ALGIERS HHHHHHHiT~^^^m P^II^^^^^bm ilfl ^ ^^ y^WmWWI^^B'^ '7 ^9 1 i en! ... .. ^ I! f} i ALGIERS ALGIERS BY M. ELIZABETH CROUSE ILLUSTRATED BY ADELAIDE B. HYDE A Star in the East NEW YORK JAMES POTT ^ COMPANY 1906 Copyright /gob, by James Pott 8l Company First Impression, September, igob To My Friend CONTENTS PAOB THE FOUNTAIN 3 WAVES 7 NIGHT AND THE STAR 19 IN THE BEGINNING 29 A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR 45 PALACE SECRETS 81 THE PASSING OF THE DETS 93 LAZARUS 109 WITHIN THE CITY GATES 117 THE FACE OF THE WATERS 129 HIDDEN WAYS 143 INTO THE PRESENT 169 CHANCE AND CHANGE 181 FOLLOWING THE STAR 209 AWAY 219 [viijl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS WATCHING THE PEODUCE OF ALGERIA DEPART FrOTltispiece FACING PAGE OMAR-BIN-MOHAMMED 4 THE ANCIENT INNER HARBOR OF THE ALGERINES 10 THE PLACE DU GOUVERNEMENT, THE HEART OF ALGIERS 16 "the palace of THE SULTAn's DAUGHTER" 24 AT THE TEMPLE DOOR 34 A HIDDEN TREASURE 44 ZAPHIRA 52 THE LAST OF THE TRAIN 70 A FAIR PALACE 84 THE FRENCH SOLDIERS 96 IN THE KASBA 102 THE FORT BY THE PORTE d'iSLY 114 TELLING ARABIAN NIGHTS 124 THE MEAL-SACK, THE KABYLE COSTUME, AND THE PURE ARAB DRESS 132 THE FOUNTAIN 144 THE LONG MOSQUE 150 THE TERRACED CITY 164 NOTRE DAME d'aFRIQUE 172 THE TRAPPIST MONASTERY 186 WOMEN 200 THE TEMPLE COURT OF THE FOUNTAIN 206 TUNIS ASPIRES 222 THE GRAVES OF A RACE WHICH BUT FOR ROME MIGHT HAVE PEOPLED THE EARTH 226 [ix] PREFACE THE book is an attempt to express a first impression of the Orient, ob- tained during five months in Algiers. Since the notes were taken, the writer has been in Tunis, and has spent a winter in Egypt. In neither, it seems to her, does the Oriental life compare with that in Algeria, both for grace and beauty. Much, however, of that first impression has been made clear and understandable by comparison with Egypt and further study there, while the feeling most strengthened is that the book itself or some book on Algiers is called for. The country is less generally familiar than other parts of the North African coast. Mo- rocco has been written of — what could be so charming as De Amicis' record? Egypt has been often described and has been visited by those who have seen no other Eastern land. But Morocco — and it may be added, Tunis — shows much which is repellant to us; and Egypt, while possessing the ancient interest, is not all the Orient, nor the best of it. The costumes of Tunis do not compare with those |[W] . PREFACE of Algiers. And the rich coloring of Egypt, which combines so well with its yellow sands; the dark woodwork of the houses; the cos- tumes, dark and less distinctive; the bronze faces of the Egyptian inhabitants; the burli- ness of the Tartar Turks; seem all less fine than the white Algerian buildings in their dense foliage, the white and distinctive cos- tume, the white faces of Algiers. The writer rejoices now that her first experience of the Orient was had in the last named city. There, from the midst of every Western comfort, in surroundings of poetic beauty — the Moorish villas and gardens now belonging to Euro- peans — with all that is repulsive to Westerners in the Oriental life hidden from our eyes, we saw the white Orient in its most ideal aspect, its spiritual meaning. Yet the political situation which revealed this Orient to us, may be its destruction ere long. Algiers is the already conquered cen- ter from which the French nation would spread our Western civilization into Tunis and Morocco. And this is the fact which gives Algeria a peculiar interest for the world to-day. M. E. C. Greenwich, Conn. September 22, 1905. [xii] ALGIERS The Fountain IT was dawn on the hills outside Algiers. The night lights shone among the cypresses. A faint flush rose above the bay, which still held in its bosom the dream of the morning star. A breeze awoke; and the first bird-call broke the silence of the garden. It was a signal. I leaned from my window and listened to the message, watching through the wonderful transparency of dawn the old struggle between Darkness and Light. And it came into my mind how in the morning of the world men had called the Sun and the Earth but one man and one woman, separated and returning to each other; or had said that the Sun was a hero, who lost and recovered some boon. Dark, the condition of absence, was evil; Light was good. Presently the gardener entered my garden, bringing the remembrance that in earliest days it had been sacred to help the Sun in his [3] ALGIERS work. After a time the Earth veiUM herself in a mist like a visible ideal. Then I, the watcher, knew, it is in a southern garden that the fountiiin of poetry, of youth and immor- tality is hid. Omar-bin-Mohamnied is the Genius of this land and of its gardens. He belongs among their rose-leaves, he, the Sf)irit of the East and of the Past. There is a silence and a mystery about him; the incense of his religion is the essence of liis life. I lis love, with her child, he has hidden sacredly away, where labyrinths of beauty lead to inner courts, to flowers and l)atliing fountains. She must never appear unveiled; and he who draws aside the veil of his bride on her wed- ding night should never have beheld the face of any but his own. That is the secret and the romance of the Moorish dwelling. Close in the trees on the hillsides nestle these white Moorish villas, overlooking the exquisite curve of the bay, which is full of changing colors. When one catches a glimpse of the hidden approaches, the cloud-like domes beneath their crescents, light arches springing from marble columns — and all fine openwork inlaid with tiling of brilliant colors — one realizes how fairy-lore and religion [4] Oiuai-bin-Muhainiiicii THE FOUNTAIN itself came out of the East, the land of morn- ing. The West should bring to the Truths, hidden in these generic dreams, the under- standing of developed reason — should redis- cover, and more clearly, what the East in visions dimly perceived. It is marvellous how the Orient remains unchanged through the centuries. Like a vision are the pale figures passing through the French streets; one may sometimes see a shepherd with a lamb in the folds of his white garment. The pages are constantly turned back for us to the beginning. Only a short journey and we enter the living Past and find the Tents of Abraham, and Rebecca at the Well — though the buildings of Egypt and of Rome are in ruins. So is interpreted for us that most wonderful book that ever was written, the oldest and therefore the most sacred, the record of a race's develop- ment told from within, the type-story, the heart-story of the world. Beautiful Orient, thou art the land of the beginning. Thine is the star of revelation. Thine is the fountain of poetry in which the Past expressed its sense of the rhythm of the Universe; and by that rhythm the Present interprets the Dream! [5] WAVES WAVES TWO friends, we had come from Amer- ica to Algiers, and had taken up our abode in a villa belonging to a hotel on the hill. Here we have read and watched, and have gone down into the life of the city and discovered the traces of what has been. For the Moorish life is passing, is now, in many of its beauteous shells, itself a dream which flits whitely through marble courts and arches where we are conscious of it. So we remember and learn. Strange that this morning land of Algeria, this beautiful southern shore long ago over- flowed by the East, should have been to our civilization as a twilight border, beyond which is the desert. There is no national story. It is not a country, but a land; yet a land which was rival and foil to Rome, and over which has swept the whole procession of history, the drama of religion, leaving a very present problem for the French. It is the secret of the charm of Algiers that no otherwhere do the East and the West so meet. [9] ALGIERS It was far to come, but we deemed it true, as Irving says, that there is no such prepara- tion for a new world as the blank of a long ocean voyage; especially if the new world be the old, and at the end of the journey one enters through the narrow gates of Gibraltar into that Sea-in-the-IIeart-of-the-Land, on whose shores men woke to self-consciousness through learning to write, and history began. Nowhere in life or story could one be more suddenly and bewilderingly presented with all the elements which make up the whole, than is the traveller to Algiers on his arrival in that city. Before he can set foot to shore Arabs and Berbers have swarmed over the steamer and blocked the passages; and when he has at last pushed by them, he ascends from the docks and passes along the Boulevard de la Republique, into the Place du Gouvernement, where he finds others congregated. Italians, Maltese, Spanish, French mingle with Moors and Arabs, Hebrews, Kabyles, Negroes and Mozabites from the desert. But it is a French city which he finds — a second Paris. The arcaded Boulevard is built above the hidden warerooms and the arches of the ramparts, which completely conceal the wild cliffs that here border the [10] WAVES bay, and that once formed a natural fortress behind which the old Moorish city rose to its own threatening Kasba on the hill. Like the closing prison-walls of the old story, the French city is rapidly closing upon and crushing out of existence the old El-Djezair. The ter- raced avenue looks down upon the harbor, one of the busiest harbors of France. The water-front is lined with piles of wine casks and cork. The railroad station is there. Every variety of vehicle, as well as flocks of donkeys, comes and goes on the graded ways which lead up beside the ramparts to the Boulevard. On the seaward side of the avenue is a heavy iron balustrade, and lean- ing along it, a line of the most varied figures imaginable. At the end of the avenue is a snow-white Turkish mosque, which strikes at once the keynote of Algiers, and, among French build- ings, forms a beautiful and unexpected finish to the long vista of the Boulevard. It takes up one side of the Place du Gouvernement, the focal point of the city: a square which occupies part of the site of the Djenina, the garden and palaces of the Deys. On the hill behind is the French cathedral; while the dome of the Jewish synagogue rises from the [11] ALGIERS old town. Near this spot were once two Roman cemeteries, and from the square may be seen the remains of a Spanish fort and of a Turkish prison in the harbor. Algeria is a great and unexhausted field for the archaeologist; an interesting puzzle to the ethnologist — but what a living question for the French! The Place du Gouvernement is a bit of the ancient Babel, where all classes and all races meet; not only from the past — the stranded elements of the great waves which have swept this coast — but also from the present south of Europe. The Moors, who with the Arabs form the chief portion of the population, are them- selves a mixture of elements, and even their name is confusing. It is undoubtedly from Mauri, applied, long before the Arab inva- sion, to the first known inhabitants of Mauri- tania; who were also called by the Romans, like all foreigners, Berbers or Barbarians, from which name the Barbary States received their cognomen. When the great Arab inva- sion swept over this same Mauritania, the Spanish called those Arabs who entered their kingdom, Moors; and in those people at pres- ent known by that term the Arab blood pre- dominates. The nearest equivalent to " Moor'* [12] WAVES among the Orientals themselves is the word "Hadar," signifying an Arab who lives in the town in distinction from one who adheres to the free life of his pure-blooded ancestors. Though this shore has been cultivated since earliest times, the Hamitic Kabyles, the other large portion of the population, who are the original Berbers or Mauri, and who are said by ancient historians to be the exiled Canaanites; and the Semitic Arabs, who believe themselves the sons of Ishmael, and whose language is first cousin to the Hebrew, both retain the primitive, patriarchal dress and customs of the old scripture days. Yet they themselves, though having Moses and the prophets, have neither the Hebrew nor the Christian religion, but believe that Mo- hammed was a greater than Jesus. Never- theless, the Kabyle women, not knowing why, make the sign of the cross over their babes when they first put them into swaddling clothes; and the girls have the cross tattooed on their foreheads. This, and the better position of the women among these people, are relics of a time when they were Chris- tianized by the Romans. The very forms of the pottery which these women mould by hand, and which is sometimes so tasteful, are doubt- [13] ALGIERS less a tradition of Roman and Punic art. These people possess also remnants of Roman law and Roman institutions. Theirs was an inaccessible mountain country; while others of their kin, now called Touaregs by the French, retained their independence in the desert. Thus they furnished a haven for the remnants of each race as it was threatened with extinction by successive invasions. Blue eyes and fair hair are now the only traces of refugees, the secret of whose origin died with them. Was it the presence of Aryan blood which has led recent authors quoted by a writer in Harper's Magazine to consider that the migration of our ancestors moved north from Africa ? Algeria, Mohammedan for a thousand years, but Christian in the days of the Romans, is again in the possession of a nation under the spiritual if not the temporal power of Rome; but with that power, in her own land and in Algeria, this nation has been lately contending. Notwithstanding this fact, the French peo- ple are of Catholic Christianity, they are of Western civilization and Aryan blood; and have shown themselves intensely anti-Semitic, at least in regard to one branch of that race. The majority of the inhabitants of Algeria [14] WAVES are Semitic Arabs and Moors, of the East and of the Mohammedan religion. The Turks, their masters preceding the French, though of Tartar blood and hated by the Semitic subjects, were also of an Oriental civilization and devotees of Islamism. The Jews, more cosmopolitan in civilization, are yet of Semitic blood and kindred language with the Arabs and have the early traditions which the Koran adopted; but they differ in the development of their religion and are the more bitterly disliked by the Arabs for their very nearness, while they are despised by the French. The Hamitic Kabyles are also East- ern and followers of Mohammed. And the sum of it all is this : that the West- ern nation which is perhaps most practical of all; whose government is most strongly centralized, all its motives coming from Paris; whose justice seems most nearly absolute, treating Negro, Moor and Frenchman as equals; is in charge of a people whose laws and customs developed from their religion, whose religion itself, whose nature and con- ditions, make for them opposite standards by which to be judged, and unfit them for com- bination with their conquerors or for compe- tition with Western civilization. Yet the West [15] ALGIERS needs the East, from whence have come its dreams and aspirations. Will it be union of the two in Algeria ? The Place du Gouvernement is the heart of Algiers; Algiers is the centre from which the French wish to solve the problem of the North African coast, the coast which is the borderland of our civilization, the margin where history is being written. It is the significance of what has been done in Algiers which gives the place its interest, in view of the situation in Morocco. Possessing Algeria, France has long needed Morocco, the hotbed of her insurrections, the refuge of her insur- rectionists. Neither Morocco nor Algeria has limited its extent into the desert; and the line between the two has never been defined in its southern part. An oasis far down in the Sahara is still a matter of dispute. More- over, in the north, Morocco might dominate the Straits of Gibraltar more effectually than Gibraltar itself, because its source of supplies, its inexhaustible though undeveloped re- sources, are there at hand. France may well dream that with Algiers as a centre, with Morocco at one end and the strategic harbor of Bizerta in Tunis at the other, she will have brought about one of those rhythmic returns [16] WAVES of history, and will have reconstructed for herself another Roman Empire. However, if the French are anti-Semitic, the Moroccans are almost fanatically anti- French, with a stronger antagonism against this European nation than against any other. It is a curious fact that this Oriental people have had for long a legend that a French army would overrun Morocco and a French general would enter its most holy mosque — where, indeed, he would become converted. In Algiers, in the Place du Gouvernement — once with its palace the centre of the city in another sense — one may already read accom- plishment. But what is the meaning of the writing for the world? One must cross the threshold of the Past to comprehend. We stand at the end of the French Boule- vard, above the French shipping; and as we watch Mohammed leaning on the wall, it is the Present which fades into a dream, the Past becomes the real. He is looking at the ancient inner harbor of the Algerines with the Moorish buildings on the jetty; and the white lighthouse like a minaret, its foot on the old Spanish fort, triumphant over the Spanish arms above the door. It is the charmed guardian of the old El-Djezair. [17] NIGHT AND THE STAR NIGHT AND THE STAR PERHAPS through its very contrast with the Present, what is left of the Past and the East draws us more strongly. But altogether many are the difficulties which lie in the way of following the star, of finding the fountain. Though the land is possessed of enchanting beauty, it is prisoned and pro- tected manifold. The French, while them- selves destroying much that was Oriental, have made Algeria difficult of access to out- side enterprise. And not only is there the almost certainly tempestuous voyage, a dragon which guards these shores, but winter and Rhamadan are here sometimes, as both were when we arrived; and the fair land was secluded by clouds and rain, to come forth later with a marvellous luxuriance of flowers. A mantle white as snow lay upon the hills; but when we approached, a perfume filled the atmosphere and the flakes melted into the fairy blossoms of the sweet alyssum. The air is pure and fresh, spicy from roses and oranges and pines and the salt from the sea. It is a land of light; a land of rose gardens [21] ALGIERS and orange groves, cypresses and vesper bells, color and fragrance and the song of birds. "I sometimes think that nowhere blows so red the rose as where some buried Caesar bled"; and here, as in other countries, per- ished Rome. The moon of Rhamadan is waning and the orange buds are bursting into bloom. Never- theless, Nature aids Man in imposing barri- cades, and even Nature has her share in the Past. The hedges are of aloes, of cacti, or of the thornbush from which the crown of thorns was made. From our high position on the hill we can see beyond weird groves of eucalypti, and among the guardian cypresses, the white city on the hill above the bay. It is inexpressibly lovely when the glow of a smile comes over it as it lies dreaming, itself the setting for a dream of fairyland. We know that everywhere through the arcaded streets of the French portion, and along the sea-wall of the Boulevard pass the pale figures from that inner city which has been called the sepulchre of a past life, where the Moor still hides away his love, his treasure and his religion, and, during the fasting moon of Rhamadan, himself. [22] NIGHT AND THE STAR The old city sternly forbids! The solid front which it presented from the water, on closer acquaintance discloses passages like burrows. The building has grown all irregu- larly. It is impossible to decipher the maze. The houses along these passages are each a smaller blank white shape with entrances often below the street level. Within, beyond the door, is the house passage, constructed to conceal; but, if followed, leading, like that which Alice found in Wonderland, to an inner world of loveliness. Every old palace is a secret. Nowhere is this more true than in Algiers. Less known, less visited, than other cities where the Orien- tal life still prospers, the capital of the Bar- bary Corsairs, the valiant City of the Holy Wars, lies here in a mysterious sleep in the midst of a new French