatened bankruptcy hung like a cloud over Spain, some such solution was under serious consideration by the Madrid government. But it was here that England stepped in. To France’s present position in Morocco Great Britain has no objection; indeed, she made it possible through the pacts she signed in London and at Algeciras. But to a French Morocco which came down to the shores of the Mediterranean, particularly to a French Morocco which included the great fortress at Ceuta, the statesmen of Downing Street have the most unalterable objections. Ceuta, as you will see by glancing at the map, is vis-à-vis to Gibraltar. And Gibraltar, because of recent developments in warfare—particularly the airplane, the submarine, poison gas, and long-range guns—is no longer so impregnable as the British War Office and the Prudential Insurance Company would like the world to suppose. Situated on a peninsula, with Spain at its back, it is cut off from reinforcements save by sea, and it lacks, moreover, a suitable terrain for the effective use of airplanes. Ceuta, which is naturally even stronger than the Rock, and which could be made absolutely impregnable by military engineers, is on the mainland, with all of Africa from which to draw supplies and reinforcements, and it possesses the other military facilities which its great British rival lacks. In the hands of Spain, a second-rate power with few colonial ambitions and no navy worthy of the name, Ceuta is not the slightest menace to Britain. But let it pass into the possession of France, let it be fortified and armed by French engineers, let strategic railways be brought up to its back door and its harbor converted into a hornets’ nest of submarines ... well, as the English will tell you, that is quite a different matter. England has no objection to French colonial schemes in Africa so long as they do not conflict with her own. But her possession of Gibraltar and the Canal has made her mistress of the Mediterranean—and mistress of the Mediterranean she intends to remain.

The fall of Abd-el-Krim—now an exile in the island of Réunion—gave birth to the hope, if not the belief, that Morocco would no longer remain a potential menace to the peace of Europe; but during the summer of 1926 there thrust himself upon the stage of North African affairs a new and highly disturbing figure in the person of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. Now the fact must not be lost sight of that Italy has never forgiven France for forestalling her in Tunisia, with its eighty thousand Italian inhabitants, nor for the fashion in which Italy has been systematically ignored in the settlement of questions pertaining to Northwest Africa. That Italy now purposes seriously to challenge French dominance of the Mediterranean there can be but little doubt, for in the air she is immensely stronger than her rival, she is very nearly as strong upon the sea, and though she is weaker in land forces, she is in better financial condition, and she has, moreover, recently strengthened her position by effecting with Spain an understanding which, in the opinion of competent observers, is not far removed from an offensive and defensive alliance.

France could probably successfully defy Italy alone; Spain alone would not be a very serious menace to her; but, with an unreconciled Germany on her flank, it is to be doubted whether she is in a position to challenge the two together, for their combined fleets could probably destroy her lines of communication in the Mediterranean and cut her off from her sources of man-power and food supply in North Africa. The government at Paris is perfectly aware, moreover, that in the event of such a conflict France could look for no aid from Great Britain, whose interests in the Mediterranean are confined to insuring the security of her sea-road to the East.

Just how Italy will set about realizing her African ambitions remains a matter for anxious speculation, though she has inserted an entering wedge by demanding a reopening of the highly delicate Tangier question, which, as every one conversant with Mediterranean politics knows, is loaded with high explosive. Whether Mussolini’s plans for colonial expansion, which he has emphasized over and over again in his public addresses, will lead to armed conflict with France is extremely doubtful; but he occupies a very strong position, not dissimilar to that occupied by the kaiser at the time of the Algeciras Conference, and he is a past master at the game of bluff. Certain it is that Il Duce intends, by hook or crook, to wring from France some sort of territorial concessions, to obtain for his rejuvenated Italy a place in the African sun. So, though it has been assumed by the more sanguine that the dove of peace has settled permanently on the soil of Morocco, it may prove to be only a bird of passage.

CHAPTER XX FROM A FASI HOUSETOP

On passing from one country into another, one instinctively expects the change in sovereignty to be signalized by some distinctive and dramatic landmark, natural or artificial, such as the Statue of Liberty, the International Bridge across the Rio Grande, the Iron Gates on the Danube, the Simplon Tunnel, the Pass of Roncesvalles, or, at the very least, the black and yellow posts bearing the sign of the double eagle which marked the Muscovite frontiers in the days of the czars. But there is nothing distinctive or dramatic about entering Morocco. A few miles after leaving Lalla Maghnia we saw a red-white-and-blue striped sentry-box, and, just beyond it, a small, low, whitewashed building over which flew an unfamiliar flag, a green triangle on a scarlet ground. Tomine brought the car to a halt; a native official wearing a voluminous cape and a fez scrutinized our passports, glanced perfunctorily at our luggage, then waved us on, and we shot across a surveyor’s line into the Shereefian Empire.

Nine miles more brought us into Oujda, an important garrison town because it guards Morocco’s eastern gate. Like most frontier cities it is clean, drab, and quite uninteresting, architecturally at least, for those who dwell in close proximity to international boundary lines seldom indulge in buildings of much magnificence, on the theory, I suppose, that boundaries can be moved by bayonets and that to-morrow they may find themselves in another country and under another rule. As history shows, this certainly holds true of Oujda, which, during the long series of wars between the sultans of Fez and Tlemcen, changed hands many times. Still, it is a well kept place, with broad, tree-planted thoroughfares and substantial public buildings, which makes on the visitor a favorable if not a very lasting impression. The Riffian campaign was in progress when we were there, and the town was so packed with troops that my memory harked back to the days of the Great War, the rumble of cannon-wheels and the measured tramp of troops sounding beneath our windows all night long.

From Oujda onward to Taourirt, Taza, and Fez the road was chock-a-block with soldiery—cloaked and turbaned spahis perched above their wiry little ponies in high-peaked saddles of red leather; tirailleurs in dust-brown khaki (did you happen to know that khaki is the Hindustani word for dust?); infanterie coloniale, bearing on their collars the anchor which is the distinguishing badge of the corps; tall, slim riflemen from Senegal, with the thinnest legs in the world, their black faces smiling cheerily under their high tarbooshes at the prospect of fighting; a battalion of the IIme Etranger, swinging along beneath their heavy packs at a steady three miles an hour, the sun-bronzed men lustily roaring the chorus of “La Casquette du Père Bugeaud”; chasseurs d’Afrique, their small, active horses laden with pretty much everything save the kitchen stove; battery after battery of field-artillery, the muzzles of the lean soixante-quinze hooded with canvas against the day when they should speak to the Riffi with the voice of France; machine-gun companies, guns and ammunition neatly packed on sturdy little mules; génie with picks and shovels strapped to their knapsacks, ready to build roads, to construct bridges, or to dig trenches; creaking pontoon-wagons hauled each by a dozen horses; field-kitchens, steam rising from the caldrons of soup and coffee; gray staff-cars filled with officers in pale-blue uniforms and gold-laced képis; ambulances with staring red crosses painted on their canvas sides—all these told us that the torrential winter rains were over and that the big spring push against the harkas of Abd-el-Krim was about to begin. Though of this war I was but a spectator, and an unofficial one at that, it was good to see once more the slanting lines of steel, to sniff again the smell of sweat-soaked leather, to hear the bugles go. For he who has once marched with armies never fully recovers from their spell.

After Oujda the road was paralleled, a little way off, by the line of narrow-gage railway which links the standard-gage Algerian system with Fez. The miniature trains were jammed with troops, and it was noticeable that the fortified stations were in a state of defense, with sentries posted at their gates and the muzzles of machine-guns peering from the loopholes in their walls. If one is willing to put up with delays and discomforts, it is now feasible to travel by rail right across Morocco, from the Algerian frontier to Fez and Casablanca and thence southward to Marrákesh. But it is not a form of transportation which I should advise at present. We met two Americans who were traveling in a Rolls-Royce en prince, sending their maid and valet ahead by rail so that in each town at which they stopped everything might be ready for them on their arrival, their tea waiting, their baths prepared, and fresh clothes laid out. For the employers it was a most comfortable, nay, luxurious arrangement, but it was scarcely so enjoyable for the employed. I asked the valet, an Englishman, how he had found railway travel in Morocco. He said that, barring the slowness of the trains, which average about twelve miles an hour; the crowded condition of the carriages, in which Moroccans, Algerians, Arabs, Sudanese, Jews, and Europeans are packed indiscriminately; and such minor discomforts as poor ventilation, suffocating dust, clouds of cinders from the engine, and swarms of fleas, it was no worse than the London tubes on a bank holiday.

Now that the trouble in the Riff is at an end, however, the French are making rapid strides in the improvement of the Moroccan railway service, and before this book is off the press most of the main lines probably will have been broadened to standard gage, thus permitting the operation of through trains between points in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. The distance by rail from the Algerian frontier to Marrákesh is 614 miles, and at present the journey occupies about four days, as the trains do not run at night. But during the summer of 1925 a service of well equipped rapides was established between Rabat, the seat of government, and Casablanca, and steps were being taken to extend it to Marrákesh, the southern capital. The pacification of the Spanish zone will also permit the completion of the line to Tangier, which, while providing another means of access to Morocco, will have the effect of decreasing very materially the large number of visitors who now enter the country through Casablanca.

The highway system of Morocco, which is due wholly to French initiative, though not as extensive as that of Algeria, is on the whole admirable. Great trunk roads connect Oujda with Fez, Mequinez, Rabat, Casablanca, and Marrákesh; and from Marrákesh secondary roads radiate to the coast towns of Mazagan, Safi, and Mogador, and across the Atlas to Agadir, the seaport and chef-lieu of the Sus. From Mequinez a comparatively little used highway runs south through Azrou to Timhadit, on the Middle Atlas plateau, where begins the ancient Imperial Road to Tafilalt, the ancestral home of the shereefian sultans. There is also a road, none too good, from Mequinez to Tangier, but that part of it lying within the Spanish zone has hitherto been none too safe because of the danger of attack by Riffian tribesmen. The trunk roads of Morocco are paved with round-headed stones, known as têtes-du-chat, which, while somewhat rough, obviate the danger of slipping in wet weather; but the pistes aménagées, a network of which covers the country, are little better than trails. I have spoken elsewhere, I believe, of the novel road-signs in Morocco. These are really sections of whitewashed wall, nearly ten feet in height and quite indestructible, the names of the towns, the distances, and direction-signs being visible at a great distance.

Taza, seventy-five miles to the east of Fez, is a considerable trading-center and a military post of vital importance, because it commands the broad pass, through which run both road and railway, which forms the only entrance from Algeria to the Land of the Farthest West. It has been a bone of contention between rival dynasties and factions for centuries. On the north side of the pass the terrain runs back in steadily rising foot-hills which thirty miles away merge into the great range of the Riff; on the south it rises more abruptly, in a series of terraces which form the buttresses of the Ghiata mountain group, the home of a warlike Berber tribe which has long been a source of trouble and anxiety to the French. This explains why Taza bristles with guns and bayonets, for once let the fierce Ghiatas swarm down from their mountain fastnesses to join hands across the pass with their fellow-Berbers of the Riff and Morocco’s doorway on the east would be closed.

Built on a series of terraces, which rise to a height of two thousand feet or more, Taza occupies a peculiarly picturesque and romantic situation. On a narrow shelf above the valley, through which run the road, the railway, and the River Innaouene, is the fortified camp of the French garrison, with numerous large barracks for the housing of the troops. Two hundred and fifty feet above this first shelf rises another, its edges bordered by sheer cliffs, on which is built the native town, a dirty, ill kept place of narrow tortuous streets and mud-walled houses, while high above all, dominating town, camp, and pass alike, is the great citadel built in the sixteenth century by one of the Abbaside sultans.

Taza is one of the last places on earth where one would expect to find a good hotel, so imagine our astonishment when Tomine swung the car sharply between the gate-posts of a white-walled compound, swept up a winding drive, and came to a halt before the door of one of the most charming little hostelries that we found in all North Africa. Another example of the Transatlantique’s enterprise, of course. Though the luncheon hour was long since past, for we had been delayed by a stretch of atrociously bad road near Taourirt, we were expected, it seemed, for word of our impending arrival had been telephoned on from Oujda, and a delicious déjeuner was on the table. Curious, is it not, how one remembers a good meal, particularly when it is unexpected, long after more important things have been forgotten?

Like many other Oriental cities, Fez from a distance appears more attractive than it really is. It is beautifully situated in a deep and winding valley, through which meanders the little stream known as the Wad Fas, dividing the city into two parts: El Bali, the old town, and El Djadid, the new. Up and down the opposing hill-slopes, which form a natural amphitheater, run massive, crumbling, pink-brown walls, hoary with antiquity, broken at frequent intervals by lofty towers and pierced by numerous imposing gates. Though the grandeur of certain other Eastern cities is wholly lacking, there is something undeniably impressive in the sight of that vast expanse of white-walled, flat-roofed habitations, broken here and there by the tile-incrusted domes and graceful minarets of the mosques and bordered by a broad fringe of vivid verdure. In fact, the whole city is embowered in foliage—a diamond set in jade—for the flanks of the hills which surround it on all sides save the south are covered with the bright green foliage of orange-groves and the gray green of the olive-gardens.

By reason of its peculiar situation, rather than of any attempt at sanitation on the part of its inhabitants, Fez has a drainage system superior to that of most Moroccan towns. When the accumulations of filth become intolerable, when the stench of garbage grows overpowering, the lids of the conduits are opened and the ordinary exits closed, so that the overflowing waters sweep down the steep streets in a miniature flood and cleanse the pavements. With that utter disregard of the principles of hygiene so characteristic of Orientals, the Fasis drink the muddy and contaminated water of the river in preference to that of the pure springs which abound in certain quarters of the town. That they do not perish by the thousands from epidemics is due, I suppose, to the fact that they have become immune to zymotic diseases by having defied for generations the elementary principles of hygiene. The town is by no means free from malaria and typhoid, however, as is betokened by the unhealthy pallor of its inhabitants, but sallowness is considered a mark of distinction by the Fasis, as small moles are by Frenchwomen, a ruddy complexion being a sign that its possessor is not of the ancient aristocracy of Fez.

The first stone of the city is supposed to have been laid in 808 by the son of Mulai Idris, the founder of Moslem Morocco, whose sacred banners are preserved in the Great Mosque, whence they are brought out and their folds reverently kissed by the sultan on the occasion of great religious festivals. Though the city has a turbulent and bloody history, having been besieged no less than eight times in the first five centuries of its existence, it only once knew foreign masters—when the Turks held it for a short time in 1554—until the coming of the French. The population is probably not greatly in excess of seventy-five thousand, of whom perhaps five per cent are Europeans, though it appears much larger. It is one of the four capitals of the empire—the others are Mequinez, Marrákesh, and Rabat—and the sultan usually passes some months there each year.

Fez, or, more properly, Fas, which is the correct spelling and pronunciation, means “hoe” in Arabic, but it has also given its name to the round red cap worn by millions of Mohammedans, of whose manufacture the city had, until quite recent years, a virtual monopoly; for it was supposed that the dye which imparts to these head-coverings their dull crimson color could be obtained nowhere else. The dye is obtained from a berry which grows in profusion in the vicinity, and is also used in coloring the red Moroccan leather for which the city is famous.

Tomine, as I have already remarked, had no head for direction, and we circled the whole city three times before he succeeded in finding the city gate nearest to the Palais Jamaï, the magnificent palace, formerly the residence of a rich native dignitary, which the Transatlantique people have transformed into a most picturesque and luxurious hotel. The Palais Jamaï is superbly situated, its gorgeously painted and tiled façade rising above a bewilderment of marble-paved terraces and orange-planted courtyards from the steep hill-slope at the extreme eastern end of the winding valley in which nestles the town. It is at some distance from the souks and other points of interest, however, and somewhat difficult of access; and the other Transatlantique hotel, situated in the very heart of the city, though far less attractive, would perhaps be more convenient for those whose visit is limited to a few days.

Because of the narrow and tortuous character of the streets, it is impossible to reach the Palais Jamaï by car, which must stop outside the nearest city gate, nearly a quarter of a mile away, whence the guest perforce makes his way to the hotel on foot through a bewildering labyrinth of high-walled, roughly paved, foul-smelling lanes, courtyards, and passages, followed by a throng of whining beggars and shrieking children, while a small army of bare-legged porters descend upon the traveler’s luggage, over which they wrangle like pirates over booty, each man eventually bearing a single piece, no matter how small, off to the hotel on his head. The hotel, while modernly furnished, is not particularly comfortable as European hostelries go, for the interior arrangements of a Moorish palace are not adapted to the requirements of Americans, who demand an amplitude of bath-rooms, closet space, heat, air, and light. We, however, being old travelers, gave scant heed to such minor inconveniences particularly as we found that the rooms reserved for us had been those formerly occupied by the pasha’s favorite wife, the door opening upon a fascinating little walled garden, where all day long the waters of a marble fountain splashed pleasantly amid masses of pink and crimson roses and orange-trees heavy with their golden fruit. In such surroundings, with a bevy of comely damsels in diaphanous garments to help while away the hours and negro slaves to supply every want, one could remain in Fez indefinitely, “the world forgetting and by the world forgot.”

As this makes no pretensions to be a guide-book, I have no intention of enumerating at any length the various sights of Fez, but there are two or three which should on no account be overlooked. The city’s most important building is, of course, the Karueein, celebrated as the largest mosque in Africa, though it is by no means the most magnificent. As in the case of all the mosques of Morocco, its sacred precincts may not be profaned by the feet of unbelievers, even when slipper-shod, but, by refraining from conspicuousness and by the judicious bestowal of bakshish, one may obtain glimpses of portions of its interior from the roofs of adjoining buildings. Because of the vast area which it covers, the roof, supported by 366 stone pillars, appears very low. The enormous chandelier which hangs above the central nave is said to weigh more than three quarters of a ton and to have upward of half a thousand lights, though they are very seldom lit, as they require a dozen gallons of oil for a single filling. Attached to the Karueein mosque is a mederseh, or college, attended by theological students who come hither from all parts of North Africa, though in steadily decreasing numbers. They pay no tuition nor rent, but buy the keys of the tiny rooms in which they sleep from the last occupants, selling them again on leaving.

In the early days of Moslem rule in Morocco, Fez was the seat of learning and the empire’s pride. Its schools of theology, philosophy, and astronomy enjoyed an enviable reputation not only throughout the world of Islam but in southern Europe as well, and were even attended by Christians. On the expulsion of the Moors from Spain at the close of the fifteenth century, thousands of refugees flocked to Fez, bringing with them some knowledge of the arts, sciences, and industries which had been developed in the peninsula, and thither also went large numbers of students to make use of the extensive libraries, which were surpassed in Africa only by those of Cairo. But its glories were not of long duration, and though still “the university town” of Morocco, Fez retains but a shadow of its one-time greatness.

The mosque of Mulai Idris, built by the founder of Fez about 810, is considered so sacrosanct that before the coming of the French the streets which approach its entrance were forbidden to Christians, Jews, or four-footed beasts, all three being included in the same category. This prohibition is no longer in force, but the sanctity of the shrine still draws great crowds of the faithful, whose fanaticism makes it highly inadvisable for an unbeliever to linger in the immediate vicinity over long. Across the way is a home for friendless or impoverished sherifas, as the female descendants of the Prophet are called.

