In the Land of Mosques & Minarets

tousjours quelque

bel

call them, have not as yet overrun the land. For the most part the travellers in these delightful lands, be they Americans, English or Germans (and the Germans are almost as numerous as the others), are strictly unlabe

teamship" drops down three or four hundred at one fell swoop on the quais of Algiers or Tunis, and then those cities become as the Place de

nted with the real North A

ordinary thing that astonishes us to-day, for there is no more virgin land to exploit as a touring-ground. It is the rubbing of shoulders with the dwellers in fore

entle assimilated adaptation of men and things, no one can predict. The Arab has become a very good engineer, the Berber can be trained to become a r

(Algeria and Tunisia, and perhaps by the time these lines are printed, Morocco) at her very door, she is more than fortunately placed with regard to the development of this part of Africa. The individual German may come and do a little trading on his ow

l colour of Mediterranean and Saharan Africa is really beyond the romancer who writes love-stories for the young ladies of the boarding-schools, and the new women of the art nouveau boudoirs. The lithe, dreamy young Arab of fiction, who falls in love wit

simply a passionate, tumultuous creature, lovable only for her inconsistencies, which

ng our parents never dreamed of! Exclamations and exhortations of the characters of "Under Two Flags," "Mon Amour," "Ma Patrie," "Les Enfants," are not African. They belong to the parasite faubourgs of Paris' fortifications. Let no one make the mistake, then, of taking this crop of North African novels for their gu

ree wheelers and four leaders, seven horses in all. It is made up of many compartments and stories. There is a rez-de-chaussée, a mezzanine floor and a roof garden, with prices varying accordingly as comfort increases or decreases. A fifty or

ces in getting around corners or down a sharp incline than any other coach-driver that ever handled the ribbons. Sometimes he has an assistant who handles a shorter whip, and belabours it over the backs of the wheelers, when ad

imagine, including perhaps a dozen fowls, a sheep or two, or even a calf. Amidst all this,

ght with possibilities of disaster. There is treasure aboard, too,-a strong-box bolted to the floor beneath the drivers' feet; and at the rear a weather-proof cast-iron letter-box, padlocked tight a

trod down in the herb-grown, sandy soil by the bare feet of men, or camels, or the hoofs of horses and mules. So narrow were t

meter wide high-roads, which now cross and recross their country, the resul

as they are in Algeria, and they a

t placed by some devoted traveller who has recalled that on that spot occurred the death, or perhaps murder, of some pioneer. The Arabs call these monuments Nza, and

gands and robbers left hiding in the mountains, perhaps, but their raids are on flocks and herds, and not for the mere dross of the gold of tourists, or the gasolene of automobilists. The desert lio

belief that it can track for weeks across the desert, drinking only air, and eatin

ars, in all Algeria th

lionesses

hers

as 1

als

the great mountain fastnesses, and the jackals themselves are harmless enough so far as human beings are concerned. The sanglier, or wild boar, is savage enough if attacked when met w

cket, grasshopper or sauterelle. The sauterelle, says the Arab, is the wonder among nature's living things. It has the face of a horse, the eyes of an elephant, the neck of a bull, the horns of a deer, the breast of a lion, the stomach of a scorpion, the legs of an ost

rmer is unlovely but not dangerous. "Il pique, mais ne mord pas," say the French; but no one likes to find them in his shoes in the morning all the sa

ty, can be tamed to follow you like a dog, and is as affectionate as a caressing kitten

he understands French (as he frequently does), he is quite as "useful" as would be his European prototype under similar conditions. Th

st and it's bad French. "Sidi mousi! Moi porter! Moi forsa besef!" is nothing at all, though it is eloquent, and probably means that the gamin, old or young, wants to

est Algerian substitute for "Day & Martin's Best," it doesn't matter in the least; they still cry, "Ciri, ciri, ciri, m'siou!" Sometimes it is, "Ciri bien, m'siou!" and sometimes "Ciri, kif, kif la glace de Paris!" But the object of their plaint is always the same. F

péritif; for in spite of his religion the Mussulman will sometimes drink beer and white wine. Some, too, are "decorated," and some wear even the ruban or bouton of the Legion of Honour on their chests where that otherwise useless buttonhole of the