town. The French Algiers, while apparently opening to the world the Arab El-Djezair, in reality encloses it more surely than did its ancient walls, with a spirit- ual barrier before which at every point the Arab life withdraws and buries itself. Through the heart of the old town the tortuous, tunnel- like passages are scarce wide enough for two to pass; and the streets form the maze of cul-de-sacs, where no foreigner may find his [23] ALGIERS way. They were streets without name, and houses without number. Each man knew his own and cared not that any other should know. A few small iron-barred windows seem also only to forbid, as does the roughness of the walls, whitewashed over the wooden supports of the projections and over the mar- ble sculpture about the doors, which is merely suggested now, and is the only hint of the exquisite courts and columns often to be seen within. For we, as women, have been privi- leged to visit Moorish women, and we know that up a narrow flight of stairs in an alley and inside these stern dwellings are revealed much grace and charm. First, the master's long reception room, then a passage which turns, forming a screen; and in the heart of the building, with the main rooms opening off the four sides of its upper gallery, is the court, perhaps with flowers and fountain. This arrangement secludes still more securely by a sort of labyrinth the Moor's hidden treasure, his harem. For in this city "Woman's voice is never heard; apart And scarce permitted, guarded, veiled, to move; Yet not unhappy in her master's love, And joyful in a mother's gentlest cares — Blest cares! all other feelings far above, Herself more sweetly rears the babe she bears." [24] NIGHT AND THE STAR So, much that pertains to Algerian life and story is diflBcult to know. History is crys- tallized in the Moorish dwellings; but many beautiful buildings have been swept away by the French. The Turks kept no clear record and did not understand how to make maps; therefore historians pass over their period with the statement that it is too terrible to tell about. The living Orientals of the Pres- ent, in whom is our chief interest, are wrapped in reserve. The fine Semitic face of the Arab is trained to impassivity. Furthermore, it is the Mohammedans' poetic fancy that no image can be made unless something of the soul goes to form it. Therefore, though lov- ing the transient mirror or the pool, which gives them back what they have lost, they dread the evil eye of the lens. The Arab keeps the grace and stately dig- nity of freedom; and his is the veil and the seamless cloak, the flowing white costume than which there is none more majestic in the world. As in his own Arabian Nights, the son of an erstwhile noble sheikh does not hesi- tate to become a merchant in a small way; and, sitting on the terrace in our garden, sur- rounds himself with the rich belongings of his former life. At times his former slaves, [25] ALGIERS the wild, fanatical blacks from the desert, fill the air about him with monotonous magic music from their weird instruments, as if to summon back the atmosphere of the Past. Yet, though we see him here, or find him sleeping where once was the gate of his city, or watch him gazing at the ancient stronghold of the inner harbor, it is only when we follow him through the gates of his temple that our eyes are touched with sight, and we realize how his inner life goes on. Here are courts again with founts for purify- ing, where the worshiper bathes his feet ere treading holy ground; and here is the inner place of prayer, where his face seems to wear a rapt expression, quite above even noticing the intrusion of our watchfulness. Surely it is part of the spell of Algiers that so much is hidden, and some things are inac- cessible. The more one seeks the more one realizes that the buried treasure is inexhaustible — until every stone speaks and one fathoms the secret of his origin in the color of a native's eyes. This is another world that lies hid in the heart of the French Algiers; a world whose walls are white as tombs, whose inhabitants are clothed in white, hooded and cloaked, with veiling haiks like clouds of the ideal; [26] NIGHT AND THE STAR figures whose motion is stillness, whose dream- ing eyes look back within the Past. All is wrapped in mystery; all is asleep; the essence of the Orient, a dream. We know that within those low doors, which one must stoop to enter, is many a romance, and a beauty as mysterious as the outward reserve which conceals it. In those villas on the hill, now many of them in foreign hands, was once the magnificence of fairy palaces, in whose courts still linger the orange blossoms, the ripple of fountains, and almost the scent of incense and of burning aloe wood. It is difference, not distance, that counts. And we find ourselves haunted and under the spell, entranced. We must dream, sometimes hap- pily, sometimes in deepest melancholy. But the dreams are true. We are not only taken to the Past, but lifted from our ideas of ma- terial worth to a larger universe, till we repeat, "What is man that thou art mindful of him; or the son of man that thou visitest him .5^" Go forth in the stillness of night, under the stars. The silence is full of a secret; the white walls shine in the darkness; the white robed figures are still. In it all is symbolized and out of the silence spoken, the truth that spiritual revelation is the secret of the East. [27] IN THE BEGINNING IN THE BEGINNING THESE are our gleanings from quaint old French books — how heavy for the French! — and from the labor of those English scholars who cared deeply for the Oriental life or loved Algeria before Egypt called to England. Especially do we draw upon the writings of one solemn Englishman, who, working for his government here beside the study window with the beautiful view, became enamored of the lightsome grace of this land, and attempted in his serious Eng- lish way to tell its story. Therefore if the tale wax dull or move a trifle heavily at times, the reader will forgive. It was and is a labor done for love. According to all these historians the Ka- byles are the earliest historical inhabitants; Kabyle, from the Arabic word for tribe, hav- ing more recently been applied to that portion of the Berbers or Barbarians — so named by the Romans — who now inhabit the mountains of Algeria. They are supposed by some [31] ALGIERS ancient writers to be the exiled Canaanites, for several Roman authors describe two col- umns of stone found near the present Tangier, with the inscription: "We are they who fled from Joshua, the son of Nun!'* There is something fascinating in these early efforts to account for everything. Their success in this case is established by ethnolo- gists to-day, who generally believe the Ka- byles to be Hamitic — and assuredly Canaan was the son of Ham. When the Semitic Phoenicians — Queen Dido fleeing from her royal brother at Tyre, as legend tells us — ^founded Carthage, and from there gained control of the coast, the Berbers were never subjugated. In the long struggle between Carthage and Rome, which was carried on over all this country, when the Semitic civilization gave way to the Aryan, and a new era was marked in the world's development, the Berbers fought, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other; but always, even after the Roman conquest, maintained a certain independence, under such leaders as the famous Jugurtha, and Juba who married the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra. Juba was a man of much personal beauty, whose learning was so re- [32] IN THE BEGINNING markable that Plutarch called him, "the greatest historian amongst kings"; and Pliny thought him more remarkable for his erudi- tion than for his crown. His son, Ptolemy, ruling after him, was summoned by the ever jealous Caligula to Rome, where, ostensibly because of the attention his rich garments excited, but more probably for his treasure, he was disposed of. He was the last native ruler to be recognized by the Great Power of those days. But gradually, some of these Berbers, those called Kabyles now, entrenched themselves in the mountain fastnesses; while others, the present Touaregs, found in the wide desert their field of freedom. The earliest definitions of the tribes of North Africa by ancient geographers cor- responded roughly to the present divisions of this country; and, though varying at differ- ent stages of development, the general lines have more or less persisted. Cyrenaica, the eastern portion, adjoining Egypt, remained intact whether as kingdom or province. The first Roman province, Africa Propria, made out of the Carthaginian state, lay next; and was, even in Roman days, divided into two portions similar in limits to the modern Tripoli and Tunis. [33] ALGIERS After Africa, came Numidia, now the French Algerian province of Constantine; and from Numidia to the Atlantic the country was known as Mauritania. The Romans divided it first into Mauritania Orientalis and Mauri- tania Occidentalis ; the former equal to what was left of the country which is now Algeria, and the latter, the present Empire of Morocco. History has made one of her curious reversals so that Western Mauritania is now the more Oriental. A later Roman division of Mauritania Orientalis prefigured the division of that por- tion of French Algeria into the remaining two provinces; that part next to Numidia becom- ing Mauritania Setifensis, and corresponding to the province of Algiers, with the Roman town of Icosium, the modern city of Algiers, to mark its western boundary. Mauritania Csesariensis represented the modern French Oran. At the time of this Roman division Mauritania Occidentalis became Mauritania Tingitana — now Morocco. During the Roman occupation, many fa- mous Romans were connected with "Africa" — the name which the Romans gave to the first province, the Carthaginian state, and which has extended to the whole continent. [34] At the Temple Door IN THE BEGINNING Q. Csecilius Metellus and Marius were lead- ers in the Jugurthine Wars. Immediately afterward raged over this country the conflict of those Titan Romans, whose family rela- tions and personal ambitions made for a period the history of the world; and whose gigantic figures are clear across the centuries and personally dear to the youth of our own age — Pompey, Scipio, Cato, Labienus, Caesar. This struggle took place before the end of the Berber kingdoms, and Berber kings of Mauritania fought first for one, then for the other rival. In this way they lost their pos- sessions and many lives; and the whole of North Africa became nominally a part of the Roman Empire. It was when Caesar had brought a measure of peace, that Sallust was given the governor- ship of Numidia. Poor Sallust! from all accounts the business of making history in this capacity was less suited to him than the writing of it. He was but an indifferent ruler and was glad to return to Rome and to see Juba restored by Augustus to his own. How- ever, after the murder in Rome of Juba's son Ptolemy, the emperors no longer attempted to give North Africa Berber rulers. The provinces prospered mightily for the [35] ALGIERS Romans in the three centuries which fol- lowed. Emperors not only came from Africa but she made emperors. It was a common saying in the home city: "What use to exile a man to Africa ? He will find there a second Rome!" The city of Algiers, as has been mentioned, was then the Roman Icosium — a station on the road along the coast — the French have made of her to-day a second Paris. Beneath the Rue de la Marine is the principal Roman thoroughfare, and two Roman cemeteries lie buried near the Place du Gouvernement in the Rue Bab-el-Oued and the Rue Bab-Azzoun under the gayest portion of the present town. There are still the remains of what is sup- posed to be a Roman aqueduct, spanning a lonely valley where the spring flowers grow. On the day when we visited it, a black cloud hung above the arches, as if the curtain of oblivion had been for a moment lifted, until an indelible impression should be made, and would then descend again. Back in the Algerian country are the sites of cities more important to the Romans, con- nected by a portion of Rome's network of great roads, roads which served to feed the world from Rome, the centre; and thus to [36] IN THE BEGINNING bind her possessions, not externally into a heterogeneous mass, but from within, into a state better organized than any empire formed before. The ruins of one of the ancient cities, which we know as Timgad, in Algeria, are impress- ive beyond those of Pompeii. There is a story that they were recently discovered by two shepherd boys who took shelter under the top of the triumphal arch, and, digging in the sand, found carvings on their impro- vised house. The city has been all un- covered since — arch and amphitheatre and forum, streets upon streets revealing the per- fect ground plan of the dwellings. It is a place of sunshine and of utter silence now — in which the soul goes back, freed from the bonds of time. During those earlier Roman centuries and afterward, while the shocks of the struggles between the Eastern and Western Empires were felt along this coast, Latin Christianity came unobtrusively into being, and is said to have had its birth in Africa, the birthplace and the place of death of the great St. Augus- tine. With Christianity were associated a new set of great African names, including TertuUian and Cyprian. Unfortunately, a [37] ALGIERS bitter schism arose in the Church over an episcopal election; and the rebellious and defeated sect of the Donatists took refuge among the mountain Berbers, who were also Christianized. Then followed the third great invasion of this coast since the arrival of the Berbers: that of the Aryan Vandals, coming from nobody is quite sure where, though there are three clearly defined and mutually disputant theories. The Vandals were admitted into Mauri- tania across the narrow Strait of Gibraltar by the Roman governor, Boniface, the disciple and friend of St. Augustine. He was driven to the treacherous act, because falsely accused of treachery by his jealous rival ^tius, who, being in Rome, had the ear of the regent Placidia. Thus this change is connected with a woman, whose story is one of the most dramatic to be found in history. The Van- dals were aided by the Donatists. Conse- quently, so divided among themselves, the Romans, in spite of the remorse and the des- perate efforts of Boniface while St. Augustine lay dying in Bona, were unable to hold the provinces. The religion of the Vandals is known as Arian Christianity. [38] IN THE BEGINNING The Vandal leader, Genseric, raided Sicily and Italy, and brought from Rome itself to Africa the golden candlestick and the holy table of the temple at Jerusalem. But the Vandals were themselves vanquished by the luxurious habits of the conquered Romans, into which they fell; and Byzantium, taking advantage of this weakness, destroyed their power. However, she could not establish her own over the native tribes. The sacred emblems were rescued by Belisarius and sent to Jerusalem, on which journey they mysteri- ously vanished from the knowledge of the world. Another century passed, and Africa as a Byzantine province under the Patrician Gre- gorius became independent even of Byzan- tium. Then from the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the end opposite to that from which the last invasion came, began a move- ment, a migration, unparalleled in history. Not for race or country, the adherents of a fight- ing religion swept over the entire coast and submerged it. Their one means of prosely- ting, the sword; inspired by a faith in imme- diate, eternal glory for him who dies in war; they fought with an abandon which rendered them as supernatural fiends to their enemies. [39] ALGIERS Nothing could withstand them. Enclosed in a horde of Berber allies, the army of Byzan- tines, with a vitiated faith, was conquered by the fire of a religion far purer in precept than their own had become in practice. With this conquest, also, are connected the stories of women. One of these is the legend of a Berber queen who called her people to council, where she declared it her belief that the Arabs were envious of the riches of the Berbers. She told her subjects that there was but one thing for her nation to desire, and that was independence. Eloquently she argued that the riches, which now endangered that independence through Arab cupidity, were intended by a higher power to do so. The danger was a revelation that the riches were wrong in themselves, a temptation to luxury which would render the nation weak to resist the envy it excited. With a fiery patriotism she urged them to destroy all their wealth, that they might preserve their free- dom in a life of simplicity. Led by her, the Berbers fell upon their own towns and de- stroyed them ; cut down their beautiful palms ; buried their jewelry. But all to no avail. The invincible army swept on. The first wave had started from conquered Egypt under [40] IN THE BEGINNING the brother of the Khalif Othman. It re- turned — but the tide rose. Another wave followed and remained. The recently inde- pendent state of Africa, once a Roman prov- ince, became the Mohammedan province of Ifrikia. The Berbers yielded their adopted religion if not their independence. Islamism reached the mountain peaks, and — except among a small number of Copts in Egypt — Christianity, though with struggles and reac- tions, was wiped out in Africa. At the nearer side of the gate to Spain the Mohammedans were stopped. Both sides of the Strait were held by the Visi-Goth warriors of that country; until Count Julian, The Trai- tor of Spanish history, in revenge for a per- sonal grievance to his daughter, invited them to enter, by the way the Vandals had come down into Africa. " Multitudes of the Moors (Berbers) followed the Arabs into Spain, and the Europeans gave the African name to their Asiatic conquerors." A large army of pure-blooded Semitic Arabs remained in the southern continent. The provinces of Africa were governed by Emirs, under' Haroun-al-Raschid and the Khalif s of Bagdad. Their capital was the sacred city of Kairouan near Tunis. How- [41] ALGIERS ever, about 900 A.D., a Berber of the prov- ince of Constantine, claiming descent from Fathma, daughter of the Prophet, overthrew the followers of the reigning dynasty of Khalifs. His successors, sweeping easi again, established the Fatimite Khalifate at Cairo, which was itself deposed some centuries later by the old orthodoxy and made its final stand in Persia. When the Fatiniites first concjuered Syria, they banishetl the desert Arab tribes of that country to Upper Egy})t, whence they spread like a horde of locusts, according to Ibn Khaldoun, westward over the whole of North Africa. Those Berbers who were not absorbed — with the remnants of Vandals, Byzantines and Romans — took refuge in their mountains. These wild, free Arabs, though banished from the cities, still roam over coun- try and desert as if, indeed, some ancient curse compelled their wandering. Several centuries later a sect of Moham- medan warriors arose in Morocco and spread its power as far east as Tripoli, with its capi- tal at Tlem9en. Thus the waters surged back and forth. A desert tribe finally con- quered most of the country, leaving the large cities independent powers. Algiers had been founded under the protec- [42] IN THE BEGINNING tion of the Fatimite Khalifate on the site of Icosium; and had been given the name "El- Djezair," "The Isles," for the islands lying out in the harbor. The whole name was "El- Djezair Beni-Mezghanna," "The Islands of the Children of Mezghanna." It is notice- able that the coast cities of North Africa are built on the west side of bays and thus face the rising sun. In the centuries following its founding Hebrews were driven to El-Djezair by per- secution in Europe, yet they are hated by Moors as well as by. Christians, and, more than the Christians, are despised by the Moors. There is an Arabic saying to the effect that Christians may be forgiven — they are ignorant; but the Hebrews should know better. Yet, though the existence of the Hebrews in Africa was barely tolerated, it was existence; and these miserable people were so thankful for mere life that when in later years the Span- iards threatened El-Djezair they besought Heaven to save it, and Algerine Jews still keep a day of thanksgiving for the storm which destroyed