Barbary : the romance of the nearest East

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BARBARY

THE

ROMANCE

OF THE

NEAREST
. EAST

BARBARY

THE ROMANCE OF THE
NEAREST EAST

BY

A. MACCALLUM SCOTT, M.P,

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1921

Printed in England,

TO

MY WIFE

500244

CONTENTS

CHArTER

Preface ......

PAGE
9

I.

The Five Towns . . . . .

13

II.

Iced Sunshine . . . . .

19

III.

Fete Mauresque . . . . .

24

IV.

The Lost City . . . . -.

30

V.

TiPASA . . .

40

VI.

" The Garden of Allah " .

50

VII.

A Desert City

58

VIII.

"What's become of Waring?" .

64

IX.

Afric's Snowy Mountains .

73

X.

Frontiers of Rome

82

XL

The Dolmen-Hunter . . .

99

XII.

Who Goes Shopping? .

106

XIII.

The Street of Perfumes

114

XIV.

Marble Dust ....

121

XV.

"Salambo" ....

130

XVI.

Bou Kornein ....

140

XVII.

The Sahel and the Steppes

148

XVIII.

The Grande Mosquee .

. 158

XIX.

The Old Gods . . ...

166

XX.

Islam .....

. 177

XXI.

The Task of France

. 185

XXII.

"EsTO Perpetua"

. 196

XXIII.

Charlie Meets the Boat

7

. 207

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CABa?HAGE : The Ancient Harbours .

The Mountain of Bou Komein in the background

Algiers : From the Harbour
Algiers : Rue de la Kasbah

A Street in the Native Quarter.
The Venus of Cherchel ....

Algiers Museum,

Roman Sarcophagus at Tipasa .
"Bride and Bridegroom."

The Desert : Sand Dunes ....

Shawiah Women : From the Aur^s Mountains

TiMGAD : The Arch of Trajan .

Showing the Paved Streets.
The Old Slave Market ....

In the Tunis Souks.
The Souk of Perfumes ; Old Tunis .
The Roman Aqueduct ....

Near Tunis,
Virgil Writing the Aeneid

A Mosaic discovered at Sousse. Now in the Mus6e
Alaoui, Tunis.

El Djem : The Amphitheatre .....

Kairouan : The Grande Mosquee ....

Arizat-Baal : a Phcenician Priestess ....

As represented on the lid of her sarcophagus in a tomb

of the fourth century, B.C., at Carthage.

A Kaid

Frontispiece

FACINQ PAGE

14
18

34

46

62
70
92

110

118
126

132

150
160
174

188

MAPS

Roman Africa
Communications

Algeria-Tunisia
8

88
216

PREFACE

ONE thought runs through every chapter
of this book. It is the Eternal Conflict,
through all the ages, between Europe
and Africa, between the organised conquering
energy of Europe and the invincible passive
resistance of Africa.

The Barbary States, or the Maghreb, are that
portion of North Africa which lies between the
Syrtes and the Atlantic, the Sahara and the
Mediterranean. It is a high plateau, supported
by the Atlas Mountains, and with fertile valleys
and plains along the Mediterranean shore. It is
almost European in its climate and in its vegeta-
tion, and ethnologists maintain that the indige-
nous native stock, the Berbers, are a branch of
that same Mediterranean race which is one of
the main sources from which the population of
Europe is derived.

For five centuries the Romans laboured to
Europeanise this country. For centuries it
seemed that they had been completely successful.
The standardised Roman civilisation, the Roman
arts and science, and the Roman Church were
supreme in Africa. They burgeoned and blos-
somed, but they struck no roots. Almost at one
blow they were utterly exterminated by the
Mohammedan invasion. In our own generation,

9

10 PREFACE

amid the colossal skeletons of Roman civilisa-
tion, France has essayed the task of reclaiming
this lost outpost of Europe. Consciously and
deliberately, with the clear logic of the French
mind and will, she has set out to accomplish the
task of Rome by the methods of Rome — the
Europeanising of Barbary.

And in the very word " Barbary " there is
conveyed a hint of the futility of the task. Bar-
bary ! There is in Africa something ahen to
Europe — something intractable, something '' bar-
baric," something that cannot permanently be
brought within the European pale. In the
chapter on "The Task of France," I end with
this reflection : —

" Why should the Roman tradition have sur-
vived the Mohammedan domination in Spain
and not in Algeria ? It is the sun which claims
Africa as its own. The great tropic heart of
Africa can never be Europeanised. Africa is the
land of the camel, the palm, the cactus, the
desert, the mirage, the Koran. You cannot
teach the palm to branch like an oak. It is
true that Spain is in climatic respects almost
identical with Morocco and Algeria ; but the
heart from which it draws its blood is European.
Its reservoirs lie not in the South but in the
North.

" Europe has once more laid hold of Africa as
she has laid hold of Asia at intervals since the
first beginnings of history. She has conquered,
she has taken possession, but in the end she has
always recoiled. To conquer is one thing, to
assimilate is quite another. The assimilator
may be assimilated. The struggle is not merely

PREFACE 11

a physical one but a spiritual one. The soul of
the conqueror is in danger. Western Europe
was saved from being Byzantinised by being cut
off from Africa and Asia. In spite of our great
possessions in Asia and Africa, the salt estranging
sea has saved us so far. We sup with a long
spoon with the East and the South. But France
lies only a few hours' sail from the New France
which she is endeavouring to create in Africa.
Her success has been marvellous. Africa has
responded to the stimulus of stronger will and
character. But— but we have yet to see whether
there will be any reflex action."

This is the thought which continually besets
me as I travel South through the changing cities
— London, Paris, Avignon, Marseilles, to Algiers.
This is the thought which obtrudes when I first
sight, across the Mediterranean, the mountains
of Africa; as I listen to the Moorish music or
watch the Moorish dancers, and the orgies of the
dervishes who pierce their flesh with swords ; as
I pass through the Grande Mosquee built of the
wreckage of Rome ; as I wander through the
ruined Roman cities ; as I trace on the Roman
frontier the same plan that can be traced along
the walls of Hadrian and Antonine in Britain ; as
I look down from the mountains upon the sand-
storms sweeping across the Sahara; as I follow
the footsteps of the Phoenicians, and of that older
race which has left us Stonehenge ; as I climb the
Mountain of Two Horns, the High Place whereon
stood the Altar of Baal ; as I stand by the tomb
of the Priest of Baal and listen to the bells pealing
from the great Cathedral with which Cardinal
Lavigerie has crowned the Bursa of Carthage;

12 PREFACE

as I feel the spell of the Old Gods and look back
into the pit from which we have been dug.

In the buried past and in the thronging present
I have tried to divine the soul of this Debatable
Land. Mr. Wm. Miller of Algiers has been most
helpful. I have learned from others whom I
met upon the way, from the Wandering English-
man who might have been Browning's Waring,
from the antiquary who was deciphering the
story of the Dolmens, from the Glasgow artist
who knew the mysteries of the Souks, from the
perfume seller of Tunis, and from others too
numerous to specify. Nor have I been neglectful
of books, and in separate chapters I have indi-
cated my debt to Mr. Belloc, Mr. Hichens, and
Flaubert. The works of reference which I have
consulted may be found in any bibliography of
North Africa, but I would specially mention
" Roman Africa " by Gaston Boissier, and
" Roman Africa " by Alexander Graham.

1st October^ 1921.

BARBARY

CHAPTER I

THE FIVE TOWNS

FROM London to Algiers is but a journey
across France. It can be accomplished
with comfort and ease in three days. In
these short swallow-flights one passes from frost
and fog to wreaths of almond blossom and golden
fountains of mimosa bathed in brilliant sun-
shine. But there is a more remarkable trans-
formation during this short journey. It is almost
as if one were passing through Italy, and through
the Levant, to the land of the Thousand and One
Nights. The stages present sharply marked
contrasts. The different belts of civilisation do
not gradually merge into one another, but are
shut off by revolving doors : Paris is of the
North, Avignon is a Roman city, Marseilles is a
Levantine seaport, Algiers might be Bagdad.

The spirit of Paris, though it differs in many
vital respects from the spirit of London, agrees
with it in this, that it is best expressed in Gothic
architecture. It is the spirit which broke up the
ancient Empire of Rome and built up Feudalism
from its ruins ; which created the Reformation
in England and the Revolution in France;

13

^v|4/is»H^}*i: BARBARY

which invented the representative system as the
machinery of government for democracy.

Westminster Abbey in London and the Cathe-
dral of Notre Dame in Paris are the most eloquent
expressions of the spirit of the two nations. The
English cathedral has grown with the nation,
and it has something of the irregularity, the
freedom, the unconventionality of a natural
growth. The French cathedral is more passion-
ately logical. The English built in order to get
a church for their worship. The French were
quite as much concerned to exemplify a principle
of architecture.

Behold this glorious church of Notre Dame.
It was built at a time when the new principle of
building construction which we know as
" Gothic " had at last, after several generations
of experimental pioneering, been fully grasped.
The architect realised that the buttress was the
key to the whole problem— that Gothic was
simply a skeleton framework of buttresses sup-
porting a roof, with the interstices between them
walled up with stone or glass. This was the
secret which enabled the Gothic architect to
build a cathedral loftier, and wider, and lighter
than any of his predecessors. He gloried in the
^ idea, and he said : "I will build a great church
which will proclaim to all the world that the
buttress is the essence of the whole structure."

Notre Dame represents the apotheosis of the
buttress. The architect,^ having grasped the
principle, has reached the limit of its structural
achievement by the most simple, direct, and
logical means. The glow of admiration and of
wonder at those beautiful forms springing direct

THE FIVE TOWNS 15

out of the heart of Nature, like the parabola of
the flight of a stone, was still so fresh that he
saw no need to superimpose upon them any
decorative elaboration that would distract atten-
tion from their essential purpose, which was that
of supporting a roof of stone.

The building rises in tiers and terraces, one
above another ; first the row of little buttress
chapels, then the outer aisle, then the inner aisle
with the triforium gallery above it, then the
central nave with its row of clerestory windows
and its ridge vault of stone. It is to support this
vault that the long, delicate arches of stone have
been thrust out, like reaching arms from the
massive shoulders of the main buttresses below,
spanning everything else, defying distance and
the law of gravity.

It is a triumph of logic and reason, a typical
product of the Northern mind, adventurous,
challenging, questioning, attacking its problems
with a resolute concentration of purpose.

In Avignon we step into another world. It
was my first sight of the South. Bright sun, a
blue sky, and dry, bracing, exhilarating air— that
is Avignon of to-day. The whole aspect of the
town is Roman. On one side of the river the
towering bulk of the Palace of the Popes domi-
nates everything. It seems invincible from its
sheer dead weight. Across the river, beyond the
new suburb that is growing up, a vast mediaeval
fortress, capable of sheltering an army, crowns
the hill. The battlemented city walls stretch
unbroken along the river side.

Our hotel was the ancient palace of a noble
family. White walls^ low-pitched, red-tiled roofs^

16 BARBARY

narrow streets, the olive trees, the cypresses, the
vines trained to form a trellis over doors and
windows— they all fitted into a picture that
showed no break with the Middle Ages. The
stamp of eternity was on everything. Avignon
still lies under the shadow of Rome.

