Rome’s successors—The Road and its influence—Algerian highways—The motor-car and modern travel—An aqueduct—Cherchel—Cleopatra’s daughter—Tipasa—The French as Colonists—Viticulture.

From many points of view the modern French may be regarded as representing most fully among the peoples of Europe the Romans of the Empire. The sturdy physique and unrivalled endurance, the unsurpassed gallantry and devotion to duty of their soldiers, recall the qualities of the legions. Their absorbing pride in and love for their native land is an echo of the tremendous sentiment of Roman citizenship. The logical coherence of their legal system is frankly based on the jurisprudence of Rome. Their faculty, for producing the most perfect work in the more refined forms of engineering and the manufacture of delicate tools and machines is a natural development of Roman thoroughness in constructive matters. And like the Romans they are the slaves of convention. Everything Roman was according to a settled plan. The empire was a vast aggregation of cities which aspired to be little Romes. From the borders of Scotland to the fringe of the Sahara, from Portugal to Asia Minor, cities were raised more or less, as circumstances permitted, fulfilling the conventional design; conventional not only in town-planning, and in the scheme of public buildings, but in the architecture of private houses and the most minute details of decoration. We grow weary in the museums of to-day of the repetition of the same motives in sculpture, in mosaic and in bronze-work. The only variety is in the quality of the execution. So, too, must a French town, a French house, a Frenchman’s manners and a Frenchwoman’s clothes be in accordance with a sealed pattern deposited in the temple of the great goddess Comme-il-faut. The French are the most law-abiding of nations, but their laws are les convenances. The occasional licence exhibited in their art and literature and morals is but the effort of a few eccentric individuals, not always of unmixed French breeding, to break through the trammels in which the mass of the race is bound.

In this country the French have set themselves from the first to carry on the Roman tradition in the making of roads. In a land which for twelve centuries has known little but destruction and decay they have built, as the Romans built before them, solid, uncompromising, inevitable highways, roads on which armies may march secure of ambush, and almost regardless of the hostility of natural forces;—roads which create not only peace, but prosperity in their course. The road is one of the most effective as it is one of the most permanent works of man. In England quite a large proportion of our main roads still follows the lines laid down by the Romans. We are ourselves rather road-menders than road-makers. Our genius finds its work in other directions. We have been in South Africa far longer than the French in North Africa, and what have we to show there at all comparable with the Algerian roads?

In one of the most notable books of our generation, Mr. Hilaire Belloc has set before us the uses, the influence, the interest, and the fascination of the road. In the course of an exploration of one of those ancient highways which we English have permitted to fall into decay and in part to disappear, he has taken occasion to impress on us the part which the road has played in the spread of civilizing influences. Algeria—roadless and anarchical for centuries, orderly and webbed with roads to-day—may add point to his argument. “More than rivers and more than mountain chains, roads have moulded the political groupings of men. The Alps with a mule-track across them are less of a barrier than fifteen miles of forest or rough land separating one from that track. Religions, which are the principal formers of mankind, have followed the roads only, leaping from city to city and leaving the ‘Pagani,’ in the villages off the road, to a later influence. Consider the series, Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Athens and the Appian Way; Rome, all the tradition of the Ligurian Coast, Marseilles and Lyons. I have read in some man’s book that the last link of that chain was the river Rhone; but this man can never have tried to pull a boat upon the Rhone upstream. It was the Road that laid the train. The Mass reached Lyons before, perhaps, the last disciple of the apostles was dead; in the Forez, just above, four hundred years later, there were most probably offerings at night to the pagan gods of those sombre and neglected hills. And with religions all that is built on them: letters, customs, community of language and idea, have followed the Road, because humanity, which is the matter of religion, must also follow the road it has made. Architecture follows it, commerce of course, all information; it is even so with the poor thin philosophies, each in its little day drifts, for choice, down a road.”^[2]

