In Barbary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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