If Avignon is Roman, Marseilles is Byzantine.
It belongs to the Levantine end of the Mediter-
ranean, where the races of three continents
blend — a hybrid city. Its appearance is curi-
ously non-Eiu'opean. The great cathedral which
raises its cluster of domes near the harbour, and
the church of Notre Dame du Garde which
crowns a solitary crag like a pinnacle, are both
modern erections, but they are purely Byzantine
in style. They speak of a fatalism that has
nothing in common with the eager questioning
of Gothic. In the streets the swarthy races of
Asia and Africa jostle Europe, and the turban
and red fez are constantly to be seen. Marseilles
is one with Tyre and Sidon. The Phoenicians
and the Saracens have left indelible traces. It is
still Europe's great gateway to the East.

Algiers is almost wholly Oriental. The town
is like a veiled woman from the harem wearing
a pair of high-heeled Parisian shoes. The quarter
round the harbour is French, with spacious
boulevards, gay Parisian shops, open-air cafes,
and electric cars. But the old town, which
chmbs up the steep hill-side, terrace by terrace,
to the kasbah, or fortress, is as Oriental as Bagdad.

It is a secret land. The women are veiled, and
the soul of this people is veiled also. The two
races, of Europe and of the Orient, mingle in the
street and in the market-place. In fez and

THE FIVE TOWNS 17

turban, in Moorish or Arab dress, with curious
European adaptations, the native toils contem-
platively and traffics philosophically, undisturbed
by all the mechanical ingenuity of Western and
Northern civilisation. The two streams flow
placidly in the same channel, touching each
other, but never mingling. The Moorish or Arab
soul looks out upon an alien world through
narrow loop-hole windows like the eyes of the
women peering out through the slit between the
veil and the haik.

The Arab town is almost incredible to a Euro-
pean. Streets there are none. It is difficult to
find a word sufficiently diminutive to express
these precipitous passages of communication
which burrow between and beneath the houses.
" Alley " and " lane " are words of far too
spacious an import. These burrows seem hardly
human to our Northern eyes. A rabbit warren
and the subterranean galleries of an ants' nest
are the closest similes that suggest themselves.

No wheeled vehicle can penetrate this labyrinth
—no horse or even mule. Tiny donkeys with
panniers are the beasts of burden, and when one
meets them climbing nimbly up the cobbled steps
one must stand aside flat to the wall to let them
pass in Indian file. A narrow streak of sky is
sometimes visible far overhead, through a crack
in the shell of the human hive.

The Moorish house is typical of the secret life
of the people. The blank walls which it turns to
the street reveal nothing. There is no attempt
at decoration. The plain, plastered, whitewashed
walls are unrelieved by windows save, perhaps,
by a narrow slit like a loop-hole. The doorway

18 BARBARY

is severely simple, save, perhaps, for a narrow
band of tiles or a moulded plaster pattern round
it. There is no " front," no '' fagade," no portico,
no loggia, none of that ostentation and public
display in which Europe delights.

But these Moorish houses are like a coat of
sackcloth with a rainbow-coloured, silken lining.
They expose their back to the world, but their
real front is turned within. Each house is built
round a central courtyard open to the air and to
the sun. A fountain trickles dreamily in the
midst. Each of the four sides consists of a double
row of arcades arched in the Moorish fashion,
the upper arcade having a balcony with a parapet
of intricate arabesque pattern. The walls are
gay with coloured tiles. Here with the world
shut out is decoration, here is colour, here is the
domestic life which no outsider may see. Our
civilisation beats around these walls like surf
upon the barrier reef of a coral island.

ALGIERS : RUE DE LA KASBAH
A street in the Native Quarter

CHAPTER II
ICED SUNSHINE

IN January, three days' journey from London,
we are in the garden of the Hesperides. It
is the land of perpetual summer and sun-
shine. The seasons are all confused. Golden
oranges and lemons load the branches of the trees,
and on the same bough the blossom is being put
forth for next season's crop.

Along the Riviera, on the Cbie d'Azur, it is
summer also ; but the weather is variable.
When the Mistral blows a shiver runs through
all the gay holiday people. But here, on the
Southern shore of the Mediterranean, the Mistral
is unknown. Sometimes a cloud passes over the
sky and a tropic rain bursts upon the thirsty
earth ; then the whole land smiles and looks up
like a giant refreshed. But mostly Algiers basks
in sunshine, stretched out upon the steep hill-
side, garlanded with groves of orange, lemon,
palm, olive, cypress, and pine, festooned with
roses, geraniums, clematis, mimosa, and bougain-
villaea, and dipping her unsandalled feet in the
clear waters of her sheltered bay.

We crossed the Mediterranean in halcyon
weather, and in the heat of the afternoon we
sighted, very faint and almost like clouds touched
by the sun, the snow-capped range of the Djurd-

19

20 BARBARY

jura Mountains. Gradually they took shape
through the vapour which clouded the horizon,
sharply cut, deeply serrated, with snow-filled
gorges clearly defined, like a range of Alps —
ominous and mysterious mountains like the giant
guardians of some secret— the bastions of Africa.
A hundred miles to the South stretches another
range, the frosty Atlas, shutting off the desert
like a wall, and on the high table-land between
them winter reigns, winter high above the
smiling sun-kissed coast. Has Europe ever really
conquered the land which lies beyond that
barrier ? Will it ever make it other than an im-
placable foe ? There is in Africa something wild
and untamed— vast as a Djinn who has been
shut up by a magician in a bottle for a thousand
years but who will emerge again when the Fates
decree.

Mustapha Superieur is the garden— or orchard
—suburb of Algiers. It lies along the steep hill-
side to the South, its domed palaces and arcaded
villas shining like snowy nymphs among the woods
of a hundred little glens, or gills, or ravins. In
the wilder parts there are steep cliffs and un-
passable hedges of cactus. No road can go
straight in this Parnassus. The Rue de Telemly,
which follows the line of the ancient Aqueduct,
is nearly level, but in order to follow the contour
of the hill-side it has to take a multitude of
" hair-pin " bends. The Chemin-Laperher, which
climbs up the hill, winds about among the
houses, loop above loop, like the trail of an aero-
plane doing stunts. Hearing a motor-car clatter-
ing beside you, you look round apprehensively
and see it skimming along many feet below on

ICED SUNSHINE 21

the other side of an orange grove. Its noise dies
away and you have forgotten about it, when
suddenly, honk ! honk ! it rushes past you
from behind, and disappeai:s round the bend in
front. Hark ! there it is again, not returning,
but just above you, separated from you by
another garden.

In the first week of January the sky is an
unclouded blue, paling to turquoise towards the
horizon. The sun shines brilliantly and strongly,
too bright to look towards, and dazzling even by
the light reflected from the hill-side. This pleni-
tude of clear, radiant light is a new experience
to Northern eyes. It is delightful to sit and bask
in the sun, to soak in the warmth and light, amid
a hundred shades of green ; for in spite of the
beating sun there is a cool caress in the air, a
tinkle of ice in the wine-glass, just a faint sugges-
tion of the snows of Atlas far to the South. The
shadows can almost be felt like a cool leaf on the
cheek. It is a tonic air.

Behind Algiers a great plain, the Mitidja,
stretches inland and Westwards. A ridge of
small hills, or downs, cuts it off from the sea.
On the other side of it the Djurdjura Mountains
and other ranges of the Tell seem to rise like a
wall, sheer and precipitous. Down this wide.
Westward-reaching valley, the splendour of sun-
set comes pouring like a flood. The terrace of
the golf club beyond the eucalyptus wood, on
the brow of a Southward-looking hill, is the best
vantage point from which to view this pageant.

As we sat there and watched the sun dipping
behind the near Western horizon, the whole land-
scape was invaded by an opalescent radiance. A

22 BARBARY

silhouette of trees and shrubs with an occasional
domed roof stood out in startling relief against
the kindling sky. Southwards and Eastwards
the near ridge fell clear away, revealing the plain.
The gulf was filled with a dim rosy light stream-
ing East. The feet of the mountains were lost
in this luminous vapour, but as they rose out of
it the rosy glow was gradually transmuted into
purple, deep and pure in tone, out of which
the snows of the upper valleys shone vividly.
The jagged hne of peaks pierced the sky in which,
behind the clouds, some vast celestial conflagra-
tion was spreading. Molten gold burst and
splashed through the shattered walls of the
crucible of clouds. Spears and flambeaux of
light were tossed far into the firmament. As the
sun disappeared the colours became more
splendid. The gold flushed to rose, and the rose
to scarlet, and the higher clouds were all edged
with crimson. The gulf of the plain was now
filled with gradually darkening but still luminous
purple, and the opalescence was rising higher and
higher up the mountain sides till finally it passed
from their peaks into the sky. The shades deep-
ened rapidly, the light faded, the celestial fire
was quenched. The African night swiftly swept
across the landscape like a shadow. The vision
was gone.

The fabled Isle of the Lotus Eaters has been
identified with Djerba, some hundreds of miles
further along the coast, beyond Carthage. The
ancient Greek mariners, who before the dawn of
history ventured beyond the rim of their world,
knew the delights of this coast, and the epic tales
of Ulysses and ^Eneas are but echoes of their

ICED SUNSHINE 23

reports. There the Argonauts ate of the lotus,
the date, the sweet fruit of the palm which is
produced in abundance without any labour of
man. There they found a land where it was
always afternoon and where life passed like a
dream. Algiers in winter is a lotus land which
the modern Argonauts may visit without fear of
being enervated. But for the palms and the
Arabs one could almost believe it was Europe —
Europe of the brief Northern summer of the high
latitudes. It is iced sunshine.

CHAPTER III
FETE MAURESQUE

THE Grande Fete Mauresque was held for
one night only at the Nouveau Theatre,
Algiers, and among the promised attrac-
tions were Arab music, Moorish, Ouled Nails, and
Kabyle dances, and a performance by fakirs, who
would thrust needles through the tongue, cheeks,
and throat, drive ^ a nail into the head, pierce the
belly with a dagger, pass their hands through fire,
slash themselves with a sword, and stand with
the naked feet upon the sharp edge of a sword.

The theatre was not in the fashionable part of
the town, and the dearest seats were six and a half
francs each. It would seem, therefore, that the
fete was not designed for what in London we
should call a West-end audience. There had been
a run on the tickets and we were just in time, on
the previous day, to secure the last two seats in
not a very good position. When the curtain rose
the house was jammed absolutely tight full, even
as regards standing room. The heat was stifling,
the atmosphere was foetid, and the whole place
throbbed with suppressed excitement. A sprink-
ling of tourists, French and English, had been
attracted by curiosity, but the mass of the
audience were obviously the native product of
the town — Arabs or Moors, Jews in large numbers,

24

FETE MAURESQUE 25

and acclimatised French, Italians, and Spaniards.
It was an audience of small shop-keepers, trades-
men, mechanics, shop-boys and shop-girls, and
representatives of all the mysterious middle
trades, hangers-on, loafers, and touts which
flourish in the East. It hummed.