The making of the Algerian highways has been no light matter. They have frequently demanded much engineering skill. Their repair is a difficult and expensive business, the heavy winter rains and the fierce summer sun have a rapidly disintegrating effect on the friable materials available. Algeria is not only an exceedingly mountainous country, but its physical conditions are very peculiar, and, except by those who have explored them, not as a rule very fully understood. The common idea of a fertile belt, more or less hilly and of varying width, between the sea on the north and the Sahara on the south, is imperfect and incorrect. As a very rough generalization, subject to innumerable variations of mountain and valley and plain, Algeria may be said to consist of two parallel ranges of mountains running north-east and south-west. The northern range slopes very gradually to the sea, often in a series of plains, providing with its copious rainfall that fertile tract known as the Tell, once the granary of Rome, and now again developing a great export trade. The Tell itself contains numerous ranges of lesser hills, called Sahels. The southern range faces the desert, in the east, in the great rocky mass of the Aures, with steep cliffs; in the west less abruptly. Between the two ranges is contained a lofty plateau, of convex form, in the main barren and sandy, but covered here and there with scrub. In many of its features it imitates the true desert. It has its shallow depressions filled with brackish water; and its inhabitants dwell in rare oases where fresh water occurs. The mountains attain no great elevation, their summits seldom exceeding 6000 feet. This is a pity. A lofty range treasuring copious stores of eternal snow would perhaps have made of the high plateau a veritable garden; and its influence would have been felt far southwards into the Sahara. The direction of the mountain lines causes the Tell, the land of tilth and colonization, to be wide at the western end of the Colony, in the province of Oran, and narrow at the eastern end, in the province of Constantine.

Where the desert breaks in waves of shifting sand against the southern range, where the streams run southwards and lose themselves,—there and not on the seaboard of France and Spain would seem to lie the destined boundaries of Europe; this the proper limit of European enterprises. The sea is to-day less than ever a barrier, dissociabilis; it is rather a link. The Mediterranean may lash itself in rage, but its rage is impotent to check the progress of the great steamers. The southern frontier of the Roman Empire is once more the southern frontier of Europe. The burning sands of the great Sahara are the true divide. Yet French enterprise is loth to admit this. The indomitable spirit of adventure, of adventure however profitless,—the spirit which led their Crusaders to the Holy Land, the army of Napoleon to Moscow, and Marchand on his interminable desert march to anticipate Kitchener at Fashoda,—this spirit is still at work. Further into the Sahara the outposts are continually being pushed; a railway is projected to Timbuctoo, now a journey of three months for caravans; and the connection of the French Colonies in North and West Africa has long been mooted. We may admire this spirit and its manifestation, but in all deference may ask, Is it business?

At the time of the French invasion, eighty years ago, there was not a single road in the interior of Algeria. The Roman roads had disappeared. The Arab paths only permitted the passage of horsemen, and wheeled vehicles were unknown. In the Tell transport was by mules, in the south by caravans. The army no sooner landed than it began to lay out roads, and for some time afterwards their construction was in the hands of the military engineers. They are now in the care of a special department. The system which has been evolved consists of a great artery running east and west from the frontier of Tunis to the frontier of Morocco, united by branch roads to the chief ports on the coast, and sending forth great feelers southward to the Sahara. These are the great national trunk roads constructed and maintained by the state for strategic purposes, and they have a total length of about 2500 miles. Besides these, the state has assisted in the making of a great number of roads partly strategic, but for the most part designed to open up new regions to colonization. These, with the ordinary country roads, make up a total of nearly 10,000 miles.