the Spanish fleet and de- livered the city. For seven hundred years the Mohamme- dans flourished. Theirs was the civilization [43] ALGIERS of the East and their Semitic race have ever been the dreamers and the teachers of the world. Into Spain they had carried their best, all the beauty and fire of the East; and had held up the lamp of learning in those Dark Ages, when the light of Rome had been well-nigh extinguished. The struggle with them developed the Spanish bravery and thirst for conquest which wrought out history in a new world. The taking of Constantinople by the Turk- ish Mohammedans shut off the trade upon which Europe depended, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean; and caused those quests of the European nations for a new way to the old world, which resulted in the dis- covery of a new world instead of a practical new way. That awaited the making of the Suez Canal and England's keeping. With the driving of the Moors from Spain and the rise of Turkish power, began the chapter in Algerian history which gave us most of the old city as we have it to-day. [44] A Hidden Treasure A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR THE monastery bell close by has rung the evening hour and I have lighted my candles for the departed day. It was so beautiful. I kneel beneath my win- dow, resting on the broad sill. Below are masses of orange flowers, with the roses under them; and beyond the cypresses, the blue curve of the bay, and the white city veiled in purple shadows on the hill. A story within a story, as the Arabian Nights are told, there comes to me the tale of Zaphira, Princess of El-Djezair. Changed from a few pages, perhaps half legend, in the quaint old French book of Laugier de Tassy, it comes to me out of the shadows and I know it in all its truth. Zaphira walks in the shades of the garden; and the falling twi- light is strangely like the dawn of another day. It was a day as heavenly fair in its be- ginning, when the Emir Selim-bin-Teumi [*7] ALGIERS watched the crescent and the morning star above the bay. In him the finest instincts of his race had risen to their flower; in him the Oriental tide of mysticism was at full flood; all his soul filled with a pure wonder. This was his wedding day; and Selim-bin- Teumi's life was as clear as the atmosphere of dawn. He knew how, years before, his father had stood in the self-same place, when his own life dawned. Before the father, as now before himself, was even then the one object which had darkened the old Emir's reign, the Spanish fort. A short time previous to Selim's birth the Spaniards had taken the last stronghold in Spain from the Mohammedans; and, as Teumi, the father, learned from cap- tive Christians, from out the Alhambra itself had sent a man across the Sea of Darkness to discover a new way to the treasure coun- try of India, that the Christians might avoid the Mohammedans in the Mediterranean and at Constantinople, where the Turks had cut off Europe from the caravan route. There were fabulous stories of how this man had found a new world for Spain; and that coun- try was now sending her ships westward, to return laden with pure new gold. But the [48] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR Moors, though defeated, had never been resigned; and from without the fair kingdom of Spain, they continued to harass her shores, until Ferdinand, strong in all he had gained, swooped down like an eagle on the African coast and around into its bays. Its eastward- facing cities one by one fell before him, and he set a fort to watch over each. El-Djezair he could not take, but the fort was there, the last link in the chain, on one of the very isles which had given its name to the town. The Emir was not afraid for the city itself — he could defend it; but to his high spirit and to his people, the fort was an insult which poisoned their lives. Since it had been com- pleted and left with its little garrison, they had tried furiously to take it; and, finding such efforts useless, had settled to attempts by siege and famine. They had captured the vessels which brought its supplies. The garrison almost miraculously held out— by a strange chance there was a fresh spring on the island— and there stood the fort, guarding the bay of the Algerines, practically closing their own harbor to them. Teumi beached his boats on the other side of the point, which meant harder work for the Christian slaves. Nevertheless, he had longed to free his peo- [49] ALGIERS pie from the insult, and to avenge it. As he had watehed on a certain morning, he had been exultant in the helicf that a son was to be born to him who would accomplish what he had been unable ti> <1»>. All w;is j)repared in the palace for the birth festivities. Suddenly, while he watehed, .1 star fell. His heart stood still. Then' raii}^ tlirou/^li the palace the death-wail of the women. He threw his arms toward lieaveri I lieu <()ven'd his eyes and stood (|uiveriug. Ibit when he had deseen(le(l ;ind women brout^ht tin- boy to him, he fell in a swift rush a e«'rtain conso- lation. Instantly he saw that for a new- born babe the child was strangely beautiful; and the large dark eyes th.it ga/ecl at him seemed even then unmi>takably those of Aziza. Aziza lived in her son. A sense of all that the boy would be to him suddenly filled his soul. Nevertheless, with the feel- ing of possession in this new form, again came fear. "As beautiful as the full moon," he would have said, but dared not, lest the evil eye be east upon the son. " Praise be to him who created such a being; may he be thy protector," he murmured with white lips. So was born Teumi's son, the present young Emir, who stood now in his father's [50] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR place; and so was the week of his birth festivity, with its gathering of relatives and friends, turned into a period of mourning. Aziza was not interred, as the poorer people, in the earth, without a protection; but half- seated, in a tomb which faced the East; and the tomb was enclosed in a lattice. It was so shielded that the Emir might visit it on his Sabbath, when the souls of the dead may return to the earth. To be sure, keeping company with spirits was women's business, therefore no men were allowed in the ceme- teries on that day — except the Emir with his private entrance to his private tomb — ^for his love was great, and that it was women's busi- ness mattered not to him. He did as he would have had his wife do for him. On the seventh day, with his own hands, he killed the sheep in the great court of his pal- ace; and in the midst of a large company, he named his man-child, Selim; and he con- sidered how he should keep him from the evil eye and plan for his happiness. He called a council of wise men to confer on this serious subject. As they sat before him on cushions on the floor, one told him of a boy kept in a subterranean chamber till he should be grown ; but the youth had one day escaped, and then [51] ALGIERS began for him a series of most evil adventures. "Yea," continued another sage, "a father took his son to an uiiinliahited island and there hid him in a cliainlxT under the ground during the period for which a warning had been given; but strange eircumstanees led the boy's slayer to hide in a tree-to|» in the same desolate island tlie night before the youth was brought there; and though the two made friends, the son was kiUed by acci- dent on the final day of the fated period. To fly from fjite is to nisli in a circle into its arms." So, thinking it over, the father de- cided U})on two things: he would keep the boy beside him; and, in order that his son might find pei'feet happiness, the custom of his coimtry should be fulfilled to the letter, he should never see face of any wcjman before his marriage. Thus Selim grew; and even the slaves went veiled before him. And the fort remained unconquerable in the harbor. As the years went on, the Emir had told his son of the mission before him; told him of his birth and the reason for his seclusion; and finally had betrothed him to the daughter of Haroun, a ruler of the Berbers, with whom he had made an alliance. The fame of the maiden's beauty had not then gone abroad [52] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR — only Teumi knew of it, and his knowledge had come about in this wise. Because of her beauty, Zaphira, the Berber princess, had been almost as secluded as the Emir's son. She had been taught the wom- anly accomplishments, had worked over her little embroidery frame, and could sing to a guitar, with a voice which melted to tears the few who had heard her. At one time during her childhood, it had been her father's fancy to show his friends, when he gathered them together, how thoroughly he was theirs, by producing his dearest treasure, Zaphira, to bear the long-nosed ewer and the basin after the feast and to pour the rosewater over their hands. And presently, though she was but a child, one of the old men desired her of her father. That afternoon Haroun called Zaphira to his apartments; and as she stood before him, he told her of another home where she should be honored as a wife, the wife of his own friend. Daughters, it was hardly needful to say, always did the will of their fathers in this matter, as in all others; and he had pro- vided well for his only child. Suddenly, something leapt to life in Zaphira. At the threatening proximity of wifehood, she be- [53] ALGIERS came a woman. She neither cried out for the homesickness and terror which cliit(ln'(l her heart; nor did she ily to her mother, well knowing there could he no refuge there from her father's will. NO refuge anywhere, she realizef, wlio knew just cnongh to see to her material necessities and to give her what trainini' she had received. IJut her father had made a plaything of the danghter whose birth liad disappointed him; iiiilil with a strong man's tenderness he had c-ome to love her for her frailty, to teach her, and to feel a deep compassion for her (lee|)einng woman- hood. He alone divined something of her dreams; and casting about in his mind and his country for the prince, he betliought him of the son of the Emir of El-l)jezair. Now it fell out that about this time the Emir of El-Djezair and his son journeyed through their own dominions; and the Emir was desirous of an alliance with the Berbers of the near mountains. Accordingly he visited Haroun, bringing the youth closed in a pal- anquin through the Berber country, where the women were not so strictly veiled. The Emir sent ahead and made careful condition that his son should not see the face of even a slave-girl. [56] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR Had the visitors been enemies, Haroun would have done them no harm while they were guests in his territory. But he did not desire the alliance, for the Berbers were ever an independent people; and he feared that in this coalition they must be the secondary part, and thus become in reality subject to the will of the Algerines. However, at the first sight of Selim his heart had gone out to the lad, and he had loved him as his own son. Therefore he took Teumi alone to the secluded part of the gar- den, beneath Zaphira's balcony. He knew that she was there at the lattice. The Emir was secretly troubled. Did Haroun mean that something should happen which should be a cause of offence after he had returned home.? He kept his eyes on the ground. But Haroun said softly, "Lift thine eyes, my brother," and the Emir looked up. Framed in the lattice, he beheld the most wonderful face he had ever gazed upon. It vanished instantly. Speechless with astonishment and distress at what he had seen, the Emir could not conceal his agitation. Haroun watched him. "She is thy daughter," Teumi said at last, "I ask her of thee for my son." "If thou askest that," answered Haroun, "thou [57] ALGIERS shalt have not only my daughter, but the alliance; for thy son is such that I praise God whenever my eyes behold him," Then the Emir told Ilaroun of his son's birth and how he had brought him up; and finally he said, " My son must not see her yet." Haroun agreed gladly, not loath to put off the day of parting. However, on one point he doubted, for he feared no comparison of his daughter's face with any other. It seemed to Haroun that the knowledge of other faces would but train the youth to appreciate Zaphira and to realize by comparison that she w^as supreme. Nevertheless, the Emir could not now be turned from his course; and he had known a true love. He desired more than ever that this peerless maiden should be the first upon whom his son should look, and that on his wedding night. It should be to him the perfect revelation of womanhood. So the Emir and his son departed; and Selim had been in the home of Zaphira, and neither knew of the other. Three years later the Emir lay dying. The fires of youth had burned out, and he would have been glad to go on, except that his work was not done. But he believed that the son [58] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR whom he had given to his city would accom- plish it. So they two talked together for the last time; and the father rehearsed the story of his own unavailing life of struggle to free his people from an insult, and reminded Selim that he must do a greater deed than his father could. Then the elder man bestowed upon his son, his last and finest gift, the betrothal. "When I am gone on my long journey," he said, " do thou set out immediately and bring thy bride home." And so had Selim done, taking a long journey for his bride, as many others, espe- cially among the Berbers, did then, and do to-day: some for a prize only to be had from a distance; others, of a baser sort, that the bride may not flee home again. Selim saw not the face of a woman, for he went in the midst of his troop. Haroun welcomed the young Emir with rejoicing and feasting; and the gift of gold which Selim brought as the price of his bride was very great. Her friends visited her and brought their gifts; but Zaphira went through the time of preparation in mingled joy and misgiving. The prince was here — her father had said he was the prince — yet she was not to see him [59] ALGIERS until after they had all journeyed together to El-Djezair and her father had left her in the Emir's palace. It was as the mist on the sea. Her father's face she knew, and her childhood life. Small wonder that she shrank. One night when the last guest had dej)arted Zaphira sat alone on the floor in her apart- ment, turning over in her lap, by the dim light of a swinging lamp, a large casket of her own family heirlooms. Suddenly she espied among them a red stone she had not previously noticed. As she held it uj) to the light, she perceived that the stone was hollow and that the color was produced by a liquid within. It was one of those curious con- trivances in which the romantic Oriental mind delights; and Zaphira had heard stories sufficient for her to understand that the imprisoned liquid was poison. Whence it had come, she did not know, and her quick Oriental imagination seized upon the mystery attaching to it. She immediately accepted it as her talisman, her charm against the evil eye; and she fastened it to a fine chain hang- ing in her breast. On the day appointed the train set out with camels and horses which the Emir had brought to convey the bride and her party [60] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR to his home. Zaphira had her own maids and her nurse, and they were the only women who came with her, for she took leave of her mother at her home. Surrounded by her servants on camels, she travelled in the centre in a rich striped silk palanquin. Selim heard her voice as she rode beside her father; and it had already carried love for the first time to his heart. Arrived at El-Djezair, the Emir housed Zaphira and her father in a fair palace. Now at last was the morning when she would become his bride; and he upon the roof watched the heavens for a sign; but no sign came, save that the dawn crept up and put out the morning star. And still he waited — for it was a new world which the sun revealed to him. For the first time, though he knew not why, he was fully conscious of its color, its fragrance, and the music of its birds. Then there rose in him the poetic, prophetic spirit which dreams great truths before they are laboriously dis- covered; the spirit which gave us the Sun- myths, in which the Sun and the Earth, ideal- ized, become but one man and one woman. And though he did not understand that the color and fragrance and music were all pro- [61] ALGIERS duced by love, and are only fully revealed to the human heart by the cause which made them, he felt, as all true lovers must, whether they understand or not, that somehow his love expressed and embraced the whole of the universe. More definitely he realized that sometimes it is given to one man or one woman to repre- sent a nation. Zaphira was a princess of the Berbers; he was Emir of the Algerines. His heart seemed to hold all his people. Then he looked toward the fort in the harbor, and a chill crept into the morning; but with fresh resolution he descended to make ready for the final ceremonies. First was the purification. Afterward, be- fore darkness fell, he and his young men went to prayer in the mosque. In the meantime it was not necessary for Zaphira to attend the public baths, with all her company of maidens and musicians, as is the custom; for she was in a palace, and to music in the outer court she, within, was bathed in the fountain and adorned in rich robes, that she might be displayed before her husband. Her maids wished to clothe her in bright colors, but she would have naught except pure white silk, and bracelets and [62] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR anklets like fetters of gold. Neither did she require henna for her hair, since there was in it a wonderful red tinge from some Aryan blood in the Berber race. When all was done and while it was still day, the grand proces- sion set out for her husband's palace, that all the people might behold it. When they had made a circuit of the city and had drawn near the Emir's palace, the servants of the Emir went out to meet them. But the bridegroom himself was at prayer. Then a lighted lamp was placed in the hand of the bride to signify that she was to be the light of the bridegroom's house; and according to an ancient Berber custom — for it was desired to combine the customs of the Arabs and the Berbers in this wedding — the master's servants lifted the bride and bore her over the threshold that she might enter clean-footed. Her maids and the maid-servants of the bridegroom gathered about her in the great court and sang and danced in a merry ring; while the men-servants cared for the Berber people; and the father of the bride and his friends and relatives had full possession of her husband's palace. Then came the bridegroom and his friends bearing torches — for it was now dark — and [63] ALGIERS they entered in and welcomed the company, and the veils of the slave-girls were dropped. But though she sat, still covered, at one side of the company, the Emir might not yet approach his bride. The feast was spread. And the grains of the couscous which was used on that occa- sion had been rolled to just their proper size by the deft hands of the women, and had been dried in the sun, when the old Emir had returned from the betrothal journey. Stories and mirth ran high, but the Emir was silent and scarcely partook of food ; while his bride from her side saw him dimly, her hand on the charm in her breast. When the feasting was over, the slave-girls set before the bride the large pan and sieve, the flour and the grains of fresh, hard wheat for the making of the couscous, to signify that from henceforth she was to keep the house. After which the guests dispersed in com- panies; and last of all Haroun embraced his daughter, kissed his son's shoulder, and went out, leaving the bride with her nurse and slave-maidens. These led her to the gallery, and Selim followed, seating himself on a rich couch before the apartments set aside for the bride. Her nurse walked the slight figure [64] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR around the court and brought her to stand before him that at last her full charms might be displayed. Were a man disposed to be haughty and to make his wife feel her subjec- tion to him, this was the moment to reveal it by keeping her standing. No such feeling possessed the Emir, however; and the sight of the golden fetters sent a strange pang to his heart. He rose quickly, took her hand and led her gently to sit down, while he stood in her place. At this the slave-maids all retired and Selim gave the old nurse, who alone remained, the customary piece of money to withdraw. Lamps shed a soft radiance about the two figures. The sound of retreating footsteps ceased and left unbroken silence; the Emir leaned forward slowly, and ex- claimed, in a voice scarcely audible, with reverence, "I lift the veil!" When it was done he stood motionless, breathless — his hand resting lightly on her head — ^for not even his wildest thoughts could have imagined a face so beautiful as this. The light in her hair made it a halo of gold. She was looking down as he drew aside the veil, and slowly, very slowly, she raised her long-lashed eyelids till the eyes gazed full into his — and there was no need of words [65] ALGIERS between them. In one long look they read all, told all. Golden summer days followed for the pair. One ceremony only, after the wcddinp;, had been omitted. It is the custom for the bride's uncle, or some man closely related to her, to cut her hair from her forehead on the day after her marriage, so that no one except her husband may possess even the memory of her loveliness.