Three minutes walk from the Hôtel Transatlantique—the one in the town, I mean—is the museum, established by the French in a former palace. It contains the usual collection of antiquities, wood-carvings, faiences, plaster-work, illuminated manuscripts, embroideries, carpets, saddlery, and arms, and in the courtyard a number of ancient cannon of all kinds and calibers, Spanish, Portuguese, and corsair. But the most interesting object in the museum, to my way of thinking at least, is a stoutly built cage, about four feet square, of wood and iron. In this cage, scarcely large enough to contain a good-sized dog, was confined for a year the pretender, Bou Hamara—“the man on a she-ass”—or El Roghi, as he was commonly known. Miss Sophie Denison, an English medical missionary who has lived in Fez for more than a third of a century, told me that she witnessed the entry into the city of the captive atop a swaying camel—a miserable, long-haired, unkempt, half-starved creature clinging to the bars of his cage. After being exhibited for weeks in the public market-place, the wretched man was shot by order of Mulai Hafid and his body thrown to the sultan’s lions, which, however, refused to touch it. Of Bou Hamara’s followers, twenty-four had their hands and feet cut off by butchers, the occasion being celebrated as a public holiday. Though the stumps were plunged in boiling fat to check the bleeding, only one of the victims gratified the cruelty of the sultan by surviving. You may see him for yourself, almost any day—a miserable creature, half-man, half-beast, shambling through the narrow streets or crouching beside the door of a mosque pleading for alms. All this, you will bear in mind, was not back in the Dark Ages, when such tortures were commonplaces, but only a few years ago—in 1909, to be exact—when William H. Taft sat in the White House and Andrew Carnegie was preaching the doctrine of universal peace and brotherhood. That Bou Hamara’s cage should now be an object of curiosity in a museum of the very city where it filled its dreadful purpose less than two decades ago, in itself provides convincing proof of what the French have done to bring justice and decency to Morocco.

The souks of Fez, though not so extensive as those of Tunis or Marrákesh, are places of endless variety, interest, and delight. Shopping or sight-seeing in the native city is tiring work, however, for the majority of the streets are much too narrow to permit the use of cars or carriages and hence can be visited only afoot or astride a mule. As the houses are high and in many cases all but meet above the narrow footways, the latter are often not much more than damp and gloomy tunnels; but the bazaar streets are usually shaded by awnings, canopies of palm-leaves, or growing vines, through which the sunlight sifts to dapple with ever-changing patterns the worn stone pavement and the walls of the old, old houses. Most of the buildings in Fez are built of wooden beams, rough stone, and plaster, so that the city as a whole does not present that ruined, half-decayed appearance so common in other Moorish towns where a sort of stucco made from mud is the material principally employed.

As is the case in all Oriental cities, the souks of Fez consist of a labyrinth of exceedingly narrow lanes and passageways, lined on either side by hole-in-the-wall shops, most of which are so small that there is no room for customers, who have to do their bargaining from outside. Though improved means of communication have deprived the city of the eminence it once held as the greatest center of the caravan trade in western Barbary and as a market for Oriental goods of all kinds, it is still noted for the manufacture of certain characteristic wares, including haiks of wool and silk, women’s embroidered sashes, handkerchiefs of silk and cotton, silk cords and braids, curved knives with hilts of gold or silver and beautifully damascened blades, long-barreled Moorish rifles, their stocks inlaid with ivory or set with semiprecious stones, native musical instruments, rude painted pottery, hammered brassware, which, however, cannot compare with that produced in Damascus, the glazed tiles so universally used in Moorish architecture, and, of course, innumerable articles—slippers, book-covers, belts, pouches, saddlery—made from the celebrated Moroccan leather. This leather is dyed in every color, though the most satisfactory tints are yellow, pomegranate, and a gorgeous vermilion, but in purchasing articles made from it one should be careful to see that he gets the genuine goatskin instead of split cowhide. During my stay in Morocco it amused me to buy a leather cushion-cover in every city which I visited, all different in color and each bearing in silk embroidery a design characteristic of the town from which it came. Few visitors leave Fez without purchasing a pair or more of the heelless Moorish slippers, but it should be remembered that only the yellow ones are worn by men, those in other colors and often gorgeously embroidered in gold or silver thread being intended for women’s use. Perhaps the most attractive articles to buy in Fez, and not to be found elsewhere in Morocco, are the exquisitely hand-tooled portfolios and book-covers, which in richness of design and delicacy of workmanship compare very favorably with the finest work of the Florentine craftsman. Really fine examples are expensive, it is true, but they are generally worth the prices demanded, which can, moreover, generally be reduced if one has the patience and knows how to bargain. I remember with regret one superb portfolio for which the maker demanded the equivalent of twenty dollars. Some months later I saw the same portfolio, or one identically like it, in Washington, where it was priced at exactly five times the sum for which I could have bought it in Fez.

When we were in Fez in 1924, and again in 1925, we were made to feel very much at home by the warm welcome which we received from the commander of the French troops, General Vicomte de Chambrun, a grandson of the Marquis de Lafayette, and from the general’s American wife, who is a sister of Nicholas Longworth, speaker of the House of Representatives. They occupy a charming Moorish palace, surrounded by lovely gardens; and some of my pleasantest recollections are of the luncheons and dinners which we had there, the long table lined by beautifully gowned women and by officers whose rows of campaign ribbons showed that they had lived more stories than Kipling or Conrad could invent. After dinner we would sit on the terrace beneath the stars, enveloped in the fragrance of the soft African night, the momentary flare of a match as some one struck a cigarette serving to light up the pale-blue uniforms of the men and the white shoulders of the women. The conversation was more fascinating than any book of fiction—narratives of adventure in the world’s dark corners, of skirmishes with the masked Touareg of the Sahara, of the secret plans of the great Senussi Brotherhood, of lion-hunts in Somaliland and tiger-hunts in Cambodia, of life in the penal colonies of New Caledonia and Devil’s Island, of encounters with slave-traders and gun-runners, of the plots of German spies and Moorish rebels and Syrian malcontents and Islamic emissaries, of broken noblemen who had found refuge in the Legion and of erring women who had found their way into Mohammedan harems, of little wars all over the world which had never found their way into the history-books, story succeeding story, “Now I remember” following “That reminds me of,” until the crescent moon swung low to the morn, and the soldier servants brought our wraps, and we made our way to the hotel through dark deserted ways which echoed noisily our footsteps.

Smoking a last cigar at night on the terrace of the Palais Jamaï, my curiosity was aroused by the shrill, quavering cries, half-calls, half-chants, which rose at regular intervals from the sleeping city. At first I assumed that they came from night-watchmen, making their lonely rounds, or from a muezzin summoning the faithful to some form of midnight prayer, but I found on inquiry that they were the voices of the Companions of the Sick, a most curious and interesting organization. Long years ago, it seemed, a pious and wealthy resident of Fez left upon his death an enormous diamond with a provision in his will that it be disposed of and the income from the proceeds used to employ a number of readers with good voices, who, it was specified, were to chant suras from the Koran at half-hour intervals throughout the night from the mederseh so that the sick might have the consolation of religion. Though I rather imagine that the income from the sale of the great diamond has long since been exhausted, the custom has been continued for many years, and all through the night the voices of the unseen readers rise from the darkness to remind the ill and wakeful that they shall attain paradise who believe in Allah and follow the teachings of his Prophet.

The Companions of the Sick are in reality a Moorish version of the radio-sets which our Western civilization has placed in so many hospitals and sick-rooms. It is true that they refer to God as Allah, and that instead of praising Christ they extol Mohammed, but the message of consolation, whether it be chanted from Moroccan housetops or broadcast from American pulpits, is much the same: “In the name of God the compassionate! Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds, the Sovereign of the day of judgment! Thee do we worship and of Thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the right way; in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, on whom there is no wrath, and who go not astray....”

The Palace of Bou Djeloud, in which Sultan Mulai Hafid signed the treaty accepting a French protectorate over his country—the room is marked with a tablet suitably inscribed—is now occupied by the resident-general on his periodic visits to Fez. It is a low, rambling structure, not at all imposing; but the carved and gilded ceilings and the polychrome Moorish decorations of some of the apartments are very lovely, and the gardens, filled with trees and flowers and dotted with marble fountains, are places of walled delight. Like all Moorish dwellings, however, it is inadequately heated and must be very cold and damp in winter, when the streets of Fez are sometimes white with snow. Climatically, Fez is a city of extremes, the mercury often dropping to far below freezing during the winter months and in summer occasionally rising to one hundred or even more. I remember one night in late May when the thermometer showed a temperature of ninety-three degrees in our room.

In Fez, as in most Eastern cities, the houses have flat roofs, which, when the heat of the day has passed, are favorite gathering-places for the women, this being, indeed, the only hour of the twenty-four when they are permitted to appear in the open air unveiled. In consequence of this custom, the roof is virtually taboo to the male members of a household, for the dwellings are so close together that a man could easily see the face of his neighbor’s wife—a breach of Moslem etiquette not readily forgiven. In the event that necessary repairs have to be made to a roof, one of the female members of the family invariably ascends first and warns her neighbors, whereupon they disappear from sight until the work is completed and the man has taken his departure.

To this rule, however, the Palais Jamaï, whose lofty roofs command an unrivaled view of the town, is for some reason an exception, presumably on the ground that if its European guests take it into their heads to go up on the roof they will probably do it anyway, and that there is no use in making objections. We always made it a point, therefore, to ascend to the top of the battlemented tower which forms a portion of the hotel in order to enjoy the magnificent panorama to be viewed from there at close of day, when the last rays of the westering sun turn the square, dazzlingly white buildings into cubes of pearl gray faintly tinged with rose. At this hour every housetop has its little group of women, all clad in their best and gayest gowns, the splotches of inconceivably vivid colors—pink, magenta, scarlet, crimson, bright purple, pomegranate, burnt umber, pale yellow, apple green, turquoise blue, white and silver, black and gold—when seen against the background of plastered walls and roofs, looking like gorgeous nosegays tossed here and there upon a vast white sheet.

From the shelter afforded by the battlements—for it did not seem wise to defy Moslem prejudices by displaying myself in the open—I could see the features of the women on the adjoining housetops with the aid of my field-glasses quite distinctly, very much as though I were looking down from the balcony of a theater at the chorus assembled on the stage. Most of the women, it must be confessed, were quite unattractive, and I approved of their wearing veils when on the street, but some of the younger girls were really lovely, with peaches-and-cream complexions and great languishing eyes. There was one in particular, I remember, a slim and most alluring creature with a creamy skin and masses of blue-black hair. With her I carried on a long-distance flirtation for several evenings running, and there even came a time when she grew bold enough to beckon to me, but her husband must have become suspicious, for I saw a man suddenly appear upon the roof and, seizing her by the wrist, drag her from my sight. I never caught another glimpse of her. Romance would suggest that she died by poisoned coffee or the bowstring, but the truth of the matter probably is that she got off with a sound spanking. For most Moorish husbands would heartily applaud the sentiments expressed in the ancient ditty:

Rising above the sea of housetops are scores of lofty square towers—the minarets of the mosques—the ancient rose-brown brick of which they are constructed being incrusted with lustrous tiles in the marvelous “lost” shade of peacock blue. Five minutes before sunset a large white flag is broken out from the flag-staff which rises like a gallows from the summit of each of the minarets as a signal to the waiting faithful that the mosque is open for worship, so that for a brief period it looks as though the whole city were flying flags of truce. Just as the upper arc of the sun disappears in crimson glory behind the western hills, there reverberates across the city the sullen boom of the sunset-gun, whereupon white-robed muezzins appear as though by magic on the balconies of the minarets, like the carven figures which pop out of cuckoo-clocks, and intone in a high, clear key the “Haya alla Salat! Haya alla Falah!” which is the Moslems’ church-bell.

Adjoining the Palais Jamaï was the residence of a wealthy Moorish pasha, whose numerous wives, daughters, and concubines always strolled amid the flowers and orange-trees of the high-walled garden as evening drew near. From the vantage-point afforded by the roof of the hotel we could look directly down upon them. Upon sighting me, or any of the other male guests, they would disappear into the shrubbery like startled fawns, but when my daughter waved to them they timidly waved back, the wordless acquaintance thus begun culminating by their beckoning her to come down and join them. The following afternoon she disappeared and did not return until just before the dinner-hour, when she burst into the room, her arms filled with flowers, native sweetmeats, and embroideries.

“Where on earth have you been?” Mrs. Powell demanded.

“I’ve been to tea in a Moorish harem,” was the casual reply, “and I’ve had a wonderful time. The pasha himself made green mint tea for me, and his wives—at least, I suppose that they are his wives, for they seemed very affectionate with him—gave me these embroideries which they had made themselves, and the cutest little negro slave-girls passed some sort of perfumed sherbet and all kinds of sticky candies on big brass trays, and I’m invited to take tea with them again to-morrow, and to bring you with me, mother.”

“What did they say about me?” I inquired. “Am I not invited to the party?”

“You are not,” my daughter replied firmly. “I couldn’t quite make out what the pasha said about you, because his French isn’t very good, but he pointed up to the roof of the hotel and then drew his finger across his throat, which I interpreted as meaning that you had better keep out of sight while his wives are walking in the garden.”

Nearly every one who has remained for any length of time in Fez will doubtless recall having seen in the streets of the native city a slight, sweet-faced European woman clad in the snowy keffieh and burnous of a high-caste Moslem woman. This is Miss Sophie Denison, an English medical missionary who has lived in Fez for five-and-thirty years. In her little home in the crowded districts of the old city she has a clinic and a dispensary where she treats hundreds of the poor without charge, and, in cases of serious illness, visits them in their homes. She is persona gratissima in every home, be it palace or hovel, in Fez, and she is probably more closely in touch with native life than any other European, not even excepting the agents of the French intelligence service; for, being a woman, she is permitted to enter the harems, to which male physicians are refused admittance save in cases of the very gravest illness, and not always then.

One evening Miss Denison dined with us at the hotel, and so intensely interesting was her conversation that midnight had come and gone before we would permit her to take her departure. Naturally I insisted on accompanying her home, but she would not hear of it.

“I am perfectly safe in the streets at night,” she explained, “because every one knows me, but the native city is not a healthy place for a stranger to be wandering about alone after nightfall. Besides, as you do not speak Arabic, you could never find your way back alone through these tangled alleyways.”

So I accompanied her only to the compound gate and watched her until her white burnous had become a mere blur amid the purple shadows cast by the high, mysterious walls. Such as she, and not the fighting-men, are the real advance-guards of civilization.

A mile or so without the walls of the Moorish city the French, as is their custom in all their African possessions, are building a modern town, so that the two races may live apart, thus avoiding the unfortunate incidents which are certain to arise when Europeans and natives live in close proximity, as, for example, in Cairo. Here, in the ville moderne as it is called, the civil government is engaged in laying out broad, tree-planted boulevards, in erecting blocks of buildings for business purposes and rows of pleasant little villas, and in installing systems of drainage, light, and water. They do such things well, the French—not on such a lavish scale, perhaps, as we have done them in the Philippines, the Canal Zone, and elsewhere, but certainly better than anything I have seen in the British colonies.

A short distance beyond the ville moderne is the great French military camp, and, beyond that in turn, the broad expanse of the aviation field, which, when we were there the last time, was crowded with pursuit and bombing planes assembled for the campaign in the Riff, Abd-el-Krim’s advanced-posts being at that time barely twenty-five miles from the city. Had the Riffian leader succeeded in reaching Fez—and he came much nearer to doing so than the French like to admit—there is no telling what would have happened, for a certain fanatic element, stirred up by secret emissaries from the Riff, was ripe for trouble, and the wild mountain tribes on the east were eagerly awaiting an opportunity to sweep down upon the town, as they had done a dozen years before. We were reminded daily of our proximity to the actual battle-line by the bombing planes which were constantly flying over the city. Regularly, as we were sitting down to déjeuner on the terrace of the hotel, a squadron of bombers, their noses pointed toward the north, their gray wings gleaming like silver in the sunlight, would go booming overhead to drop the steel calling-cards of France on Abd-el-Krim, and, before the salad had been served, we would sight them again, black specks against the vault of blue, hastening back for more.

It was our great good fortune to arrive at Fez in time to witness the remarkable religious ceremony known as the Great Prayer, which marks the close of the fasting month of Ramadan. It was held on a broad and grassy plain a few miles without the walls of the town, which was crowded with pious and picturesque pilgrims who had come hither for the occasion from every part of Morocco. Day broke to reveal gathered on the plain such an assemblage, at least in point of color, as I have seldom seen. Here were men representative of every district within the empire, of every class and condition: fierce-looking tribesmen who had come down from the hills on horses and others who had come up from the desert astride of camels; portly townsmen and horny-handed, sun-bronzed peasants; mullahs in snowy turbans and hadjis with the green scarfs which show that their wearers have made the pilgrimage to Mecca; pashas on curveting chargers, nomad sheikhs on méhari racing camels, wealthy merchants on richly caparisoned mules, villagers on donkeys so diminutive that the riders’ feet all but touched the ground, closely veiled women and children in screaming calicoes crowded into creaking carts drawn by plodding oxen; and thousands upon thousands of the poor but pious plodding along on foot.

In the center of the plain had been erected of whitewashed bricks a sort of pulpit, its mihrab carefully oriented toward Mecca. This was the focus of the gathering, for from it the faithful were to be addressed by the khalifa, the sultan’s brother, and toward it, as though drawn by a magnet, the dusty thousands made their way, to seat themselves cross-legged on the acres of grass matting which had been provided for the purpose, and to await the opening of the ceremony with true Eastern patience.

After an hour’s wait in the pleasant morning sunshine—a delay which passed quickly because of the curious and colorful types to be seen on every hand—there emerged from the nearest of the city gates a long and glittering procession, its stately advance across the plain heralded by a fanfare of trumpets and the boom of cannon. It was headed by a squadron of chasseurs d’Afrique resplendent in their sky-blue and scarlet uniforms, for the French are past masters in the art of flattering their Moslem subjects by showing their respect for the Mohammedan religion. After these came a cavalcade of high religious dignitaries, grave-faced, bearded, patriarchal men in snowy garments and turbans bound about with green, astride splendid black mules of the Andalusian breed, which are smoother of gait and far more costly than horses. Then a large group of caïds, emirs, sheikhs, and other native chieftains, their restive, wiry horses magnificently caparisoned, the bridles of scarlet leather heavy with gold and silver, the velvet saddle-cloths in some cases sweeping the ground. Each chieftain was accompanied by a retainer bearing aloft a great religious banner, the folds of green or scarlet silk embroidered in gold with suras from the Koran. A little interval ensued, and then, between double files of shereefian foot-guards in zouave uniforms of blue, red, and yellow, came the khalifa himself, brother and representative of the sultan—a sallow-skinned man with a thin fringe of beard along the chin, muffled in a hooded burnous of pale-blue broadcloth and mounted on a cream-colored Arab stallion. Negro slaves walked, or trotted rather, at his stirrups, and behind rode a brilliant entourage of religious and civil functionaries, caïds, pashas, emirs, sheikhs, cadis, and courtiers, wearing costumes bewildering in their variety and color.

As the cortège debouched upon the plain, a great horde of tribal horsemen, who had been massed upon the flanks of the encircling hills, suddenly set spurs to their horses and came thundering down the slopes in a torrent of barbaric color, standing in their stirrups, brandishing naked simitars and long-barreled rifles, their standards flapping in the breeze and their burnouses floating out behind them. As they rode they shouted the resonant, deep-throated battle-cry of their faith, “Ul-ul-ul-ul-ul-ullah Akbar-r-r!” which came to our ears like the growing roar of an advancing sea. It was intended as a purely peaceful demonstration, a greeting to the head of their church and state as represented by his khalifa, but there was something peculiarly significant and subtly menacing about it to our little group of Europeans, a mere islet of unbelievers lost in a Moslem sea.