It would almost seem that in the design of the great highways running east and west, and north to sea, and south to the desert, the French had some prescience of the invention of the motor-car. The roads are, in fact, most admirably adapted to its use, often from their open character and long straight stretches (a part, no doubt, of their military intention), at almost any possible speed. And their surface is commonly excellent. Remote places formerly only to be reached by painful journeys in jolting diligences are now within easy reach. And although the automobile is still the luxury of the few, it may not be long before popular “omnibus” vehicles will extend its advantages to the many. The railway train is becoming the inferior beast of burden,—crawling wearily along at its African pace of fifteen or twenty miles an hour; while the sprightly motor-car flies past, perhaps at a speed of fifty. It is true that Article 14 of the Règlements for Algeria provides that “en aucun cas, la vitesse n’excédera celle de 30 kilomètres à l’heure en rase campagne et celle de 20 kilomètres à l’heure dans les agglomérations,” but there seems to be no disposition to enforce this; and there are no police traps, and no A.A. scouts. The really important provision is, “le conducteur de l’automobile devra rester constamment maître de sa vitesse.”

We may take it therefore that travel in Algeria is entering on a new phase; that this most beautiful and interesting country has at a blow become accessible to the traveller who has neither time nor inclination for primitive methods of journeying; and that in the matter of country hotels French enterprise will surely rise—it is already rising—to the new opportunities. There are motorists and motorists; to one class the car itself is all-important, the country traversed a minor matter, the surface of the road on which “she” is to display her powers being the first consideration. Such enthusiasts will bring their own cars, and will perhaps not regret doing so. But there are also persons of grovelling mind, who cannot rise to any enthusiasm over carburetters and petrol consumption, who, in fact, regard the motor-car as merely a very agreeable means to a very desirable end. Such lowly souls will perhaps be satisfied with hiring a car in Algiers. They will find no difficulty in selecting an adequate vehicle at a reasonable rate; no Black Care will sit behind them,—if a breakdown occurs they have only to study the scenery until it is repaired; and they will have the advantage of a chauffeur who knows the country, and will not forget the rule of the road at a critical moment. He may have other qualities;—ours was a sportsman, and would produce a gun and shoot thrushes for our dinner while we photographed Roman temples. Our murmured pity at their death missed its mark; he regarded them simply as very good—to eat. And so they are.

Before he sets forth on more ambitious journeys, the master, temporary or permanent, of a motor-car may make several interesting expeditions in the neighbourhood of Algiers. The guide-book will suggest his objective, the excellent maps of the “Voies de Communication” will point out the way. If his tastes run in the direction of visiting historic sites, he may spend a very interesting day in motoring to Cherchel, the ancient Julia Cæsarea, situate on the coast about seventy miles west of Algiers. He has a choice of routes; he may proceed inland to Blidah, and thence to Marengo, and so to Cherchel, and return by the coast road, or vice versa. We chose a middle course. We followed the Blidah road as far as Boufarik and then turned westwards by country roads to Marengo. With occasional interludes of roughness, especially where the marshy nature of the country renders their maintenance difficult, these roads are very good. They traverse a well-cultivated district of the great plain between the coast-hills and the Lesser Atlas, of which the snowy summits are brilliant in the morning sun. On a hill to our right we catch a glimpse of the curious Tombeau de la Chrétienne, so called;—in all probability the mausoleum of Juba II and Selene his wife, the founders of Cæsarea. It is placed on the summit of a hill 756 feet above the sea, and is a circular building of about 130 feet in height. Like most Roman buildings it has been used as a quarry by subsequent peoples; perhaps the solitary capital of a column which I noticed on a farm gateway came from this source.

Between Boufarik and Marengo the country is fairly well cultivated; substantial farmhouses, surmounted by groves of eucalyptus trees, stand amid great fields of vine and corn. It is difficult to realize that, in spite of its long history, this is essentially a new country, far newer than the Colonies of South Africa, newer than a good deal of Australia. At Marengo we join the main road from Blidah to Cherchel and descend rapidly by the side of the newly-constructed railway. From a contemplation of the enterprise of modern France, we are taken back at a bound to the works of ancient Rome by the appearance on a hill to the left of a portion of the aqueduct of Cæsarea. At this point it spans a lateral valley in a triple series of arches, rendered perhaps more impressive by a breakage in the middle. Leaving the car we scramble up by the side of a stream and reach the great watercourse itself. Passing beneath its arches we ascend the valley a little, and turn to look down on its immense proportions. Amid the rough mountain scrub we have passed from all evidence of modern cultivation, and are alone with this mighty fragment of the past. It is difficult to find a reason for the feeling, but few of Rome’s monuments impart a fuller sense of her magnificence than the aqueducts which survive at so many different points of her Empire. They are a symbol perhaps of her relentless power over nature and man, of her determination to have what she wanted at all cost. Sometimes, as in the Campagna, it is the long lines of interminable arches which impress us; here it is rather their soaring height. Many modern peoples would have carried the open watercourse by a circuitous cutting on the hill-side round the head of the little valley; such a proceeding was alien to the directness of Rome.