* But Selim would not haveZaphira marred, and he was not afraid. The Emir already knew his bride. The two spent their days among the foun- tains and the lilies, in the garden which the Emir had caused to be planted for his bride; and from which, as she went to her bath in the morning she could just look over the hedge to the sea; for the garden was on a steep hill and shut in with cypress trees where the nightingales sang. With full summer there came a riotous burst of bloom, following the long, heavy rains. Together the Emir and his wife had seen all the flowering of the orange trees, had watched the almond blossoms come and go, * So keenly do Orientals feel the disgrace which a woman of their family may bring upon them, that, in case of suspicion, they claim the right to take her from her husband against his own protests and to put her to death without trial. [66] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR the wistaria, wild lilies, violets and asphodels. Some were native, some had been brought from other lands. And the almond blossoms were like pink clouds of dawn; the wistaria festooned itself over walls and cypresses; the white iris in the shady borders was as a spirit flower, of a color purer and a texture finer than the lily. Yet all had been only a prelude to the roses, countless as stars and closer, large and fragrant, growing in a wild and wonderful abandon of luxuriant life. But with them came into the Emir's radiant life a curious sadness : not like the melancholy of the dank, dark forest or of the ebbing tide; but the melancholy of too much color and fragrance, an over-rich development — the floodtide at the turn — life which has reached only at its height, the consciousness that it must perish. And that is the melancholy of Algiers to this day. One evening as the two walked together in the garden, the Emir spoke of it. "See how all things change," he said. "Must it be so with love.'' I would that I might never know it, Zaphira, but might perish, triumphant in love at its height." Zaphira put her hand to her heart and it touched the charm. She sat down on the [67] ALGIERS edge of a fountain, and he stood before her, as he had on her wedding night. Zaphira was wise with the instinctive wisdom of women, and she answered: "What thou needest is action. Then thou wilt come to thy love without sadness. Hast thou no task to do?" The Emir flushed as he thought of the task laid upon him by his father, who had given him his bride. "I will storm the fort," he said. Zaphira's eyes were large and dark, but without fear. "When thou takest the fort, thy love shall be made perfect without change," she whispered, as if in awe. So the Emir set about such preparations as had never been made before ; for he meant to take his time, and not to attack the fort in sudden rage, as his father had. Accordingly two young spies were sent out, pretending they fled from the Emir's wrath. He saw that they were received. Two days later, he and all his people beheld them suspended upon the wall of the stronghold. When his stores and his men were concen- trated, the Emir bombarded the fortress, but with less fortune than Teumi had; for the Orientals can only fight well under the [68] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR inspiration of a fiery leader; and the long, cool preparations and discipline of their enemies are no more deadly to them than such preparations or attempts at discipline on their own side. They could not be kept at their guns, but fled from the answering fire of the fort. Houses in the city were demol- ished, but the fortress seemed charmed against injury, and a superstition took hold of the people, so that at last they would not fight at all. Then the Emir sat among his counsel- lors with his head in his hand; and they tried to solace him with stories, for stories will usually divert and console the Oriental heart in its direst distress. Nevertheless, the Emir seemed not to hear them. Braver him- self than those who strike in fiery passion, his first effort had been failure; and what consolation, except previous success, can ever avail in the first great failure.? At last he said: "Tell me true history — no tales of love, for mine is better; and the only comfort for me is the knowledge of other men's successful deeds!" Then one answered: "My master, there are stories — but we told thee not, lest thou shouldst be too impatient with thy poor [69] ALGIERS people. There are two brothers, Greeks, — sons, they say, of a poor man of the island of Mitylene, — and the eldest, especially, has made himself master of men and of ships, and what- ever he touches is his. Baba-Aroudj, the Corsair, has come sailing out of the East." The Emir lifted his head. "Tell me of him," he said. So one after another rehearsed tales of the Barbarossa brothers, Horush Baba-Aroudj and Khair-ed-din — elaborating picturesquely the rumors which had only begun to reach El-Djezair from fugitives and sailors. The Emir bade them tell him more and more; and they taxed their wits and imaginations. Thus he sat with them day after day, and always there was more to tell. They brought before him those who had carried the news — sometimes a sea-captain, sometimes a traveling merchant. All the city now heard of the victorious career of the Corsairs — how port after port was falling before them. Then thought Selim, "If I do not ally myself with these Barbarossas, we shall surely fall into their hands. They are Mohammedans and strong; I will call upon them for aid, and so the fort shall be taken from the Christians." His counselors ap- proved what he said. But when, triumphant [70] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR in his solution, which would remove the dan- ger and make it a means of removing the insult, he told Zaphira in the garden; she grew very white and gasped. "It is the sea!" she cried; but he knew not what she meant. Messengers were dispatched to Horush Baba-Aroudj and he gaily accepted the mis- sion. Feared by all men, an outlaw save for the strength of his sword, and living by the terror he created, was there something in him still which made him prouder to be a friend than a foe, and glad to have a religious mission to which to apply his power.? Who shall say that Baba-Aroudj did not mean well when he started for El-Djezair.? — taking with him five thousand soldiers, while Khair-ed- din, his brother — Khair-of-the-faith — was to follow by sea to help him if help were needed. However, as Baba-Aroudj drew nearer to El- Djezair, though yet a long way off, he began to hear of the marvelous beauty of the Berber princess, the Emir's wife, with her halo of golden hair. And Baba-Aroudj's own hair and beard were red. By the time he had reached the city, El-Djezair had become to him just this one woman. Baba-Aroudj was resolved to possess Za- [71] ALGIERS phira. When he arrived, the Emir welcomed him with more than his customary cordial hospitality; for was not this man of fire a deliverer? Baba-Aroudj, crude and uncouth, responded to his host's gracious care by pre- senting him with numerous and magnificent gifts, gathered in piracy from every quarter of the Mediterranean: vessels of gold and of silver, perfume, and slaves. At dusk the Emir left his guest, that he might keep tryst with Zaphira in her garden. As they sat among the lilies beside the foun- tain, her hair held a glow like the sunset, as if it had gathered into itself all the sunshine of the day. The Emir was joyous, triumph- ant in the certainty of success, which was yet hope; and as fear is worse than any evil, so is hope better than any good. Zaphira loved him best when he was alert for manly action; and he was surprised afresh in his love for her by richer womanly grace and tenderness than she had yet revealed to him, or indeed, had been capable of revealing; for even as he hoped, so she feared, and fear had un- locked the deeps of her nature. When he left her to attend to the comfort of his guest, Selim said to her, "My happiness is per- fect." [72] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR In the morning the Emir went, as was his custom, to the bath before the early prayer. His new slaves bore the water in the rich, new vessels and made the bath fragrant with the perfumes from the East. Selim stepped into the water. Suddenly he felt himself in the grip of a powerful force, which came from a man's hands. There was an instant's terrible struggle, too fierce for thought— and the Emir had passed out of life on its full tide — as he had wished, while the joy of his love had known no change, and his heart was high in the thought of victories to be won. Men said that he had been strangled. When news was brought to Baba-xAroudj, he expressed the deepest sorrow, and declared that it was his right and also due to the rank of the Emir, that he should pay the dead man every respect and honor, and should help to accord him such a funeral and tomb as had not been seen in El-Djezair. And none was strong enough to say the Corsair nay. Yet not only did he never see Zaphira's face — but he could never enter the apartment where Selim lay, when her shrouded figure was present ; and he never heard her voice among the wailing mourners. He felt sure that he would have known it if he had. Zaphira [73] ALGIERS remained for him a myth, an ideal, for which he had sacrificed the last good left in him. When the funeral was over, Baba-Aroudj took the slaves and withdrew from the house of mourning. A fort was built for him by his men, far out on a rocky point; and there he lived; and from there, with his soldiers, he was master without effort of the rulerless city. There he bided his time. For it trans- pired that on his way he had vanquished the Berber allies of the nearer mountains. When the appointed days of mourning were expired, he sent a message to Zaphira, pitying her in her forlorn position and claiming it as his right, since the accident had happened through slaves whom he had brought, to marry her and maintain her in her proper rank. Still the unbroken silence. Horush Baba- Aroudj dwelt night and day upon the thought of her, neglecting to storm the fort. Again he sent a letter, not patronizing now, nor claiming anything, but beseeching the princess to be his queen. The letter was brought to Zaphira as she lay white and still on her couch. When she had read it, she sat up; the color returned to her cheeks, the bright- ness to her eyes. So that was it! She did [74] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR not know that she was the cause of the treach- ery which had broken her life; but she did know that if he wished to possess her for herself, revenge was in her hand. She broke the silence with this message: "Zaphira will never marry while the murder of her husband remains unavenged." Then Baba-Aroudj took hope and heart, and set himself zealously to work, behead- ing thirty men, after pretending an investiga- tion. This task accomplished, he sent again to Zaphira, telling her that all were dead who were concerned in the crime, and that there was no longer any barrier between them. Zaphira did not hesitate. Not to kill him could she marry him. She wrote him one sentence: "Thou, and thou only, art the murderer of my husband." Upon this, love turned to fury in the heart of Baba-Aroudj ; and he wrote her arrogantly and insolently how he would have her by force. Zaphira read the message and stood breathing hard, with that look in her eyes with which she had once faced her father. "I will die, but I will not marry him," she said to her old nurse; ''and I will not die by his hand." She drew out the charm from her bosom and it glowed like a drop of blood. [75] ALGIERS In this moment of fearful need, the nurse smiled on her as she had in the days when Zaphira was a child. "My lamb, it was I, who, fearing thy beauty, gave thee that charm. I had it from my husband, a sea-captain, who found it amid his other spoil." Even as they spoke they heard the sound of soldiers' feet, and a turmoil at the gates. Baba-Aroudj had meant to give Zaphira no chance to attempt escape, no time even to think. There could be but one issue to the struggle. Yet, though her women quailed, Zaphira lost all fear at the first sounds. She called for a glass, and the old nurse brought it her. She cracked the tiny jewel and poured its contents into the water; and she waited, but not because she was afraid. As she held the glass in her hand, she was strong with a new strength. It was not long to wait. The cries and din of the strife at the gate were soon over. A crash told them the inner door was down. Tramping feet could be heard through the master's room to the inner court, ascending the stairs, coming along the gallery. The door of Zaphira's apartment burst open, and Baba-Aroudj stood within it, holding back his men. [76] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR Zaphira also stood before her women, pride rendering that last moment of her life the supreme moment of her matchless beauty. Thus is sometimes vouchsafed to men a vision of what they have striven for, w'aether by good means or ill; but, if by ill, it may be only to haunt them forever. While he stood spell-bound, Zaphira raised the glass and drained it, exclaiming, "Selim, 1 only regret that I did not come to thee before. I keep thine honor." Then she fell forward at the pirate's feet, dead. She did not pass alone. Rage at his hopeless, helpless love took possession of Baba-Aroudj, and he turned upon her maidens and her old nurse and slew them with his own hand, the swiftest and most merciful of the fates which awaited them. Madly Horush Baba-Aroudj plunged into war, never able, night nor day, to lose the memory of that face, the vision of the impos- sible, which had forever stricken hope from his soul. Men said that he fought like a devil — but it had always been in his blood. Two years later, the city of El-Djezair, which Zaphira had personified to him, also faded from his eyes, as he lay dying of a Spaniard's thrust. The Spanish had sent an army [77] ALGIERS against him, and he had not taken the fort. However, Khair-ed-din, his brother, cap- tured it soon after, and saved El-Djezair from Christian domination for a new period which lasted three hundred years. More- over, he inaugurated the Mussulman piracy against the Christian world; and made El- Djezair the center of the raids, so that she became known among Mohammedans as the City of the Holy Wars, and was unmatched in history for her pride, considering the little- ness of her real strength. Khair-ed-din united the mainland with the island on which the fort had stood, and so formed an inner harbor. Upon the one remaining tower of the fort, his grandson, Hassan, erected the lighthouse, the beautiful white guardian of El-Djezair, strangely charmed in all bom- bardments of the city, coming out of the clouds of smoke, miraculously unharmed. And beneath it, over the door in its fortress base to this day may be seen the Spanish coat-of-arms. The ships come and go in the harbor — what messages of life and death do they bring .'^ It is past sunset now and I sit beside [78] A DREAM OF EL-DJEZAIR my table with its candles, while the sound of the evening bell floats in at the open window. I think it is raining softly — there has been much rain of late. The almond blossoms are gone and the iris flowers too, but the asphodels cover the fields. [79] PALACE SECRETS PALACE SECRETS THE great palace of the Deys is gone ; but closely embedded in the old town are fragments, gems whose setting has been destroyed. There is a foun- tain in the wall of the Rue des Palais Vieux, covered with French posters; there are the palaces of the present Governor and the Archbishop. The Governor's palace beside the present cathedral belonged to Hassan Dey and has a new and unnatural fa9ade. The Archbishop's, across the Cathedral square, is called by the Arabs the Palace of the Sul- tan's Daughter, and is an exquisite bit of architecture, where busts and religious paint- ings look strangely out of place. And there is the palace of Mustapha Dey, now the National Library, which once contained the Museum also and so sheltered for many years the tombstone of its former owner. Each of these palaces is built about the inevitable court, the essential feature of every Oriental dwelling. It is "the middle of the [83] ALGIERS house" referred to in Hebrew scripture, where marriage and all ceremonies and gather- ings took place. A shade above the opening may be drawn across the sky and suggests to us the Psalmist's simile: "Spreading out the heavens like a curtain." The courts are surrounded by a row of columns and horse- shoe] arches upholding the gallery, and a second row supporting the roof. No two of the arches are exactly alike, for they were always measured by the eye and thus have the intimate charm of that which is not mechanical. In the stately palaces there are also outer courts, but it is about the four sides of the inner one both below and around the gallery that we find the usual long and narrow rooms — very narrow, because their width was regulated by the ceiling beams, which were sometimes cedars of Lebanon, and were never more than twelve feet long. In many palaces these were the woinen's apartments opening on the gallery of the inner court; in others, like the Kasba, there was a separate harem court or building. The house of Mustapha is entered through the magnificent vestibule, the reception room of the master, probably the finest example of such a room remaining in Algiers. Above [84] PALACE SECRETS the stone benches on both sides are the dis- tinctive Algerian arches, springing like the horseshoe, but flattened on top. A passage leads into the court, which a turn at right angles conceals from view. On the day when we stood in the upper gallery the rain was falling in a silver shower upon the tiles below. We refreshed our minds with the old stories; for it is to this palace we must come and come again for the fountains of our information; and within these enchanted Moorish walls we find our- selves taken back in books and paintings to the old city as it was. We are conscious of the romance of the East, which is concen- trated here and here becomes self-conscious. In this deserted court we catch the life which, passing, haunts it still. The palace itself reveals to us how, when the last Moors had been driven from Spain to Africa, Isabella, in the Alhambra, must have been filled with wonder and romance, and, believing nothing impossible, sent Co- lumbus on his wild quest. We know how Ferdinand's fleets pursued the Moors, and placed a chain of forts before their cities. One watched the harbor of the Algerines. It was then that Baba-Aroudj, the Corsair, [85] ALGIERS came sailing out of the East, and, strangling the Emir, made himself master of El-Djezair. Khair-ed-din, his brother, succeeding him, found himself on the edge of a precipice, the hostile Spaniards about him, the hostile Moors below. He appealed to the Sultan at Con- stantinople and made himself the Sultan's vassal. Then were sent two thousand Turk- ish braves or Janissaries. The fort fell. El-Djezair was under Turkish rule. Khair-ed-din connected the island with the mainland by a jetty which is said to have taken thirty thousand Christian slaves some three years to construct. Thus a harbor was enclosed, which to-day forms the inner and military harbor of the French Algiers. The story of the Turkish period, thus begun, is written in blood. Gradually the Janissaries increased in power. They de- manded from the Sultan who appointed the Pacha or Dey, an Agha to represent their rights, the Agha to be elected from their number by themselves. Finally, after a revo- lution, they gained the privilege of electing the Dey. His election was now merely sanc- tioned by the Sultan, after having been heralded by a magnificent gift. Thereafter, the fort on Cape Matifou no longer saluted [86] PALACE SECRETS incoming rulers when their ships were de- scried, approaching from the East. El-Djezair had become to all intents and purposes an independent government of the Turkish sol- diers. Such was the historical consequence of the Barbarossas' deed. The Dey was now the Janissaries' tool, murdered whenever they became dissatisfied, or when a rival faction to that which had elected him increased in strength. Yet no one could refuse to serve, and scarcely any died a natural death. The factions between the Janissaries caused constant strife. Upon one memorable day the divisions were so nearly matched that five rulers, it is said, were elected by first one and then the other, and as quickly murdered by the oppo- site side; until, in despair of agreement or fear of self-annihilation, they decided to go forth and to consider as the chosen one the first man whom they met leaving the mosque from evening prayer. He chanced to be a poor cobbler around whom they congregated and addressed him as "Dey!" Poor man! The Arabian Nights had come too true for him. His knees knocked together and he besought them of their mercy to let him go his way. But there was no escape for him; [87] ALGIERS and it is recorded of him that he made one of the wisest and best of the rulers of this period. For his predecessors, the five less than ephem- eral sovereigns of a day, five magnificent tombstones side by side commemorate their names. Though the Turks kept no clear records, their relations with other countries are written in the records of all of them. El-Djezair, the Valiant, became from the time of the Corsair Baba-Aroudj the City of the Holy Wars, the headquarters of Mussulman piracy, and the seat of an unparalleled slavery. That Dey who most encouraged these depredations was most popular at home and therefore most secure. Christian captives of every race and rank were subjected to the most incredible hardships, as Sir Lambert Playf air's " Scourge of Christendom" makes only too clear. On no less an authority could some of the tales be believed. And what did the European nations do.