Arriving at the pulpit-shrine which had been erected in the center of the plain, the khalifa, assisted by his negro slaves, dismounted, as did the other chiefs and dignitaries, while the horsemen bearing the standards ranged themselves in a vast semicircle in the rear, their green and scarlet bairags, surmounted by the golden crescent, forming a fitting background for the amazing scene. The services consisted of an interminable and impassioned sermon by some high dignitary of the church, corresponding, I presume, to the Turkish Sheikh-ul-Islam, and a rather brief address by the khalifa. Then, at a given signal, the whole vast assemblage—Berbers, Arabs, and Moors, men who had come from regions as far apart as the Riff and the Sus, the shores of the Atlantic and the edges of the Great Sahara, men of many tribes and speaking many tongues, but all bound together by the ties of a common religion—rose as one, and, with their faces turned toward the Holy City, intoned in chorus the tremendously impressive shehada, the stanzas which constitute the Moslem’s confession of his faith.... Ash hadu illa illaha ill Allah! Wa ash hadu inna Mohammed an rasool Allah! As the white-clad thousands prostrated themselves in prayer, and rose, and knelt again, their voices rising in deep-throated supplication, it seemed as though I were looking down the tossing billows of a mighty sea. And, in fact, I was, for this mighty concourse represented an arm of that Islamic ocean which has all but overspread two great continents and broken upon the shores of a third.

CHAPTER XXI IN THE SHADOW OF THE SHEREEFIAN UMBRELLA

Morocco is unique among the countries of the world in that it has four capitals—Fez, Mequinez, Marrákesh, Rabat—and the names of all save the last, which is the seat of the French administration as well as one of the imperial residences, are spelled in various ways and have various pronunciations. Take, for example, the case of the second city I have mentioned. If you are English you will call it Meknes; if French, Mekinez; if Spanish, Mequinez; but the Moroccans themselves speak of it as Miknasa.

Seen from a distance, Mequinez—which is the orthography which I happen to like best and to which I am accustomed—gives promise of being an Arabian Nights sort of city, a place of mystery and enchantment; for its crumbling walls, mellowed by years and weather to a lovely reddish brown, broken at frequent intervals by massive, foursquare towers, and pierced by nine imposing gates, rise abruptly on the east from the edge of a broad ravine, which separates the ancient native city from the modern town which has been erected by the French. Towering above the flat-roofed houses, like fingers pointing toward heaven, are numerous beautifully proportioned minarets, their faces inlaid with mosaics of blue-green-and-yellow faience tiling; and in the outskirts white palaces and villas peep coyly from amid the gray green of the olive-groves and the more vivid foliage of the orange-gardens. Yet within the walls disappointment awaits the visitor, for the buildings are, on the whole, quite unimpressive; there are no mosques which can compare with those of Tunis, Kairouan, and Tlemcen; and the place is wholly lacking in the picturesque and colorful street scenes which constitute the chief charm of Fez. The sights of Mequinez may, indeed, be numbered on the fingers of a single hand, the finest of them, perhaps, being the panorama of the city as viewed from the terrace of the Hôtel Transatlantique, on the eastern bank of the ravine, in the early morning or at sunset.

Most of the nine gateways which give access to the city are quite mediocre; but one, the Bab Bardain, has some fine old tilings, and the decorations of another, the Mansour Gate, are superb. The latter, one of the most imposing city entrances in all Morocco, consists of a colossal ogive arch flanked by huge square towers into the bases of which are set marble columns appropriated by the Moorish builders from the Roman ruins at Volubilis. The façades of both gate and towers are set with lustrous jade-green tiles overlaid with amazingly intricate arabesque designs in blue and yellow, so that the structure, when the sun strikes upon it, seems to be incrusted with enamel. On a sort of frieze above the arch a pious Arabic inscription stands forth in bold black characters. It is just the sort of a gate from which, to complete the picture, should come riding Harun al Rashid or Suleiman the Magnificent; but the first time I set eyes upon it an enormous yellow autobus, crowded with frowzy-looking native passengers and piled high with their heterogeneous possessions, was en panne beneath the arch, defiling the air with the noxious fumes from its exhaust and completely blocking traffic.

Five minutes of brisk walking through the narrow, abominably rough streets of the inner city bring one to the weed-grown cemetery which contains the venerated tomb of Mohammed ben Aïssa, patron saint of Mequinez and founder of that strange mystic fraternity known as the Aïssaoua, whose members, scattered throughout North Africa, emphasize their piety by eating broken glass, swallowing live serpents, gashing themselves with knives, and indulging in other such-like pleasantries. From the cemetery the controleur civil, who had constituted himself our cicerone and guide, conducted us to a salesroom which has been established by the French for the encouragement of native handicrafts, where we purchased a few specimens of Miknasa embroidery and leather-work which were superior to anything we saw in the extremely mediocre souks. He also promised to introduce us to a very holy man, a “living saint,” who has won a great local reputation by refusing to accept alms, but the saint was not at home. This was very disappointing, as my acquaintance with saints is confined to those who have been planted for some centuries under several feet of earth and marble, and I certainly had never had the privilege of meeting a Moslem holy man who not only did not ask for money but actually declined it when it was offered to him. No wonder that this unique character enjoyed the honor of canonization while still living!

The one outstanding feature of Mequinez, however, is the enormous ruined palace commenced in 1634 by Sultan Mulai Ismail and never completed, and the adjoining mosque, which serves as the royal builder’s tomb. Ismail the Bloodthirsty, as he was dubbed by his terrorized subjects, was one of the most remarkable figures which the shereefian dynasties have produced. A man of wonderful vitality, as was proved by the many hundreds of sons and countless daughters who were born to him in a harem surpassing that of Solomon, his reign lasted for five-and-fifty years, during which his fierce grasp on the empire never relaxed and his lust for blood and women never slackened. Having, as he supposed, driven the English from Tangier, he besieged the Spanish stronghold of Ceuta for more than a quarter of a century in the hope of driving the last infidel from the soil of Morocco; but otherwise his military operations were confined to the extermination of internal enemies, which he accomplished effectively and bloodily with the aid of his negro household troops, the Bokharis—a Moorish version of the Turkish Janizaries—and of a foreign legion composed of renegade soldiers of fortune and adventurers from many countries. With his negro guards and foreign mercenaries ready to execute unhesitatingly his every behest, Ismail ruled with an iron and bloody hand an empire which stretched from the shores of the Mediterranean to Timbuktu and from the coast of the Atlantic to the frontiers of Egypt.

Perhaps the most picturesque incident in a life which was filled with wars, intrigues, and amours was Ismail’s infatuation for the Duchesse de Montpensier, niece of Louis XIII and cousin of Le Roi Soleil—La Grande Mademoiselle, as she was called—then at the height of her fame and loveliness and the greatest catch in Europe. His interest in the princess was aroused when the French ambassador at the shereefian court showed him a miniature of her. Charmed by her delicate and patrician beauty, the sultan, whose slightest wish was law within his own vast domains, determined to add her to his matrimonial establishment, which was at the time somewhat short of blondes. Even Louis XIV hesitated to antagonize a monarch so powerful as Ismail by bluntly refusing his request for his cousin’s hand, while the princess herself, though amused and doubtless intrigued by the imperial proposal, had no intention of exchanging the luxuries of the Louvre and Versailles for the uncertainties of a harem in Barbary.

“Tell your princess,” the sultan instructed the French ambassador when informed of her misgivings, “that here in Mequinez I will build her a palace compared with which your boasted Versailles shall be a pigsty.”

The Prince of True Believers lost no time in making good his word. Thousands of Christian slaves, captured by the Sallee rovers, provided the labor; rare marbles were ready to hand in the ruins of Volubilis a few miles away; the richly tiled walls and exquisite carvings were executed by the most skilful Moorish craftsmen. Before the work was completed, however, Ismail passed to the Moslem paradise, but the ruins which remain testify to the stupendous size of the palace which he was erecting for the Roumi princess who would not have him. The outer walls of the building, which are twenty-five feet thick and four miles in circumference, inclose a bewildering congeries of palaces, kiosks, offices, barracks, passages, courtyards, arcades, and gardens. Hard by stood the imperial stables, with accommodations for eleven thousand horses, which surely would have put the écuries of the king of France to shame. As for the Grande Mademoiselle, she eventually married an impecunious young Gascon named de Lazun, whom she left, however, when, upon his return from the hunt, he threw himself into a chair and shouted at her, “Pull off my boots, Louise d’Orléans!”

A mile or so beyond the ruins of Ismail’s palace is a military school established by the French for native princes, a sort of miniature West Point, where the sons of caïds, pashas, emirs, and sheikhs are fitted for commissions in the army. It is a small but beautifully kept establishment, though I imagine that those who have slept on the narrow iron beds allotted to cadets at the great military university on the Hudson would be somewhat astonished at the pillow-heaped divans on which the young nobles rest from their arduous exercises; but the discipline is very rigid, and those who successfully complete the course are fully qualified to take their place at the head of squadrons of spahi cavalry. Connected with the school is a haras and remount depot, where horses imported from France, Ireland, and Hungary are crossed with that hot-blooded desert breed, the Barb, to which Barbary gave its name. It is interesting to note, by the way, that a very large proportion of the horses now on the English turf trace their descent from the Godolphin Barb, the famous sire which was brought into England from Morocco during the reign of George II.

Less than an hour by motor-car to the north of Mequinez, by a steep and winding road which can be perilously slippery in wet weather, is the ancient and curious town of Mulai Idris en Zarhon, which might be described as the Mount Vernon of Morocco in that it is the burial-place of Mulai Idris ben Abdallah, founder of the Moorish Empire and first ruler of the shereefian line, around whose highly venerated shrine the place has grown. Because of its extreme sanctity, which annually draws thousands of pilgrims from all corners of the Islamic world, it was forbidden to unbelievers until the French occupation; and the only European who is known to have entered its gates before 1912 was an English traveler, James Jackson, who managed to pay it a hurried visit in disguise in 1801. It is one of the most picturesquely situated communities in all North Africa, its square white buildings, crowded together and dominated by the shrine of the sultan-saint, clinging to the precipitous slopes of a spur of the Zarhon Range, which here runs down into a wild and romantic glen. The town is walled, and access to it is through an extremely narrow gate, the last few hundred yards of road being so extremely steep that I questioned whether even our powerful Renault would be able to make the grade. There is little of interest in the place save the shrine itself, which is considered so sacrosanct that non-Moslems may not even approach, much less enter it. There are no Europeans in Mulai Idris, and we did not remain there very long, for the inhabitants are extremely fanatical, and the atmosphere was anything but friendly. This attitude of intolerance was unpleasantly illustrated when, at a bend in the road, half a mile outside the gate, I ordered Tomine to stop the car in order that I might obtain a photograph of the city, which, perched on its lofty crag, with the purple masses of the Middle Atlas for a background, looked very lovely in the golden glow of late afternoon. But a group of natives, who had hurried up when I unslung my camera, became so menacing that in order to avert an unpleasant episode I continued on my way—not, however, until I had surreptitiously snapped a picture.

Twice yearly, in the spring and in the fall, Mulai Idris is the scene of great religious festivals, when the town is thronged with eager pilgrims, many of whom come from as far away as Turkey and the Red Sea countries. On these occasions take place the revolting performances of the Hamadchas, an African order of dervishes, who, after working themselves into a state of religious frenzy during which they are supposed to be unconscious of their actions and insensible to pain, bite off the heads of living serpents, handle red-hot iron, gash themselves horribly with knives, and hold glowing coals on their tongues. I have witnessed similar exhibitions many times during the course of my wanderings in Western and Middle Asia, but I remember most distinctly one which I saw a good many years ago in a small town near Tetuan. After the usual program had been completed, one of the fanatics, a half-demented creature with sunken eyes and a great shock of long hair, whose finger-nails had been permitted to grow until they were as long and sharp as knife-blades, took his place in the center of a circle formed by his rocking, moaning colleagues, and proceeded to pluck the flesh from his lower legs in chunks until the muscles and ligaments were laid bare and the bones themselves showed white and ghastly through the welter of blood and mangled flesh. At length, weakened by loss of blood, he sank senseless amid the widening pool of crimson.... It was not a pleasant sight.

If you visit Mulai Idris you will, of course, keep on to the ruins of Volubilis, which are barely a mile away, on the lower slopes of the Djebel Zarhon. Personally—I might as well confess it frankly—I am rather bored by ruins, unless, of course, they are on the grand scale, like those of Carthage or Timgad, where enough remains to give one an adequate idea of what the living city was like. But Volubilis, which was the westernmost outpost of the Roman Empire, demands more of a strain on the imagination, for here all that remains above ground is a score or so of shattered marble columns, some stones which are said to mark the site of the forum, and a massively constructed triumphal arch, in a fair state of preservation, which was erected about two centuries after the Crucifixion in honor of Caracalla, who, you will recall, built a bathing establishment of imposing size in Rome. The only work of art of importance thus far unearthed at Volubilis is a very fine bronze figure of a dog, now kept in the little museum at the entrance to the ruins.

Mequinez is separated from Rabat, the third of the great imperial cities, by just a hundred miles of smooth, hard highway, and Tomine, who was fond of stepping on the gas whenever I would permit him, covered those hundred miles in just two hours. One of the pleasant features of motoring in Morocco is that, once outside the cities, you can travel as fast as you please, for the great trunk-roads are nearly straight, there are little traffic and no traffic cops, and the villages are few and far between.

Long ere the buildings of Rabat came in view we could see the red-brown bulk of the Borj-el-Hassan, the splendid but uncompleted tower erected by Sultan Yakub, or El Mansur, as he is better known, rising from beyond the intervening plain, its red-brown bulk—for it is a little too heavy to be truly graceful—silhouetted against the Atlantic’s shimmering expanse. There it has stood, majestic and aloof, for upward of seven hundred years, a fitting monument to the creative genius of those fierce Berber kings, the Almohades, who, in the Alcázar, the Giralda, and the Alhambra, left such glorious reminders of their rule in Spain.

When, in 1184, Yakub el Mansur founded Rabat at that point on the western seaboard of Morocco where the waters of the Bou Ragrag enter the Atlantic, Salé, on the opposite bank of the little river, was already an ancient city and one of evil repute, notorious throughout the length and breadth of Christendom as the stronghold of the dreaded Sallee rovers. Until very recent years Salé was a far larger town than Rabat, but since Rabat became the seat of administration of the French protectorate the situation has been completely reversed, Salé having only about half as many inhabitants as its younger sister. The combined populations of the two towns now probably number not far from seventy-five thousand, ten per cent of whom are Europeans. Though the French are dredging the bar which obstructs the mouth of the river and are making other efforts to improve “the port of the two banks,” it can never be anything save a third-rate harbor; yet in pirate days it must have afforded a much safer haven for shipping than it does at present, or, as is more likely, the bar permitted the passage of the shallow-draft galleys employed by the corsairs while proving an insuperable obstacle to the larger war-vessels which pursued them.

Rabat consists of two parts: the old walled town beside the sea, whose dilapidated ramparts, now used as promenades, inclose the kasbah, the souks, and most of the mosques; and the mushroom modern city which has sprung up under the ægis of the French on the slopes of the low hills to the east. By no means rich in historical monuments, and possessing few really fine examples of Moorish architecture save the Hassan tower just mentioned, Rabat nevertheless has a fascination all its own. Of the palace of Sultan Yakub only the foundations remain, but its spacious walls inclose an admirably arranged if small museum and a school of native art, where, under French supervision, instruction is given in dyeing with vegetable colors, wood-carving and painting, and illuminating on vellum—arts for which Rabat was once famous, but which are now almost lost. Perhaps the most beautiful feature of the city is the famous Blue Gardens, within the precincts of the former palace, where flowers in every shade of blue, from deepest indigo to palest cerulean, form rectangles of glorious color against the rose-brown tapia of the ancient walls. Forming a pleasing relief to the prevailing blue of the blossoms are the broad pathways of rolled red sand, the effect thus produced being equaled by few formal gardens in the world and surpassed by none.

A few paces from the Hôtel Transatlantique, by a narrow lane which winds down between high blank walls to a mysterious green door, is a little Moorish café, tucked away on a narrow terrace formed by an angle of the ancient fortifications, whose ramparts here fall sheer away to the waters of the Bou Ragrag. It is much frequented after sunset by natives of the upper class and by Europeans of discrimination, for its mint tea, thick black coffee, and meringue-like pastries are the most delicious in all Morocco; native musicians draw soft, haunting melodies from instruments of reed and string; and even on the sultriest nights it is swept by cooling breezes from the broad Atlantic. Here Romance walks o’ nights, for the tea-tables are set in bastions from whose embrasures the culverins of a Moorish despot once defied the sea-power of England, France, and Spain; across the river, not a pistol-shot away, is Salé, long the seat of pirate power; the lean black galleys of the rovers swung at anchor in the harbor in between; and a few score rods to the west, where the river broadens out to meet the sea, the great combers come sweeping in from the Atlantic to break in foam and thunder on the bar. Scattered here and there about the gardens, cross-legged on the cushioned benches, are wealthy Moors, their white garments showing ghostly in the purple velvet darkness, the dull glow of their cigarettes lighting up the grave aristocratic faces framed by the snowy hoods. When the full moon casts a broad bar of silver athwart the darkened waters, when the palm-fronds whisper softly in the gentle night breeze, when the scents of jasmine and orange-blossom rise in waves of fragrance from the gardens just below, when the African night throbs to the strains, half plaintive, half barbaric, of zither, flute, and viol, then this Moorish pleasure-garden is quite the most enchanting spot I know. Were I a bridegroom I should take Her there, of all the Lovely Places, on the honeymoon.

The souks of Rabat, though by no means so extensive or picturesque as those of Fez and Marrákesh, contain certain characteristic articles which are not to be found elsewhere, at least in any variety. Such, for example, are the Rabat scarfs and curtains—lengths of white and filmy muslin heavily embroidered at the ends in barbarically hued silks. Here, too, and nowhere else, is to be had the carved and painted woodwork for which the city is noted—low tables, bookcases, wall-shelves, gun-racks, decorated with elaborate arabesque designs in the mellowed reds, blues, greens, and yellows employed in the adornment of Moorish mosques. The carpets of Rabat likewise enjoy a wide reputation because of the thickness of their pile, the softness of their colors—usually browns or grays—and the fact that they are colored with the ancient vegetable dyes.

On the slopes which rise gently from the landward side of the native city to the summit of a low range of hills, in an environ which might be designated for the sake of convenience as New Rabat, the French have established the seat of government of the protectorate. Here is the administrative center of all Morocco, and here the various branches of government, including the treasury-general and the ministries of war, agriculture, and public instruction, as well as the Shereefian Scientific Institute and the Institute of Higher Moroccan Studies, are housed in brand-new, commodious, and stately buildings. All these are grouped about the imposing palace of the French resident-general, while set on a little knoll, a quarter of a mile away, are the great white buildings of the imperial palace, one wing of which contains the offices of the ministry of the interior.

New Rabat is a made-to-order capital, and in building it the French followed the example of the South Africans at Pretoria and of the Australians at Yass-Canberra by starting with the bare site and building from the ground up. Hence there are none of the ugly and incongruous buildings which mar the beauty of so many capitals, including our own. Instead, everything is fresh, harmonious, and strictly up to date. The dull and depressing style of architecture which characterizes so many public structures in France, the rococo ornateness of others, and those fantastic and atrocious vagaries in which French architects have indulged along the Riviera are all happily absent from New Rabat, whose buildings are all in a modified Moorish style, of reinforced concrete, with white or tinted walls and tiled roofs. The first impression is that it is all a trifle too theatrical—a Florida land development and the Oriental section of a world’s fair combined—but this is doubtless due to the newness of the place, for it was not commenced until after the Armistice. With due allowance made for this, however, the general effect is singularly pleasing, for the situation, with the Atlantic and the old walled city in the foreground and with the mulberry masses of the Middle Atlas looming in the western distance, is superb; the architecture, though exotic to Western eyes, is on the whole restrained; the Moorish note which has been introduced suits the setting and provides the needed color; and in a few years crudeness will be relieved by masses of foliage, for the soil responds quickly to hose and hoe.