The city to whose fountains and baths the aqueduct brought copious streams of fresh water from the hills has disappeared. A squalid little port fills some of its site, and entombs its marbles, but the aqueduct, situate too far from the habitations of subsequent man to serve his purpose as a quarry, and too threatening with its mass to encourage any hasty attempt at demolition, has survived.

A mile or two lower down are a few arches of a branch of the same aqueduct; perhaps more picturesque in their greater ruin, but less impressive in their situation and height. All around as we enter Cherchel are evidences of its ancient glory. The fashioning of the ground, the great squared stones which are built into the walls, the marble columns lying about in the town square, and the huge masses of shapeless brickwork on the shore prepare us for the collection of statues and other objects gathered together in a well-arranged museum.

The city of Cæsarea, renowned for its magnificence in the splendid Roman world of the first century, rose under the hand of a woman, as Carthage under Dido’s. To the loves of Antony and Cleopatra was born the Princess Selene. In her veins flowed the blood of the Ptolemies,—perhaps of the Pharaohs,—and of the paramount family of Rome. Truly, to adapt the language of the turf, was she bred for building. Possibly with the idea of providing for this inconvenient young lady at a safe distance from Rome, Augustus mated her to Juba, a descendant of that Masinissa, King of Numidia, who had been the staunch ally of the Romans in their long struggle with Hannibal. Juba, educated at Rome, had developed literary tastes. He is lauded by Pliny for his erudition, and we learn from Plutarch that he merited a place among “Royal and Noble Authors.” Save perhaps for the dark blood of his ancestry, he was a fitting match for Cleopatra’s daughter, especially as he was restored to the Numidian throne of his family, with all the power of Rome behind him. Retiring to the ancient Phœnician town of Iol, the Royal pair set to work to raise a noble city, which perhaps with a punning reference to its former name they called Julia Cæsarea; and to gather around them a circle representing the best culture of the time. Marble colonnades and porticoes, baths and theatres and temples sprang into being on the fair curve of the bay beneath the wooded hills. Great libraries enshrined the literary labours of the monarch and the learning of the age. The scholars of Greece found a comfortable and inspiring home at the court of the pedantic king, and the existence of a hundred thousand citizens attested the material wealth of the new city. Juba and Selene lived here in peace to old age. The king died in A.D. 19, and was succeeded by his son Ptolemy, who inherited none of his father’s good qualities. A debauched tyrant, he plunged his kingdom into anarchy and was summoned to Rome. He was received with every mark of honour, but was put to death by Caligula, because, as it was said, the splendour of his attire unduly excited the attention of the populace.

Ptolemy’s sister Drusilla was the wife of that Felix, Governor of Judæa, before whom Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, so that Felix trembled, and answered, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season I will call for thee.” Drusilla is described in the Acts of the Apostles as a Jewess, which she was not, by birth at any rate.

It is sad to learn that as late as 1840 much of the Roman city was still to be seen. The theatre, now marked by a mere depression in the ground, was almost perfect. Here we have a genuine grievance against the French conquest; but 1840 was in the dark ages. So Cæsarea has passed; the Vandals, the Arabs, the earthquakes, and the French have all done their worst: and between them they have made an end of it. Perhaps even a systematic excavation would not yield us much of value. The statues to be seen in the museum are for the most part copies of statues already found at Rome, and suggest that there was little originality in the artists employed by Juba and Selene. But nothing can impair the beauty of the site, and not even the presence of a banal Franco-Arab town can forbid us to dream of a white marble city beneath a deep blue sty and facing a purple sea.