^ England is a fair example of the rest. Among her quaint old books is one discussing the matter of Christian slavery in Algiers (as it was called in English), and pleading that Parliament should ransom British subjects. The question was discussed and ransoms [88] PALACE SECRETS were paid from time to time. Yet Charles II. signed one of the most humiliating treaties ever made by the English nation, in which he disclaimed any responsibility for freeing Brit- ish subjects in captivity. Individuals might ransom them if possible. It was not a mat- ter in which the government would interfere. So for three hundred years this piracy in the Mediterranean and on the Seas, this slavery at the gates of Europe, stole from her nations many of their best. And for three hundred years those Christian civilized na- tions might so easily have crushed it — reports of the weakness of the fortifications and the smallness of the navy often reached them — yet for three hundred years they permitted it to exist, nay, fostered its existence, paying the tribute demanded for immunity in guns and ammunition to be used against them- selves. And all because of that world-old fear that one of them should gain more than another; and that still more reprehensible desire to maintain this scourge for use against each other. Said one of the monarchs of France, "If there were no Algiers I would create one!" Yet France, her nearest neighbor, was in most constant feud with her, and the greatest [89] ALGIERS sufferer. Against France she leveled her most daring insults. And always, upon the approach of avenging French vessels, the French consul was imprisoned, and in some cases — I quote Col. Playfair — shot from a cannon. Once, so Col. Playfair records, when a French fleet anchored in the harbor, the consul was shot out to them from a mor- tar. The cannon is now preserved at Brest. The Algerines called it Father Fortunate; the French, La Consulaire. That Mustapha Dey, who began his reign in 1799, confirmed all the former iniquity of Algiers against France. On the thirtieth of September, 1800, the great Napoleon himself agreed to a humiliating peace. He had larger matters on his hands and, being unable to concentrate a force across the water, signed a treaty to the effect that bygones should be bygones and the French should pay 300,000 piastres to the Dey. This humiliation not appearing sufficient to the Sultan at Con- stantinople, the French consul and all his countrymen were forced to leave Algiers. To Mustapha Dey came the frigate George Washington to arrange for the tribute from the United States. This vessel, lying in the entrance to the harbor, was what Mustapha [90] PALACE SECRETS needed to carry his accession gift to the Sul- tan at the Porte; and he promptly requisi- tioned the frigate, much to the indignation of the people of our country, who were slow to feel that we must follow the example of the older states of Europe. It is interesting to know in this connection that in after years the United States became the first of the nations to refuse to pay tribute to the Algerine Deys; that England still later, in 1816, roused herself and suppressed forever the Christian slavery; and that, at the taking of Algiers in 1830, the French fol- lowed the plans and suggestions of a United States consul. Long before this, Mustapha himself, the arrogant ruler of the last of the eighteenth century, found himself powerless in the hands of his own Janissaries, and fled, so tradition tells us, to his summer palace, now the Chateau d'Hydra, where he was captured through treachery and murdered. He was one of the last of the Deys, for the iniquity of the Janissaries was well-nigh accomplished. The story of Turkish evil in Algiers is finished. [91] THE PASSING OF THE DEYS THE PASSING OF THE DEYS THE incoming tide of light floods the little room in the villa. The large French windows stand wide open to it, and it falls upon the warm-hued rugs and the small hexagonal red tiles, such as are used everywhere about Algiers in both French and Moorish houses. It reaches one corner of the writing table before an old gilt mirror, and touches to brightness the inevitable old- world pair of candles that after dark-fall shed a dim, religious light; and it wakes the flowers the dear little French maid Sophie always keeps there, in order that whenever we enter we may be greeted by the fragrance and the color which suggest the larger world just outside. It is the villa in the orange grove, beneath whose trees grow narcissi and violets, where roses climb the steps below the windows, and the air is full of the scent of blossoms and the song of birds. There are moonlit nights in the orange grove when the moonbeams [95] ALGIERS blend with the fragrance; and dark nights, when Sophie, among the rose vines in the doorway, holds high her lamp above her head to guide the guests to the hotel; and hearing their returning footsteps comes out to light them m again. But now it is morning in Mustapha — Mustapha, high on the Sahel and nearer the curve of the bay than is the city of Algiers. Across its waters are snow-capped mountains. On our own side, nearer the sea, a profile of Algiers on her hills. From our windows we can watch the ships come and go in the har- bor, and the thousand changes of expression of the white city guarded by its fortress light, and now glowing brightly under the risen sun. Gradually from the distance there grows the sound of singing, swelling ever fuller, a jaunty rhythmic air with yet a minor cadence that never fails in martial music. "Ah oui, c'est qu'elle est belle avec ces chateaux forts, Couches dans les pres verts, comme les geants morts! C'est qu'elle est noble, Alger la fiUe du corsaire ! Un reseau de murs blanc la protege et I'enserre." It is the French soldiers riding by, with their Turkish costumes and horses of Arab breed. Sunlight, the French soldiers — it is To-day. High noon brings us to luncheon at the [96] 'Txr'£ ^ THE PASSING OF THE DEYS Chateau d'Hydra over against Mustapha, near the village of Birmandreis. For miles it commands the country and some of those miles are its own. Vineyard and field stretch in every direction. We enter the large outer garden with its palm-bordered drives, pass under the great gate and across the first court, leaving the carriage at the entrance to the second. On one side of the second court is the doorway to the house proper. It leads into the master's old reception-room, the long, narrow hall, with the stone bench running the entire length — now used to receive our outer wraps. At one end of this room is a tiled stairway in the wall. It turns once and brings us at last to the heart of the house. We have entered the inmost court. Such a marvelous little gem! The twisted pillars which support its arches under the galleries are arranged in pairs, Alhambra fashion. Under the soft light, in this secluded and exquisite centre of an Eastern palace, our hostess greets us — a woman, not out of place in it because a product of all preceding days and of all countries — a charming American! It is a very modern luncheon where con- versation flows in various streams in as many languages, and a merry party gain different [97] ALGIERS points of view. The dining-room itself and the library are long, narrow apartments on opposite sides of the court. In the library the vaulted ceiling and the tiling of the walls are very fine. This chateau possesses the rarest collection of tiles, near Algiers. From the library, after luncheon, we wander into the inner garden, which must in Oriental days have been the garden of the harem. It is full of white lilies ; and here is the unfail- ing fountain, its black waters reflecting the white roses which dip into it under delicate and closely overhanging pepper trees. The present owner tells us she has arranged the spot to look as much as possible like the scene of Beauty and the Beast. Oh, these villas and these villa gardens of Mustapha and of El-Biar — The Well — above Mustapha! What romance of another life clings to them to make the present richer by possession and by contrast. For though some of them are French, and some are improved and sunnier copies, others, like this, are genuinely Moorish. Cold and comfortless, the unchanged Moorish houses may appear; with their tiled floors, the scant amount of sun admitted from without, and the rain often falling, a fountain from heaven, straight [98] THE PASSING OF THE DEYS into the court. But they are still warm with a presence; and many a story is buried where romance lingers in their glorious gardens, hedged in and terraced on the hills. The hills form a different setting for each one; and even in the new estates the roses have recalled the other days — it is in the very soil — and they cover all things in a gracious tangle of luxuriant and continuous life. Every old garden is a remembrance. Each house has its special interest and its story. In the garret of one was discovered an English name written by a captive; and a short time ago that same Moorish dwelling, now in- habited by English people, was visited by the grandson of its former owner, who rode up in an automobile to see the ancestral estate! This is but one of the incongruities which cause us a mingling of smiles and of tears. The note of a violin recalls us from our April thoughts in the garden. There is music in the gallery. We re-enter the house and go up another flight of tiled steps turning between the walls, to the erstwhile apartments of the Moorish harem. Here is the recep- tion-room of the present mistress of this dwell- ing. Windows on one side of it open to the [99] ALGIERS gallery, and at one end overlook the second court. In the centre a dome makes a bay- window, and a circular couch takes up the middle. Here we gather and in the inter- vals of the music listen to the echoes of the house. The chateau dates back to Roman days and has subterranean passages. The story of Mustapha Dey is recalled. Poor Musta- pha! We let him pass in peace from this beautiful palace of his. Then we speak of Dr. Bowen of the English consulate, who occupied the house under a later Dey and whose sturdy sense of right led him to under- take dangerous and grewsome duties. Surely it is a place of haunting suggestions; but the American family fill its heart with the sweet- est music to be heard in Algiers, and the con- stant prattle of lovely children. The spell seems broken and lifted and the sunshine streams into the house. As we drive home we cannot help reflect- ing that this life of the foreign colony in the Moorish villas on the hills outside Algiers is for us the happiest result of the changes wrought by the French. Here we command what little of the real Oriental life remains visible; while we dwell in its most beautiful [100] THE PASSING OF THE DEYS shells, and much that might have offended Western eyes is hidden with the retreating Eastern existence in deeper fastnesses. Our- selves, surrounded by every accustomed com- fort; it is the poetry, the true ideal in the East, which we may enjoy to the full in all the white chastity of marble, the purity of sparkling fountains. Perhaps the palace of greatest historical interest to us is enclosed in the Kasba, where was concluded the story of the Deys. This almost impregnable fortress, with its white walls two metres thick, is situated above and behind the old town, and serves the French, as it once served the Turks, to overawe the Moorish population surging up the hill to the foot of its walls. The soldiers who use it as barracks are dressed in the famous Turkish Zouave costume. The name " Zou- ave," given by the French to their celebrated African regiments, is a corruption of " Zou- aoua," one of the most warlike tribes of Kabylia, so warlike that at first they alone were enrolled in the native militia of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Afterwards the ranks were opened to all Kabyles, Arabs, and Turkish half-breeds. The Turks themselves had been banished from Algeria. It is said that the [101] ALGIERS half-breeds took the French bounty and de- camped to the enemy. Their ranks were re- cruited by the French until nothing was left of the Turks but their costume. Yet to see these soldiers turns back the last page of history. From the battlements of the Kasba one can look far below over the roofs or terraces, the women's private outdoor world. Forti- fications ran down on both sides from the Kasba, forming with the sea a triangle which enclosed the city. Within the Kasba itself are the palace and harem buildings of the last two Deys, a minaret and numerous council chambers and dungeons — all irregu- larly and picturesquely planned. Many a head has ornamented the grim walls. And upon the great door, now for- ever closed, hangs the chain, which, grasped by any one, gave the right of appeal. Above is the little iron-barred window from which the Dey looked down on executions. Ali Khoja was the last Dey but one. Until his time the Kasba had been used solely for government purposes, while the Deys and their families had always lived in one of the palaces in the town. Ali was a man of spirit, and resolved that the ruler should no longer be at the mercy of the Janissaries. One [102] /: THE PASSING OF THE DEYS dark night, with hired soldiers and some three hundred mules, he left his beautiful palace in the city and moved himself and his treasure within the great fort. One can almost see the silent train winding up the hill. Not till morning did the Janissaries realize what had happened and appear before the Kasba. The Dey turned their own guns against them and the mercenaries held the fort. The Janis- saries' stronghold was taken, their power broken, by one from their own number. We hear still of the fabulous garden Ali Khoja had made in the court of the harem, and may see the minaret of his mosque, where he went to prayer without leaving his fortress. But two years after his bloodless triumph the plague, which was one of the appurtenances of fatalistic Algerine govern- ment, descended upon him. Hussein Dey followed him in the Kasba. In the topmost gallery of the large inner court hangs a small reception pavilion, used by Hussein for important interviews. Its remoteness suggests that the ruler wished to be as far from interruption as possible. Here occurred the famous cou^ (Teventail. And on the terrace in front of his private apart- ments is the place where Hussein watched [103] ALGIERS and smiled at the French ships in the har- bor which had come to avenge it. For just as these Deys were estabhshing their power above their Janissaries, France suddenly found that the Algerine cup of iniquity was full. Like the last drop or the camel's straw, it was a small thing, in com- parison with what had gone before, which finally brought the end : a quarrel between the Dey and the French consul over some money owed to an individual. In exasperation Hus- sein Dey, usually self-possessed, and superior in all accounts to his adversary, struck the French consul across the face with his fan, and at that one fell stroke lost all his fair domin- ions. The consul rose in dignity and ex- claimed, "This affront is not to me only, but to the King of France!" And Hussein, in his Oriental pride and passion, declared, "I care no more for your master than I do for you!" The French fleet appeared in the harbor; three years later the French army landed on the west side of the peninsula to storm Algiers from above and behind. The Turks met the army and were defeated. Then General de Bourmont received two messages: one from the Janissaries offering to dispose of the Dey in expiation of the insult; the other from the [ 104] THE PASSING OF THE DEYS Dey himself, asking the terms of surrender. The Janissaries were quickly disposed of. The city was surrendered. The Dey, with his suite, was given safe conduct to Italy. And France found herself unexpectedly in possession, not only of Algiers, but of a province — somewhat indeterminate in size, it is true; but approximating the home coun- try itself. The end of Hussein is pathetic. From Italy he went to Egypt, where he was received by the Khedive Mohammed Ali with Oriental ceremony, and the sympathy which befitted a Mohammedan ruler in so sore a plight. One day, however, immediately after a pri- vate interview, Hussein was seized with con- vulsions and died. So ends the story of the Deys of Algiers. But once a year a vision of the ancient splen- dor returns in one of their palaces. For a few hours the dream comes true, the romance and story suggested by the old dwellings become visible. This is on the occasion of the grand annual ball of the Governor-Gen- eral of Algeria — which realizes our imagin- ings of the court of Solomon. This year it took place in the most completely exquisite of ail buildings near Algiers, the palace of [105] ALGIERS the Deys at Mustapha, reserved as the sum- mer palace of the French Governor. With- out and within are upper and lower colon- nades of arches; the inner walls are lined with lacy openwork; and the beams, we fancy, are the cedars of Lebanon. On the night of the ball the court was thronged with a great and somewhat incongruous assembly, principally French, who pushed up into the galleries and rooms above. But there were other guests who gave the character to this occasion. The invitation is a summons to the Arab chiefs of Algeria, Aghas and Bach- Aghas. They are the influential heads of tribes, to whom the French government has given an ofiicial position to bind them to itself, and through them, the tribes, for whose allegiance and good conduct they are re- sponsible. These men came up to the city several days