Dotting the pleasant slopes beyond the administrative buildings are numerous charming villas, embowered in flowers and strongly reminiscent of southern California, in which the officials of the French administration and the officers of the garrison dwell. Running through the town in every direction are broad avenues planted with young trees which will eventually provide an abundance of shade; thanks to the lavish use of water and unremitting care the broad stretches of greensward are able to defy the fiery African sun; and masses of scarlet geraniums and purple bougainvillea provide splashes of vivid color. With its white-walled, red-roofed houses set amid blazing gardens, with its cypress and eucalyptus trees, with the sparkling sea in front and the bare brown hills behind, the residential district of the new city bears a striking resemblance to Santa Barbara.

Set high on the hillside, dominating all else, is the French residency, flanked on either side by low, rambling office buildings, with which it is connected by pergolas smothered in flowers. It is an enormous structure, somewhat too suggestive of an exposition building, perhaps, or of a Florida hotel, but quite imposing and, on the whole, in excellent taste. The state reception and dining rooms have some effective mural paintings depicting various phases of Moroccan scenery and life, as well as a magnificent collection of Moorish weapons presented by various caïds and chieftains to the former resident-general, Marshal Lyautey; the cozy and homelike private apartments, occupying the upper floors, command entrancing views of mountain, plain, river, and sea. The residency wholly lacks the dignity of Malacañan, the palace of the governor-general of the Philippines in Manila, but it fulfils its purpose admirably, though I doubt if it impresses very deeply the descendants of the men who built the Alcázar and the Alhambra.

Though Sultan Mulai Yusef has palaces in Fez, Mequinez, and Marrákesh, not to mention numerous kasbahs in the Atlas, at all of which he stays for longer or shorter periods each year, his favorite residence is at Rabat, doubtless because it is there that he receives the flattery so dear to his Oriental soul, and also, perhaps, at the suggestion of the French resident-general, who likes to have his imperial protégé where he can keep a paternal eye on him. While the sultan, as I have explained in an earlier chapter, is head of both church and state, his temporal power is merely nominal under the restrictions imposed by the French protectorate, whereas his influence as the spiritual leader of his people, who venerate him as a descendant and successor of the Prophet, has to be reckoned with. Thus, while certain of the Berber tribes, including those of the Riff, steadfastly refuse to recognize his claims to the sultanate on the ground that he is an Arab and a usurper, they nevertheless bow to the spiritual authority which he possesses by virtue of his position as khalif. It is easy to understand how the spiritual influence exercised by the sultan-khalif makes him a highly useful instrument of government in the hands of the French as long as the protectorate is conducted as it is at present. This explains why they surround him with all the pomp and ceremony traditionally associated with the shereefian throne, and see to it that his prestige, which is vitally essential to the success of their policy, is scrupulously respected and safeguarded.

When Mulai Yusef moves, as he does frequently, from one of the imperial residences to another, he travels in truly Oriental state, accompanied by a vast entourage of ministers, officials of the court, religious functionaries, guards, slaves, and concubines. Of the latter he is said to have upward of half-a-thousand, but he naturally does not take the whole of his enormous harem establishment with him—only a favored few. He and his glittering court are transported in a great number of high-powered, luxuriously fitted cars, the imperial procession tearing along at terrific speed between rows of salaaming subjects while the traffic looks out for itself.

Foreigners can always obtain at least a passing glimpse of the sultan on the occasions of the three great religious festivals of the Mohammedan calendar—the birthday of the Prophet, the Grand and the Lesser Bairam—as well as every Friday, which is the Moslem day of worship, when he goes to mosque in state, the one which he usually attends while in residence at Rabat being only a few hundred yards from the palace. The ceremony of going to mosque corresponds to the selamlik of the Turkish sultans, though it is a tawdry and insignificant affair as compared with the impressive military spectacle which was staged weekly at Yildiz Kiosk when Abdul Hamid sat on the Ottoman throne and Turkey was still Turkey. Nevertheless it is a picturesque and colorful show, an interesting survival of the splendor which once surrounded Oriental rulers but which has now almost disappeared; for King Fuad of Egypt goes to the weekly prayer in a limousine, and Mustapha Kemal, the president of Turkey, wears a bowler-hat and swings a Malacca cane when he attends mosque, if he attends at all.

But in Morocco the French, in order to enhance the dignity of their puppet in the eyes of his subjects, signalize Mulai Yusef’s hebdomadary devotions by a display which is a cross between a circus procession, a parade of Shriners, and the Lord Mayor’s Show. The cortège is headed by a battalion of the famous Black Guard, with its field music, the gigantic negroes who compose this corps of household infantry wearing the fantastic uniforms associated with the zouaves, but with certain embellishments of their own, including a waistcoat of canary yellow and a small, tightly rolled turban which looks like something between a piece of striped peppermint candy and a doughnut. By way of according equal respect to the two branches of the dual government, the band plays French and Moorish airs alternately. Immediately behind the foot-guards, on gray horses perfectly matched, comes a squadron of spahis, beturbaned and becloaked, riding beneath a forest of lances from whose steel-shod tips flutters a cloud of green and scarlet pennons. Next a string of magnificent Barb chargers, riderless and richly caparisoned in trappings of red and gold, each led by a groom in the livery of the imperial household. Another squadron of spahis, this time on gleaming bays, and at last, guarded by slaves and eunuchs, the khalif himself, seated in a miniature brougham which was presented to one of his predecessors by Queen Victoria. At the carriage door walks the imperial almoner, whose business it is to increase the popularity of his master by distributing alms in the form of small pieces of silver to the poor who line the route. Bringing up the rear of the procession is a whole cavalcade of ministers of state, officials of the household, and religious dignitaries, some on horses and some astride of beautiful Andalusian mules, with negro slaves trotting at their stirrups.

After the services in the mosque, which are usually of brief duration, the sultan makes his selection from the led horses, whereupon a quartet of brawny Nubians fairly boost him into the high-peaked scarlet saddle. An attendant raises above his head the great green umbrella which is the symbol of the shereefian power, the drummers beat the prescribed number of ruffles and the long roll, the buglers sound a fanfare, the native onlookers salaam until their turbans touch the ground, and his Imperial Majesty Mulai Yusef, Emperor of Morocco, Prince of True Believers, Vice-Regent of God on Earth, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, Grand Cross of St. Michael and St. George, thirty-sixth lineal descendant of Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, rides slowly back to his great white palace to amuse himself with his wives and his concubines until another Friday rolls around. And at a desk in the residency, a quarter of a mile away, a quiet-mannered Frenchman, who detests ceremony and never puts on a uniform if he can help it, is directing the affairs of the empire.

Though there is nothing of particular interest to see there, one should pay a brief visit to Salé, the ancient corsair city on the north bank of the Bou Ragrag, directly opposite Rabat, with which it is connected by a bridge a mile or so up-river. Its renown is due to its association with the Sallee rovers (Sallee is the medieval spelling; the English call the place Salli and the French Salé), who were even fiercer and more daring than their colleagues of the Mediterranean. It is well to keep in mind that while, from the European point of view, the pirates of the Barbary coast were a set of bloodthirsty robbers, from the standpoint of the Moors they were pious warriors battling for the faith, who had volunteered to punish the Nazarenes for their rejection of the teachings of the Prophet, and, incidentally, for having ejected their coreligionists from Spain. The honor in which their memory is held may be better realized by comparison with that of the Crusaders, in which the positions were exactly reversed. Nor, despite the glamour in which we have enveloped the Crusaders as champions of Christendom, were they appreciably more chivalrous than the rovers or more humane. Unlike the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who fought only for themselves, the rovers approached as nearly to an organized navy as anything Morocco ever possessed, and their vessels were at times fitted out at the expense of the state, to whom their prizes therefore belonged. Whereas the corsairs of Algiers and Tunis confined their operations mainly to the Mediterranean, the sea-adventurers of Sallee harried the Atlantic coasts of Spain and France and even ventured as far north as Devon and Cornwall, carrying off the populations of whole villages.

The rovers attained the zenith of their power in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, during which period hundreds of thousands of Christians suffered captivity, unspeakable tortures, and death in Morocco rather than abjure their faith, the sole condition on which a measure of freedom within the empire was offered to them. All Christendom was horrified by the tales of cruelty and outrage brought back by captives who had been ransomed or had managed to escape, and collections were made at church doors throughout Europe for the purpose of purchasing the freedom of Christian slaves in Barbary. Frequent missions for that purpose were undertaken by devoted members of religious brotherhoods, not a few of whom themselves became martyrs to the cause. It must be remembered that the lot of the Christian slave in Morocco was infinitely worse than that of the negro, who indifferently embraced Islam, and was at once admitted to equality in all matters save that of freedom; for the Christians were generally employed under the lash of the taskmaster in the construction of fortifications and public buildings—it might be said that the mortar used in some of the grandest structures in Morocco was mixed with Christian blood—or as rowers shackled to the benches of the galleys, thousands of them dying in their chains. But for those European women, often of gentle birth, who fell into the hands of the Moors, was reserved the most awful fate of all.

If, by this time, you have had enough of Barbary, you may leave us at Rabat and motor northward—a long day’s journey—to Tangier, whence there is a triweekly service of small and abominably dirty Spanish steamers to Algeciras. At present, on account of the somewhat disturbed condition of the Spanish zone, Tangier is isolated from the rest of Morocco, but when the Riff has been pacified for good and all, and when the railway from Tangier to Rabat is in regular operation, the former city will become one of the principal gateways to Barbary, being particularly convenient for those who disembark from the transatlantic steamers at Gibraltar or who come down from Spain.

As the seaport nearest to Europe, Tangier was the town in the empire in which, until the coming of the French, the effects of progress were most marked; and it is still the place of residence of the ministers and consuls-general accredited to the shereefian court by the foreign powers, these forming the nucleus of a highly cosmopolitan society which has expanded into an influential community enjoying privileges and immunities unknown to natives who do not enjoy foreign protection. Here, by virtue of the rights conferred by early treaties, foreigners continue to enjoy an extraterritorial status, as they still do in China and as they did until very recently in Turkey and Siam. Thus, foreigners in Tangier who are accused of crimes are tried by their own ministers or consuls-general; and, if convicted, they are either confined in consular prisons, or in the case of serious crimes, sent home to serve out their sentences.

As might be expected, this arrangement has resulted in some curious situations. They still tell the story over Tangier dinner-tables of a certain foreign minister—for obvious reasons I shall not disclose his nationality or name—who became infatuated with a very beautiful woman, whose snowy purity, however, was slightly tinged with lavender. One night the wife of the minister died in great agony—the result of poison in her coffee, it was said. It was common knowledge that she had been poisoned by her husband and his paramour—but who was going to prove it? And, even if it could be proved, who, pray, was empowered to try the case? The Moorish courts had no jurisdiction over foreigners, and the foreign ministers had no jurisdiction over one another. And the minister in question could hardly be expected to sit as judge upon himself! So nothing ever came of the matter, for Tangerine morals are as easy as an old shoe. Having inherited his wife’s fortune, the minister promptly married the other woman and retired from the diplomatic service. The last I heard of the pair, they were living, outwardly quite happy, somewhere on the Riviera.

Tangier, which has a population of about fifty thousand, more than half of whom are Christians or Jews, nestles between two eminences at the head of a spacious bay, which forms the best harbor in Morocco, though vessels of any size have to anchor a mile or so offshore and disembark their passengers in small boats, which in rough weather is an extremely unpleasant, not to say hazardous, proceeding. Viewed from the sea, the town presents a very picturesque appearance, its white houses rising from the harbor’s edge like linen-covered seats in a theater, with the citadel, the remains of the mole built by the British during their occupation in the seventeenth century, and York Castle to the right, the commercial quarter in the central valley formed by the two hills, and at the left the road which runs along the shore to Tetuan, with the European hotels above and a crescent of sandy beach below. As in all Eastern towns, the streets are exceedingly narrow and crooked, lined by cupboards in lieu of shops, and with cafés, wine-shops, and drinking-dens at almost every corner, for the foreign population of Tangier has an unquenchable thirst. Formerly the city was intolerably filthy, poorly lighted, and none too safe at night; but since the establishment of an international control, modern sanitary, water, and lighting systems have been introduced, and its narrow ways are vigilantly patrolled by an efficient gendarmarie under French and British officers.

Like the gateways to all barbaric countries—Djibouti, the port for Abyssinia, is another case in point—Tangier is a hotbed of plot, conspiracy, intrigue, and gossip, much frequented by those engaged in shady international transactions or who otherwise sail close to the wind. In the old days, when the extradition laws were not recognized by Morocco, it was a favorite refuge for fugitives from justice from Europe and the two Americas, the terrace of the Hotel Cecil being dotted at the tea-hour with beautifully groomed men and women of the most engaging manners who had left their own countries under a cloud and quite abruptly because they had been too quick on the trigger, because they had signed to checks names that were not their own, had departed with other people’s money or other people’s husbands or wives. Here they dwelt in comfortable if not contented exile, dining at the legations if they were not too notorious—for a hostess cannot be unduly exclusive in a place where society is as limited as in Tangier—playing poker in the cool seclusion of the Cecil’s card-room, or riding into the back-country on picnics or pig-sticking expeditions, but ever and anon turning longing, homesick eyes toward Gibraltar, where liners from America and England swing at their moorings beneath the shadow of the Rock. Until very recently, at least, life in Tangier was seldom dull, being punctuated by such episodes as the theatrical visit of the kaiser, Raisuli’s abduction of Ion Perdicaris, numerous naval demonstrations, and the unofficial negotiations with the envoys of Abd-el-Krim, while the presence of gun-runners, smugglers, rebel emissaries, war correspondents, and concession-hunters lent a pleasant atmosphere of romance and adventure to the town. But, now that the war in the Riff has ended and the international status of the town has been definitely fixed, it is to be presumed that Tangier will settle down to an uneventful and prosaic existence, dwelling contentedly enough in the memories of its stirring past.

If, as I have already remarked, you are weary of African travel, if you are surfeited with Moors, and mosques, and minarets, and marabouts, and mosaics, and places whose names begin with M, then you can board a steamer at Tangier which will land you a few hours later at Algeciras, whence the Sud Express will bear you in some six-and-thirty hours to the boulevards of Paris. But I trust that you will see fit to stay in my company a little longer, for I would take you south to Casablanca, the amazing city into which the French have transformed a squalid Spanish settlement in less than a decade; to Mazagan and Mogador and other coast-towns with magic names; to red Marrákesh; to the country where the Grand Caïds rule in feudal splendor; to medieval castles tucked away in the fastnesses of the High Atlas; and over the ranges to the forbidden Sus.

CHAPTER XXII SOUTH TO THE FORBIDDEN SUS

We Americans pride ourselves on being an exceptionally well informed people, yet it is curious how erroneous are the opinions which we hold on many subjects, and how tenaciously we cling to our misconceptions. The great majority of our people believe, for example, that the foreign missionary is a sanctimonious, psalm-singing, hypocritical individual, with a sun-umbrella under one arm and a Bible under the other, who seeks to force on the heathen clothing and Christianity, neither of which they want, and who is regarded as a meddler and a nuisance by the officials of the country in which he is stationed. Another case in point is that of the French colonial, whom we picture as an unkempt, miserable being his bare feet thrust into slippers, his soiled white suit several sizes too large for him, who passes his time sipping absinthe in a café, perusing “La Vie Parisienne,” and counting the days until he can return to la belle France. These are not merely misconceptions; they are caricatures, as unjust as they are untruthful.

Whenever I hear some one remark, “Well, we must admit that the British are the only really successful colonizers,” I feel that I should like to show him Casablanca. When the French bombarded and occupied it in 1907, Casablanca was a filthy, backward, and ill governed Moorish coast town with a population of barely twenty thousand. Yet in less than two decades of French rule its population has increased more than six hundred per cent, and it is to-day one of the cleanest, best governed, and most progressive cities in all Africa.

Indeed, there are few cities of its size in the United States which can surpass Casablanca in point of municipal improvements, for it has miles of broad, paved, tree-planted streets; thoroughly modern lighting, water, and sanitary systems; an excellent telephone service; stores which are counterparts in miniature of the great magasins in Paris; several luxurious hotels; restaurants whose cuisine is vastly superior to anything found in most American cities; a state opera-house; a municipal theater; numerous beautiful parks; and a whole series of imposing public buildings in the neo-Moorish style, which is harmonious, colorful, and pleasing to the eye, if nothing more. In short, Casablanca epitomizes the great work which the French have accomplished in Morocco, where they have hauled the native out of the slough of ignorance, indolence, and superstition, in which he has been wallowing for centuries, set him upon his feet, and are teaching him to become a decent, law-abiding, progressive citizen. What was formerly an open roadstead, dangerously exposed to northwest winds, has been transformed by the construction of a huge breakwater into a safe and spacious harbor which provides anchorage for vessels of all save the largest size. There is still noticeable, of course, an air of crudity and incompleteness, such as is characteristic of all communities of rapid and sensational growth, notably those in Florida and along the Pacific coast, for steam-shovels, road-scrapers, and scaffoldings are much in evidence; streets are being broadened, straightened, and surfaced; hundreds of crowded and insanitary native hovels, hotbeds of disease, have been torn down and the sites not yet reoccupied; ramshackle Oriental structures still stand cheek by jowl with steel and concrete office-buildings.

The commercial life of the city focuses in the spacious square known as the Place de France, from the center of which rises a lofty Oriental clock-tower. Starting at the clock-tower, an extremely broad thoroughfare, lined by banks, steamship agencies, curio shops, restaurants, cafés, and consulates, runs down to the débarcadère, where passengers land who arrive by sea. This east and west thoroughfare divides the commercial city into two sections. To the north lies the European business quarter, with its banks, stores, office-buildings, and hotels, nearly all of modern construction. Immediately to the south, surrounded by an ancient crenelated wall, are the souks, which here consist not of covered passageways, as is the case in most Moroccan cities, but of a tangle of narrow, crooked, cobble-paved streets, just wide enough for two carriages to pass, the trash-filled shops being kept for the most part by Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, and Indians. Though here are to be found none of the charming examples of Moorish art which make bazaar-shopping in Fez and Marrákesh so delightful, the curio dealers, who appear to have imported their stocks from Japan and Germany, drive a roaring trade, particularly when war-ships and tourist-steamers are in the harbor.

At the back of the business quarter is the new town, devoted in the main to public buildings and apartment-houses, with numerous pleasant parks and fine, broad streets. Conspicuous on a busy corner is the new post-office, an enormous mosque-like building which looks more like a Moorish place of prayer than a place for handling letters. On the steps are native letter-writers, ready to serve the illiterate by writing epistles of love, sympathy, business, or abuse for a small consideration; while at a desk just within the door sits a youth speaking a dozen languages who is supposed to be a human postal-guide, supplying any information which may be demanded of him—usually incorrectly. The various bureaus of the local French administration are pleasantly housed in a long, low building of white plaster which might have been transported bodily from southern California; and in the park close by is a really fine equestrian group, depicting a French cavalryman grasping the hand of a Moroccan spahi, which commemorates the aid given to France by Morocco during the Great War. It is good art, and, what is more important, it is good diplomacy.

Perhaps the most striking and significant of the reforms which the French have effected in Casablanca are illustrated by the lengths to which they have gone in safeguarding the health of the native in matters concerned with food and women. The great public market is the largest, best arranged, and cleanest I have ever seen; for the noise, odors, dirt, and general confusion which are such unpleasant features of many of our American market-places, and of nearly all European, are here wholly absent. The whole place is as immaculate as the operating-room of a hospital, and the public health is further safeguarded by a vigilant corps of sanitary inspectors, who ruthlessly order into the garbage-pails any tainted meats or over-ripe fruits and vegetables.