So we turn homewards. For a while we follow the Marengo road by which we came; pass the great aqueduct again; but shortly turn to the left to reach Tipasa and the seaside road to Algiers. As we approach the coast traces of the Roman past are everywhere;—on every mound great shaped stones, “the splendid wrecks of former pride,” lie in confusion, and here and there a portico suggests the existence of a suburban villa,

When we reach Tipasa itself the great stones lie in heaps, in most admired disorder. The ruins in their extent seem to indicate the existence of a greater town than the historians admit Tipasa to have been. It is said to have been founded by Claudius as a colony of veterans, and to have contained 20,000 inhabitants. It is rich in memories of the great Arian controversy which played so important a part in the history of North Africa after the triumph of Christianity. In A.D. 484 the Vandal king, Huneric, imposed an Arian bishop on the Catholic inhabitants. A great part fled to Spain; those who remained and refused to accept the heresy had their right arms lopped off and their tongues cut out. It would seem that different branches of Christendom have often been inclined to treat their erring brethren with more severity than they meted out to the unregenerate heathen. Perhaps the heathen has ever been a more likely convert.

The situation of Tipasa belies the opinion that the ancients had no eye for natural scenery. It stood on a fair promontory sheltering from the east a little cove which is protected from the west by the great mountain mass of Djebel-Chénoua, which lies between Tipasa and Cherchel. The country around is singularly picturesque, and the tout ensemble very beautiful, even for this beautiful coast.

Thence we start for a run of fifty or sixty miles by the seaside road to Algiers, a road which has been splendidly engineered, and is kept for the most part in a condition beyond praise. In front of us stretches the coast-line past the Bay of Algiers to Cap Matifou; on our right are the wooded hills of the Sahel. Here and there the land between the road and the sea is laid out in gardens formed in small rectangular plots divided by hedges of a tall reed to break the force of the wind. Even so the Dutch nurserymen erect screens to protect their tulips on the wind-swept lowlands of Holland. In these enclosures we particularly note frequent plantations of the tall “silver” banana. And so in due time we reach Algiers, conscious of a well-spent day.

Travel gives the death-blow to many illusions. If there is one tenet to which British self-complacency has clung with more desperate energy than another, it is that our people are the only successful colonists. We are ready to admit that the German has hardly had a fair chance. He is relegated for the present to desert tropical lands which failed in the past to tempt even Portugal. That France owns colonies of a different class we have been dimly aware, but the oracles of the club and of the Press have consistently pictured to us the French colonist as a miserable being who passes his time sipping absinthe in a café, and longing for his return to la belle France. Possibly in the purlieus of Algiers such a being might be discovered; at any rate, he is certainly not more in evidence than the “remittance men” and bar-loafers are in our own colonies. And a motor drive for twenty or thirty miles through the rich plain which encircles Algiers will send our long-cherished belief a-packing to the limbo of dead British prejudices. We have recently discovered that the home-staying French, at any rate, know something about practical gardening, and the raising of vegetable crops for market; that their scientific methods and untiring energy combine to get more out of the ground than we do; and we have even been led to pocket our pride and to import certain practical French gardeners, at a fancy wage, to show us how the thing is done. In this we are only following the example of our ancestors, who acquired most of their arts and crafts from French and Flemish refugees. Yet it was quite a shock when one of these new-comers, looking round him at the fair fields of the home farm on a great estate in a southern county, ingenuously remarked, “But why is not this country cultivated?”