The performance was a dreary and tenth-rate
thing. The music was interesting, but a very
little of it went a long way. The dancing was
eccentric, and stimulating chiefly to the risible
faculties. The fakirs were beastly and revolt-
ing. And yet the vast audience were moved to
increasing transports of enthusiasm. They
stamped with their feet on the rare occasions
when the music grew quicker ; they joined with
hilarity in the nasal refrain which was repeated
at frequent intervals ; they audibly sucked in
their breath with admiration when the dancers
came forward ; they roared with applause when
they bowed their adieux ; and they watched
with breathless excitement the sordid atrocities
of the fakirs.

A London audience of a similar class would
have hooted the whole performance off the stage.
Cockney taste may be far from refined, it may be
vulgar, it may sometimes be gross ; but it is
never merely vacuous, or merely monotonously
rhythmical, or merely gruesome. There is always,
in a popular entertainment in London, an in-
tellectual interest of a sort, a broad humour, a
play of wit, a vivid portrayal of character, a rude
moral. It is always stimulating. But in the
whole of this African performance no trace of
intellectual interest could be detected, at least
by Northern eyes. It was cataleptic. One felt

26 BARBARY

as if one were under the influence of some hateful
drug.

Not that there was any element of indecent
nudity in the performance. Madame Yamina's
troupe of female musicians and chanters, who
occupied one side of the stage, were well stricken
in years, and almost as closely veiled as if they
had come direct from a harem. They sat stolidly
on their low stools, scraping at their fiddles,
picking at their guitars, or thrumming at their
tambourines and tom-toms, and humming their
monotonous nasal refrain, like a subdued drone
of bagpipes, with an air of the most complete in-
difference. Not an ankle was to be seen. One
member of the troupe was dressed in what seemed
to be an ancient Victorian blue silk dress, with a
turban of the same colour. She squinted horribly,
but she gave more sign of enjoyment than any of
the others. Madame Yamina, herself, the leader
of the troupe, was a determined-looking matron
of some fifteen stone, probably a Jewess, and,
therefore, unveiled. She was obviously a favour-
ite with the crowd. The male members of the
troupe were dressed in their shabby, European,
every-day clothes, but, with the exception of the
leader, a burly, elderly Frenchman, they all wore
the Arab fez. One with protruding white teeth,
like UHomme Qui Rit, wore a fixed grin as if his
lips had been cut away. None of the violinists
played in the European fashion, but, holding the
instrument at arm's length on the left knee, they
sawed away at it listlessly with the right hand.
No wonder men are fatalists who have to listen
to this monotonous, hypnotic drone.

The dancing was equally un-European. No

FETE MAURESQUE 27

twinkling toes. No display of agility. No tossing
of shapely limbs. Nothing of the spirit of Terpsi-
chore. The dancer, enveloped from neck to
ankle in a loose jacket and voluminous, baggy
trousers of gaily coloured and spangled silk,
hobbled twitteringly on her feet, imparting a
continuous wiggle-woggle to the lower part of her
body. She shook like a jelly-bag in violent agita-
tion. Her face was absolutely expressionless, but
she pirouetted slowly, advanced and retired from
the Arab pipers who accompanied her, and very
languidly waved a coloured kerchief in each hand.
Baya, in her " Mauresque " dance, was plump
and placid. Fatmah, of the Ouled Nails, looked
more savage and barbaric. If the performance
were meant to be indecently suggestive, it was a
failure so far as the European visitors were con-
cerned, for most of them merely laughed at the
ludicrous spectacle. A male Kabyle dancer,
however, who gave what seemed intended for a
parody of the two previous dancers, was more
violent in his abandon, and provoked a corres-
ponding degree of applause.

Of the performance of the Fakirs it can only
be said that for those who like that kind of thing
it was just the kind of thing they would like.
Into the Spanish bull-fight there enters a large
degree of skill and sporting hazard, but there
was no redeeming feature in this orgy of self-
torture. Yet the spectacle of an aged ragamuffin,
with his face bristling like a porcupine with great
pack-sheet needles and hat-pins, which transfixed
his cheeks, tongue, and throat, was hailed with a
chorus of appreciation. Some larrikins, who had
responded to the invitation to sit on the stage to

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guarantee to the genuineness of the feats, beamed
with exuberant dehght at each new bestiahty ;
but the visitor requires a strong stomach to sit
through the performance. To emerge into the
cool air and the African night was hke a deliver-
ance of the soul.

Africa, from the Desert to the Mediterranean,
is studded with the ruins of numerous Roman
cities. They are the mute witnesses of a mighty
empire, of a resplendent civihsation, and of a
great Church sanctified by the blood of martyrs.
The deluge passed over them and swept every-
thing away save these dead stones. To-day
France, the inheritor of a Roman tradition, has
come again in the footsteps of the Romans. Will
her work be more enduring ? Will she succeed
where Rome failed ? She has been less than a
century at work, but Rome was five centuries.

In all these ruined Roman cities the most con-
spicuous feature is generally the Amphitheatre,
capable of seating ten, twenty, thirty, even fifty
thousand spectators. What went the people out
for to see — Greek tragedy — Latin plays — or
beast-fights and slaughter ? The native stock
has changed little in the past two thousand years.
They have preserved their separate language,
their separate habit of life, their separate temper-
ament, and they have armed themselves with a
religion which seems impregnable to the attack
of Christianity. The Desert, the sun, the climate,
preserve the type, and there is a steady process
of assimilation of the European. In three genera-
tions the French Colonists become Africans rather
than Frenchmen. The chains of law and custom
and tradition still hold, but in some subtle way

FETE MAURESQUE 29

they are not Europeans. The audience which
packed the Nouveau Theatre at this Fete Maur-
esque was not European. Africa with its black
heart claims them.

CHAPTER IV
THE LOST CITY

GHERCHEL is a tiny Arab and French
town, with a good harbour, about
seventy miles West of Algiers. It is
built upon the site of the ancient city of Csesarea,
the Athens of the West, a city where once the
descendants of the Ptolemies and the Pharaohs
reigned amid a brilliant court, surrounded by all
the luxuries and refinements of Roman and
Greek civilisation. The modern town occupies
only about one tenth part of the ancient site.
The splendour has vanished ; only the ruins of
the Baths, of the Amphitheatre, of the Circus, of
some villas, of the City Walls, and of the Aque-
duct, attest its former existence. For thirteen
centuries the ruins have served as a quarry for
Arab builders. The fairest statues have been
shattered by fanatics ; the exquisite marbles
and pillars, their place of origin forgotten, now
adorn the mosques and Moorish palaces of
North Africa ; and the richest finds of modern
antiquaries have been removed to Paris and
Algiers. But some beautiful green pillars may
still be seen in the Military Hospital, which was
formerly the Grand Mosque, and in the local
museum there have been collected sufficient
statues, sculptured fragments, and mosaics to

30

THE LOST CITY 31

prove that this was one of the great artistic
centres of the Ancient World.

Csesarea, to give it once more the name of
pride which it bore for five centuries, was a city
on the frontiers of civiHsation, a city of the far
West. It marked, in its early days, the extreme
limit of Roman advance into the wilds of Western
Africa. Beyond were the savage Mauri, match-
less horsemen, who could always find a refuge in
the impregnable valleys and passes of the Atlas.
The city grew with all the mushroom rapidity of
an American pioneer town. Like San Francisco
it occupied a site of great natural beauty, it had
an excellent harbour, it tapped the trade of a
rich and fruitful hinterland, and it increased in
wealth amazingly. Fortune gave it for its
earliest rulers, a generation before the Christian
era, an enlightened King and Queen, who not
merely inherited the noblest blood in Africa and
Europe, but who, by strange chance, had been
trained in the noblest traditions of Roman and
Greek art and letters. Craftsmen and schoolmen,
artists and philosophers were attracted to the
new metropolis, and received there no lack of
encouragement and patronage. For five cen-
turies its lamp burned brightly, and then suddenly
it was extinguished.

Behind the rocky promontory of Algiers, from
the low sandy shore of its bay, there stretches
inland and Westwards the great plain of the
Mitidja. It is separated from the sea by a
narrow belt of low hills, one might almost call
them downs. This rich alluvial land has afforded
one of the first and best fields for French coloni-
sation and agricultural development. It pro-

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duces grapes, figs, oranges, lemons, almonds,
vegetables of all kinds, and cereals in great
abundance. For centuries before the Roman
name was known here its fertility was renowned.
The Phoenicians founded their trading stations
along the coast, at Rusguniae (near Cape Matifou),
at Icosium (Algiers), at Tipasa, and at Jol, which
was the still more ancient name of Cherchel and
Caesarea.

Algiers lies at the Eastern extremity and
natural outlet of the Mitidja Plain ; but the
character of the plain determined that Caesarea,
at the Western extremity, rather than Algiers,
should become the capital in Roman times. The
lower part of the plain, towards Algiers, was
marshy and infested with malaria. The upper
part, towards the West, was well drained and
healthy, and there was easy communication
through the low hills to the harbour of Caesarea.
Algiers had the better harbour, and under the
Arabs it became the chief port ; but this was due
to extraneous causes. Its prosperity was based
not upon the agricultural wealth of the Mitidja,
whose lower levels were still infested with
malaria, but upon the piracy of its Corsair fleet,
which required above everything the strongest
and most sheltered harbour. The French have
drained the marshes and banished the fevers,
and the first-class harbour of Algiers has now
drawn all the trade of the country to itself.
The stately Caesarea conceals its identity in the
village of Cherchel.

After the Romans had destroyed Carthage
they were forced, in spite of themselves, by the
logic of events, in order to gain security on their

THE LOST CITY 33

frontiers, to advance ever further and further
into the interior and Westward along the coast.
Their pohcy was at first one of buffer states and
protectorates, hke the Native States of India.
They had no desire to penetrate into the remote
recesses of the Atlas Mountains, inhabited by
wild tribes whose poverty was their protection.
But these nomads were awkward neighbours,
well skilled in the practices of Rob Roy. If they
were not to be subdued by Rome the buffer state
was necessary as a protection for the rich Roman
farms and villages and cities. Even that system
had its dangers. The native dynasty, as it
waxed strong and secure, was apt to pursue a
policy of its own. In time of civil strife in Rome
it was tempted to throw its alien strength into
the scales in favour of one faction. The Imperial
Power gradually absorbed the more settled
portions of the country, erecting them into
Roman provinces, and pushing the buffer state
ever further West.

The great native dynasty of Numidia at the
commencement of the Roman occupation of
Africa was that of Masinissa, the Berber Chief
whose romantic career, first as the enemy and
then as the ally of Rome in her struggle with
Carthage, won for him the crown of Numidia,
with his capital at the great rook fortress of Cirta
or Constantine. His grandson, Jugurtha, an
ambitious and able prince, usurped the throne
and led a revolt against Rome. The story of his
long struggle and final defeat has been told in
great detail by Sallust. His great-grandson,
Juba I, who succeeded Jugurtha, took the side
of Pompey in the civil war. Caesar in person led

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the campaign against him and inflicted upon him,
at Thapsus, so crushing a defeat that, rather than
be taken captive to grace a Roman triumph, the
royal fugitive committed suicide. Then fate
and romance and the subtle policy of Augustus
conspired to produce one of the most interesting
chapters in African history.