In the northern outskirts of the city is the abattoir, its tiled decorations giving it a Moorish atmosphere hardly to be looked for in such a building, which has been constructed on the most approved lines under the supervision of slaughter-house experts from Chicago and Kansas City. I didn’t visit the upper floors, where the killing is carried on, because in my life I have witnessed more than a sufficiency of bloody scenes; but the lower floors were so scrupulously clean, even though it was a busy day, as the decks of a war-ship. What with the thoroughly scrubbed concrete floors, and the white tiled walls, and the neat white smocks of the butchers and their assistants, it is a place where a beast of any discrimination should positively enjoy being slaughtered. The animals which are here transformed with neatness and despatch into steaks, chops, and cutlets consist of cattle, sheep, and a few mules and horses. Such few pigs as there are in Morocco die of disease or old age, never by the knife of the butcher, for pork is anathema to all Moslems. In the words of Mr. Armour—or was it Mr. Swift?—every portion of an animal which enters the Casablanca slaughter-house is utilized save the squeal; and it would not be surprising were the French, with their well known reputation for thrift, to conserve even that in the form of phonograph records!

Somewhat further to the east, and more convenient of access from the town, is a community dedicated to the practice of the oldest profession in the world. It is what would be known in America as a “red-light district”—the quarter of the prostitutes. Instead of attempting to stamp out vice, which would be utterly impossible in an Oriental country like Morocco—there is a native proverb to the effect that the Moorish temperament consists of five parts, and that four of them are passion—the French have wisely decided to isolate it and, by official supervision, keep venereal maladies down to a minimum. Like the Yoshiwara of Yokohama, the prostitute quarter of Casablanca is a self-contained community, with its own bazaars for the sale of food and merchandise, the whole encircled by a wall with police goumiers at the gate. The “daughters of pleasure” are of every Mediterranean nationality—Berber, Arab, Moresque, Ouled-Naïl, Senegalese, Egyptian, Greek, Spanish, Syrian, even Circassian. You pay your money and you take your choice, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you make your choice first and pay the lady afterward. The range is amazing. Every sensual whim, every national taste, is catered to. Here you can find mountains of female flesh from the Jewish quarter of Tunis and visions of slim brown loveliness from the mountains of the Ouled-Naïl; hard-faced hussies from Tangier and lustrous-eyed houris from Marrákesh; strapping, coal-black negresses from the Niger country and dainty damsels from Mogador and Saffi, their Spanish blood betraying itself in their pink and olive skins and their bewitching eyes. It should be understood, of course, that this quarter is patronized almost wholly by Europeans and natives of the lower class, particularly by the soldiery, the more well-to-do finding their lady-loves among the hordes of French, Spanish, and Italian filles de joie who carry on their trade within the city. The regulations governing the quarter are very strict. Each girl is examined at frequent intervals by a government physician, and, if she is found to have contracted a venereal disease, her “ticket”—that is, her license—is taken away from her until she is cured. The whole town is new from the ground up, the narrow lanes, whose cobbles are scrubbed until they shine, being lined with quaint, charmingly decorated little houses, which might be the studios of artists, with tiled roofs, blue or bright-green doors, and softly tinted walls of rough-cast plaster. The French architect whose creation it is evidently put his heart into the task.

Because of its excellent communications by sea, land, and air, Casablanca is the commercial, just as Rabat is the political, capital of Morocco. It is four days from Bordeaux by the steamers of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique; overnight from Tangier and about two and a half days from Marseilles by the vessels of the Paquet Line; and it is a port of call for the Belgian mail-boats which ply between Antwerp and Matadi, in the Congo. (When Mrs. Powell and I came up from Central Africa and Senegal in 1925 we disembarked at Casablanca, that being my third visit to Morocco.) A service of fast trains is now in operation between Casablanca and Rabat, fifty miles away; and the narrow-gage line to Marrákesh is shortly to be standardized, if it has not been done already. Excellent motor roads run northeast to Rabat, Mequinez, and Fez; southeast along the coast to Mazagan, Safi, and Mogador; and south to Marrákesh, which can also be reached by a longer and poorer but very interesting road via Kasbah Tadla, which cannot be taken, however, without special permission from the military authorities. Telephonic communications with the other cities of Morocco, and the cable service with France, are good and remarkably inexpensive. There is also a daily airplane service between Casablanca and Paris via Málaga and Toulouse, letters bearing an air-post stamp which are dropped into the box at the general post-office in Casablanca in the morning being delivered in Paris on the afternoon of the next day. I forget the price of an airplane ticket from Casablanca to the French capital, but, if I remember rightly, it is no more expensive than first-class travel by train and boat.

Should your stay in Morocco be limited, you had best take the great trunk highway which runs from Casablanca almost due south to Marrákesh, a distance of 160 miles; but, if time is no particular object, and you can spend a night or so en route, I should advise you to follow the coast road through Azemour, Mazagan, Safi, and Mogador, glimpses of these picturesque and interesting cities amply compensating the traveler for the additional distance and fatigue.

Azemour, in turn a Carthaginian colony, a Roman outpost, and a Portuguese trading-station, and containing remains of all three occupations, lies half a hundred miles to the southwest of Casablanca and a mile and a half inland, where the Um-er-Rabi’a, here wide, deep, red, and rapid, comes swirling down from its birthplace in the High Atlas to meet its mother, the ocean. The impetuous Um-er-Rabi’a—the name means Mother of Grass—the second most important river of Morocco, is as long and wide as the Thames, but quite unnavigable because of the bar at its mouth and its numerous waterfalls. Azemour, the Arabic for “wild olives,” which stands on its southern bank, once marked the southernmost outpost of the sultanate of Fez, but in 1513 it was captured by the Portuguese; Ferdinand Magellan, the first circumnavigator of the globe, who was an officer of the expedition, was wounded during the assault on the town and lamed for life.

Just beyond, set on the edge of a curving bay, unusual on this coast, is Mazagan, the port of Marrákesh and the outlet for the products of the rich region known as the Dukála. It was built at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the Portuguese, then at the height of their sea-power, but they abandoned it to the Moors in 1769, the settlers moving to Brazil, where they established another colony, New Mazagan, on the banks of the Pará. The massive ramparts and crenelated battlements raised by the Portuguese give to Mazagan a very un-Moorish atmosphere, which is accentuated during the hot season by the thousands of Europeans who flock there for the sea bathing, its splendid plage of pearl-white sand being dotted with hotels, casinos, bathing-cabins, and gaily colored umbrellas. Incidentally, Mazagan is noted throughout Morocco for its oysters, crabs, and lobsters, so those who are fond of seafood would do well to stop for lunch at one of the restaurants perched on stilts above the sands.

Next, as we push down the coast, comes Safi, the principal outlet for central Morocco’s wool and grain. It has no harbor worthy of the name, vessels being compelled to anchor in the open roadstead, whence communication with the shore is very difficult and dangerous when a northwest gale is blowing. The most conspicuous building in the town, and the only one worth visiting, is an old palace built by one of the Filali sultans—I think it was Mohammed XVII—whose beautifully tiled courtyards justify a brief inspection.

By far the most beautiful and interesting of the Moroccan coast towns, however, is Mogador, capital of the province of Háhá. Its dazzlingly white houses, encircled by an ancient wall, crown a little rocky peninsula jutting into the sea, which, when the wind comes from certain quarters, almost turns the place into an island, as in the case of Mont-Saint-Michel. On the landward side is a broad belt of gray-white sand-dunes—a miniature Sahara were it not studded with frequent patches of fragrant broom—and beyond, far as the eye can see, stretches the green mass of the Great Argan Forest, a densely wooded area one hundred and fifty miles long by thirty wide. Approached from this side, Mogador bursts on the view like a magic city hovering between sea and sky, which has led the Arabs, with their addiction for romantic nomenclature, to name it Es-Sueira—the Picture City. The name by which it is known to Europeans is a contraction of Sidi M’godol, a local saint who won a wide reputation by his ascetic piety. It is one of the cleanest towns in the empire and has one of the best harbors, driving a profitable trade in almonds, gums, olive-oil, and goatskins with England, France, and the Canary Islands. Mogador, in fact, provides a novel and most interesting gateway to southern Morocco, and one of which those in quest of the picturesque and unusual might profitably take advantage, for it has a weekly service of British cargo steamers, clean and comfortable, coming direct from London by way of the other Moorish ports.

From Sidi M’godol’s city we turned sharply inland, the hood of the Renault now headed toward Marrákesh, due east and, as the road runs, something over a hundred miles away. For the first half-dozen miles our way wound amid a wilderness of sand-hills, their wind-smoothed surfaces casting an intolerable glare beneath the African sun; and our minds harked back to when, long weeks before, we had pitched our tents amid just such dunes in the Grand Erg Oriental of the Sahara. Here, however, the dunes were of but brief duration, and then our road plunged abruptly into the cool green depths of the Great Argan Forest. The argan, which is found nowhere else in the world, belongs to the Sapotaceæ family and is a distant cousin of the gutta-percha tree. Its fruit, which ripens between May and August, is a nut somewhat resembling an olive and is a favorite food of camels, mules, goats, sheep, and cattle; from its kernel the natives extract an oil much used in the cookery of southern Morocco. But horses, like Europeans, refuse to touch the fruit in any form because of its nauseous flavor. Horses are highly intelligent animals.

And so, after a few delightful hours in the forest, and many hot and tiresome ones upon a dusty plain, dotted with clusters of conical thatched huts, called nuállas, like those of Central Africa, each village encircled by a zariba of thorn-bush to keep off marauders, we topped a little rise just as the sun was dropping out of sight beyond the horizon’s rim, and looked down upon red Marrákesh. There are certain cities which cannot be approached for the first time by a traveler who has any imagination in his soul without a feeling of solemnity and deep anticipation. Such are Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad, Samarkand, Delhi, Peking; and to that list Marrákesh may fittingly be added. The Morocco City of our childhood, as the school geographies of those days erroneously called it; built nine hundred years ago by Yusuf ibn Tashfin and until very recent times all but inaccessible to unbelievers; the seat of monarchs whose splendors rivaled those of Harun al Rashid; associated since its beginning with cruelty and oppression; long notorious as a center of the slave-trade; its hectic history written with sword-points dipped in blood; it has ever been a city of mystery and high romance, beckoning alluringly to the adventurous traveler.

It lies in the center of a spacious plain—Bled el Hamra, “the Red”—barely a dozen miles from the underfalls of the High Atlas, whose mighty ranges sweep round it to the south and southeast in a tremendous arc, purple-flanked and topped with snow. As befits an imperial city—for it is one of the four capitals of the empire—Marrákesh is surrounded by a lofty wall, broken at regular intervals by huge square towers, wall and towers alike now crumbling into ruin. The city is encompassed and interspersed by luxuriant orange-groves and gorgeous gardens, and both within and without the walls are numerous broad open spaces of sun-baked earth, like Indian maidans. Rearing itself majestically above the expanse of crowded, flat-roofed houses, few of which are more than two stories in height, forming a landmark which can be seen from afar, is the Kutubia tower, a striking memorial of the architectural genius of the early Moors and one of the most famous monuments of its kind in the world. Without the town, forming a broad band of vivid green between it and the encircling plain, are acres of date-palm groves; hidden amid the greenery are low-walled gardens from which rises the fragrance of apricot, pomegranate, and orange blossoms; little rivulets, grandchildren of the Tensift, meander amid the stately trees; and from their nests atop the roofs and walls and towers white storks gaze benevolently down upon the passer-by.

It is fitting that Marrákesh should be called “the Red,” for, with the exception of the Kutubia mosque and a certain gate brought in pieces from Spain, there is not, it is asserted, a single stone building in the city, and even bricks are sparingly employed. The almost universal building material is a rammed concrete of red earth and stone called tabiya, and consequently everything in the city and its immediate vicinity—houses, walls, mosques, towers, ramparts, even the soil itself—is of a deep red-brown hue which changes beneath the afterglow to a gloriously rich and rosy shade of coral.

In Marrákesh, as in Fez, the Transatlantique has two hotels; one in the heart of the city, the other in the southern outskirts. The former, made over from an old Moorish palace, leaves much to be desired in the way of comfort, at least so far as the rooms are concerned; but the latter, known as the Mamounia Palace, recently completed and open only during the “high season,” is a really magnificent establishment, in fact the best application of the Moorish style to modern purposes that I have seen, which in beauty of decoration and completeness of equipment is the equal of any of the great tourist caravansaries of Florida or California.

The most conspicuous object in the city, dominating and dwarfing all else, is the splendid minaret of the Kutubia mosque already mentioned, both it and the similar but inferior Tower of Hassan at Rabat being of the same type as the contemporary Giralda at Seville; and, if tradition may be trusted, the same architect, Jabir, was responsible for all three. Its massive walls are of hand-hewn stone, mellowed by time and weather to a lovely shade of terra-cotta; inlaid in the upper portions of the four façades are enameled tiles of the “lost” shade of Persian blue, the equal of which for loveliness of color I have never seen save only in the Ulug-beg at Samarkand. Its cupola is thatched with very ancient glazed tiles of a beautiful jade green; and impaled on the slender spire itself are three glittering balls that, according to the Moors, are of solid gold, though the French controleur civil assured me that they are but gilded copper. The mosque to which the Kutubia belongs is a large brick structure, the interior a forest of marble columns, which was built by Abd-el-Mumin, the first of the Almohade rulers, under whom the Moorish Empire reached the zenith of its fame and glory at the close of the twelfth century.

The life of Marrákesh, which has not far from one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, focuses in the great central market-place, still called the Sinners’ Concourse, because there, within the memory of men still young, were held the wholesale executions by which the sultans punished revolt and put fear into the hearts of their subjects. It is the scene of that well known painting entitled “The Justice of the Khalif”—I think it is by Gérôme, but I am not certain—in which a Moorish ruler is depicted seated on his white horse, beneath the green umbrella, surrounded by his viziers, chieftains, and slaves, while stretched in long rows on the bloodied ground are the headless corpses of those who dared oppose his will.

To my way of thinking, the souks of Marrákesh, which comprise the district known as the Kaisariyeh, are the most interesting in all North Africa, and this despite the fact that the city, unlike Fez, has only one manufacture of importance, that of Morocco leather, which is here dyed in every color of the spectrum and made up into articles of every conceivable kind. The workmanship is generally inferior, however, and I should strongly advise any one in quest of leather goods—pillows, portfolios, and the like—to visit the studio of a well known French artist and his charming wife (I forget their names, but every one knows them) in the little house they have built just outside the western gate of the town. The house itself is a gem of modern Moorish domestic architecture; and the garden, with its masses of brilliant flowers, its pool, and its kiosks, is a place of sheer delight.

Hard by the street of the leather-merchants, just beyond the souk where are manufactured the vividly colored cords of silk or wool used to support the leathern pouches which all Moors wear slung over their shoulders in lieu of pockets, is the armorers’ bazaar. Here weapons of every sort—rifles, pistols, simitars, and daggers—are displayed in bewildering variety. During a preceding visit to Marrákesh I had invested somewhat heavily in the short curved knives, with damascened blades, ivory or jeweled hilts, and sheaths of embossed silver, which are the favorite weapons of the Southland. Being a collector of blade weapons, I am not particularly interested in fire-arms, however, or was not until a Syrian acquaintance showed me a pair of long-barreled Moorish rifles which had been offered for sale that day by a tribal chieftain from the Sus. The barrels were nearly eight feet in length, bound with countless bands of hand-wrought silver, each of which was exquisitely arabesqued or bore an Arabic inscription. The stock of one was of some rare old wood, incrusted with silver and inlaid with ivory; the other was even richer, being set with colored enamels and semiprecious stones. Such pieces seldom come upon the market, for they were family heirlooms which had been handed down through many generations. The asking price was exorbitant, but I was determined to become their owner even if it necessitated my returning to America second-class. The negotiations, conducted by my obliging friend the Syrian, consumed the better part of a week, but the night before our departure he brought them to me at our hotel, having succeeded in beating down their owner to the limit I had fixed. To-day they repose in a glass case in an American museum, but of the hundreds who view them daily I suppose there are few indeed who pause to think of the desperate affrays in which they spoke with tongues of flame, of the unbelievers against whom they were leveled, of the turbaned sheikhs who once bore them on their red saddle-bows as they rode on their raids across the desert. To the unimaginative they are, I suppose, but queer old guns.

By reason of its situation at the mouths of the passes which lead through the Atlas to the Sahara, Marrákesh was for centuries an important center of the slave-trade, in fact the greatest market in northwest Africa for the “black ivory” brought across the desert by caravan from the Niger country and the Sudan. This accounts, of course, for the great number of coal-black faces seen in the city’s streets and for the negroid features of so many of the southern Moors. With the coming of the French the open traffic in human beings was perforce abandoned, but that should not be taken as meaning that slavery in Morocco no longer exists, for the institution still survives, though in a restricted and less ostentatious form. Most of the wealthy Moors own slaves, as do all the great caïds and pashas, a fact of which the French are perfectly aware, though for reasons of policy they close their eyes to it. They have, however, succeeded in effectually breaking up the trans-Saharan slave-trade, and, with the sealing of this great source of supply, slaves are becoming increasingly difficult to secure and have advanced enormously in price.

There are several dealers in Marrákesh—and the same is true of Fez—who are always in a position to supply trusted customers with negro slaves, both male and female, at a price, though I was told that the Circassian slave-girls, always at a premium because of their beauty, can no longer be obtained. The prospective purchaser tells the slave dealer what he wants, and the latter goes about the business of supplying his customer’s requirements just as an employment agency supplies its patrons with domestics. When I was in Marrákesh in 1925 a French official of the Bureau Arabe told me that the market price for a young girl of good physique was about three thousand francs, which was equivalent to about one hundred and fifty dollars at the rate of exchange then prevailing. Many American men, it might be remarked, spend as much as that on one of their lady-friends in the course of a single evening—and usually get less value for their money.

Let me make it amply clear, however, that the conditions described in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” do not now exist in Morocco, whatever may once have been the case. A slave who is dissatisfied with the treatment she (or he) is receiving can always demand to be sold, and, furthermore, can refuse to be sold to a prospective purchaser of whom he does not approve. All this is, of course, very exasperating to the old-fashioned Moors, who were brought up to believe, like the planters of the pre-war South, that their slaves were as much their property as their horses and their dogs, and that they were at liberty to treat them as they pleased and to dispose of them as they chose.

“Allah only knows what the world is coming to,” they complain bitterly, “when a slave-girl begins talking about her ‘rights’! In our fathers’ time, when a girl talked thus, she got a touch of the bastinado. Why, if this sort of thing keeps on, Morocco will soon become as impossible a country to live in as the country of the Frangi, where, it is said, a cook actually has the insolence to demand that she be permitted to go out on Sunday afternoons. By the beard of the Prophet, we Moors are coming to a pretty pass when we permit such a state of things!”

This seems as good a place as another to speak of the position occupied by Moorish women. To begin with, it should be explained that polygamy is by no means as universal in Morocco, or, for that matter, in any other Oriental country, as is commonly assumed, for, though a man may legally have four wives and as many concubines as he pleases, the size of his harem must of necessity conform to his financial condition. And, even if a man can afford to maintain the full quota of wives permitted him by Koranic law, he generally prefers to spend his substance on concubines, for these do the work of the house, and, if they bear their master no children, they may be sold like any other chattels. Polygamy, generally speaking, is confined to the rich, or at least the comfortably well-to-do, for the facility of divorce makes it much cheaper for a man to change wives frequently than to keep several at the same time. An American, by way of illustration, finds it more economical to keep only one motor-car, and turn it in every year or so for a new one, than to keep his garage filled with machines which stand idle a large share of the time. The age-old question of feminine jealousy also proves a deterrent to the maintenance of large matrimonial establishments, for a man who does not treat all of his wives with equal generosity is not likely to lead a very tranquil domestic life. The sultan, who is said to have upward of five hundred women in his harem, must have his troubles!