Of this great plain between the sea and the mountains no such question could be asked. Some corn is raised, and some vegetables, such as artichokes, but most of it is devoted to the culture of the vine. It is all in the highest state of cultivation, and not an inch is wasted. The vines are planted in open fields, with the precision of the hops of Kent. Now is the time of pruning, and they are all being cut back to within a foot or so of the ground. To an eye accustomed to the hill-side and rocky vineyards of the Rhine, of Italy, or of Madeira, to the vines which in Southern Europe throw themselves in reckless abandon over trellises and wayside trees, these flat fields, which suggest turnips or beet, have a very unromantic appearance. But it is easy to see that the cultivation is conducted on the most scientific and business-like lines.

It was our privilege to be invited to visit a French gentleman and his family at their residence about twenty miles from Algiers. Our host has purchased a large tract of land, the whole of which he has turned into a great vineyard. He has built a pleasant country house, and filled it with treasures of Arab art, and the trophies of travel in other lands. He has planted a garden of palms and sub-tropical shrubs—a garden not kept up to the standard of English trimness, but rich in shade, and pleasantly suggestive of a jungle. Not only are his vines planted and pruned with mathematical precision, but all his machinery for the extraction and treatment of the grape juice is of the latest and most practical character. A long building lined with huge vats gives an idea of the greatness of his undertaking, and is designed to enable him to hold the produce of two vintages in the event of a bad market:—a very important advantage to a producer. There is nothing of the model, or pleasure, farm about the place; it is all intensely practical. “It is an industry,” said our host; and indeed it is; a fine example of industrial intelligence applied to agriculture. The presence on the farm of two motor-cars and an aeroplane is evidence that he is otherwise abreast of the movement.

It may be that our host is exceptionally gifted, both in enterprise and resources, but at any rate his example must be of great value. And the vistas all around of similar properties with pleasant houses bowered in trees and gardens suggest that it is followed. It is agreeable to learn that this industry meets its due reward. In 1910 it has been exceptionally profitable. The chief buyers of Algerian wines are the wine-shippers of Bordeaux and Macon, from whose cellars they emerge as claret and Burgundy. The complete failure of the vintage in Europe has caused a rise of fully fifty per cent in the price of the produce of Algeria. In this happy climate, sure of its winter rain and its summer sun, a failure of the vintage is unknown and almost inconceivable. Viticulture has become the most important of the industries in which Europeans in Algeria are engaged, and its prosperity is of great importance to the Colony. Before the French conquest, the use of wine being forbidden by the Koran, the vine was only grown to a small extent for its fruit; the raisin sucré of Khabylia was especially esteemed as a sweetmeat for dessert. The first colonists made experiments in the production of wine, but with insufficient knowledge and inadequate equipment. Wine-makers are an aristocracy among agriculturists; a high intelligence and inherited traditions count for much. The ravages of the phylloxera in France created the opportunity of Algeria. The wine-growers of the South thrown out of work were ready to emigrate, and the deficit in the mother country’s production offered a great market for the Colony. Since that time the industry has made steady progression. In 1850 2000 acres were under cultivation as vineyards; in 1905 about 450,000 acres. The production of wine, which amounted to 370,000 gallons in 1878, is now over 150,000,000 gallons. The price obtained for wine exported is subject to very wide fluctuations. In 1903 the 100,000,000 gallons exported realized £4,000,000. In 1906 110,000,000 gallons realized only £1,600,000.

Algeria has managed to keep comparatively free from the phylloxera; the provinces of Oran and Constantine, west and east, have suffered somewhat, but the central province, Algiers, has so far escaped. Energetic measures are taken to guard against the extension of the plague, and owners of vines which it is found necessary to destroy are compensated by the State. The policy of the Government is now not to encourage the extension of the vineyards, but to improve the quality of their produce. An effort should be made to find other outlets than the French market, and thus counteract the wide fluctuations in value which arise from its varying demands. Some attempt has already been made to produce rich dessert wines similar to those of Portugal and Madeira, of which there is a considerable consumption in France, and it would appear that there is no obstacle to its success. A delicious Muscat is already made, which might conceivably obtain a great vogue.