Juba's infant son, the second Juba, fell into
the hands of Caesar and was taken by him to
Rome. After he had been borne through the
streets in the train of Caesar's triumph the
problem arose of what to do with the royal
child. He was adopted by Octavia, the wife of
Antony, one of the noblest and most generous-
hearted of Roman matrons. This great and
gracious lady had also adopted the child, a little
girl, whom her rival in her husband's affections,
the ill-fated Cleopatra, had borne to Antony,
and who was without a protector. The two
children were reared together in the atmosphere
of the Roman Court, which had not yet been
corrupted, and under the influence of a good
woman. All that was best in Greek and Roman
art and letters was brought to bear upon their
education. He was of the blood royal of Numidia,
a Moor, as swarthy as Othello. She had in her
veins the blood of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies.
Her mother had named her after the Moon
Goddess, Selene Cleopatra.

Augustus had to settle his African policy.
The Eastern territory of which Cirta, the old
Numidian capital, was the centre, was absorbed
into the Roman Empire, but he still felt the
need of a buffer state further West. He marked
off new limits for the State of Numidia, with its

THE VENUS OF CHERCHEL
Algiers Museum

THE LOST CITY 85

capital at Caesarea. A prince was at hand, in
the person of Juba II, a youth of bright in-
tellect, trained in the best traditions of Rome.
And then there was the fair daughter of Egypt
with whom he had been brought up. It occurred
to Augustus as a master stroke of policy to marry
these two and to give them the new Kingdom to
govern. And thus, twenty-six years before
Christ, commenced the long and happy reign of
Juba and Selene.

With the aid of Roman arms and Roman dis-
cipline order was preserved among the Berber
tribes. The rich plains and valleys on the coast
were cultivated. Trade poured into the harbour.
Wealth accumulated with marvellous rapidity,
and a city of palaces and temples began to spread
out around the harbour. It seemed that a new
Carthage was growing up which might become
the sovereign city of the Western Mediterranean,
a Carthage in which the baleful influence of the
Phoenicians had disappeared. Juba and Selene
were determined that the inspiration of their
capital should be Greek and Roman, and it was
a purely European city that grew up. One or
two fragments which the spade of the excavator
has revealed, show that Selene had not forgotten
the ancient and mystic land of her birth or the
worship of Isis, but the unmistakable impress of
Greece, the nobility, the calm, the perfection of
beauty, is found everywhere. Of the Venus of
Cherchel, which now, with all its mutilations, is
the chief glory of the Algiers Museum, Monceaux
has said that " by its plastic elegance it bears
comparison to the Venus de Medici." In the
little Museum at Cherchel there may be seen

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numerous other statues in bronze or marble,
copies made to the order of Juba and Selene of
originals belonging to the golden age of Greek
Art, the age of Phidias and Praxiteles. The
creative spirit had departed, or could not be
evoked to order, but the love of beauty and the
joy in exquisite form remained. The artists
imported from Greece were copyists and imi-
tators, but they copied the best models, and in
the numerous statues of Athena, Diana, Venus,
Hercules, ^sculapius. Pan, Bacchus, and other
classic subjects, we may still see reflected the
glory that was Greece.

For forty-five years Juba reigned. Twenty
years before his death there was born into the
world, in a stable at Bethlehem, a Babe whose
name became mightier than Rome, whose Gospel
has survived the ruin of Empires, and whose
faith to-day is the faith of the whole European
race wherever it is to be found. One curious link
there is between Caesarea and Palestine. The
daughter of Selene, Drusilla, became the wife
of that Felix, Governor of Judea, who trembled
before the preaching of Paul, and said, " Go thy
way for this time ; when I have a convenient
season, I will call for thee."

Juba was succeeded by his son Ptolemy. Two
portrait busts in marble have been preserved of
this grandson of Antony and Cleopatra. They
were discovered, one at Cherchel, the other at
Hammam R'ira, and are now to be seen in Paris
among the treasures of the Louvre. They show
him, a young man, with a fillet across his curling
hair, handsome to look upon, with distinct
traces in his features of the Egyptian dynasties

THE LOST CITY 37

whose blood he inherited along with his Berber
and Roman blood. Unfortunate youth ! He
was not destined to continue the dynasty. The
wild tribes became too turbulent for a buffer
state to control. He stood in the path of Rome,
and he was removed. Summoned to the Imperial
City he was thrown into a dungeon where he
starved to death, and his kingdom was incor-
porated in the Empire.

Twenty-five miles east of Cherchel, and near
Tipasa, a remarkable monument crowns a summit
among the huddled hills which line the coast.
As one motors through Tipasa it is the most
conspicuous feature on the Eastern horizon.
It stands out sharply defined against the sky
like a truncated pyramid or blunt cone, an
Egyptian shape. It is solid and enduring like
the work of the Romans, but it lacks their
dominating utilitarian motive. The architec-
tural details are Greek, the pillars round the
base being of the Ionic order. Exploration has
revealed that its purpose is sepulchral. It con-
tains deep in its heart, approached by a laby-
rinthian gallery, secret chambers similar to
those of the Pyramids. This is the so-called
Tombeau de la Chretienne, a mistranslation of the
Arab title, Kbour-er-Roumia, " Roum " being
the Arab word for " Roman," or Christian.
The monument, however, is certainly pre-Roman.

Archaeologists are generally agreed that this
is the veritable tomb of Juba and Selene, and
although no direct proof such as an inscription,
or funerary remains, can be cited (the tomb was
rifled by the Arabs centuries ago), there are
certain strong indirect indications. The shape

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and style show the mingled influences of Egypt
and of Greece. The Arab title " Roumia " may,
in this case, have been borrowed from the
Phoenician " Roumiah," signifying Royal. Fur-
thermore, there is a reference to this structure
in the works of Pomponius Mela, a geographer
who wrote in the first century, possibly during
the life of Juba. He describes it as " Monu-
mentum commune regice gentis.^' There is a
similar structure, the " Medrassen," about fifty
miles South of Constantine, the original capital
of the native dynasty. The Egyptian influences
are more pronounced in it, but it has undoubt-
edly furnished the model for the tomb near the
Western capital. If it is indeed the tomb of
Juba and Selene, it is strange that the approach
of death should have brought their thoughts
back to Egypt.

Under direct Roman administration the pros-
perity of Caesarea continued. As its trade
increased the city spread over a wider area.
The Arabs have obliterated it. Of the ancient
city hardly one stone remains standing upon
another, but without the walls, some four miles
away, there still remains a noble fragment which
bears eloquent testimony to the vanished power
and magnificence. It is the aqueduct which
brought down to the city by the sea the water
from the mountain cisterns of Marceau, fifteen
miles distant. The aqueduct follows the gentle
slope along the left side of the River El Hachem,
but before reaching Caesarea it had to cross the
tributary valley of the Oued-Bellah. This mag-
nificent bridge, spanning the gorge on three tiers
of arches, rivals in its solidity, in its towering

THE LOST CITY 39

grandeur, in its challenge to eternity, the aque-
duct of Carthage and the Pont du Gard of Nimes.
It strides like a Colossus across the gap, an
emblem of the indomitable will which created
the city and nourished it with the waters of the
distant mountains. Where all else has vanished
it endures, pointing dumbly and inexorably
towards a forgotten goal.

CHAPTER V
TIPASA

WHO hears now of Tipasa ? There
were scores of Roman cities in North
Africa of greater renown, seaports
through which Rome drew her corn and oil and
the coloured marbles of Numidia, rich cities of
the valleys and plains, strong cities among the
mountains and on the frontiers, cities which
rivalled any that could be found in Italy or
Gaul. There were Carthage, the rival of Rome,
and Leptis, the birthplace of that great Emperor,
Septimius Severus, and Hippo, the seat of St.
Augustine, and Thysdrus, the native city of
the Gordians, whose amphitheatre could seat
sixty thousand people, and Bulla Regia, and
Thugga, and Gigthis, and Sufetula, and Theveste,
and Thumagadi, and Cirta, and Caesarea, the
Athens of the West, and many others whose
names to modern ears are but as sounding brass
or a tinkling cymbal. These were not mere
villages or isolated outposts of Empire. They
were great, wealthy, proud cities. Very few
modern cities of Europe are fit to be compared
with them for magnificence and luxury, and
modern Algiers and Tunis are but mushroom
provincial growths. And yet they are no more.
The spade of the archaeologist is busy clearing

40

TIPASA 41

their sites of the debris of the oblivion of cen-
turies and revealing their vast foundations.
Their names are forgotten, and the lizard crawls
over stones that record the names of Emperors
of the World. Of all these cities Tipasa was one
of the smallest.

Tipasa was only twenty miles distant from
Csesarea, the brilliant capital of Mauretania. It
was outshone by its powerful neighbour, but it
was no mere satellite or handmaid of Caesarea.
It had a separate life and occupation of its own.
It became a centre of Imperial power, a ganglion
in the vast system of law, religion, and military
force which held Africa and Gaul and Britain
and the provinces of the Danube, Thrace, and
Asia Minor in subjection. Judging from the
extent of its walls, the lay-out of its houses, and
the size of its theatre, its population must have
numbered over twenty thousand. The popula-
tion of Csesarea numbered over one hundred
thousand, but if we wish to gain some idea of the
superabundance of Roman wealth and power,
and of the depth of the roots which Roman
civilisation had struck in African soil, we cannot
do better than visit the ruins of this secondary
little town of Tipasa.

The road from Algiers to Tipasa lies along the
coast, at first amid market gardens, and then
amid vineyards, and through numerous prosper-
ous little coastal villages, an ideal motor run of
fifty miles. The sun in January beats hot and
strong, and there are golden oranges and lemons
hanging on the garden trees, but the air has a
tang in it. It is a tonic air, like the strong clear
wine of the country. The approach to Tipasa

42 BARBARY

is picturesque. The low hills running down
close to the shore are clad in eucalyptus, pine,
and scrub cedar, scenting the air with their
aromatic essences. The Mediterranean, a sheet
of vivid green and blue in the distance, laps the
shore in clear shining ripples without a stain in
them. The purple profile of Chenoua in the
background forms a classic background that
suggests the epic age of Greece, and the youth
of the world. There on the shore is a solitary
pillar ; there in a field are some massive hewn
stones. In a flash we are through the trim street
of the modern village, laid out with French
mathematical exactitude, past some enormous
shattered walls and vaults of Roman brick, and
pull up at the excellent little Hotel du Rivage.

The ancient town of Tipasa stood upon three
small promontories which jut into the Mediter-
ranean, making two small bays. The central
promontory and the little bay to the East of it
formed, no doubt, the site of the earliest Phoe-
nician settlement, the centre round which the
town grew. Here, on the highest point, burned
the fires of Baal Moloch, and here also were
worshipped Ashtaroth, under her Phoenician
name of Tanit, and all the host of heaven. Here,
later, was the Roman Capitol in which the same
gods were worshipped, identified with Saturn
and Diana. The massive ruins of the temple
have been uncovered. Only the foundations
and the lower courses remain, but they are on
a scale that rivals the work of our cathedral
builders. By the end of the fourth century
they would be appropriated for Christian wor-
ship.