In Morocco girls frequently marry at ten or twelve, and a man is looked upon as a confirmed bachelor if he has not entered the state of matrimony before he is out of his teens. Old maids are virtually unknown, for a woman, be she ever so unattractive, is useful for doing the household chores, though a girl of slender figure stands a far slimmer chance—if I may be permitted the pun—of making a good match than does a fat one. For flesh is considered a prerequisite of feminine beauty in Morocco, and, writers of fiction to the contrary, a Moor wants no slim and dainty damsels lying around his harem. To obviate so unfortunate a physical defect, a young girl, upon approaching the marriageable age, is, like a Strasbourg goose, subjected to a systematic course of stuffing. After each meal an ambitious Moorish mother compels her daughter to swallow a dozen or so of sausage-shaped boluses compounded of flour, honey, eggs, and butter, thus producing the corpulency which the Moors consider essential to a truly lovely woman. Because of this process of fattening, and of total lack of exercise, a woman’s avoirdupois increases with her years, so that by the time she has reached her middle twenties she is, if Allah has been kind to her, a series of fleshy billows, waddling and rolling along like a four-master under full sail.

When a man marries he gives the bride’s father a money present, but this does not amount to a purchase of the girl, as some have asserted, for she always brings to her new home furniture and household utensils worth considerably more than the bridegroom’s gift, and, in case of divorce, she retains possession of them. Until a woman becomes a grandmother—usually at about thirty—and loses her beauty, she is forbidden to so much as speak to any of the opposite sex save only her husband, sons, father, and brothers; even an uncle or a cousin would not dare to salute her on the street should he be able to recognize her beneath her swathing of burkha, haik, and barracan. And the husband who, upon returning home, finds a pair of women’s slippers outside the anderun, may under no consideration enter, because he knows that some one else’s wife or daughter is within.

Thus encloistered, with no outside interests whatsoever to occupy their minds, it is not surprising that the thoughts of these prisoners of the harem should turn to sensual things. Nor should it be assumed that, by reason of the constant surveillance to which they are subjected, Moorish women are invariably chaste, for husbands sometimes are called away, slaves may be bribed or cajoled, windows may be reached by ladders, and every door has its key. Where there is a will there is usually a way. The truth of the matter is, as Mr. Budgett Meakin has remarked, that nothing short of the unexpurgated edition of the “Thousand and One Nights” can convey an adequate idea of what goes on within those whited sepulchers, the high, blank walls of Moorish homes.

All women save the wives of the rich possess sufficient skill in sewing or embroidery to be able to support themselves in case of need, for, strictly speaking, a husband is required to supply his wife only with a head-kerchief and slippers. As a rule, Moorish wives have very little money, and it is a common thing for wives to steal from their husbands in order to purchase clothes and even food. Candor compels me to admit, however, that such incidents are not unheard of in more highly civilized countries.

In Morocco divorce is a very simple matter—at least for the husband. When he tires of a wife all he has to say is, “Woman, I divorce thee! Get thou hence!” whereupon she has no option but to return to her own family. In theory, it is true, she may get a divorce from him, but this is extremely difficult in practice. All women, divorced or otherwise, are regarded as widows, and may remarry six months after the death of a husband or three months after a divorce. The husband may repent and take his wife back a first and a second time, but after she has been divorced three times he may not marry her again until she has been wedded to some one else and divorced. The Moors, who are an impulsive, hot-tempered race, frequently divorce their wives on the flimsiest grounds. For example, when a man swears by the haram—that is, by the forbidden—and does not fulfil his oath, he has to divorce his wife. Miss Sophie Denison, the English medical missionary in Fez of whom I have already spoken, told me of a young Moor of her acquaintance, newly wedded and genuinely in love with his wife, who, while strolling with a friend one day, took his oath over some trifling matter. Unable to keep his vow, he returned home and divorced his bride of a few weeks. The story does not end tragically, however, for when the prescribed interval had elapsed he remarried her.

A short distance without the splendid Aguenaou Gate of Marrákesh, one of the finest in all Morocco, are the gardens of the Aguedal, the pleasure-place of the Moorish sultans. It is in reality an enormous orchard, two and a quarter miles long and a mile and a half wide, surrounded by a lofty, bastioned wall, its fruit-trees—oranges, lemons, figs, and olives—set out in ordered rows. In the center is a reservoir, or tank, as it would be called in Persia, about six hundred feet square and edged with a marble coping. Toward one end of the inclosure is a second pool, somewhat larger than the central one. On the edge of the smaller of the two pools is a Moorish pavilion with a spacious marble terrace, where, on hot summer evenings, the women of the imperial harem sometimes come to bathe and to enjoy the comparative coolness, for during the summer Marrákesh becomes unendurably hot, the mercury frequently rising to 110° in the shade. Personally, I think that the Aguedal is vastly overrated, for, when we were there, the buildings were in a state of disrepair, the roads leading through the gardens were deep in dust, and the lake reflected the scorching rays of the African sun like a sheet of burnished copper. Toward nightfall, however, when the heat of the day has passed and the pavilions and the trees are mirrored in the peacock-tinted waters, it must be very lovely.

Journeying south from Casablanca the observant traveler can hardly fail to note the steady decrease in the numbers of French soldiers, until, by the time Marrákesh is reached, the European fighting-man has almost disappeared. For, as has been remarked, the whole of the Southland is under the rule of the Grand Caïds, and its towns are garrisoned by their own soldiery—ruffianly looking nondescripts, for the most part, though the well drilled household troops of El Glaoui, the most powerful of the native chieftains, wear uniforms which vie in gorgeousness with those of the Shereefian Guard.

The military forces in Morocco consist normally of twenty-two regiments of infantry, six regiments of cavalry, and twelve battalions of artillery, which, with the special service organizations, give a total of 22,000 French troops and 47,000 Moroccans. To these must be added a force of native auxiliary troops, including the Shereefian Guard, having a strength of approximately 24,000 men, so that it will be seen that even in peace-time some 93,000 soldiers are employed to garrison the country, though this number was trebled, if not quadrupled, during the fighting in the Riff. Two divisions recruited from native Moroccans served with marked distinction in the Great War and are now quartered on the Rhine, where they have been a cause of much dissension, the Germans claiming that they are colored troops, to which the French retort that the Moroccans are Berbers and, therefore, Caucasians. That France has found in Morocco a valuable source of man-power goes without saying, and this the French intend to exploit to the fullest degree; but to assert, as has one American writer, that “the population of Morocco could furnish her [France] possibly a million of glad and willing defenders in case of need” is, of course, absurd. The total population of French Morocco, as estimated by the French themselves, is something under five and a half millions, yet Belgium, with a population nearly half again as large, even when fighting for her very existence, was never able to place anything like a million men in the field. Though such statements are doubtless good propaganda they are grossly misleading.

Though in Marrákesh there is a French garrison—composed almost wholly of spahis and Senegalese—and a considerable staff of army officers and civil officials, pains are taken to see that the military are in evidence as little as possible. This is due, no doubt, to a desire to conciliate El Glaoui, the great overlord of the Southland, who wields a power which is almost despotic. If a native jeweler has a gem which he covets, he takes it, and pays for it or not as he pleases; if he hears of a beautiful girl, he sends his slaves to her home and without so much as a by-your-leave has her brought to his harem, and her family do not dare to voice a protest; if a man defies him he has him bastinadoed or thrown into the terrible dungeons of the prison called Hib Misbah; if the tribes under his jurisdiction revolt, as occasionally happens, he drowns the rebellion in a sea of blood. Like all great Moorish gentlemen, El Glaoui is a charming host, gracious, generous to a fault, and thoughtful of his guests’ comfort, but there is that in his smoldering eyes and relentless mouth which warns one that it would not be safe to cross him.

It may be asked, in this connection, whether the people of Morocco, as a whole, are really contented under French rule and desire to see it continued. I do not think so, though in saying this I realize that I am taking issue with the opinions so loudly expressed by the members of several self-styled “American missions,” who have been invited to Morocco by the French government for purposes of propaganda and who have been flattered with free motor trips, reviews, dinners, and decorations. It is true that the agricultural population of the country is awakening to a realization that French rule means for them strict justice and freedom from oppression; the merchant class views the protectorate with favor because it spells peace and increased prosperity; the Grand Caïds will remain loyal to France just so long as they find it profitable to do so. Yet among the mass of the people, particularly in the hinterland, there exists, if not actual discontent, at least a feeling of sullen resentment that the land of their fathers should be ruled by foreigners and unbelievers. That the people of Morocco are vastly better off under the rule of France than they were under their own sultans, no fair-minded person can deny, but the same may be said with equal truth of Egypt and the Philippines, where England and the United States respectively have conferred enormous benefits on the native populations. Yet both the Egyptians and the Filipinos want to rule themselves, and the Moroccans, unless I am very much mistaken, want the same. For colonial powers have found, over and over again, that to impose their rule on native peoples, no matter how just and kindly and beneficial that rule may be, is to incur, as Kipling puts it,

Sultan Mulai Yusef was in residence in Marrákesh during my last visit save one to that city, and through the courtesy of the French authorities it was arranged that I should meet him. The audience was to take place in the imperial palace, a huge, wall-encircled congeries of buildings near the Aguenaou Gate, at ten o’clock in the morning. I was accompanied by the Vicomte de Trémaudan, an official of the French civil administration who had volunteered to act as interpreter, and by an American friend.

“The etiquette of the Shereefian court is very strict,” explained de Trémaudan, “and must be punctiliously observed. Upon entering his Majesty’s presence we are expected to stop and bow, to advance a little way and bow again, and then to move forward a few more paces and bow a third time.”

“I’ve met quite a number of kings and emperors in my time,” I remarked, “not to mention a whole raft of shahs and sultans, and with all of them one bow was quite sufficient; but if the sultan insists on his guests performing the Daily Dozen as they approach him, why, I have no objection.”

Alighting from our car at the entrance to the palace, where a detachment of the Garde Noire presented arms, we were conducted by chamberlains through an interminable series of courtyards, corridors, and anterooms, between rows of saluting soldiers and salaaming slaves, emerging at length into a vast marble-paved courtyard bathed in the hot African sunshine. Assembled on a terrace at the farther end of the court, and evidently awaiting us, was a group of white-clad figures, one of them, apparently a person of importance, standing somewhat in front of the rest.

“That is the sultan,” whispered de Trémaudan. “Now don’t forget what I told you about bowing.”

“All right,” I responded. “As citizens of a true democracy we’ll do our best to make an impression on royalty. Here goes.... One ... two ... three....”

We stepped out with the precision of Prussian guardsmen. When half-way down the court de Trémaudan whispered a word of command, at which we came to a sudden halt, clicked our heels together, and bowed as a single man. Ten yards on we repeated the performance. And, arriving opposite the waiting figure, we did it all over again. Whereupon a French officer, who had been watching us with considerable amusement, called out to de Trémaudan:

“But this isn’t the sultan, mon vieux. This is the master of ceremonies, who is waiting to conduct you to his Majesty.”

De Trémaudan’s face turned to the color of the ribbon which he wore upon his breast, and I felt as once I did when, taking part in amateur theatricals, I got too far down-stage and found myself outside the descending curtain. But I had made all the obeisances I intended to; I had no more flummeries left in my system; so, when we were shown into an inner court and from a small pavilion Mulai Yusef himself advanced to greet us, I bowed with the respect which is due to the head of any government, be it Moroccan or American, whereupon the Prince of True Believers shook me most democratically by the hand and pressed me into a chair beside him.

I don’t know how old Mulai Yusef is, but I should guess that he is somewhere in the middle forties, though it is difficult to tell the age of an Oriental. As might be expected, he has none of the characteristic features of the Moor, for he is not a Berber but an Arab. He is a man of medium height, his portliness emphasized by his voluminous garments, with a full, almost bloated face, sleepy-looking, kindly eyes which have a glint of humor in them, full red lips, a wonderfully clear olive skin, and, like all Moors of the upper class, a scraggly fringe of beard along the line of the chin. He wore a djellaba of some finely woven creamy white material, the hood of which was drawn up so as to cover his head and partly shield his features; beneath the hem of his garment showed slippers of soft yellow leather. About his dress, in fact, there was nothing whatsoever to distinguish him from any other Moorish gentleman.

The little kiosk, or pavilion, in which the sultan received us was exquisitely decorated in the Moorish style, his Majesty sitting on a broad divan in the native fashion, though we were provided with incongruous-looking French chairs upholstered in yellow satin. During the audience, which lasted perhaps three quarters of an hour, the conversation touched on many things—the sultan’s hope of some day visiting the United States (which, I have found, is a stock remark of monarchs in talking to Americans), the beneficence of French rule in Morocco, what I had seen in the empire, and where I was going. All mention of political questions was noticeably avoided. So innocuous was the conversation that I had the feeling that I was talking to a puppet and that I could almost see the French official who stood in the background dexterously manipulating the strings. Negro slaves served us with tiny cups of thick black Arab coffee and Turkish cigarettes; the sultan placed his hand upon my shoulder in a sort of benediction and expressed the pious wish that Allah watch over us on our journey; and we sidled from the presence in what strove to be a dignified compromise between American informality and Eastern etiquette.

It was one of those glorious days of blue and gold, so rarely found anywhere outside of Morocco and southern California, when we set out from Marrákesh on the last lap of our long journey, our final objective the forbidden Sus. The sky was an inverted bowl of bluest Chinese porcelain, and before us a burnt-umber plain, flat as the top of a table, stretched away, away, to where the Atlas Mountains “stand up like the thrones of kings.” As we left the Red City behind us and took the ancient road by which conquerors and caravans have come up from the Sahara since ever time began, I found myself humming those lines of John McGroarty’s:

It was late spring, the ideal season in which to see any country, and the land was as gay with flowers as a woman’s Easter bonnet. Nowhere else have I seen flowers grow as they do in Morocco; for, instead of being interspersed, the various species hold aloof from one another, each confining itself to certain ground, which gives to the landscape the appearance of a vast, old-fashioned coverlet. Dark blue, purple, yellow, white, and scarlet—iris, bugloss, marigold, lily, and poppy—occurred in patches of several acres; as we approached the lower slopes of the mountains whole hills and valleys were blue with borage and convolvulus. At times the road wound across a carpet of green and yellow mignonette; at others it was banked by drifts of asphodel, white lilies, daisies, lavender, thyme, and broom. On one occasion, while Tomine was repairing a puncture, Mrs. Powell and my daughter picked thirty varieties of wild flowers in half as many minutes. After seeing this amazing floral splendor one understands whence the Moors obtained the inspiration for their chromatic art; but, like most really beautiful things, it is of brief duration, and under the scorching sun of Africa it soon sinks into the russet monotony of withered herbage.

It is said that when Sidi Okba made his great march from the Nile to the Atlantic he and his warriors rode in the shade of trees all the way. But even if this statement once were true—and the Arabs are fond of exaggeration—it is true no longer. Nevertheless, Morocco is by no means destitute of arboreal beauty. The cork-tree, which once provided the country with an important industry, has lost ground enormously, the Moroccans being unable to keep pace with Portuguese and Spanish competition; but it is still found in great numbers in the Ma’mora forest, twenty miles in length, which lies between the Sebu and the Bou Ragrag, and there is a similar and even larger forest not far from Mequinez. I have already spoken of the vast argan forest, nearly five thousand square miles in extent, to the east of Mogador; while on the lower slopes of the mountains the mimosa, the aloe, and the prickly pear are abundant, and higher up evergreens, pines, and junipers, cypresses and cedars, clothe the mountain valleys in mantles of vivid green. Of the individual trees, none is more remarkable than the arar, a cypress-like tree which is found both in the Moroccan and the Algerian Atlas. From its beautiful and enduring timber was built the roof of the famous cathedral at Cordova; it has been identified with the citrus-wood of the ancient Romans; and it furnishes a valuable variety of gum.

For some reason most people think of Morocco as an extremely hot country, yet, save in the far south, it is not even a subtropical one, having, in fact, much the same climate as the lands on the opposite side of the Mediterranean, to which its flora and its general physical character bear a striking resemblance. It has been described as a cold country with a hot sun, and this is true on the whole, though it is manifestly unsafe to generalize regarding a region so extensive in area and so varied in altitude. The coast, shielded by the maritime ranges from the hot winds of the Sahara and fanned by cool breezes from the sea, has a climate akin to that of the Riviera, but without the chilling mistrals and the sudden changes in temperature which make life on the Côte d’Azur so trying at times. Inland Morocco becomes extremely disagreeable, however, during the summer heat and winter rains, the best times for visiting the interior being from late September to early December and from the end of April to mid-June. Like California, it is a country of extremes, for, looking across the orange-groves from the windows of my room in Marrákesh, when the thermometer stood at nearly 100 in the shade, I have seen snow gleaming on the Atlas, less than a score of miles away.

The Atlas, which forms the backbone of the country, is known to the Moors as Idráren Dráren—Mountains of Mountains. And it is appropriately named, for as I have remarked elsewhere, it has a greater average height than the Alps, its series of tremendous peaks culminating in Mount Tinzar, which has an estimated height of fifteen thousand feet, being higher, therefore, than any peak in the United States outside of Alaska. The Moroccan Atlas consists of five distinct ranges varying in length and height but running more or less parallel to one another. Southernmost of the five is Djebel Saghru, or Anti-Atlas, which forms Morocco’s first line of natural defense against the Sahara. Since the dawn of history caravans of slaves, spices, ostrich-feathers, ivory, and gold from Central Africa and the Niger countries have entered Morocco by the passes of the Anti-Atlas, one of them being a gap barely five paces in width, the strata of variegated marbles which form its walls having been polished to a gleaming brilliancy by the camels and bales of merchandise which have rubbed against them through countless centuries.

The main range, known as the High Atlas, which we were now approaching, is by far the longest and loftiest of the five chains. Its southern flanks, being exposed to the hot, dry winds of the Sahara, are almost totally destitute of vegetation; but the slopes facing toward the north are covered with splendid forests of oak, cedar, cork, and pine and inclose numerous well watered valleys of great fertility, in which half-savage Berber tribes, their miserable villages clinging precariously to the hillsides, cultivate tiny irrigated fields with the implements used in the days of Abraham.

For a distance of a hundred miles or more that portion of the High Atlas lying to the south of Marrákesh is a huge blank wall, unpierced by any passes practicable for motor-cars or even caravans; but further to the west a road of sorts crosses the Bibawan Pass at a height of 4150 feet and drops down into the valley of the upper Sus; while beyond it the Goundafi Pass, considerably lower but more rugged and difficult, gives access to the Susi capital of Tarundant.

Perhaps I have not made it sufficiently clear that our destination was the valley between the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas traversed by the River Sus, from which it takes its name and whose ever-flowing stream is sufficient to turn the whole district into a garden. Once an independent kingdom, peopled by a race of warlike and highly fanatical Berber mountaineers, believed to be immensely rich in mines of gold and copper, long closed to trade by imperial decree, and still too unruly to be opened to Europeans, the Sus is one of the most inaccessible, picturesque, and interesting regions in the empire. Caravans laden with copper-ware, olive-oil, butter, saffron, wax, goatskins, dates, dried roses, gold-dust—how their mere enumeration stirs the imagination!—regularly make the four days’ journey over the rugged Goundafi Pass from Tarundant to Marrákesh; and a handful of French officials are now scattered through the district, which is gradually becoming pacified, but it is still regarded as unsafe for foreigners and is officially forbidden to colonists or travelers, permission to visit it being obtainable only from the French resident-general at Rabat, who passes the request on to the Grand Caïds who are the real masters of the country.