before the ball, and were every- where about the streets, in their magnificent robes, their flattering French decorations, pompous and fat because of their inactive lives. Others also, like the grandson of the last Dey, were present, prisoner-guests. A stately procession it was in which these Arab chiefs greeted the Governor. Afterward, whether disturbed by the heat, or proud dis- [106] THE PASSING OF THE DEYS dain of the curiosity they excited, many of them did not linger in the house. Outside, the gardens were aglow with lights: blue as moonlit water along the borders; rose-red like brilliant flowers in the luxuriant foliage; yellow as dates, hanging in clusters from the tall palms. iVll the palace, arches and domes, was outlined with soft lights. Most fairy- like of all was the large outer court and fountain, lighted by the surrounding arches, and open on one side to the garden and the garden fountain. Here the Arabs sat about or stood in groups of conscious grandeur and wonderful color. And over all, the moon shone. That one night of the ball, in the corners of the stairway stood native men in costume with raised swords, as if to guard the vision. Yet it vanished with the morning like a scene from fairy -land. Just that one ball and nothing more — except a few tokens left be- hind which prove to us that it was real: the rich old family jewels and heirlooms which some of the Aghas were obliged to sell to pay the expenses of the journey, and which may be found in a shop in Mustapha. Even the palace is deserted. The Gov- ernor no longer lives in it since his own beloved [107] ALGIERS son died there; a recent sorrow whose asso- ciation is personal and fresher than haunting Turkish tragedies. The palace stands lonely, left to the stranger. The Governor shuns it, yet the country about it is no longer under the spell of the Orient. The walls are broken down, and in the openings grow the aspho- dels. In the city, only Lazarus remains. [108] LAZARUS LAZARUS IN the morning we would see Lazarus. The walls are broken down, the man at the gate of the city is asleep, and we penetrate to the inner stronghold of the hidden life. Sunshine and clouds flit over the road which winds down to the city — a magnificent road, splendidly built, for France is a road- making country, and roads mean history. Some of these are reminiscences of the Ro- mans, traversing on Roman foundations the old Roman ways. Such is the old road to Mustapha, now a discarded short cut, shut in by high walls. On the new way rich foliage hangs over the path beside us, and always in view is the laughing water of the beautiful bay we are nearing. But the first object we meet is one of the cross - shaped wine-carts. No railway goes over the Sahel by the shore; and this fine road is the scene of constant struggles, where horses of the frail Arab build draw loads too great by far. [Ill] ALGIERS Day and night since we took up our abode in the villa there has floated to us from the distance, mingled with the creak of the brakes and the crack of the whips, the harsh cry of the drivers, that one sound which we hear at the very first above all others and which haunts us as long as we stay more persistently than any other and seems to express a melan- choly influence in Algiers. It is a relief to see the little burden-bearers of the city — the donkeys. A flock of them is the most characteristic sight of Algiers and of the surrounding country, and one not unworthy to serve as the arms of the city. Camels now rarely come into the streets.* But these little beasts are everywhere. They * This fact caused the writer some chagrin. How was it pos- sible to return from Africa to America without having seen a camel — except the baby in French captivity at the French Jardin d'Essai? Reports of a dromedary seen at the Kasba reached us from time to time, but always arrived too late. Trips into the country failed to procure the coveted sight. Lamentations on the subject became so well known that friends who journeyed on into the desert sent back photographs of the elusive animals. Fortunately the ship on which we sailed from Algiers stopped at Tunis, and from the window of a trolley in the latter city we perceived a drove of camels on the Boulevard. The reputation of a certain traveler, who must be truthful at all costs, was saved. Shortly after our return we chanced to walk upon the main street of a Pennsylvania town. Our surprise may be imagined, when we beheld a camel moving majestically do\\'n the sloping avenue toward us. His air was that of superior disdain of his surroundings, and he bore a rider in full Arab dress. We stood transfixed with astonishment. Afterward we learned that he belonged to a neighboring circus — but America had triumphed. [ 112 ] LAZARUS go up and down the flights of stairs in the old town, wearing baskets like inverted sun- bonnets, and carrying everything from build- ing stone to dust and drivers. One cannot blame the native drivers, either of horses or of donkeys, for their impervious- ness to suffering. Those merry-hearted, tune- ful French soldiers, who represent authority, sometimes cruelly wound their own beautiful white horses. And the Mohammedans' standard concerning the value of life and of physical comfort for themselves is different from ours. The native workmen of Algiers do not lead an easy existence in spite of na- tive indolence. Sometimes we have seen the drivers get inside the rims of the wheels ; and often Arabs themselves push and pull. One hand-load which we witnessed going up a hill consisted of two pianos and a bale of hay. And we have watched old men in single harness drawing large carts of meal sacks on a slimy road. As we pass down from Mustapha we find Lazarus at the Porte d'lsly, where was once an old gate of the city. Here began the wall which ran from the sea to the Kasba at the top of the hill, and down to the sea on the other side. The gate and the wall are gone, [113] ALGIERS and the old fort at this seaward end is even now being demohshed. Opposite the fort on an open lot sit all day long some of the poor of Algiers, the venders of oranges; and from each man the government in the person of a tax official extracts a tax each day. The Porte d'Isly is an excellent place to see the relation between the city and the country outside, between the present and the past. The main roads from the south run into it, and loads of every description come and go. There is building taking up the planted lots around the square, and the groups of little donkeys are always hard at work. Here and there a man from the country sits down beside his mule, and sleeps as un- disturbed as if he were out in the open desert, miles from any French habitation. There are sure to be soldiers; or mules with panniers laden and patriarchal drivers; or hand-loads; or shavings-men. It is particularly a resort of the shavings-man. Who or what he is, we have never quite understood; but he has grown to be a familiar figure. Usually he is old and always he carries on his back a huge bundle of shavings between two mats. There is a bit of wall that divides an upper road from one which turns down below; and on [114] LAZARUS this wall the shavings-men have their open air club, where they drop their burdens and chat together, or sometimes curl up and go to sleep. Many are our struggles to catch one in our camera, but he is invariably super- stitious and invariably melts quickly and mysteriously away, leaving only a blur on the film. Just as the noonday sun becomes unbear- able for us, the orange peddlers roll their cloaks about them, and stretch themselves upon the ground to sleep. Here, at the height of day, on this open square surrounded by French buildings, these figures lie uncon- scious of all outward things, asleep — asleep just outside the very spot where once was the gate of their city. It is true that thus they may still dream, children of moods, of laugh- ter and of tears, of fiery faith and fatalism, unpractical, all-feeling — and we realize that although the portal is gone we are none the less shut out. But there is something signifi- cant about it, this sleep by the fallen gate. It is natural to these people and in this cli- mate to be indolent, and should not of itself cause their race to decay, unless they are brought into contact with other than natural conditions. [115] ALGIERS Is it possible that there is in these Arabs, as some Westerners think, a lethargy of the spirit, the result of discouragement, and a suppressed life, which means sure sinking into the deeper sleep? [116] WITHIN THE CITY GATES WITHIN THE CITY GATES WHILE the man at the gate is asleep, we have entered into his city, not once, but many times; have seen the Jewish merchants "discussing argosies" in the public square; have passed through the French portion into the Arab town; have broken bread in an Arab house. The Arabs always travel with us in the tram from the Porte d'lsly into town. They have long crowded Europeans out of the old diligence which is their own particular sleep- ing-car, bringing them into the city as if from a battle-field or under the spell of unconscious- ness we have noted. Along the street we catch glimpses of their Arabian Nights in the small Arab shops and markets nestled within the outer portions of the large, new French buildings. There are fruits and vege- tables and all sorts of household provisions, and the market baskets in rows above the doors. Many shops are filled with the earth- [119] ALGIERS enware water-jars used to carry water at the wells in the country. Openings from this thoroughfare reveal flights of stairs leading up on the hill into the old town and the country beyond. Beside the city fountains stand the copper water-jugs, and we envy the grace with which the tribe of water-carriers bear them away on their shoulders as they hurry to supply some Arab house. Is it a wine of enchantment they carry.? In the old city another set of boys are bear- ing trays on their heads to the public ovens, with the bread which the housewives knead in the morning, and which is brought back to them at night. Thus are the two neces- sities of life provided. Our tram turns down to the Place Bresson, where the Municipal Theatre looks across a palm garden to the Boulevard and the sea. Then we enter the narrow way called "Bab- Azzoun" — the French spelling of the Arabic syllables meaning "Gate of Grief," a street so named by the natives when prisoners went to their punishment through the gate at the end of it. Beneath it is a Roman cemetery. But no traces of suffering linger now. The Bab-x\zzoun is the fashionable shopping street, where the best French stores of Algiers [120] WITHIN THE CITY GATES supply the needs of Western costume, and where Fille's, the Algerian Huyler's, is found. Door by door with these are shops of other nationalities; and, most fascinating, those of Turkish dealers who have the much prized Kabyle jewelry and who have collected from old native families heirlooms of ancient Alge- rian workmanship, their like not to be had in other lands, and from these same old fam- ilies, spoils of ancient piracy brought from every country on the Mediterranean Sea. Fine cups there are from Damascus, among the rare old embroideries in the Algerian stitch, and the rich jewels in the distinctive Algerian settings. The flowers of a broad but perishing tree are gathered here. We leave the tram where steps lead up to another square near by, the Place de Chartre, partly in the old town, above and behind a portion of the French city. Here the large provision market is held every morning; and we see what we wished to know, how the physical needs of the life of Algiers are sup- plied. The vendors are chiefly Arabs, but the meat and the unsalted butter come from France. There are always eggs and chickens; and the Arab chickens are very lean, but the French chickens are fat. There are fresh [121] ALGIERS olives'^and fresh olive oil and the dates and oranges of the country. Beyond us, on the same level, is the Cathe- dral square, above the Place du Gouverne- ment. But we retrace our steps to the Bab- Azzoun, which brings us into the Place and continues beyond it as the Bab-el-Oued, a street which led to another "Gate." Not many outsiders go that way, although it leads to an old garden of the Deys, to the large Lyceum, and to Notre Dame. We walk toward the water instead, crossing the Place du Gouvernement to the end of the Boulevard, the place to watch the produce of Algeria depart. Below us wine casks, cork and dates are waiting for the ships. Beneath our feet are the hidden warehouses behind the arches of the ramparts. Around us on the Place are French cafes, some frequented by the Moors. They give us a hint of the Algerian Oriental's mode of existence. His is essentially a cafe life. Where he is poor, his small cafe in the old town is his club, in many instances his only home. So we watch the changing life about us, as we wander beneath palms in the far corner of the square, where is the flower market of [122] WITHIN THE CITY GATES Algiers. It also is kept by Arabs, but with French bouquets. Under the arcades at one side is a French shop with tin funeral wreathes, suggesting the tie which the French already have in the new country. We recall the day when we went to an Arab lunch in an Arab house and how it was at the invitation of a French woman, one who had lived among these people all her life and who had learned to speak Arabic before she spoke French. For this experi- ence in her enchanted home we skirted the edge of the old town; climbed through the ancient garden of the Deys upon the hill; and came at last to the gate of iron which was to open for us, between two buildings in an otherwise solid block. We were not sure it led into the passage which we were seeking, but as we hesitated, a fairy Moorish maiden came flying down the street, her haik floating wide, in her hands strings of orange buds, such as all Arabs bring from the market to their wives each evening, to be fastened in and to droop from the hair. This small woman served our hostess, and the flowers were for our own adorning. Fathma assured us we had found the entrance, and flitted up the stairs before us, stairs which seemed in- [123] ALGIERS terminable, passing between close walls and under occasional arches that hid the flights beyond. Doors on the landings opened into habitations; and at last we came out on a small open court. Here in the wall is again the fountain, with another flight of stairs at one side. This court leads into the lower floor of the house. Ascending still we reached the heavy outer door, through which we entered the reception vestibule. Another heavy door at right angles opens to a long passage, at the end of which we came at last to the inner court where our hostess met us. This inner place is very fine in workmanship, although, as it is here the upper floor, there is no gal- lery. On one side double doors give onto a balcony, closely latticed and looking over the roofs below, to the sea. Beautifully carved double doors, with smaller doors cut in them, in the shape of the Moorish arch, open into the three apartments on the other sides. In the end of one of these, under a dome, our luncheon was to be spread. Here were no pictures to offend the eye. All the furniture is in keeping; and we sat on cushions on the floor about a low round table. A brass tray which exactly covered the table was brought in with the first course: mince pie without [124] WITHIN THE CITY GATES the sweetening, and soft with olive oil. The Moors cook everything in oil, which is quite tasteless if it is pure. As they do not use knives and forks, it is necessary that the meat should be soft enough to break in the fingers; but since this was our first Arab meal, our hostess thought best to provide us with the Western implements. While we sat at meat, partaking of the Oriental food, brought to us by the soft- stepping, barefoot Oriental maiden, in her red ^velvet gown, — she who cast a spell upon us with her solemn dark eyes, — our hostess initiated us into many of the mysteries con- nected with the preparation of Algerine meals and with Algerine customs and life. Our second course was couscous, the staple native dish of high and low everywhere in North Africa. It is made of hard wheat, of the sort which is also employed for macaroni, but cannot be used for flour. The preparation of couscous is a somewhat elaborate one, and is woman's chief accom- plishment. The whole grains are pounded in a mortar; then rolled in flour by a peculiar motion of the hand, keeping the grains all separated. These are constantly picked out as they grow large enough, and are then [125] ALGIERS dried in the sun, after which they will keep for several years. To cook the couscous the Arabs put it over a pottery steamer, under which they have fowl or meat, cut into small pieces. The couscous is cooked entirely by the steam from the meat; and one may imagine that when the grains are ready the meat is also. The white meal is spread in a large, flat dish, and the bits of meat, with beans and lentils, arranged in fancy patterns on top. In another dish the meat juice is served as a sauce; and sometimes a hot sauce of tomato and peppers is added. We each seasoned our own little places in the big dish, and when we had eaten out a small quantity with wooden spoons, poured the bouillon on, like water into holes in the sand. The Arab bread, which was served with the lunch in wedge-shaped pieces, is very fine and snowy and perfumed with orange. Be- cause there are no real kitchens and no ovens in private houses, the housewives of El- Djezair merely knead their bread, and give it to the bakers' boys who take it to the pubhc ovens. After the couscous, came serpent cake, soft, rich pastry, with minced meat and nuts and spices, rolled into a bun. Fruit and [126] WITHIN THE CITY GATES dates followed, and Arab coffee, ground to powder and made thick as a syrup. The repast over, the pretty Moorish girl who served us brought a pitcher with a long, graceful nose, and poured rosewater over our hands into a basin with a perforated cover. After the luncheon our hostess took us to the roof of the house, from which we looked over other roofs or terraces, the women's world of out-of-doors, where no man is ad- mitted, even though it be on his own dwell- ing. For the white street coverings are laid aside, and the pretty costumes, the sweet faces, under the drooping silk kerchiefs, are revealed. The women visit freely from roof to roof, and one may guess the gossip pro- claimed from the house tops. Beyond, from every terrace, may be seen the mysterious blue sea, the secret of the power and the fall of the old El-Djezair. We took leave of our hostess, grateful for a glimpse of the women's life, which is hidden from men, even from those who have visited among the Arabs.* And having broken bread in an Arab house we went back into that Place du Gouverne- ment which we had looked upon from above. * This is frequently mentioned by De Amicis in his " Morocco." [127] THE FACE OF THE WATERS THE FACE OF THE WATERS IN this open square to which we have so often penetrated, in the heart of the city, where once stood the palace of the Deys, we gaze upon the face of the waters, the surface of the Oriental life of Algiers, the throng that first greeted us when we ap- proached by sea. They are a motley throng to decipher, but we hold the key. It is the dress of the pure-blooded Arab, which, even where modified and changed, gives the character to all. About the head and shoulders falls a fine, white woolen gauze, softening like a cloud the delicate features and transparent olive skin of the face, often a face revealing the beauty and ideality which belong to the Semitic race in the East. This head-covering or haik is bound to a felt cap with yards of camel's hair cord, and is so long that it would trail upon the ground if not gathered up and secured at the waist by a sash. Sometimes Turkish trousers and jacket, or a plain straight white garment are worn; [131] ALGIERS but outside of all, holding in the haik about the neck, is the burnous, a great circular cloak, the seamless garment, having a hood which is drawn over the head in bad weather. According to the day are one, two, or even three burnouses worn; and according to the wealth of the wearer is the texture more or less fine. Occasionally, also, the outer cloak is of glorious blue or red, the colors which glowed so richly at the Governor's ball, or it may be of undyed black sheep's wool. The costume allows, perhaps demands, the utmost freedom of movement and the result is remark- able grace.