TIPASA 43

Behind this temple lies the forum, a vast
rectangle paved with heavy flagstones. A soli-
tary base for a statue stands in the middle near
the Northern end. Otherwise the expanse of
floor is unbroken by any indication of monument
or pillar. It was completely open to the sky,
a place of meeting, promenading, bargaining,
discussion, oratory. To the East and South it
is flanked by ancillary buildings, municipal
offices, law courts, academies, and doubtless
wine -shops and gambling houses. On the
Western side, at a lower level and approached
by a flight of steps over an arched passage, is
a large basilica. The lower courses of the
walls remain, and the two long rows of pillars,
constituting the aisles, in a fragmentary con-
dition, are still in situ. It originated, no doubt,
as a public hall, but some tombs indicate that
it was a Christian church.

The power and wealth of the early Church
are indicated not merely by inscriptions and
Christian symbols frequently found among the
ruins, but by the number and size and situation
of the churches. Across the little bay, on the
Western promontory, stand the ruins of a Basilica
of unusual size, a veritable cathedral. It is
170 feet long by 147 feet broad. It has a nave,
with four aisles on each side, separated from each
other by eight rows of pillars supporting arcades.
On the third promontory, the Eastern one, just
beyond the town wall, stood another church,
dedicated to Saint Salso, a young girl of Tipasa,
who in the days when Paganism was still supreme,
had overthrown an idol and paid the penalty of
martyrdom. These churches, crowning the three

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promontories with their pillars and their mosaics
and marbles, with their baptisteries and sepul-
chral chapels, and other ancillary buildings, are
on a scale which rivals anything our cathedral
cities can show. Alas, they are but ruins ex-
cavated from the ground. The more beautifully
worked stones, the inscriptions, the sculptures,
the marbles, the most perfect mosaics, have
either been destroyed or looted or removed for
security to various museums.

And now for the other public buildings and
works. The baths we have already remarked
in passing through the village, massive walls
and vaults of Roman bricks which, though the
walls have been rent asunder, seem to possess
the quality of indestructibility. One can still
see on them the prints of the makers' fingers.
In the garden of M. Tremaux, where the earth
sounds hollow as one treads over long-buried
vaults, excavation has revealed many interesting
sites. A chateau d'eau, the centre for the dis-
tribution of the water supply which had been
brought from the hills by an aqueduct, sets a
standard of architectural art which not one of
the waterworks of our utilitarian age could sur-
pass. Little is left of the theatre save the
excavation on the hill-side for its tiers of benches.
The pillars and the marble were plundered long
ago. In the middle of the garden a large and
deep excavation has revealed the foundations
and lower courses of a building which is remark-
able not merely for its size but for the solidity
of its construction. The huge blocks of which
the plinth is constructed have been carefully
dressed and the moulding has been executed

TIPASA 45

with great symmetry and exactness. Down a
long stretch on the West side the pillar bases are
in situ. Even in their ruin and desolation these
fragments have upon them the stamp of majesty
and of dominion.

Passing through the garden we descend
through olives and myrtles to the shore of the
little Western bay. On every vantage point upon
the slope are found the ruined palaces and villas
of the wealthy and powerful, still displaying the
unmistakable evidences of culture, refinement,
and luxury. The walls show the plan of the
domestic arrangements, the atrium or central
court, with its fountain, the living rooms, the
bedrooms, the baths, the heating and drainage
systems. A large arched sewer, cloaca maxima,
up which a man could walk, has been cut deep
down into the solid rock, and is carried far down
into the sea. Numerous manholes open into it.
Here is a tessellated pavement, there a fragment
of mosaic, revealing a classic pattern, and there
again a bay window looking out Westwards
across the bay towards the sun setting in orange
and crimson splendour behind Chenoua. The
choice of sites for these villas and their disposi-
tion, reveal a love for natural beauty which is
sometimes denied to the Ancients.

Over all the ruins the soil has accumulated
to a depth of from ten to fifteen feet. The
greater part is still unexplored. Wherever a
trench is dug there is a generous display of
relics. The garden of M. Tremaux is a museum
of them — of amphorae of gigantic size, which
might well have been part of the plant of a
wholesale wine merchant, of pillars re-erected,

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of capitals delicately chiselled into luxuriant
foliage, of memorial stones, dedicatory inscrip-
tions, votive tablets, altars, friezes, cornices,
and two beautifully carved marble sarcophagi,
one pagan and the other Christian. The soil
from which all these have been exhumed is
itself a compost of anthropological debris. Every
spadeful that is thrown up contains a dozen
fragments of pottery, brick, or tile, and bits
of bone. The shards vary from pieces of coarse
amphorae to bits of fine Samian ware, and a
little collection can rapidly be made to represent
a wide variety of patterns and glazes — black,
reddish brown, yellow, white, and green. With
the exception of the public halls and temples,
and the principal villas, the upper courses of the
buildings seem to have been constructed chiefly
of rubble, pressed earth, and concrete, with
binding courses of brick, and with bricked
lintels, corners, and arches. Hence the ruins,
as they subsidea, have formed the present
compost.

And this is Tipasa, this city of temples and
mansions, one of the smallest of the Roman
towns in Africa, which flourished for five cen-
turies and was blotted out fourteen hundred years
ago. Algiers, the modern French capital, is larger,
but Tipasa was better equipped in all its public
institutions, and in the amenities of life it did not
fall short of the highest modern standard.

Lunch at the Hotel du Rivage, in the garden,
under the gnarled branches of a naked fig tree,
and surrounded by pillars, capitals, amphorae,
and inscriptions in the language that is suited
best of all for epigraphy ! Alfresco in January !

O cq

<

o

TIPASA 47

These fields can still grow a rare wine, and the
vegetables, the oranges, and the almonds are
beyond compare. The hotel is for sale. One
thousand pounds will buy the goodwill and the
stock-in-trade. It is very attractive. What a
life for an amateur antiquary.

Returning to Algiers, about two miles East of
Tipasa we sight again the pillar, on a small
eminence near the shore, which first attracted
our attention. We halt our car near the Villa
Demonchy, in the midst of a eucalyptus wood.
Here we note at the side of the avenue a large
stone basin with two circular rollers of stone.
It is a Roman oil mill for pressing the olives.
We are therefore near the site of a Roman farm.
On the terrace of the villa looking towards the
sea is preserved a magnificent white marble
sarcophagus, a real treasure of art, representing
a scene from Greek mythology, carved in high
relief, full of life and action, and boldly imagined
details. Descending through the trees we reach
a little sandy beach on the West side of the
promontory, an ideal spot for bathing and for
gathering shells and all the curious debris of the
sea. The promontory consists of a lava stream
still showing the shape of the successive waves
of its viscid current, and forming little lagoons
where it has been suddenly congealed by the sea.
The lava rock is of a curious spongy texture,
like the familiar rubber sponges, full of bubbles,
large and small and with extremely hard and
sharp cutting edges. Walking over it is like
walking over a sponge of iron slag.

On the highest edge of the promontory, look-
ing Westwards, are the ruins of a palatial mansion.

48 BARBARY

Many mosaic and tessellated floors are exposed.
Part has already been washed away by the sea
and the waves are doing the work of excavator.
This was not part of the town of Tipasa. It
must have been the manor of some wealthy
proprietor who contrived on this site to enjoy
all the luxuries both of town and of country.
Down at the edge is the most remarkable feature
of this spot, a great tank or cistern, about 80 feet
long by 40 feet wide, cut out of the rock, with
only a narrow unbroken wall of rock left between
it and the sea. It is obviously a swimming bath.
The edges have been hewn to form benches for
resting, and the bottom shows squared bases for
pillars or statues. On the East it communicates
with a larger and deeper basin, also rectangular,
which in turn communicates with the sea, and
which may have served as a harbour.

We know the name of the lord of this manor
by the sea. He was Saedius Octavius Felix,
and he was a great man at Tipasa. He was
Duumvir or Mayor of the town. We can fancy
him returning in the evening with his wife and
family from some fete at Tipasa. They would
look back upon the same scene that we see
returning to Algiers. Behind Chenoua the sun
is sinking into a far-spreading zone of orange,
deepening into fiery tones of russet, bronze, rose,
scarlet, and crimson. The Western waters reflect
the hues of heaven. Against this background
rises the massif of Chenoua, purple and
violet, dim and dreamlike, with a shimmering
opalescent flush on its summit. Inland stretches
an olive and dark green trail of vineyards, groves,
and forests, with white walls and red roofs

TIPASA 49

shining vividly here and there. Across the calm
water move some large fishing boats manned each
by eight rowers who stand up to their work and
fling their weight forward rhythmically on their
oars. Even so might the boat of the Lord of the
Manor return from Tipasa seventeen hundred years
ago. The ladies would recline on gaily coloured
cushions. Their silken scarfs would flutter in
the breeze caused by the motion of the boat.
A fair arm would hang over the boat's edge,
and dainty fingers trail idly in the crystal water.
The tawny elegant youths would discuss their
bets on the chariot races. Snatches of song
would float over the water. The sturdy slave
rowers would strain at the oars. And if they
were late a lamp would shine to guide them to
the landing stage.

CHAPTER VI
" THE GARDEN OF ALLAH "

THE popular success of Mr. Robert
Hichens' novel, ''The Garden of Allah,"
is unquestionable. It has run into
twenty-eight editions since the publication in
1905, and it has had a long run on the stage.
It brings hundreds of visitors every year to
Biskra, the desert town of Algeria, in which the
plot of its spiritual drama is laid. It has created
an atmosphere which, for all tourists who have
been drawn hither by it, envelops the place and
colours their vision. It is the tourists' hand-
book to Biskra, just as " The Lady of the Lake "
is the handbook to the Trossachs, or " The
Raider " to Grey Galloway, or any of the novels
of Thomas Hardy to Wessex. Biskra has
become '' Hichens' Town." His name is on
everyone's lips. Every guide claims to have
served him and to be able to identify all the
sights and persons mentioned in the novel.
He, rather than Cardinal Lavigerie, the founder
of the White Fathers for the evangelisation of
the Desert tribes, whose statue looks out upon
the Desert he longed to conquer for Christ, is the
Patron Saint of Biskra.

It requires genius, through the medium of
printed words, to stamp one's personality upon

60

" THE GARDEN OF ALLAH " 51

a place, to envelop it in an emotional atmo-
sphere for other people ; and the feat is all the
more surprising where the material is so un-
promising. Here are none of the romantic
accessories dear to the heart of the fiction writer.
Here are only palm trees, and mud huts, and
hotels, in an oasis on the edge of the arid Desert
that stretches monotonously league after league
towards the sun. Out of the sand he has spun
the ropes of his enchantnient.

The book struggles under the physical dis-
advantage of being prodigiously long, more than
twice the length of the ordinary " six-shilling "
novel. The action is slow and is protracted by
long descriptive passages. In fact, the book is
both a guide-book and a novel, and that is
perhaps the secret of its success. With the most
systematic thoroughness every feature and aspect
of Biskra and the Desert is sought out and de-
scribed. The only thing the volume lacks to
make it complete is an index. Everything is
there, if the mere casual tourist only knew
where to find it in the five hundred pages — the
railway journey, the guides, the tips, the palms,
the gardens, the native cafes, the Ouled Nail
dancing girls, the bazaar, the perfume seller,
the sand diviner, the fakirs who eat glass and
put their hands in fire and pierce themselves
with skewers and knives, the musicians, the little
Catholic church, the mosques, the statue of
Cardinal Lavigerie, the sunsets, the camels, the
desert caravans, the mirage, the sand-storm, the
scattered oases, the camping place by the solitary
well, the track blazed by the bones of camels,

52 BARBARY

the desert town. If I proceed I shall soon have
compiled an index.