It is a region of savagery and grandeur; the soaring, snow-capped peaks, the ramparts of purple rock, the narrow roads bordered by dizzy precipices, the dark and gloomy forests of cypress, pine, and cedar, the leafy glens, the tumbling streams and sparkling waterfalls, the stone villages perched each on its mountain-top, all reminded us of the Grand Kabylia, which the Sus resembles, though on a vastly greater and more impressive scale. The Susi, who speak a Berber dialect called Shillah, are a hard-bitten, wiry race, distinguished in dress by their short cloaks of a brown and white striped homespun and by the fact that they do not as a rule wear turbans. Fierce fighters, shrewd traders, skilled workers in the copper mined from their native mountains, they lead hard, squalid, and frugal lives, being prodigal only in powder and human life.

Now we were in the dominions of the Caïd Goundafi, the great feudal chieftain who is overlord of the Sus; and it was thanks to him that, at the request of General Daugan, the French commander at Marrákesh, our journey was made not only safe but reasonably comfortable. For there are no hotels in the Sus, and, unless Gandoufi makes arrangements for the traveler to be put up at his kasbahs, one is faced with the alternatives of passing a sleepless night in a vermin-infested hovel or of making himself as comfortable as he can in the open.

These kasbahs, which are to be found not only in the fastnesses of the High Atlas but throughout central and southern Morocco, are in reality feudal strongholds, half-palace and half-fortress. They are usually situated far from the beaten paths of travel, occupying positions of great natural strength; for, like the French and English castles of the Middle Ages, they were originally designed with a view to defense against the incursions of the border tribes. With their crenelated ramparts and keeps and bastions, their drawbridges and courtyards, their loopholed walls and massive towers, they are immensely imposing and frequently of astounding size, one of those which we visited bearing a striking resemblance to Windsor Castle. To emerge from a gloomy defile, whose rocky walls rise sheer on either hand, and be confronted by one of these stupendous strongholds frowning down from its lofty site upon the valley below, produces an impression not far removed from awe. The traveler has the feeling that he has been magically transported back into the dim and distant past, “when knights were bold and barons held their sway,” the impression of an earlier age being heightened when he sees a cavalcade of brilliantly garbed horsemen issuing from the bastioned gate and catches on the battlements the glint of steel.

And so, following the winding Sus, we swung down through the green and ever-broadening valley to where, set on a lofty eminence above the river’s mouth, the white battlements of Agadir—the Santa Cruz de Berbería of the Spaniards, the Gate of the Sudan—look out upon the broad Atlantic. Barbary lay behind us; our long journey was at an end. As I stood upon the hill-slopes looking down upon the cluster of square white houses which form the little town, it struck me that Agadir, remote as it is, was in a way symbolic of all North Africa. Its Berber inhabitants converted by the Arabs to Islam, it has been occupied in turn by Portuguese, by Spaniards, and by French, yet the Arabs alone have left any lasting impression. Coveted by the Germans because of its mineral wealth, it almost precipitated a great European war. Whether it will remain isolated, barbarous, and forbidden, or whether it will be opened up to civilization, only the future can determine. But I was too tired to speculate on African problems, so I left the Dark Continent to settle its own troubles and turned my attention to the evening meal. When darkness had fallen we climbed to the ancient fort atop the hill, my wife and I, and, ensconcing ourselves in an angle of the seaward ramparts, gazed out across the silent, star-lit ocean to where, four thousand miles away, lay America—and home. At our backs the ghostly bulk of the High Atlas reared itself skyward in a mighty and mysterious wall. From somewhere amid the shadows of the sleeping town below came the throb of desert drums.