* The native cavalry or spahis, and the oflScials in the employ of the French, dress like the Governor's aide-de-camp. The haik and the camel's rope remain; and in winter a gorgeous scarlet burnous falls from the shoulders under the chair-back of the saddle, and over each white horse. But beneath is the costume left behind by the Turks and similar to the Zouaves: baggy embroidered trousers, embroidered coats and long leather cavalry boots. *The costume contrasts strongly with that of Egypt, all the more because there only the lower class among the men wear native dress and therefore no really fine Oriental costumes are seen. [132] THE FACE OF THE WATERS Some of the Moors of the town have ex- changed the white haik for the red Turkish fez, which is also worn by the Zouaves. Sometimes one sees a mixture of Turkish and Hebrew costume. The Hebrew color is blue, in stockings and in the turban around the fez. The Moors, who have performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, wrap green turbans around their fezes. All the Moors and their women, except among the poorest, wear neat, low shoes, with white stockings. Those who live out- side the town carry their shoes and stockings in their hands on the country roads, and, coming into the city, bathe their feet at one of the fountains and there don their hose and slippers. The womanhood of El-Djezair is clothed in spotless white. No woman may walk out alone, therefore she goes in the company of several others to shop or pray. We watch them pass the Arab fountain on the jetty, on their way to their own praying place. Some may be degraded; none appear degenerate, none are venders or toilers in the streets.* As the white walls hide the romance of courts and fountains, the white haik, which * The opposite is true of the mass of Egyptian women, [133] ALGIERS the woman wears as a shawl and which falls over her from the forehead to the knees, con- ceals the beauty of lace tunics, velvet bodices and rich old family jewels. The size of the white bloomer overalls may be inferred from the fact that the silk trousers beneath them are sometimes nine yards in width. Accord- ing to the age of the wearer does the width of the garment diminish. This fashion of dressing gives a peculiar bird-like gait, men- tioned in very old Arabian stories.* The face of the Algerine woman, below the eyes, is covered by a white veil called the adjar, held down by the hand which always clasps the haik together. The white brows and dark eyes above the adjar reveal, per- haps more than anything else, the superior- ity of this race among Orientals. The Kabyle woman is less frequently seen in Algiers' streets. The man is sturdier and stockier than the * At first the costume seemed ungainly to us, but it com- pared more than favorably with the scant attire at Tunis; which, though it also has the merit of being white, flaps about the legs, while the feet are enclosed in loose slippers, so short as to bring the heel under the instep; and the face is completely covered with two pieces of black cloth, one above and the other just below the eyes. The snowy costume of the Algerine woman also seems much neater than the flounced European skirts or the long black cloaks of Egypt. [134] THE FACE OF THE WATERS Arab. His dress is a striped garment, of a carpet-like texture, one of which is supposed to last a life-time. But what a home he comes from! Of all Algeria for scenery Kabylia is the finest part, and Kabylia of the Djurdjura the best. It is that snow-capped range of mountains over there across the bay. Its picturesque villages, hidden by the distance, crown the tops of sharp spurs, white minarets above clusters of red- tiled cottages. There are villages of the great warlike tribe of the Zouaoua and of the tribe of Ait-Zenni who produce the jewelry. From Kabylia of the Djurdjura comes also the crudely classic pottery. The highest of the Djurdjura mountains is Tamgout Lalla Kha- didja — the peak of the Lady Khadidja — more than seven thousand feet above the sea and quite inaccessible from November to May. It is almost opposite a small French fort, which guards the head of the river es- Sahel. Near the summit is the shrine of the Lady Khadidja, a pilgrimage to which is con- sidered by the Kabyles as scarcely less meri- torious than one to Mecca. Kabyle woman- hood has always had a better position than Arab or Moorish womanhood, the Kabyles having but one wife. Their highest shrine [135] ALGIERS among the snows, where they kept safe their ideal of freedom, is to a woman; and it was the capture of a woman saint, Lalla Fatimah, in the Djurdjura, which hastened the submis- sion of Kabylia in 1857. At the foot of the peak of the Lalla Kha- didja runs the great bed of the Oued-es-Sahel. Only a few thin streams can be seen in it ; the rest is taken up by groves of ancient olive trees. Not only are Kabyle laws, customs and art said to have come from the Romans, but even these far-away olive trees are said to have been grafted in Roman times. The art was probably lost among the Kabyles, and was only re-introduced by the French. We withdraw our eyes from the mountains and return to our types in the square of Algiers. The water-carrier in his blue shirt, with his picturesque copper jug, belongs to the tribe of Biskris, from about Biskra, the most im- portant desert city of Algeria, sought now by foreigners for climate. It is the man of the desert who bears water to the houses of Algiers. That darker man, whose garment is a long coat of many colors, is a Mozabite. One author says the word is derived from Moab. [136] THE FACE OF THE WATERS The Mozabites are not the shepherds, but the killers of sheep, the butchers of Algiers; and they come from oases in the desert, which are the latest annexation of the French. Their women never come with them; and their chief ambition is to make sufficient money to return to their own little country, those secluded, sand-bound islands, where few Christians have set foot. The largest of their seven confederated states is said to be eleven miles by two. Nevertheless, in these small ravines in the far desert the Mozabites have built real cities. They have their capi- tal, Ghardaia; their royal or sacred city; and their commercial depot. All the fertile ground has been laid under high cultivation. This seems a remarkable fact, but came about as a result of necessity in supporting their num- bers from so small a space. The farming is carried on largely by the women and children. In the Place du Gouvernement and every- where amongst the people move the French soldiers, the visible presence of power, wear- ing the well-known Turkish "Zouave" cos- tume, so-called in the first place from the tribe of Kabyles, the mountain-folk of Algeria. [137] ALGIERS They swing along the roads, singing their rollicking strains, and are very brilliant and jaunty in the full red trousers, white blouses and blue jackets, with the red fezes hanging — one does not know how — on the backs of their heads. The cavalry are mounted on white horses; for the pure Arab steed, though no longer existing here, has given the Alge- rian horses their color. It is snowy under the long, red cloaks which the native cavalry- men wear in winter. There is also, now, in this Place du Gou- vernement every variety of costume, every type and mixture of types; stately white- robed patriarchs with umbrellas! But even the poorest workman, with a brown mealsack serving him for a hooded burnous, surprises us with the suggestions of grace and ideality he gives the homely thing. In whatever guise, the native has the same freedom of motion, and makes even carrying hods as graceful and rhythmic as a strain of music. Our camera is always with us for illustra- tion; but our intentions are not unkind, and it requires much care not to cause distress to the poor native of Algiers and thus stand in the way of our own investigations. Not that his poverty gives him any shame — though a [138] THE FACE OF THE WATERS sharp bargainer, he is at all times superior to material discomforts or pride; and, moreover, lays all blame upon the broad shoulders of the French government — but he fears the camera as the evil eye. Its blackly magical power has even been proved to him. Has he not viewed, exposed for sale in windows and hung above the paper stands, the images of his friends who have faced the instrument, not for gold but for a few paltry coppers ? Perhaps he finds himself. And since he be- lieves no image can be made with the consent of the object unless something of the soul goes to form it, he knows that he is scat- tered on post cards to the four winds of the earth. This experience, instead of harden- ing, serves in most cases to make him more wary. It must not be imagined that the desire to increase by reluctance the value of posing leads these men to shun the eye of the lens; only in respect to certain half-breed, devil- may-care boys can this be true. They dance before us, urging, "Photographic! Photogra- phic!" But the only genuine pure-blooded Arab who ever stood for us refused to be paid. Occasionally, as in a group which we took outside of a cafe, the men who have lost [139] ALGIERS their "prejudices" will smile assent to us, but there is sure to be an objector in the group who scowls darkly and wishes to be assured that he is not within the range. The sincere Mohammedan slips away in evident deep discomfort from this weapon of the soul ; and pennies will not bribe the children or the women. Women may have no souls to be destroyed, but the men object for them. One day within the old town, two unveiled women posed for us in a doorway. A man came by and stopped to talk with them. He himself was taken — with full cognizance, as we thought, believing him to be one of the "un- prejudiced." Accordingly, when he asked pleasantly in French if the photograph were done, we answered guilelessly, "Yes." What he said to the women we never knew. We had stepped into the vestibule of a French house to change the roll of film. Suddenly we were besieged by a crowd of amazons, in soft clothes and carrying cigarettes; the eyes of some ablaze with fury, others adding fuel to the flames by their amusement. Our com- pulsory hostess enjoyed the scene with avid- ity. We smiled and smiled, like Shakespeare's famous villain; and either because of our desire to be propitiatory, or because we were [ 140] THE FACE OF THE WATERS in a French house, we came out with a whole camera. This photographing is to true Mohamme- dans but another form of insult from that west- ern civilization which destroys not the body only; and to the small boys but another excuse for the mischief which possesses them. These particular youngsters are so merry, so winsome in spite of dirt, more anxious for a smile to which they can respond than they are for coppers; but it is their merriment which is uppermost, and as we pass through the Arab town they always spy the camera and fly delightedly ahead, warning the women away with that cry of "Photographic!" or exultantly telling them their pictures have been taken. Among the men the humor which is so characteristic of these people is revealed, when they watch and even assist us to photograph others who are not conscious of what is going on, while they themselves keep carefully behind us. Sometimes the interested, idle crowd becomes overpowering and we give up lying in wait, and flee. We do not intend to hurt feelings with our camera. After all, who among ourselves has not some pet superstition which has power to cause him anguish; who among us would [141] ALGIERS like to be photographed at church or at prayer? Yet that is exactly what a European woman attempted in a mosque in the heart of the Arab town this winter — to her own extreme discomfiture, for one ragged beggar threw his arms about her neck. In their own eyes, and as a psychological consequence in reality, they must become degraded by hav- ing no recourse to revenge. They are help- less in this as in other matters pertaining to their religion. They are forced to admit Christians to their mosques, where once such pollution could only have been wiped out in blood. It is a question as to what is the effect upon them, of their taking the fees given them for the privilege of entering their most holy places. There are times, however, when, even were we disposed, we should not dare to do violence to their beliefs. We two women have gone through the entrance pas- sage and have stood alone in the court of the temple while these tall men came from prayer. Some of them caught sight of the machine, folded away under an arm, and angrily brushed against us as they passed; most of them were uplifted far above seeing us ; and the camera was kept reverently closed. [ 142 ] HIDDEN WAYS HIDDEN WAYS WE stand in the Place du Gouverne- ment beside Mohammed, looking down upon the jetty, the jetty of Khair-ed-din, at the Spanish fort, and the mole itself, built by the Christian slaves. Along it, where the low, white barracks now extend, were the former Christian prisons; while under the fine old arches of the present Admiralty, which was the house of the Cap- tain Pacha, and is now one of the most perfect Moorish houses remaining in Algiers, is prob- ably the place where the slaves were landed. We have gone down to this spot sometimes, close to the mysterious power of the sea, where the Past entirely enfolds us. Beyond the arches, in the wall of the house, is the fountain, one of the finest spared by the French. White groups of women pass on their way to their small praying place in a filled-in arch, where the keeper sits below the level of the threshold, his turbaned head [ 145] ALGIERS just visible, and two palms keep guard beside the door. There is a picturesque old Turkish prison at one end of the island; and hidden away, around a corner in it, a rich old door. In the arch above the door are the only images of living things to be found in Oriental Algiers. They are two mosaic lions, made by a cap- tive Persian, a Fatimite Mohammedan, whose creed permitted it. The beauty of the crea- tion proved its right to exist. In spite of all changes and destructive forces, it is undis- turbed to this day. The crowning charm of jetty and island and harbor is always the white lighthouse of Hassan, springing lightly from the Span- ish fort, with the Spanish arms above the door. Each night it glows over the water, in which lay the strength of the Algerines; warns the ships of danger, guides them home to port — still shines out as the spirit of the ancient El-Djezair. In the morning it is finest to walk out on the smooth masonry which forms the French continuation of the jetty, enclosing the larger harbor; and there, with the fresh wind blowing and the sound of the breakers in our ears, to look back at the terraced white city, [146] HIDDEN WAYS the sunlight falling full upon it. Here and there, at our feet on the rough masonry, are boys engaged in that most fascinating sport for all ages and all grades of civilization — fishing; and down among the irregular blocks which break the force of the sea are Arabs lying in the sun and wind, out of sight of our modern life, again asleep and dreaming. Ascending from the mole to the point of the city from which it extends, we seldom return by the branch of the new-made boule- vard overlooking the shore, but walk up the street which leads directly from the jetty. It was a Roman street, this Rue de la Marine, but its attraction now is the Moorish mosque, the oldest in Algiers, restored by the French after the bombardments which partly wrecked *t. The mosque's long outer colonnade is ►surmounted by serrated horseshoe arches, and contains a black marble fountain sur- rounded by columns, grouped as in the Al- hambra. Within its courts one realizes that the old life does indeed go on, the life whose essence is faith. Though it flows in hidden ways, in streams and undercurrents, less and less evident beneath the French structure growing above it, yet it is there. The portal of the temple is the only entrance to it; [147] ALGIERS within, the only place where one may catch a glimpse of the Moor's real existence. Just inside the gates of the temple sit the Eastern beggars: women and children. In the outer court is the law office of the Cadi; for the law is interpreted solely from the Koran, and minor differences between Mohammedans are settled by the Cadi, to whom they go for knowledge of the law. In the mosque proper are arches and pillars unadorned — pillars behind pillars, half revealing, half concealing distance, unfolding vistas suggestive of infin- ity. Across an arm of the building is an inner court and the holy fountain of ablutions. Five times a day must the Mohammedan bathe his limbs, and must utter his profes- sion of faith in eight different postures. Between seven and noon there is no regular prayer time and we are permitted to photo- graph. But there is always some one pray- ing, his little pile of surplus garments at the foot of the pillar beside him, where he laid them when he went to the fountain. His face wears that strange expression when the light of the eyes is inward. Round and round he twirls his finger, his lips move, his eyes are fixed. When the prayer is over and he walks away he seems scarcely to tread the [ 148] HIDDEN WAYS earth. At the door to the outer court he once more raises his arms above his head, his last posture of devotion, then bends to slip his shoes on and walks out, wearing that exalted expression which is the only change we ever witness from the mask of stoical impassivity. We think the prophetic dream of old is here to-day in the mosque. Or do we see with the outer eye our inner dream of it.? At three the flag is flying from the minaret for the hour of prayer. Then, especially on Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath, the day on which God created Adam, there is quite a company in the mosque, sitting on the floor in a circle around the reader of the Koran, who faces the sack, the position of which indicates the direction of Mecca. One day, in her interest, the writer unconsciously walked out of the big slippers with which Europeans must cover their unholy shoes; and later discovered them lying side by side many yards away across the floor, their bril- liant red loudly calling attention to her delin- quency. Could she reach them before a Mohammedan discovered the sacrilege ! For- tunately, the devoutness of the worshipers was her protection and shield. Every minute [ 149] ALGIERS of that soft journeying was torture lest her movement should direct some eyes toward the telltale objects. But not one worshiper appeared to notice her. That devoutness, — is it purer worship, at least more for the sake of the other world and less for this, than our prayers ? For the Mohammedan is a fatalist. Though God slay him, yet will he say: '* Allah is great." His prayers are prayers of adoration, rather than prayers of petition. Once at evening at the close of Rhamadan, through the good offices of one who has known the Arabs many years, a small com- pany of us were admitted to a mosque to see the ceremonies which end the long fast. It is that Turkish mosque, the Mosque de la Pecherie, on the corner of the Place du Gou- vernement, and it belongs to the Malekite sect. The Long Mosque, the older Moorish building, in which also the festival was kept, but which has no gallery for guests, is the property of the Hanefites. Both sects are Sunnites, or orthodox believers, in distinction from the Shiites, the Fatimite unorthodox sect of Persia. This mosque on the Place du Gouverne- [150] HIDDEN WAYS merit is built upon the side of the cliff and, singularly enough, in the form of a cross. It is said to have been constructed for the Turks by a Christian slave who was an architect, and who perished for his temerity in giving it this shape, that his blood might purify the temple. There is a wooden gallery leading in from the level of the street. In this gallery we were permitted to stand, gaz- ing down upon the scene. Countless candles illuminated it; countless silent figures moved about below us. There was neither the sound of voice nor of foot. Gracefully and naturally the groups changed, and arranged themselves along the edges of the lines of carpet, facing the reader. The shoes lay in rows before them, or were tucked into any convenient niches in the wall. The