All these details have been observed and re-
corded through the medium of a temperament
which has coloured them and transfused them
with its own emotional vibrations. Domini, the
heroine, is an athletic young woman (if one may
so describe the daughter of a Peer) who has
reached the age of thirty-two without ever
having been in love. She is a Catholic, deeply
religious by instinct, but with no vocation to be
a nun. She falls in love, though she is slow to
recognise it, on the railway journey to Biskra,
with a strange man — strange in an emphatic way.
With the sight of the stranger comes an access of
religious emotion, and she experiences profound
spiritual thrills in the little Catholic church.
Within a month or so they are married, and set
off in a caravan of their own to spend their
honeymoon in the Desert. They trek from oasis
to oasis, then, after some months of Eden, the
mysterious lover confesses that he is a monk
who has broken his vows and has just escaped
from a Trappist monastery where he has been
an inmate for twenty years. Domini persuades
him to return to the monastery, and the book
closes when she leaves him at the gate. The
Biskra of the book is the Biskra seen by Domini
through all the kaleidoscopic emotions of this
period.

The spiritual drama takes the place of the
drama of action and incident. It takes two to
make a quarrel, says the proverb. Mr. Hichens
shows how one may make a quarrel, for the soul
of man or woman is a house divided against itself.

" THE GARDEN OF ALLAH " 53

Mr. Joseph Chamberlain used to say, in the
privacy of his family, that his party was a party
of one and that party was divided against itself.
The drama of this book is not the mutual falling
in love of Domini and her Trappist monk, their
marriage, and their parting. It is the conflict
within the soul of Domini before she yields
herself to the stranger and the further conflict
before she leads him back to the monastery gate
and leaves him there. for ever. Nothing happens
on the stage. Everything happens in the soul
of Domini.

Domini, in spite of her athletic proclivities
(she can hardly restrain herself from laying
violent hands upon disrespectful Arabs), is of an
introspective nature, always thinking about and
analysing her own emotions. She has fled from
a placid existence at home in the hope that face
to face with the immensity of the Desert " she
might learn to understand herself," and her
prayer on arrival is " Give me power to feel
keenly, fiercely, even though I suffer." Forth-
with she begins to feel with astounding vividness.
It is not really Biskra that is described in the
book, it is what Domini felt about Biskra and
the Desert, and how they affected her spiritual
and emotional development. There is no simple,
direct observation of Nature. From sunrise to
sunset, and in the watches of the night, Domini
is interposed between us and the smallest detail.
We cannot hear the muezzin call from the
minaret save charged with the ecstatic emotions
of Domini. We learn what the Desert is like
through the impressions which it made upon the
mind of Domini.

54 BARBARY

Domini spends her first day at Biskra, or
" Beni-Mora," as it is called in the book, in the
garden of Count Anteoni, a mysterious Italian
Comte de Monte Cristo, who hovers in the back-
ground of the story and who ultimately becomes
a Mohammedan. In real life this is the Jardin
Landon, a wonderful oasis which a wealthy
French nobleman has created on the edge of the
Desert. It rivals anything that may be imagined
about the hanging gardens of Damascus where
sultans took their delight. It is an Elysium in
the Desert, a Paradise of shade and greenery, of
rippling streams, of long vistas and winding
paths. For fruit there are date palms, fig vines,
and orange trees, and, besides, there is a wealth
of all shade-providing and flowering trees and
bushes. There are palms of many varieties,
and pines, and eucalyptus, and rubber trees, and
bananas, all evergreen, and a thick undergrowth
of bamboos, shrubs, dwarf palms, creepers,
geranium, hibiscus, and mimosa. The Desert is
shut out by ramparts of foliage. The sun is filtered
through lair after lair of greenery. The only
sounds are those which soothe — the rustling of
the leaves and the rippling of the water which
flows in a hundred channels through the thirsty
sand. This is not Nature. It is all artifice.
Infinite labour was required to lead round these
fertihsing waters, to plant and prune and
tend those trees, to make these walks, and to
preserve them in such meticulous order.

It is only those who have not read the book
who mistake this for the Garden of Allah. The
mistake is natural, for it would be difficult to
find a more perfect realisation of the popular

" THE GARDEN OF ALLAH " 55

conception of the Garden of Eden. But the
Garden of Allah is something very different from
this man-made Paradise. It is vast, empty,
terrible, majestic. The Arabs have a saying,
explains Count Anteoni : " The Desert is the
Garden of Allah."

The Desert draws Domini with mesmeric
power. " A conviction was born in her that
Fate meant her to know the Desert well ; that
the Desert was waiting calmly for her to come
to it and receive that which it had to give to
her ; that in the Desert she would learn more of
the meaning of life than she could ever learn
elsewhere."

I quote two passages as illustrative of the
descriptive method of the book. In each the
subject is the Desert seen under different con-
ditions.

" It was gigantic. There was even some-
thing unnatural in its appearance of immensity,
as if it were, perhaps, deceptive, and existed
in their vision of it only. So, surely, might
look a plain to one who had taken hashish,
which enlarges, makes monstrous, and threat-
eningly terrific."

And again : —

" Red deepened and glowed in the gold
behind the three palms, and the upper rim of
the round moon, red too as blood, crept
through the Desert. Domini, leaning forward
with one hand upon her horse's warm neck,
watched until the full circle was poised for a
moment on the horizon, holding the palms in

56 BARBARY

its frame of fire. She had never seen a moon

look so immense and so vivid as this moon

that came up into the night Hke a portent,

fierce yet serene, moon of a barbaric world,

such as might have shone upon Herod when

he heard the voice of the Baptist in his dungeon,

or upon the wife of Pilate when in a dream

she was troubled. It suggested to her the

powerful watcher of tragic events fraught

with long chains of consequences that would

last on through centuries, as it turned its

blood-red gaze upon the Desert, upon the

palms, upon her, and, leaning upon her horse's

neck, she too — like Pilate's wife — ^fell into a

sort of strange and troubled dream for a

moment, full of strong, yet ghastly, light and

of shapes that flitted across a background of

fire."

Is the book true ? Does it give an adequate
picture of Biskra and the Desert ? The question
is futile, and the answer will vary with the
reader. The book is too highly subjective to be
judged by the canons of objective reahty. One
visitor, after a week of palm and sand, will be
bored stiff. Another will revel in the minute
self-analysis of Domini, and, like her, see all his
own moods reflected in the sand. Hichens
is like the sand diviner who figures in the story.
He carries more than sand in his bag. But
not all believe in divination.

There are many to whom this kind of intro-
spection is antipathetic. They are content to
skip all these self-communings, if only they can
ie^rn, in the first place, whether she married the

" THE GARDEN OF ALLAH " 57

man, and, in the second place, what she did
when she discovered that he was an escaped
monk. So far as they are concerned, if the book
were cut down to about one-third of its present
size, it would be both a better novel and a
better guide. They look askance at Domini
as if she were a kind of monster. Mr. Hichens
refers to these critics in the preface published in
the later editions. They are " very angry with
Domini for ' taking back ' Boris to the monastery.
They declare that a woman who really loved
a man would never voluntarily part from him,
and that Domini had no right to conceal from
Boris the fact that she was going to have a
child." But even by their protests they show
that the book has for them the interest of a
problem.

But no doubt it is precisely the fusion of
religious and erotic emotion which gives the
book its chief attraction for many other people.
They would not be willing to sacrifice a single
one of the twenty-eight pages devoted to the
conscientious explication of Domini's emotions
on her wedding night. It is easy to understand
the growth of the Hichens' cult. The Hichens'
pilgrims come trooping to Biskra with their
copies of " The Garden of Allah " in hand,
hoping to experience the mystic thrills of Domini.
They are a pathetic band, these " seekers " —
seeking they know not what, a revelation, a
vision, a new life, perhaps only a mirage. Alas !
they often go back unsatisfied. The Desert is
but sand and sun. The eye sees what the eye
brings with it.

CHAPTER VII
A DESERT CITY

BISKRA, the City of the Sun, the Queen
of the Desert, the fairest of all the oases
of the Sahara, lies on the edge of the
Desert at the foot of the Aures Mountains which
rise like the wall of a furnace. It is a mistake
to think that the Desert is utterly unpopulated.
All the drainage from the Southern slopes of the
great Atlas range flows into the Sahara in
numerous rivers fed by the rains and the eternal
snows. None of them ever reaches the sea.
Their waters filter through the sands and are
lost in vast underground reservoirs. Here and
there these hidden stores of life-giving water
burst forth, or have been tapped by artesian
wells, and the Desert blossoms in forests of palm,
the tree which bears the harvest of the Desert.
The prosperity of Biskra is based upon the date
palm. Not only has it 250,000 palm trees in its
own oasis, but from all directions throughout
the Desert, wherever there are oases, caravans
of camels laden with dates converge on it as the
central depot and market.

Biskra is the centre of a group of oases in
which artificial irrigation has been highly
developed. Wheat is cultivated successfully
over large areas. The palm forests straggle out

m

A DESERT CITY 59

along the broad dried-up river bed, and in the
midst of each oasis small villages of hovels
built of sun-dried mud bricks have grown up.
In these huts, hfe is reduced to its simplest
proportions. There are no windows and the
interior is as dark as a cave. A pot, a family
dish, a water jug, some rugs and mats constitute
all the furniture that is required. Biskra itself
is a town with something of the complexity of
town life. It has a French quarter, with boule-
vards, and cafes, and shops, and hotels, but for
all that it is an African town, a desert town.

The French are still foreigners here. They
maintain a garrison. They live under the shadow
of the great Fort St. Germain which, in case of
emergency, could contain the whole European
population and stand siege. They have sub-
dued ; they have established law and order ;
they have introduced the elements of civilisa-
tion, but they have not changed the native.
The stream of native custom, language, instinct,
temperament, flows alongside, but absolutely
distinct from the stream of French civilisation.
The native craftsman squats cross-legged at his
task in his little dark cave of a shop lit by an
electric bulb. He has changed little in essentials
from his ancestors who occupied the land thou-
sands of years before the Romans. It is a strange
and violent contrast, the manners and habits of
four thousand years ago side by side with modern
civilisation, Abraham jostling the Parisian.

The vogue of Mr. Robert Hichens' novel,
" The Garden of Allah," brings thousands of
sightseers to Biskra, but there is very little
sight-seeing to be dojie. The street of the

60 BARBARY

Ouled Nails, the ungainly and unsavoury harlots
of the Desert, has been written up ad nauseam.
Prim tourists, of both sexes, walk along the
street, stare at the bedizened creatures sitting
at their doors or in their balconies awaiting
custom, and peep into the Moorish cafes to see
the dull and unexciting dancing. Or they go
and look at the disgusting antics of the Dervishes
who eat glass and scorpions, and stick skewers
through their flesh if a certain number of francs
are forthcoming. One can wander through the
palm groves, between the mud walls of the
gardens, and inspect the picturesque but squalid-
looking villages. One can watch the Arabs in
the market, in their cafes, or at prayer, and the
camel caravans arriving or departing. There
are a number of beaten-track " excursions," to
the Mosque of Sidi Okba, to the Hot Baths, to
the neighbouring oases, to the Jardin Landon,
to the sand dunes on the Desert and to the
foothills to see the sunset. But the craving for
sight-seeing will not find more than will satisfy
it for three days at Biskra.