ill not become naturalized to any great extent. Out of forty-one naturalized foreigners in Tunis in 1891, 27 were Italians

it will never overturn Mohammedanism. The trail of Islam is a long one a

GHT of

he Arab-Moorish overrunning of North Africa defined an epoch full of the incident of romance, whatever may have been the cruelties of the barbarians. This period endured until finally the sombre cities of the corsairs became the commercial capitals of to-day, just as glorious Cartha

h concerning that of the French which, since the unhappy affair of Fashoda, has been more active than ever. The French are not the garrulous nation one sometimes thinks them. They have a way of doing things, and saying nothing, which is often fraught with surprises for the outsid

n of sand and the last oasis palm-tree, and it alo

gérie is a part of France, a Department across the seas like Corse. It holds its own elections and has three senators and six deputies at Paris. Its gov

e Algérie" as the French fondly call it, is not a mere strip of mountain land and desert. It is one of the richest agricultural lands on earth, running eastward from the Moroccan frontier well over int

eupon great national granaries were built and the commerce in the wheat of Africa took on forthwith almost the complexion of a monopoly. The sowing and the harvest were most primitive. "I ha

d drinking much coffee, each of these narcotics very black and strong. Four months later his ample, or meagre, crop comes by chance. Then he flays it, not by means of a flail swung by hand, but by borrowing a little donkey from some neighbour,-if he hasn't one of his own,-and letting t

rybody else flees before it except the native who eats its spiny, juicy bulbs and finds them good. The rest of us only find the spines, and throw the fruit away in disgust when we attempt to taste it. The Barbary fig is the Arab's sole foo

ean states and provinces, the date-bearing palm, come within three well-defined

xes. The French leave its collection to the local Ca?ds or Sheiks,

are four principa

nstantine), a tax on land; the Lezma, the generic term for various contributions, such as the right to carry firearms (the only tax levied in Kabylie), and the

s a specific tax on olive-trees as well as date-pal

the ends of the earth,-usually under the name of a cru more famous. It is very good wine nevertheless, this rich, hybrid juice of the grape; and, though the Proven?al of Chateauneuf, the sons of the Aude, the Garde and the Hérault, or the men of Roussillon do not recogniz

"vin blanc de Carthage," should carry the fame of these North Afric

s faith which the French have held inviolate so far as proselytizing goes. It is this one fundamental principle which has done much to make the French rule in Algeria the success that it is. Britain should leave religion out of her colonizing schemes if she would avoid the unrest which is continually cropping up in various parts of the

ince when occasion demanded. There are vestiges of these old Roman quais at Bougie, at Collo, at Cherchell, at Stora and at Bona. These Roman works, destroyed or abandoned at the Vandal invasion, were never rebuilt; and the great oversea

rs, until in comparatively recent times, were there any ports or harbours, legitimately so called, in either Algeria or Tunisia, though the Spani

subtropical one. It is very like the climate of the latitude of Washington, though perhaps

he Algerian coast is

centigrade Summe

entigrade Autumn,

rly, 17°-18

as an example, the balance swings in favour of Algeria in winter,

tigrade Summer

tigrade Autumn,

rage, 16°

figures swamp any of the other single "foreign imports" in value. One does not speak of course of imports from France. As the argument of the dealers, who push the sewing-machine into the desert gourbis of the nomads and the mountain dwellings of the Kabyles, has it, the civilizing influences of Algeria have been railways, public schools and "Singers." What progressive Arab could be expected to resist such an argument for progress, with easy-payment terms of a franc a week as the chief inducement? The only objection seems to be that his deli

em; nor hats, though a Stetson, No. 7, would please them mightily, all but the price. There is no demand for folding-beds or elastic bookcases. The Arab sleeps on the floor, and the only book he possesses, if he can read, is a copy of the Koran, which he tucks away inside his burnous and

there is the German occupation

onizer himself, but he knows how to sell goods. In North Africa, in the coast towns, over a thousand German firms have established themselves within the last ten years, all the way from Tangier to Port Sa?d. This may mean little or nothing to the offhand thinker; but when one recalls that the blackamoor and the Arab have learned to use matches and folding pocket-knives, and have e

depths, the case of the late German consul at Cairo, Paul Gerhard, who wrot