haiks were all removed. Each head was covered with a red fez, each pair of shoul- ders with the pure white cloak. When the reader began there were responses and prayers ; the worshipers, sometimes all standing, some- times seated, moving in successive waves, as a field of flowers when the wind passes over it. There is a gallery in the center of the cross, and from it a choir of boys chanted in the intervals of the reading; while at times, [ 151 ] ALGIERS boys moved among the congregation, sprink- ling the hands or the heads with the dew of fresh jasmine water. We also were anointed. Beside us in our high position, the mayor, the prefect of police, and several soldiers watched; the first two, at least, as invited guests. Standing there in that old wooden gallery above a visionary throng, made more so by the rigors of the fast, strange thoughts of Samson came into our minds. But the service was over safely; the worshipers carried off the candles; and we stepped into the outer darkness, pausing to thank the sheikh before we left. It has been with deeper understanding that from this time on we have traversed the hidden ways of the ancient El-Djezair. Many are our trips through the narrow passages of the old town. They bear strange names, these streets. The Arabs called them, when it was necessary to designate them at all, by some familiar mark — as we would say, the street where the blacksmith lives. The French caught the sounds and, with careful attention to detail, tried to reproduce them in French spelling and — possibly to his horror — labeled the Arab's streets in the very stronghold of his silence with neat little signs. [ 152 ] HIDDEN WAYS So was named the Rue Soggemah in which is the one Oriental bazaar in the old town. It is in a Moorish building, where, if you but understand the Oriental spirit and have the Oriental soul's superiority to time, you may bargain for rugs and old embroideries and jewels, prayer ornaments, rings, and pins to fasten the haiks, like fans spreading back to the stick and secured from slipping by a large crescent on the pin itself. Here is the Kabyle jewelry, found everywhere. It comes from the tribe of Ait-Yenni, and was only done in silver, but now is made of base metal. The Kabyle jewelers have never worked in gold. Two kinds of a pattern are usually made, one enameled and the other plain, or only ornamented with bits of coral. You may also find the modern brasswork: lamps and coffee-pots and those Oriental cups which make such charming Western finger-bowls. Farther on and up the town grows deep and silent, as are the ebbing streams of its life. The steep streets, unlike those of other Oriental cities, are washed to a certain clean- ness by the rains. Sometimes a rich-robed figure emerges quietly from a low door; veiled women glide past us out of old stories. They remind us of the lily and her lowly [153] ALGIERS origin in earth — as does the best in the Arabian tales. But here are no gay bazaars, such as we hear of in Tunis and Cairo; no more sign of vitaUty than a few small provision shops, with their long strings of onions, and their shorter and sweeter strings of orange buds. Nobody seems working in the old town, except the tribe of water-carriers in their long blue shirts, with their copper jugs on their shoulders, bringing refreshment and purifi- cation to these city houses from the foun- tains in the streets. Yet behind the silence tiny fingers are weaving wondrous webs. In one Moorish house little girls are learning the embroidery stitch which their great-grandmothers knew. Early in the French occupation, a French- woman, realizing that the art of Algerian embroidery was dying, founded this school which her granddaughter carries on. From the beginning they collected the rare old pieces, once so lavishly done: napkins long enough to encircle the table and to cover the laps of ten; fine indoor head-coverings of the women ; even exquisite caps for drying the hair. For a time these little girls will con- tinue the beautiful work of the Moorish past, [ 154] HIDDEN WAYS with all its suggestion of poetry. Attempts have been made in this school to teach the children reading, but the parents object, for it injures their chances of marriage. They leave their benefactress soon after their work becomes valuable; but she still cares for those who have grown old since her grand- mother's time. In another Moorish building little girls are making the soft rugs which win the Western hearts. A row of these children, each with her henna-dyed hair in a long braid wound with a kerchief, is a quaint picture. They copy patterns placed above their work, and some of the little ones are so small they are obliged continually to climb upon the bench to see. But their wee fingers pick out the threads of the loom, and tie and cut the wool or silk, faster than our eyes can follow. An error, detected by the next look at the copy, is as rapidly taken out. When we visited the school, some of the quickest children were but nine years old and had been scarcely six months there. As we stood in the Moor- ish court, hung round with rugs, and with looms upon all sides, there floated down to us, from the gallery above, the sound of chil- dren singing — the voices of other little work- [ 155 ] ALGIERS ers — sweet and cool and clear as bird-notes or the splash of a fountain in the court. Boys, in the good old Oriental days, were taught to read and write the Koran. Now, many of them attend the French schools and the Lyceum, to be educated with French boys. Sir Lambert Playfair seemed to think that this was a mistake. The Lyceum itself is one of the finest build- ings in Algiers and can board eight hundred students. The course is exactly like that of all other Lycees in France, but the objection is the mixture of Christian, Jewish, and Moham- medan boys. All through the narrow passages of the old town we find always in the otherwise almost deserted streets these children, the new life of El-Djezair. They line our path on either side, or flit shyly up and down the steps of some cross street, making it a verita- ble Jacob's Ladder. The girls are all called Fathma, for the daughter of the prophet, with some individual name beside; the first- born sons are all Mohammeds and their brothers bear some variation of that revered name, or one of its attributes, such as Ab- dallah, Slave of God. But the boys wear the responsibility of their great name with a light [156] HIDDEN WAYS satisfaction, as boys are apt to do; and the girls! — the girls are born coquettes, with sweet and musical voices, and lithe and graceful forms. Their beauty is their one chance for preservation. They are irresisti- bly winning as they dance beside us, their heads on one side, their exquisitely formed, henna-stained hands held out while they chant a sort of sing-song, "Merci, Madame; Madame, merci!" They do not arrive at the dignity of womanhood: that is, they are not taken off the streets and veiled, until they are ten or twelve, or begin to show an interest in the mirror. They are married at twelve or thirteen, old at thirty. Even in their brief childhood these girls are burdened with the care of smaller children, often car- ried on the back to enforce the plea for money. Two of these little mothers we see almost every day at a place where we change cars. Poor little hard-worked girls with their great, wistful dark eyes — one wonders what be- comes of them if they return empty-handed. Can we hope that wife-beating fathers will spare their little ones.'^ Yet the instincts of the Moors are not brutal and there are many evidences that they are affectionate parents. Frequently we see poor fathers leading their [157] ALGIERS children tenderly by the hand. There is also a Moorish official whom we often notice accompanied by his daughter, in her cunning Moorish costume, the exact copy of a woman's, except uncovered by the white overgarments. His is a beautiful dreamy face and he watches her with loving pride, as if she embodied for him the mystery of life in an ideal relation. Moorish children, even of the better class, do often appear dirty and neglected, especially in the case of sons, and so we find them in. fine Moorish gardens; but it seems not out of place in the garden, for it is a reminder of magic, though the magic of the evil eye, which the parents thus attempt to avoid. On one of our visits to the town we were admitted to a Moorish household. Four of us, including an English general and his wife, had been spending the morning in El- Djezair. A man upon whom the general attempted to practice Arabic had acted as a guide and had led us to his own home, which was like a rabbit burrow in a wall. The general remained with the guide, who held open the door that we might see to make our way up from the small entrance chamber by a tiny, winding stair in the wall, the steps of which had been almost obliterated. Above, [158] HIDDEN WAYS in another diminutive apartment, with a ceil- ing too low to permit us to stand upright, was the home nest, where the entire family were clustered. Cooking was going on; and the heat and close air were intolerable, so we beat a hasty retreat, watched on our way by a tiny sprite of a girl, who was cuddled into a projecting, iron-barred window. Discouraged, we dismissed our guide and went on through the town alone. A small, self-elected conductor appeared to warn us from one of the innumerable cul-de-sacs, telling us, "It only ends in an Arab house.'* "Well, but," we replied, "we might like to see the house." Whereupon he flew ahead out of sight, and we came upon him just as he dropped the knocker of one of those stately doors. Now we should see the Ara- bian Nights. We had reached the end, and the portal was opened by a woman, who herself kept out of sight. The boy explained that we wished to see the interior, and we women were eagerly welcomed; but a cry went up at sight of the general, who was obliged to remain outside. The household proved to be well-to-do; and, upon entering the court, we found the traditional four wives to greet us, each surrounded by her [159] ALGIERS own brood of three or four. We dared not praise them, however — no greater harm could we do them than thus to attract the evil eye! The women were like sisters together. We wondered whether they, in the ennui of changeless lives, or we, in the mood for con- stant change, were more surprised and de- lighted with the visit. They were as inter- ested in our clothes as we in theirs, examining the texture and marveling that we do not wear an extra number of coats on cold days. They themselves were charming in pretty house costumes. In the court the dinner was being cooked on one of their curious portable stoves. But the women hurried us to their own upper world. From the gallery they ushered us into one of their four apartments, the usual long narrow room. There were bright cushions, used as beds, across it, side by side down part of its length. Most im- portant, however, was the object to which the women pointed with pride, and for which it was evident they had brought us there — a piano! They would not let us go till we had played for them. Meanwhile, the gen- eral stood without, with such patience as he could command. In this land where women are accounted so far below men, foreign [160] HIDDEN WAYS women possess an advantage over their lords. But we do not expect to be merely enter- tained. Where can one go among the peo- ple and not have one's heart ache through the feeling of common humanity. This is par- ticularly the case in Algeria, where a race conformed to an alien civilization presents a constant and sometimes a painful incongru- ity. The humor of the situation seems a trifle grim, like that in the situation of the captives cut or stretched to fit the robber's bed. And still I think they sleep, deeper and deeper, trying to forget. The closer draw their prison walls, the closer their inner life is hid. On the Friday following Rhamadan, we go to one of the two large Arab cemeteries. The men are at prayer in the city mosques; but the women are gathered here; and no man of their own or of any nationality, no man except the blind beggar, may come within the gates of the high walls. The Mohammedans believe that the spirits of the dead may return on that day of the week, and the women and their children go to keep them company. The cemetery is full to overflowing with the dead. A small boy once told us that his mother could not be buried in the grave with [161] ALGIERS his father, because the grave was "complet." When asked how many "complet" meant, he answered, quite as if speaking of a matter of course, "Trente." The body of the adult Mohammedan is borne on the shoulders on a sort of bier, the carrying of which is sure to bring good luck, so that the bearers are continually changed on the way. Babies are carried on small cushions in the arms. Only men attend the burial, walking in irregular groups. The body is placed in the earth without any casket, half-sitting and facing the East. Mo- hammedans leave some one to stay beside the dead the first night, to repeat for the soul the responses to Asrayl, the archangel questioner, which the poor spirit may have forgotten. Though the cemetery we visit is the prin- cipal one in use to-day, it is from a Christian standpoint an utterly neglected, unkempt and desolate acre. The stones, shaped like a head and shoulders, lean every way in the rank grass; the small cribs on the grave centers are half full of rain water. And grouped around each, almost sitting in the water where the graves are sunken, are the family parties — picnicking! Small boys go about with trays of Moorish candy for sale; [162] HIDDEN WAYS and the women and children scatter orange peel and bits of cake, for they have come to spend the day and must lunch. More- over it is the only outing good women ever have, and they must come in companies of relatives. The stages going out to the ceme- teries are crowded with them. Surely no more ghostly sight could be imagined than this cemetery full of grave- stones; more full of white-robed, hooded figures, wuth adjar off and great dark eyes beneath pale brows, eyes which are lovely even over the white veils. For as one sense is sharpened to take impressions when its owner is deprived of the others, so may one means of expression, like these dark eyes, be intensified. Theirs is a beauty not unknown in other lands, where it sometimes appears, especially among the peasantry, whose veil is ignorance. In every rank, it is the expres- sion of what cannot otherwise be told, and is therefore an appeal, the witness to some- thing deeper speaking through the individual life. Is it not essentially the woman beauty.? As we watch them, remembering that the men are at prayer, they bring to us in bodily form the images of haunting spiritual pres- ences in the East. Are these indeed the [163] ALGIERS suffering spirits of the race? At least they signify, in this place of death, the continuance of creative life. Seven open graves we count as we pass out — it was five when we came before. Yet El-Djezair is a small city. We remember that it is the fasting month of Rhamadan, which has brought cruel suffering and death. The Mohammedan year is divided into months of moons, which division slightly varies every year, the season of the fast. During Rhamadan, from sunrise to sunset the good Mohammedan may not touch so much as a drop of water. The penalty for any one caught taking wine was death. The law may no longer be enforced by this pun- ishment, but fear of worse evils in the long after- journey still deters men. That they are faithful we had various opportunities of learning. Among others, was the case of a young girl, ill with tuberculosis. A French woman whom we knew took her in, and by feeding her with the most nutri- tious food had succeeded in giving her a new start toward life. But Rhamadan came and the girl would fast with the rest. Then she pleaded to be allowed to make a pilgrim- age to her old home. Through the help of [164] HIDDEN WAYS the good French lady, who realized that now it was all the poor child had left to desire, she was sent home, but returned to her friend, only in time to breathe her last. The girl died, pleading for a soothing medicine, but denied by her mother, who felt that it was necessary to know the exact moment of the soul's departure in order to pray for it. Thus does their religion help to make the Mohammedans stoical. The body and physical life are less to them than to us. However, the rich do not suffer much in Rhamadan; they simply turn night into day and do but listen for the sunset gun. But the poor who are obliged to work by day — the drivers and those graceful hod-carriers work- ing on the French buildings, feel it cruelly. It would seem as if poverty among the natives in Algiers has not decreased since the change of government. Many a man has lost his all, and the children are still beggars, under Western modes of giving. Yet the land is rich, and almsgiving is a part of the Mohammedan religion. When wealthy Moors were here, the poor did not fare so badly, especially during Rhamadan. Though there were no organized charities, there was a spirit of brotherhood between all classes. [165] ALGIERS Now many of the rich are gone; and another form of life, for which his nature was not made, has been forced upon the poor man. No wonder that when his fast falls in the winter he now calls it a "good Rhamadan." When it comes in the heat of an Algerian summer, the time when building is done for the following season, and when the sirocco blows like a blast from a furnace, withering all living things, while he may not have one drop of water to cool his tongue — it must be a purgatory to cleanse him of many sins. Has it not always been true in history that an alien civilization destroys the life which did not grow to it, but is cut to fit it.^ Surely, as surely as the French building is destroying the Moorish architecture, the French life is supplanting the Oriental. Does it matter.^ Is it not the natural course of events that what stands in the way of our civilization must go.'^ How many civilizations have raised that plea! France merely in- tends to make over. Is there any deeper significance, a significance, perhaps, to the world, in her method of solving the problem of Algeria.? Will that method be extended in time to Tunis and Morocco.? For the Moorish life is passing, is even now [166] HIDDEN WAYS a vision which flits whitely through marble courts and arches where we are conscious of it. Beauty and poetry hide amid the papyrus of the ancient bathing fountains in those courts, which are the same as "the middle of the house" referred to in Hebrew scriptures, with their cedars of Lebanon for beams and their shades which remind us of the Psalm- ist's simile. The veiled figures which belong in them are cloaked in the seamless white garment. A dreaminess rests upon the land; its people slumber deeper and still dream; and we, who would interpret the Dream of Ages, enter into the spell. All is indeed asleep, the essence of the Orient a dream, an inner consciousness to be interpreted by the West. But out at a country market, where a host of patriarchal Arabs congregate, as they do in a different and stated place on each day of the week, we are conscious of something else. Here are the tents, the cattle, and the sheep. Here are Laban and Jacob again. These are they still capable of waking to the cry of a prophet, "Thus saith the Lord!" [ 167 ] INTO THE PRESENT INTO THE PRESENT THERE is a drive of some ten miles westward from Algiers to a Trappist monastery. The way leads step by step through all the story of Algeria. We take the lower road, around the Cape Caxine, the western point of the crescent enclosing the bay of Algiers. And first above the still French cemeteries shines the church of the conquerors, the sailors' church, for the French must come by sea to Algeria. Notre Dame d'Afrique reminds us that Algiers is still the port, and there one may, perhaps, feel more of the religion of France than in the city cathedral where the army is represented, and where the presence of the troops gives the Sunday service a military character. Notre Dame belongs to the days of that fervent worker in Africa, Archbishop Lavi- gerie. It stands so high on the end of the hills that from it one can see only the water at its foot — the square before it seems to overhang the sea. It is a weirdly windy [171] ALGIERS place, where the self-strippe