I bear my testimony against sight-seeing. The
real attractions of Biskra appeal very little to
the mere sightseer. They are the winter climate,
the sun, the Desert, the restfulness, the driving
back of the soul upon its own resources. One
absorbs through all one's pores the Sun, the
Master of life. The vast, empty, sun-drenched
spaces of the Desert give a powerful impulse
towards abstraction, and help one to cast aside
the small frets and worries of life and to feel that
one has an inner life of one's own. Biskra is an
ideal place for a rest cure, but this is the last

A DESERT CITY 61

thing the sightseer desires. The person who
requires to be " entertained " had better hurry
back to London or Paris at once.

The great South Road, the Touggourt Road,
leads direct into the Desert. For a few miles
out from Biskra it passes between irrigated
fields, on which, in January, the fresh green
wheat is springing, and then, quite suddenly,
the Desert commences in a huddle of wind-blown
sand dunes. There is some kind of clay or marl
beneath the sand which would, no doubt, be
fertile if irrigated. Some tufts of dry, rustling,
desert herbage cling to exposed patches with
desperate tenacity, and a small creeping gourd
sends its long tendrils burrowing deep through
the sand. Its bright green and yellow fruit,
about the size of an apple, lies scattered in scores
over the mounds, half buried in the sand. These
gourds are said to be poisonous, but they are
not a source of danger to either man or beast.
They are so inexpressibly bitter to taste that
no one would be tempted to eat them. Suicide
by such means would be too unpleasant. So
there they lie, these Desert fruits, ripening in
the sun. Dead Sea apples, alluring to the eye,
but repulsive to the taste.

The sand dunes are like great waves of a
petrified sea. They are carved by the wind into
all kinds of whorls, ripples, eddies and ridges.
The waves of this sea of sand are not mere
undulations. They are carven by the wind. They
are scooped, and edged, and scalloped. Here
they are rounded like a whale's back, here they
show an edge like a shark's fin, here they fall
away sharply in a sand precipice. The abrupt

62 BARBARY

slope is too steep to olimb. One slips deeper and
deeper at every step, and the loose sand rolls
back, threatening to engulf.

Northward, in the direction of the mountains,
one passes rapidly out of the arable belt into a
land of rolling shingle hills. It is a desert of
gravel, pebbles, stones, seldom as large as a man's
head. It is like one vast river-bed or rather
ocean beach. The stones are mostly flint, and
hard limestone, quartz, and schist. Some are
beautifully rounded, and others thin and flat.
The quartz is delicately smooth, the limestone
curiously corrugated with folds and contortions
like a petrified brain ; dull red, bluish grey, and
slate are the prevailing colours, and one can
understand from these stones how the distant
mountains get their colours when the sun is
shining on them. It is a desolate land, a heart-
breaking land. In the sand desert one might
sink and die in a stupor of apathy. But here, in
this hard wilderness, one would beat one's head
upon the stones in futile and unavailing rage.
One sinks on the sand as on a soft couch, but on
this stony bed one would be stretched as on a rack.

The loose friable sand forms a veritable
ocean. It is fluid. It drifts and streams and
flows with the wind. It rests in the calm and
moves on in the storm, running like the sand
in some gigantic hour-glass, flowing in currents
and cascades and tides and whirling columns.
The motion of the sand is quite unlike that of
water. The sea tosses and undulates in huge
waves ; the Desert rises into the heavens in
innumerable legions and travels on the wings
of the wind.

A DESERT CITY 63

I looked down upon the Desert from a spur
of the Aures Mountains when the wind, not a
gale, was blowing from the North, and I watched
the flight of the sand in cloud battalions sweep-
ing forward like wraiths with spectral robes
trailing behind them. Swift as the flight of a
shadow they passed over the surface of the
Desert, gathering volume as they went, curving
upward like a wave, or curling downward like
a Djinn muffling its face in its arm, whirling in
sudden vortices, darkening the sky, more terrible
than an army with banners.

When a gale blows the world is without form
and void. Chaos seethes and boils. The earth
is resolved into its separate atoms and molecules,
which stream once more through the primeval
void waiting the compelling finger of the Creator
to shape the world once more. To be caught in
a sand-storm is not merely to be tossed and
battered ; it is to be submerged, enveloped,
blinded, dazed. The Arab has good reason for
regarding Hell as a place of pestilential winds.

Sand and stones, wind and sun, day and night,
the immaculate blue vault and the canopy of
stars, these are the elemental constituents of the
panorama of life in the Desert. In this vast,
slowly-revolving panorama there is so little in
the external world to distract the attention
that one is thrown back upon the inner life of
contemplation and dreaming. These waves of
sand, stretching into the dim immensity, are a
fitting symbol of eternity, and a fit soil to
nourish a sterile fatalistic creed. The conditions
do not conduce to continuity and concentra-
tion of thought. This is the way to Nirvana.

CHAPTER VIII
" WHAT'S BECOME OF WARING ? "

I WAS puzzled by the Englishman who sat
by himself at a small table in a corner of
the dining-room of the Hotel du Sahara,
at Biskra. He was generally first to enter the
room, and always first to leave it. For an
hour before dinner he would sit in the little
drawing-room copying entries from a small note-
book into a larger one, occasionally consulting
a volume which lay beside him, and apparently
oblivious to the rest of the world. At other times
he vanished. He went none of the usual excur-
sions. Once I thought I saw him in the dark
recess of a little native cafe off the Market
Square playing chess with a nondescript Arab.
He gave me the impression of being a shy and
somewhat uncouth man. He was obviously not
a tourist, and he was very different from any
commercial traveller I had ever met. He might
have been a novelist of the microscopic, note-
book type, in search of local colour, or, again,
he might have been an eccentric scholar sent to
breathe the desert air for the good of his lungs.

One evening, as we sat waiting in the drawing-
room for the dinner bell, an American lady was
intent upon a game of Patience. The cards
would not come right. At the opposite side of

64

" WHAT'S BECOME OF WARING ? " 65

the table sat the Englishman, absorbed in his
note-books, and apparently oblivious to all else.
Suddenly he leaned across the table, shot out
his arm, and with his forefinger jabbed one of
the cards. " Try that," he ejaculated, and
before the lady could recover from her astonish-
ment he was intent on his book again.

I also had a note-book in which I used to
write before dinner. One day he looked up
suddenly and asked me if I knew Arabic. He
seemed disappointed when I said " No," but
brightened perceptibly when I began to display
an interest in the language. No, he could not
say that he knew Arabic. He had only been
working at it for some sixteen years. He spent
two or three months every year like this, wan-
dering among the Arabs and improving his
knowledge. Why ? Oh, it interested him — it
was his hobby. He would rather do this than
play golf. The structure of the language was
simple — very like English, indeed — but there
was need for a tremendous amount of sheer
memory work. The vocabulary contained many
simple, definite words to describe composite
actions, and often the word describing a par-
ticular way of doing a thing would be quite a
different word from the general word for this
action. Moreover, the plurals were what we
would call " irregular," not expressed by the
addition of a suffix or prefix, but by some struc-
tural change in the word itself, which had to be
learned separately for each word.

He spent his days talking with the Arabs in
the streets and cafes, in the market, or wherever
he could meet them. He noted down any new

ee BARBARY

word which he came across, and was careful to
get its exact shade of meaning. Then, when he
returned to the Hotel, before dinner, he tran-
scribed his rough notes into a large note-book
and verified them as far as possible from his
Arabic dictionary. He was also keenly inter-
ested in Arab folk-lore, religion, ethnology,
manners and customs. He had many friends
among the Arabs. With some he merely gossiped
in the cafes. Others he made his friends by
teaching them English, which they were very
anxious to learn. Others he hired as guides or
attendants as occasion required, and some of
these were acquaintances of many years' standing.

" What's become of Waring since he gave us
all the slip ? " I said to myself. " Seems to have
chosen land-travel rather than seafaring." Here
was one of those strange Englishmen of whom
Browning wrote, who love to dive into the un-
known, and who reappear when the Empire has
need of them, speaking unknown tongues. This
man had served in the War, but he did not tell
me where. He was not communicative on that
subject, but about his beloved Arabs he would
talk until the day dawned.

" The Arab mentality," he said to me one
evening, " is very difficult to understand — the
point of view, the attitude of mind, is so different
from that of the European. And yet in some
ways they are curiously like the English; for
example, in their sense of humour. It is very
different from the French sense of humour. The
French love wit and epigram. They delight in
the neat turning of a sentence. The Arab
humour is much broader — more in the nature of

" WHAT'S BECOME OF WARING ? " 67

joking. They love chaff and leg-pulhng. They
will roar with laughter at the smallest joke of
this kind. If you chaff them, that is the way to
keep them working in good temper. I have
known a servant leave his master because he was
too dull, too serious — never made a joke. To
enjoy life an Arab must be merry.

" I met some soldiers on leave to-day at a
cafe. They belonged to a regiment recruited in
this district, and they were full of stories about
the W^ar. They did very well in the War, but they
were little use in the trenches. They could not
stand the wear and the strain of the life. They
were at their best in a charge. They would go
over the top and then be brought back to a rest
camp to await fresh drafts. One of these men
had the Croix de Guerre : he had been over the
top eleven times, a pretty good record ! They
asked me how the English soldiers did their drill,
and I told them as best I could how we sloped
arms, and formed fours, and so forth. They were
greatly amused, and not a little scandalised. It
was quite different from their way. ' And do
they really do it so — on the left shoulder ? '
They seemed to regard it as wicked and heretical,
and yet amusing. ' How peculiar.' They shook
their heads over it, and went into peals of
laughter.

" The Arab is not troubled by that spirit of
unrest which can only be worked off by action.
He has no itch for action. I have a young Arab
friend out in the desert at Sidi Okba who has
deliberately abandoned himself to a life of
loafing. A cup of coffee, a game of dominoes, a
gossip in the market-place, these are to be the

68 BARBARY

substance of his life, his sole preoccupation from
the cradle to the grave ! His father has left him
a little property, sufficient to satisfy his few
needs for food, shelter, and clothing, and so he
can dream away his life in the sun. There are
many such. Hichens, in one of his short sketches,
tells of a guide whom he employed to walk round
with him and translate for him in the cafes.
' And what will you do when I go away ? ' he
asked. ' Ah, that's when I shall have my little
holiday ! ' the Arab replied, with the air of a
man who had been performing the labours of
Hercules. ' And how will you spend your
holiday ? ' 'In the morning when I awake I
will eat a couple of figs. Then I will go for a
stroll in the market-place, and have a cup of
coffee, and a talk with my friends at the cafe.
Then I will return home about eleven o'clock for
a meal. In the afternoon I will go again to the
cafe and play dominoes and talk with my friends.
After the evening meal I will go again to the cafe,
and perhaps see some dancing and hear the talk
of strangers. And then I will go to sleep.' Such
a day would drive a European mad. I once met
two boys I knew in Tunis and I found that one
of them was going on a visit to Kairouan. I
arranged to meet him there, and I spent with
him a day very much like that."