A SHORT GLOSSARY OF ARABIC WORDS AND PHRASES COMMONLY USED IN BARBARY

FOOTNOTES

INDEX

• Abd-el-Aziz, Sultan, 348, 353
• Abd-el-Kader, 159, 295 et seq., 331
• Abd-el-Krim, 367 et seq.
• Abd-el-Mumin, Sultan, 436
• Abd-er-Rahman, Sultan, 347
• Abdallah-ibn-Abad, 212
• Abou Bekr, Arab conqueror, 106
• Abul Hassan, Sultan, 331-332
• Adjim (Djerba), 142
• Adrar, of the Iforas, 163, 174
• Ægusa, Battle of, 63
• Æsculapius, 59
• Africa, Roman province of, 79
• Agadir (Morocco), 350, 457-458
• Agrigentum, Battle of, 62
• Ahaggar Plateau (Sahara), 173
• Ahmed Pasha, bey of Constantine, 252-253
• Air, hills of (Sahara), 174, 218
• Aïssa, Marabout, 234, 402
• Aïssaoua, sect, rites of, Biskra, 233 et seq.
• Mequinez, 402
• Alaoui Museum, near Tunis, 47 et seq.
• Alaric the Goth, 79
• Alcázar, or Al Kasar (Morocco), 364
• Algeciras (Spain), 8, 423
• Algeciras Conference, 351 et seq.
• Algeria, 215 et seq.
• agriculture, 316 et seq.
• conquest, 159, 313 et seq.
• government, 311 et seq.
• inhabitants, 314
• minerals, 318
• motoring, 307 et seq.
• railways, 306
• roads, 305 et seq.
• Tell, 311
• Algiers (Algeria), 278 et seq.
• Arab city, 281
• El Biar, suburb of, 298-9
• French city, 280
• gardens, 299
• Great Mosque, 283
• Jardin d’Essai, 300
• mosque of Sidi er Rahman, 283
• museum, 301
• Mustapha Supérieur, 298 et seq.
• New Mosque, 283
• Notre Dame d’Afrique, Church of, 303
• occupation of, French, 293 et seq.
• palace of deys, 282
• palace of governor-general, 299
• Alhucemas (Spanish Morocco), 366
• Ali V, Sultan, 334
• Alides, dynasty of, 347
• Alix, General, 356
• Almohades, dynasty of, 331, 346, 408, 436
• Almoravides, dynasty of, 337, 346
• Americans in the Foreign Legion, 336 et seq.
• Americans in the Riff, 368-369
• Amor Abbada, Moslem saint, 109
• Amr ibn al Asi, Arab conqueror, 106
• Andalusians, 16, 34
• Anti-Atlas Mountains, 454-455
• Arab invasion of North Africa, 80, 106 et seq., 114, 243, 341 et seq.
• Argan Forest, Great (Morocco), 432-433
• Argo, 151
• Argonauts, 136, 150-151
• Army in Morocco, French, 445-456
• Arouj, corsair chief, 284, 331
• Atlas Mountains, 10, 239, 451 et seq.
• Augustus, Emperor, 78, 121, 309
• Aurés Mountains, 150, 189, 240, 253
• Azan, Colonel Paul, 335
• Azemour (Morocco), 431
• Azrou (Morocco), 378
• Babor, Mount, 267
• Balearic Islands, 69
• Bamaku (French Sudan), 184
• Barb horses, 405
• Barbarossa, corsair chief, 20, 252, 269, 284 et seq., 320, 331
• Barbary, climate, 9, 10
• topography, 10, 238-239
• Barbers of Tunis, 41
• Bardo, palace of, near Tunis, 46 et seq.
• Bataillons d’Afrique, 326
• Batna (Algeria), 241
• Bekri, Arab geographer, 155
• Belisarius, 80, 114
• Beni-Abbés (Morocco), 168
• Beni-Isguen (Algerian Sahara), 217
• Beni-M’zab, 212 et seq.
• Berbers, 57, 61, 101, 117, 125, 139, 340 et seq.
• Bey of Tunis, 45
• Beylerbeys, Turkish, 286
• Bibawan Pass (Morocco), 454
• Biskra (Algeria), 10, 152, 216 et seq.
• Aïssaoua, performances of, 233 et seq.
• climate, 224
• “Garden of Allah,” 226 et seq.
• Ouled-Naïl, dancing-girls of, 230 et seq.
• Villa Landon, 226 et seq.
• Bizerta (Tunisia), 14 et seq.
• Blake, Admiral Robert, 290
• Bled el Hamra (Morocco), 434
• Bled Kebira (Tunisia), 122, 124 et seq.
• Blue Gardens at Rabat, 410
• Boabdil, king of Granada, 330, 347
• Bokharis, 402
• Bône (Algeria), 291, 294
• Bonnier, Colonel, French explorer, 167
• Bordeaux, routes from, 7
• Borku (French Equatorial Africa), 174
• Bou-Hamara, 348, 354
• Bou-Kornein, peaks of (Tunisia), 44, 60, 65
• Bou-Ragrag, river (Morocco), 409
• Bou-Zarea Hills (Algeria), 303
• Bougie (Algeria), 264 et seq.
• British policy in Morocco, 349 et seq., 370 et seq., 385
• Bugeaud, Marshal, 296
• Bu-Maza, “goat-man,” 297
• Byrsa, 57 et seq., 84
• Byzacium, 115
• Byzantines in Africa, 79, 106, 114, 243
• Cæsar, Julius, 78
• Cæsarea (Algeria), 108
• Caïds, Grand, 357 et seq., 362, 445, 455
• Caius Gracchus, 78
• Calcius Herculis, 240
• Cambē, 56
• Camels, 208 et seq., 218
• Cameroons, 164, 352
• Canaanites, 57
• Cannæ, Battle of, 67
• Cape Spartel, 344
• Caracalla, Emperor, 408
• Caravans, 208
• Carpets, Tunisian, 36
• Carthage, 17-18, 24, 32, 56 et seq.
• agora, 85
• Admiralty Palace, 84, 86, 89
• amphitheater, 89-90
• aqueduct, 87, 105
• area, 82
• Byrsa, 57 et seq., 84
• Cathedral of St. Louis, 94
• cemeteries, 93
• circus, 89 et seq.
• Cothon, 84 et seq., 88-89
• Eschmoun, Temple of, 59, 88
• forum, 85
• harbors, 84 et seq., 88-89
• Megara, suburb of, 84
• Museum, Lavigerie, 86, 95-96
• Odéon, 89
• population of Punic City, 82
• Punic remains, 86
• racing, 91 et seq.
• Roman remains, 86 et seq., 89 et seq.
• sarcophagi, Punic, 96
• Scorpianus, house of, 92
• tabulæ execrationis, 92-93
• Casablanca (Morocco), 353, 424 et seq.
• abattoir, 427-8
• communications with Europe, 430
• markets, 427
• new town, 426-427
• Place de France, 426
• prostitutes’ quarter, 428-429
• souks, 426
• Cato, Marcus, 72, 78
• Cervantes, Miguel de, 288
• Ceuta (Spanish Morocco), 365 et seq., 370-371, 403
• Chabet Pass (Algeria), 264 et seq.
• Charles II, king of England, 290
• Charles V, king of Spain, 20, 42
• Cherchel (Algeria), 309-310
• Chergui, island of (Tunisia), 121
• Chotts; see Shats, 149 et seq.
• Christian slaves, Tunisia, 42-43
• Algiers, 288 et seq.
• Christians persecuted, Carthage, 79, 85, 89
• El Djem, 116
• Cirta, 250 et seq.
• Cisneros, Cardinal Ximenes de, 320
• Citroen, André, 181
• Citroen tractor expeditions, 181 et seq.
• Clausel, Marshal, 253, 331
• Cleopatra, 309
• Colomb-Béchar (Algeria), 184, 223, 323
• Color line in French North Africa, 166
• Compagnie Générale Transatlantique services to North Africa, 7, 266, 430
• hotel at Constantine, 259
• hotel at El Hamma, 144, 148
• hotel at El Oued, 194
• hotel at Fez, 382
• hotel at Marrákesh, 435-436
• hotel at Mequinez, 401
• hotel at Michelet, 274
• hotel at Taza, 379
• hotel at Tenes, 310
• hotel at Tlemcen, 331
• hotel at Tozeur, 156
• Congo, French, 160
• Constantine (Algeria), 247 et seq.
• Arab town, 257
• cathedral, 257
• Corniche Road, 249
• Djamaa-el-Kebir, 256
• gorges of the Rummel, 248 et seq.
• history, 250 et seq.
• Hôtel Transatlantique, 259
• Jews of, 258-9
• kasbah, 256
• museum, 257
• palace of Ahmed Pasha, 255-256
• Place de la Brèche, 258
• souks, 258
• Coppolani, French explorer, 166
• Cork industry, 452
• Corsairs, Algerine, 255, 269, 284 et seq.
• Moorish, 417 et seq.
• Tunisian, 42-43
• Cucumbers, 119
• Daia (Algeria), 323
• Dakar (Senegal), 184
• Damrémont, General, 253
• Darfur (Sudan), 174
• Dates, 155-156
• Daugan, General, 359
• d’Aumale, Duc, 296
• de Brazza, Savargnan, 160, 166
• Decatur, Stephen, 291
• de Chambrun, General Vicomte, 388
• Defoe, Daniel, 289
• de Foucauld, Vicomte Charles, 167 et seq.
• Delattre, Father, 95
• de Lesseps, Ferdinand, 152
• de l’Isle, Brière, 166
• Denison, Miss Sophie, 385, 394, 443
• de Trémaudan, Vicomte Louis, 448
• Dido, 17, 24, 56
• Divorce in Morocco, 443-444
• Djebel Amur, 215
• Djebel Saghru, 454
• Djebel Zaghouan, 102, 104
• Djelfa (Algeria), 219
• Djerba, island of, 122, 135 et seq.
• character of, 137 et seq.
• costumes, 139
• Hara Srira, 139-140
• Houmt-Souk, 140 et seq.
• inhabitants, 138
• Jews in, 139-140
• Skull Fort, 141
• synagogue, 139-140
• wild flowers, 138
• Djerid, Tunisian, 149, 154
• Djidjelli (Algeria), 266
• Djorf (Tunisia), 142
• Djurjura Mountains, 249, 264, 269, 273
• Dodds, General, 166
• Donatists, 243, 251
• Douls, Camille, 166
• Dourneaux Duperré, 166
• Dra’a, river, 365
• Dragut, corsair chief, 114, 141
• Dunes, sand, 174 et seq., 186 et seq.
• Dutch bombard Algiers, 291
• Duveyrier, Henri, 166
• Eaton, William, 290
• Edward VII, King, 349
• El Araish (Morocco), 366
• El Bahira, lake of, 19, 44, 83
• El Beloui, “the Barber,” 110-111
• El Biar (Algeria), 298-299
• El Djem (Tunisia), 115 et seq., 126
• El Eubbad (Algeria), 333
• El Glaoui, khalifa of Marrákesh, 362, 446
• El Golea, oasis of, 160, 174
• El Hamma (Tunisia), 144 et seq.
• El Hiba, Moorish pretender, 357
• El Juf, oasis of, 163
• El Kahena, Berber chieftainess, 117, 125
• El Kantara (Algeria), 222, 240-241
• El Kantara (Tunisia), 136
• El Oued (Tunisia), 194
• El Roghi, Moorish pretender, 385
• En-Nasr, Berber ruler, 268
• Ennedi Mountains, 174
• Entente Cordiale, 349
• Eschmoun, god of the Carthaginians, 59
• Es Sueira (Morocco), 432
• Exmouth, Lord, 291
• Faidherbe, General, 166
• Falconry, 200
• Fan, dey of Algiers slaps French consul with, 293
• Fatimite wars, 155
• Felicitas, St., martyrdom of, 79, 90
• Ferdinand V, king of Spain, 269
• Ferryville (Tunisia), 15
• Fez (Morocco), 380 et seq.
• climate, 390
• Companions of the Sick, 389-390
• drainage system, 380
• Great Prayer, 396 et seq.
• history, 381
• hotels, 382
• Karueein Mosque, 383
• leather-work, 387
• massacre of, 355
• mederseh, 383
• military camp, 395
• Mulai Idris, mosque of, 384
• museum, 384-385
• palace of Bou Djeloud, 390
• Palais Jamaï, 382
• population, 381
• situation, 380
• souks, 386 et seq.
• Treaty of, 355
• Ville Moderne, 395
• women, 390 et seq.
• Fezzes, manufacture of, 381
• Filali dynasty, 347
• Flaminius, Roman consul, 67
• Flatters, Colonel, 166
• Foreign Legion, 162, 323 et seq., 336 et seq.
• Fort National (Algeria), 273-274
• Foum-es-Sahara; see El Kantara (Algeria)
• Foureau, Fernand, 161-162, 166
• French policy, Algeria, 311 et seq.
• Morocco, 349 et seq.
• Tunisia, 26-7, 49, 312 et seq.
• Gabés (Tunisia), 117, 122, 136, 152
• Gabés, gulf of, 112, 119, 121, 151
• Gafsa (Tunisia), 156
• Galleys, Carthaginian, 61 et seq.
• corsair, 287
• Gallifet, General, 160
• Gambetta, French statesman, 94
• “Garden of Allah,” 222
• Garden of the Hesperides, 366
• Gazelle hunting in the Sahara, 200
• Gelaa Matmata (Tunisia), 125-126
• Genseric, 79, 215
• German colonies in Africa mandated to France, 164
• German policy in Morocco, 349 et seq.
• Ghadames (Sahara), 166
• Gharbi, island of (Tunisia), 121
• Ghardaia (Algeria), 156, 212 et seq.
• Ghars of Matmata, 127 et seq.
• Ghiata Mountains (Morocco), 378
• Gibraltar, 370-371
• Goletta; see La Goulette
• Gordian, Emperor, 116
• Goths in North Africa, 79
• Goundafi, Grand Caïd of the Sus, 363, 456
• Goundafi, pass of (Morocco), 454
• Gouraud, General, 356
• Grand Caïds, 445
• Grand Erg Occidental, 173-174
• Grand Erg Oriental, 173-174, 179 et seq.
• Grande Mademoiselle, 403 et seq.
• Great Prayer near Fez, 396 et seq.
• Greeks in North Africa, 80
• Guemar, oasis of (Algerian Sahara), 197
• Guinea, French, 160
• Guraya, Mount (Algeria), 267
• Hadrian, Emperor, 87, 105, 316
• Hadrumetum, 56, 113
• Haedo, Spanish historian, 302
• Hafsides, dynasty of, 268
• Háhá, province of (Morocco), 432
• Hamadchas, sect of, 406
• Hamilcar, 61, 63, 65 et seq.
• Hammamet, gulf of, 112
• Hamman Meskoutine (Algeria), 260 et seq.
• Hammon, god of Carthaginians, 59-60
• Hannibal, 63 et seq., 121
• Hanno, 63-64
• Hara Srira (Djerba), 139-140
• Hasdrubal, 65, 77
• Hasdrubal Giscon, 68
• Hassan, Arab conqueror, 80, 85
• Hassan, Sultan, 348
• Hassan Tower at Rabat, 408
• Hatchet, defile of the (Tunisia), 65
• Hercules, Pillars of, 18
• Herodotus, 123
• Hesperides, Gardens of the, 56
• Hichens, Robert, 226
• Hippo Zarytus, 56
• Hoggar Plateau (Sahara), 173
• Hohenzollern, William, 350
• Homer’s description of Djerba, 137, 142
• Horace, 103
• Horses, Barb, 405
• Houmt-Souk (Djerba), 136, 140 et seq.
• Hounds, Saluki, 200
• Hussein Pasha, dey of Algiers, 292 et seq.
• Iarbas, King, 56
• Icosium, 283
• Idráren Dráren Mountains, 453
• Idris, Mulai, 345, 381
• Idris II, Mulai, 345
• Idrisi dynasty, 346 et seq.
• Ifni, Spanish colony of, 364-365
• Igidi (Sahara), 173-174
• Imperial Road to Tafilalt, 378
• Innaouene, river, 379
• In Salah, oasis of, 168
• Isly, Battle of, 297
• Isly, Duke of, 296
• Italian interests in Tunisia, 14
• Italian policy in Morocco, 371 et seq.
• Ivory Coast, 160, 184
• Jabir, Moorish architect, 436
• Jackson, James, English traveler, 405
• Jarabub (Tripolitania), 198
• Jason and the Argonauts, 136, 150-151
• Jewelry, Kabyle, 276
• Jews, Algeria, 258-259, 316
• Morocco, 342
• Tunisia, 53
• Jol, 309
• Joubert, French explorer, 166
• Juba I, king of Mauretania, 103
• Juba II, king of Mauretania, 309
• Jugurtha, 251
• Julia Cæsarea, 309
• Jusserand, Jean Jules, 27
• Justinian, Emperor, 80
• Kabyles, 270 et seq.
• Kabylia, Grand, 11, 263 et seq.
• Kabylia, Lesser, 269
• Kabylia, rebellion, 297
• Kairouan (Tunisia), 49, 80, 100 et seq.
• carpets, 36, 111
• Djamaa Amor Abbada (Mosque of the Saber), 109
• Djamaa Sidi Okba, 105, 107
• Djamaa Sidi Sahab (Mosque of the Barber), 110
• El Beloui, tomb of, 111
• history of, 106 et seq.
• hotel, 107
• Kasbah Tadla (Morocco), 430
• Kasbahs in the High Atlas, 456-457
• Kayes (Senegal), 184
• Kedija, Mount, 274
• Kef (Tunisia), 103
• Key of David, 132
• Khair-ed-Din, corsair chief, 252, 284 et seq.
• Kherrata (Algeria), 264
• Koceila, Berber chief, 117
• Kolea (Algeria), 308
• Ksar-er-Rabit in Sousse, 115
• Kubr-er-Rumia (Tomb of the Christian Woman), 308
• Laghouat (Algeria), 159, 219
• La Goulette (Tunisia), 19 et seq., 44, 80
• Lalla Maghnia (Algeria), 313, 374
• La Marsa (Tunisia), 44
• Lambessa (Algeria), 241
• Lamoricière, General, 297
• Lamy, Lieutenant, French explorer, 166
• Larache (Morocco), 366
• Largeau, Victor, French explorer, 166
• Laroussi, Si Sayah, Grand Marabout of the Tidjania, 199
• Lavigerie, Cardinal, 94-95, 220-221
• Leather-work, Fez, 387
• Marrákesh, 437
• Tunis, 38-39
• Légion Etrangère, 323 et seq., 336 et seq.
• Lella Setta Hills (Algeria), 329
• Leptis (Tripolitania), 70
• Libya, 58, 133, 151
• Libyan Desert, 175
• Lipara, Battle of, 62
• London, Declaration of, 349-350
• Lotophagi (Lotus-Eaters), 141
• Lotus, quest of, 141 et seq.
• Louis IX, king of France, 80, 94
• Louis XIII, king of France, 403
• Louis XIV, king of France, 404
• Lyautey, Marshal, 168, 355, 357
• Maclean, Caïd Sir Harry, English soldier of fortune, 352
• Macta, Battle of the, 295
• Madrid, Treaty of, 363
• Magellan, Ferdinand, 431
• Maghreb-el-Aska, 339
• Mahomet XVI, Sultan, 347
• Ma’mora, forest of (Morocco), 452
• Mansoura, ruins of, 334
• Marabouts, 115, 147, 197 et seq.
• Marchand, Major, French explorer, 178
• Marinides, dynasty of, 346
• Mark Antony, 369
• Marrákesh (Morocco), 434 et seq.
• Aguedal, 444
• Aguenaou Gate, 444
• architecture, 435
• Bled el Hamra, 434
• climate, 444
• hotels, 435-436
• Kutubia Tower, 435-436
• leather-work, 437
• mosque of Abd-el-Mumin, 436
• Sinners’ Concourse, 436
• souks, 437
• visit to sultan, 447 et seq.
• Marseilles, 7, 11 et seq.
• Martel, Charles, “Hammer of God,” 345
• Mascara (Algeria), 323
• Masinissa, king of Numidia, 65, 69, 248, 251, 309
• Matmata Plateau (Tunisia), 121, 123 et seq.
• Mauretania, 163, 167, 173, 344
• Mazagan (Morocco), 431-432
• M’Donnell, Ida, escape, 291
• Medenine (Tunisia), 121, 130 et seq.
• Medjerda, river, 117
• Medrassen (Algeria), 245
• Megara, 78, 84
• Meggarine, Battle of, 159
• Méharistes, 154, 201
• Mekinez; see Mequinez
• Melilla (Spanish Morocco), 365
• Meninx, 137
• Mequinez (Morocco), 400 et seq.
• Aïssa, tomb of, 402
• Bab Bardain, 401
• hotel, 401
• Mansour Gate, 401
• palace of Mulai Ismail, 402 et seq.
• school for princes, military, 405
• school of native arts, 402
• stables of Mulai Ismail, 404
• Mercenaries, War of, 64, 103
• Mers-el-Kebir (Algeria), 320
• Metabia, Arab tribe, 215
• Metaloui (Tunisia), 156
• Metameur (Tunisia), 134
• Michelet (Algeria), 274
• Michigan, University of, excavations at Carthage, 99
• Micipisa, 251
• Miknasa, dynasty of the, 346
• Mjerda River, 313
• Mogador (Morocco), 432
• Montpensier, Duchesse de, 403 et seq.
• Morocco
• Abd-el-Krim, 367 et seq.
• airplane services, 430
• British policy, 348 et seq., 370 et seq.
• capitals, 400
• climate, 9, 453
• conquest by the French, 163-164, 314
• divorce, 443-444
• forests, 452
• French policy, 349 et seq., 414, 416, 446-447
• German policy, 349, 358
• government, 312, 359 et seq.
• Grand Caïds, 357 et seq., 362
• history, 339 et seq.
• inhabitants, 340 et seq.
• Italian policy, 371 et seq.
• Jews, 342
• military forces, French, 445
• Moors, 343 et seq.
• Moroccan troops in Great War, 359
• polygamy, 441
• population, 343-344, 446
• protectorate declared by France, 355
• railways, 376-377, 430
• Riff, 353, 355 et seq., 364
• roads, 306, 377-378
• slavery, 437 et seq.
• Spanish policy, 349 et seq.
• Spanish zone, 363 et seq.
• steamer communication, 430
• Sultan Mulai Yusef, 356, 361, 414 et seq.
• Tangier, 364 et seq.
• topography, 453-454
• wild flowers, 451-452
• women, position, 440 et seq.
• Motoring, Algeria, 307 et seq.
• Morocco, 306, 377-378
• Sahara, 156 et seq.
• Tunisia, 117, 124
• Mozabites, 212 et seq.
• Mtouggui, khalifa of High Atlas, 300
• Mulai Hafid, Sultan, 353
• Mulai Idris (Morocco), 405
• Mulai Ismail, Sultan, 402 et seq.
• Mulai Yusef, Sultan, 163, 356, 414 et seq., 447 et seq.
• Murabti, dynasty of, 346
• Mussolini, Benito, 371
• Mustapha Inférieur, 274
• Mustapha Supérieur, 298
• Neal, Admiral Sir Harry, 292
• Nefta, oasis of, 193-194
• New Carthage (Cartagena), 66
• Oases, Saharan, 154
• Okba ibn Nafi, Sidi, 106 et seq., 229-230
• Omar, Arab khalif, 106
• Oran (Algeria), 318 et seq.
• Othman ibn Affan, 106
• Oued Biskra, 222
• Oued Rir, revolt, 159, 204
• Ouergha, valley of (Morocco), 368
• Oujda (Morocco), 352, 374
• Ouled-Naïl, dancing-girls of, 230 et seq.
• Ouled-Naïl Mountains, 219
• Ourgla (or Wargla), oasis of, 156, 159, 213
• Outih, 56
• Ovid, 91
• Palet, Lieutenant, French explorer, 166
• Payne, John Howard, author of “Home, Sweet Home,” 55
• Penon, at Algiers, 285-286
• Perdicaris, Ion, kidnapping, 348
• Pères Blancs, 221
• Perfume-sellers of Tunis, 33 et seq.
• Perpetua, St., martyrdom, 79, 90
• Perrégaux, General, 253
• Pétain, Marshal, 368
• Phenicians, 56 et seq.
• Philadelphia, U.S.S., in war with Barbary corsairs, 291
• Philip II, king of Spain, 365
• Philippeville (Algeria), 260
• Piali Pasha, 141
• Pillars of Hercules, 366
• Polygamy in Morocco, 441
• Pomaria, 330
• Portuguese in Morocco, 431, 457
• Preble, Commodore, 291
• Ptolemy, 155
• Punic Wars, 61 et seq.
• Quintus Fabius Maximus, 67
• Quiza, 319
• Rabat (Morocco), 408 et seq.
• Blue Gardens, 410
• Borj-el-Hassan (Hassan Tower), 408
• modern city, 412
• museum, 409
• palace of Sultan Yakoub, 409
• school of native arts, 409
• souks, 411
• Railways, Algeria, 306
• Morocco, 376-377, 430
• Sahara, 184-185
• Tunisia, 155-156
• Raisuli, Moroccan bandit, 348, 352
• Ramadan, observance, 44-45, 206
• Redemptionists, order of, 289
• Regulus, Marcus Attilius, 17, 63
• Renault, Louis, automobile manufacturer, 183
• Renault twelve-wheel cars in Sahara, 156, 179 et seq.
• Rhodes, Cecil, 221
• Rhorfa of Medenine, 131 et seq.
• Riff (Morocco), 353, 364 et seq.
• Rio de Oro, Spanish colony, 365
• Roads, Algeria, 305 et seq.
• Morocco, 377-378
• Tunisia, 117-118
• Romans, Algeria, 241 et seq., 265, 268
• Tunisia, 60 et seq., 115 et seq., 144, 155
• Roosevelt, Theodore, 348, 351
• Roudaire, Colonel François, 152
• Routes to North Africa, 7-8
• Rovers, Sallee, 409, 417 et seq.
• Rummel, gorges of, at Constantine, 249-250
• Saddlery of Tunis, 38-39
• Saffron Islands, or Zaffarines (Morocco), 366
• Safi (Morocco), 432
• Sahara, 195 et seq.
• agriculture, 196-197
• Algerian, 311-312
• area, 171
• climate, 9, 195-196
• color, 190
• conquest, 158 et seq.
• date cultivation, 155-156
• oases, 154, 176 et seq.
• railways proposed, 184-185
• scheme for flooding, 152
• topography, 172
• trade routes, 193
• Tunisian, 149
• wells, 176 et seq.
• Sahel, Algerian, 279
• Tunisian, 113, 115, 117
• St. Gerónimo, buried alive, 301 et seq.
• St. Louis, death on last Crusade, 17
• St. Vincent de Paul, captured by corsairs, 43
• Salah Reis, corsair chief, 269, 309
• “Salammbô,” Flaubert’s, 64, 103
• Salé (Morocco), 409, 417
• Salisbury, Lord, 161
• Sallee Rovers, 409
• Saluki gazelle-hounds, 200
• Sand-storms, 191 et seq.
• Santa Cruz de Berbería (Morocco), 457
• Say (French Sudan), 161
• Say, Louis, French explorer, 166
• Sbeitla, Battle of, 110
• Scipio Africanus, 17, 68 et seq., 74 et seq.
• Sebkha-en-Rouan, 83
• Sebkhet-es-Sedjoumi, 19, 44
• Selene, Princess, daughter of Cleopatra, 309
• Selim, Sultan, 252, 285
• Selkirk, Alexander, 289
• Sempronius Gracchus, 121
• Senegambia (French West Africa), 160
• Senussi, 198
• Septimius Severus, 247
• Setif (Algeria), 264
• Shat-el-Djerid, 152, 155
• Shat-el-Fejej, 152
• Shat Gharsa, 152, 155
• Shat Melrir, 152, 222
• Shats, 149 et seq., 153 et seq.
• Sidi Abdallah (Tunisia), 15
• Sidi-bel-Abbès (Algeria), 323 et seq.
• Sidi Bou Medine, 333
• Sidi-Brahim, Battle of, 297
• Sidi-Ferruch (Algeria), 293
• Sidi M’godol, 433
• Sidi Okba (Algeria), 229
• Sidi Okba; see Okba ibn Nafi
• Sidi Salah (Tunisia), 120
• Skull Fort in Djerba, 141
• Slave-trade, 214, 437-438
• Slaves in Barbary, Christian, 288 et seq.
• Solomon, Byzantine, general, 243
• Somaliland, French, 164
• Sophonisba, 68
• Sousse (Tunisia), 56, 107, 113 et seq.
• Spain invaded by Carthaginians, 65 et seq.
• Spanish policy in Morocco, 349 et seq.
• Spanish rule in North Africa, 140, 252, 269, 284 et seq., 320-321, 343, 353, 363 et seq.
• Staoueli, Battle of, 293
• Staoueli wine made by Trappist monks, 318
• Steeg, Théodore, French resident-general in Morocco, 360
• Stone Age, relics, in Morocco, 344
• Sudan, French, 161
• Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan, 286
• Sus (Morocco), 451 et seq., 455 et seq.
• Susi, characteristics, 455-456
• Syphax, king of the Massæsylians, 68-69, 251
• Syracuse to Tripoli, route, 8
• Syrtes, 123, 150-151
• Tababort, Mount, 267
• Tabarca (Tunisia), 79
• Tacape, 122
• Tafilalt (Morocco), 378
• Tafna, Treaty of, 295, 331
• Tamanrasset (Sahara), 168
• Tangier (Morocco), 364 et seq., 372, 419 et seq.
• Tanguin, Battle of, 296
• Tanith, Carthaginian, goddess, 18, 59-60, 89
• Taourirt (Morocco), 379
• Taparura, 119
• Tarik, Berber general, 345
• Tarundant (Morocco), 454-455
• Tasili Plateau, 173
• Taza (Morocco), 378-379
• Tchad, Lake, 166, 178, 184, 193
• Tebessa, 241
• Tell, Algerian, 238
• Tell, Tunisian, 112
• Temacin (Algeria), 207
• Tenes (Algeria), 310-311
• Tensift River (Morocco), 435
• Tertullian, 90
• Tetuan (Spanish-Morocco), 366
• Thamugas, 242 et seq.
• Thapsus, Battle of, 78, 103
• Thines, 24
• Thysdrus, 115 et seq.
• Tibesti Plateau (Sahara), 174
• Tidikelt, oasis of, 154, 166
• Tidjania (Algerian Sahara), 199
• Timbuktu (French Sudan), 154, 161, 167, 169, 178, 184, 193, 208
• Timgad, 241 et seq.
• arch of Trajan, 245
• baths, 245
• forum, 244
• library, 244-245
• Timhadit (Morocco), 378
• Tinzar, Mount (Morocco), 453
• Tisouros, 155
• Tizi-Ouzou (Algeria), 273
• Tlemcen (Algeria), 329 et seq.
• Togoland (West Africa), 164, 352
• Tomb of Christian Woman, 308
• Touareg, 161 et seq., 168 et seq., 177, 201
• Trade routes across Sahara, 207-208
• Trajan, Emperor, 114
• Transat; see Compagnie Générale Transatlantique
• Trinitarians, order of, 289
• Tripoli, American naval demonstration, 291
• Tripolitania, 8, 106
• Triton, sea-god, 150
• Tritonis, Lake, 150
• Troglodytes of Southern Tunisia, 123 et seq.
• Tuat, oasis of, 154
• Tummo Mountains, 174
• Tunis, 20 et seq.
• Alaoui Museum, 47 et seq.
• aqueduct, Roman, 44, 87
• arrival at, 20 et seq.
• Bab Cartagena, 55
• Bab-el-Bahar, 28
• Bab Souika, 40, 52
• barbers, 40-41
• Bardo, palace of, 45 et seq.
• Belvedere, park of, 44
• bey of, 44, 48, 51-52
• Bou-Kornein, peaks of, 44 et seq.
• cemetery, Jewish, 54-55
• cemetery of St. George, 55
• chéchias, manufacture, 40
• Dar-el-Bey, palace of, 43-44
• Djamaa-es-Zeitouna, 50
• Djamaa Sidi Mahrez, 52
• executions, 45
• hats, 39
• Jewesses, 53 et seq.
• kasbah, 42-43
• leather goods, 38
• loot of Carthage, 32
• Medina, 28
• mosaics, ancient, 49
• mosques, 50 et seq.
• Night of the Prophet, 51
• Payne, John Howard, author of “Home, Sweet Home,” 55
• perfume-sellers, 33 et seq.
• Porte de France, 42
• porters, 29
• Ramadan, observance, 44-45
• routes, 8
• saddlery, 38-39
• slippers, 40
• Souk des Etoffes, 36
• Souk-el-Attarin, 33
• Souk-el-Blagdjia, 40
• souks, 30 et seq., 51
• women, 52
• Tunisia, 102 et seq.
• agriculture, 103-104, 112
• area, 111 et seq.
• character of country, 102, 111 et seq.
• conquest, 314
• declaration of French protectorate, 160
• Djerid, 149, 154
• French policy, 26-27, 49, 311 et seq.
• government, 312
• hot springs, 146
• olive culture, 113, 120
• railways, 155-156
• roads, 117-118
• Roman remains, 115
• Sahara, Tunisian, 149, 155
• Sahel, 113, 115
• Shats, 149 et seq.
• sponge-fishing, 119, 121, 138
• Tell, 112
• topography, 112
• Turks in Algeria, 284 et seq., 331
• Tussid, Mount, 174
• Ulric, Admiral, 291
• Ulysses, 136, 142
• Um-er-Rabi’a, Moroccan river, 431
• United States at war with corsairs, 291
• Utica, 56, 69, 72
• Vagas, Martin, Spanish commander, 285
• Valée, Marshal, 253, 296
• Van de Capellen, Admiral, 291
• Vandals in Africa, 79, 87, 114, 243, 330, 344
• Vienna Congress, 291
• Villa Cisneros (Rio de Oro), 365
• Volubilis, 344, 401, 404, 407-408
• Von Bülow, German chancellor, 351
• Wadai (French Equatorial Africa), 174
• Wad Fas (Morocco), 380
• Wadi Martil (Morocco), 366
• Wadi M’zab (Algerian Sahara), 214
• Wahabis in Djerba, 139
• War Mountains, 174
• Wargla; see Ourgla
• Wattasi dynasty, 347
• Weapons, Tunis, 37
• Marrákesh, 437-438
• White Fathers, order of, 86, 94-95, 221
• Wild flowers, Djerba, 138
• Morocco, 451-452
• Women, Algiers, 282
• Djerba, 139
• El Hamma, 147
• Fez, 390 et seq.
• Marrákesh, 440 et seq.
• Tunis, 52
• Xanthippus, 17, 63
• Yakoub, Sultan, 334, 408
• Yarmorasen, Sultan, 330, 332
• Yazid, Sultan, 347
• Yusuf ibn Tashfin, Sultan, 434
• Zab, 222
• Zaffarines (Spanish Morocco), 366
• Zaghouan (Tunisia), 87, 104
• Zama, Battle of, 70
• Zarzis (Tunisia), 136
• Zenata Berbers, 330
• Ziban (Algeria), 222
• Zinder (Niger Territory), 161, 166, 193
• Zouaves, 279
• Zuara (Tripolitania), 8