'' I remember," he said to me another time,
" meeting some men who had just returned
from the High Tell where they had gone with
their tribe for employment on the harvest. They
take with them on their march their wives and
families, their tents, their camels, their sheep
and goats, even their poultry. It was very hard

" WHAT'S BECOME OF WARING ? " 69

work, they told me. Oh ! very hard work !
About five o'clock in the morning they would
squat down in the market-place. Presently the
farmer would come along, just as in the Biblical
parable, and ask if they wanted to be hired.
And they would say No, they had just come to
amuse themselves in the market. Then the
farmer would state his terms and they would
make a bargain. They are paid not in coin but
in a share of the crop. If the corn was growing
very thick their share would be one in ten. If
it was growing very thin it might be one in six.
That is to say they would have one rick out of
every ten or six. They would then thrash this
corn themselves and sell the grain. They ex-
plained to me that they sometimes would scoop
a little hole in the ground and build one rick
over it, so that it would contain more. This they
would include as part of their share unless the
farmer was sharp enough to notice it.

" I asked them how long they worked. Well,
they started early in the morning and worked till
eleven. Then they had their first meal — only a
small meal. Then they started again and worked
till one, when they had their chief meal. ' Then,'
they said, ' we go to bed and sleep till nine
o'clock.' ' Whatever do you do that for ? Don't
you sleep at night ? ' 'Oh no, we sit up all night
talking. If we were to sleep at night all our
goods would be stolen. We must watch them
very carefully. The women watch by day while
we are sleeping, and at night they sleep while we
guard.' I said that I might some day come for
a holiday with them, but I would sleep in my
tent at night. That would never do, they said»

70 BARBARY

When I awakened in the morning I would find
only the sky above me. The tent would be
gone."

" You ought to meet Hilton Simpson," he
said again. " He could tell you much more
about the secret life of the natives and about
tribes who are almost unknown to Europeans
than I can. I am only an amateur ; he has
penetrated to the heart of the mysteries of
these mountains which lie behind us. I saw
him three weeks ago at El Kantara, where he
and his wife have a house. Where are they now ?
Up in the mountains with a big game hunter.
Cotton, shooting mouflon, the Barbary wild
sheep.

'' Have you ever heard of the Shawiah ?
They are a tribe who inhabit that great massif
of mountains which stretches from here to Tunis,
the great barrier which was the frontier of the
Roman Empire. You can see its barren peaks,
red and blue and luminously opalescent in the
sunset. Behind these baking furnace walls there
are sheltered valleys and forests of cedar trees.
There live the Shawiah. They are said to be
the remains of a white race who occupied this
country thousands of years before the Romans
or the Phoenicians, and who have left their
Megalithic Monuments, their Dolmens, and Crom-
lechs, and Menhirs, scattered along the shores
of the Mediterranean and even in Britain. The
Hilton Simpsons have spent months among
these people, travelling from village to village,
living their life, winning their confidence, study-
ing their customs, collecting their folk-lore.

" Among other things Hilton Simpson has

'' WHAT'S BECOME OF WARING ? " 71

made some interesting discoveries as to the
survival of primitive medicine and surgery among
the Shawiah. It has long been known that in
ancient times, probably before the Romans, the
native surgeons practised trepanning. There
were rumours that the primitive art was still
practised in the remote Aures Mountains, but
it was very difficult to get any evidence on the
subject. The French discourage native surgery,
and in consequence the natives will seldom reveal
anything about it. Hilton Simpson made many
efforts to discover what were the methods and
instruments employed, and at last he found a
native doctor who said he had performed the
operation and who consented to show him his
instruments on condition that he did not give
him away to the French.

" The doctor produced a ring like a large
wedding ring with a wire attached to one side
of it at right angles. This ring was made red-hot
and then applied to the part of the head on
which the operation was to be performed. It
cauterised the place, and probably deadened the
nerves. Having burned a ring on the head the
operator then proceeded to drill a small hole in
the skull, taking care not to pierce the brain.
Then he drilled another little hole near it in the
line of the circular brand, and another. No
more was done that day, but the work of drilling
these small holes was renewed from day to day
until the complete ring of bone had been per-
forated. The disc was then lifted out and the
piece of bone or foreign matter which had been
pressing on the brain was removed. The disc
was then replaced and the head bandaged. The

72 BARBARY

recuperative power of the native annealed the
bone and healed the wound. It was a savage
operation, and, of course, many patients did not
survive, but it must have succeeded frequently,
as the ancient tombs show."

I never met the Hilton Simpsons, but I see
from the newspapers that they have since
returned with a rich harvest. I have not met
again the student of Arabic, but he gave me his
card, and I note that his home in Essex is called
" The Wilderness." The tame delights of home,
however, will not satisfy their souls. They will
feel the call of the wild, of the desert and the
mountains, and some day their friends will ask
again : " What's become of Waring ? "

CHAPTER IX
AFRIC'S SNOWY MOUNTAINS

THE sun was shining hotly at Biskra in
the January morning. We had our
early cafe al fresco on the veranda,
with the fronds of the date palm in the courtyard
rustling in the fresh breeze that was springing up.
In the market-place, where we bought some
mandarin oranges for the journey, the Arabs
were squatting on the pavement displaying their
goods, but betraying no anxiety for custom.
The half-naked children were running about
chaffering with each other, or solemnly imitating
their elders. It was the chief town of the Ziban,
the Northern part of the Sahara, the central
depot for the trade of the desert, whither came
the long caravans of camels, laden with dates,
and droves of sheep which pick up a living on
the scanty herbage near the oases. It lies at
the foot of the Aures Mountains, one of the
highest sections of the Atlas range, which rise
precipitously from the Sahara, shutting it off
from the rich Mediterranean lands.

At noon we took the train for Batna, which
lies on the high table-land just North of the
mountains. For an hour we followed the course
of the oued, or river, which has burst through
the mountains, bringing down the life-giving

73

74 BARBARY

waters which make the oases, and which, dis-
tributed on every side by an elaborate system of
irrigation, never reach the sea. On either side
stretched vast expanses of ploughed land. For
the present they were as naked as the desert,
but by and by they will be clad in waving
grain. Every now and again we passed forests
of palm trees, and villages of sun-dried mud
bricks scarcely distinguishable from the naked
earth, and strings of camels and sheeted spectres
seated on donkeys, and nomad tents like the
upturned keels of boats. Soon we were among
the outlying spurs of the mountains, red, flinty
rocks, crumbling precipices, jagged peaks and
ridges. It is a burnt-out land, from which
Dante might have got his picture of the burning
marl of Hell.

The mountains drew in closer and became
more precipitous on either side, till quite sud-
denly we arrived at the Gorge of El Kantara,
the Desert Gateway, a deep and narrow chasm,
cut out by the river or torn by some convulsion
of Nature. Behind us the rolling sands of the
Desert stretched for thousands of miles towards
the Sudan, towards the haunts of the wild
Touaregs, towards Lake Tchad and Timbuotoo,
the Garden of Allah, the unknown, the untracked,
a more formidable barrier than the mountains.
One moment, the vision is spread out towards
the South ; then the train rounds a corner and
it is as if iron gates were clanged behind us,
shutting out the illimitable distances. For half
a mile the palm trees straggled after us, then
they too ceased. We were in a different country,
in the fastnesses of the mountains, climbing

AFRIC'S SNOWY MOUNTAINS 75

steadily till we reached a height of over 3000
feet.

Before we reached the corn lands of the
plateau we passed through a harsh and bitter
country. The earth was raw and metallic. It
was dry and baked as in a limekiln. A withered
tuft of starveling grass, here and there, only
served to emphasise the failure of vegetation.
There was no mould, no humus, no deposit of
ancient growths. It was like a land of slag that
had just been emptied from a crucible — a fierce
land, a hateful land, a forbidding land, a land
which could never be home, a land for nomads
only. As we mounted, however, we approached
the land of cedar and cypress forests, at first
scrub and dwarf only, but the trees increasing
in size in the higher altitudes. The distant hills
were clothed in wood.

At Batna we were already 3400 feet above the
level of the sea, having risen 3100 feet from
Biskra. It was now six o'clock and dark. The
cold mountain air caught us as we descended
from our carriage. Clouds obscured the rising
moon. " A fire in your room ? " asked Mine
Host of the Hotel des Etrangers, as we arrived.
" And a motor-car for Timgad to-morrow ? "
Certainly ! We dined well in this simple but
hospitable caravanserai, and after dinner we sat
with Mine Host and his friends who all spoke
English admirably, and talked for hours of
Algeria, of the Mohammedan religion, of the
Roman Remains, and of the vast resources of
the country which might feed Europe. And so
to bed.

In the morning we opened the Venetian

76 BARBARY

shutters to look out upon a new world. The
veranda was an inch deep in snow. Every
branch and twig of the trees which line the
boulevard of this little French town was heavily
loaded with snow, shining like silver filigree
work against the dark walls opposite. The roofs
were white, and around on every side the moun-
tains encircled us with walls of white. It was a
wintry landscape — a January morning in Scot-
land it might well be, but for the immobile Arab
who stood muffled up in his white burnous leaning
against one of the trees in the square.

Timgad lies twenty-three miles East of Batna,
in the mouth of a valley running South into the
Aures Mountains. Our car climbed steadily
upwards through a landscape that grew ever
more wintry. At Lambese we passed through
the camp of the Third Legion buried in the
snow. The great square block of the Praetorium,
and the Arch of Septimius Severus stood up,
black and forbidding, like stark sentinels of the
vanished Empire, still at their post despite the
lapse of centuries. A keen and piercing wind
blew from the North. It penetrated the fibres
of the thickest woollen overcoat. We gasped as
it seemed to drag the very breath from our
nostrils. We had need of all our furs and mack-
intoshes to keep warm. At Marcouna we had
reached an altitude of over 4000 feet, the height
of the summit of Ben Nevis. At the Horse-shoe
Bend, in the January before the War, the snow
drifted a metre deep, we were informed, and
barred the way for a week, so that Mr. Lloyd
George, whose signature is shown in the visitors'
book at the Museum at Timgad, had to postpone

AFRIC'S SNOWY MOUNTAINS 77

his visit for some days. And even in the hotel at
Batna he was beset by suffragettes.

From the formation of the snow we could see
that the fields which stretched over the plateau
were ploughed lands, and at the foot of the hills
we could discern small clusters of huddled brown
huts with an occasional larger farm-house. At
a deserted spot on the descent to Timgad we
suddenly noticed that a kerbed pavement ran
along each side of the road. Side streets, simi-
larly kerbed, ran off at right angles, and other
streets ran parallel to the main road. A whole
new town had been plotted out and the streets
made. Three houses stood in a solitary block.
Upon the front of one was inscribed the word
" Poste,'' upon another " Mairie,'" and upon the
third " Ecole'^ Not another house was to be
seen but those three advance guards of the
Municipality that was yet to be, the Post Office,
the Town Hall, and the School. Right in front
of them in the naked field on the opposite side
of the road a wandering nomad had pitched his
tent. There he stood, immobile, in his turban
and picturesque rags, like a Red Indian gazing
over the solitude where one day New York was
to raise its myriad voices.

By the time we arrived at Timgad the morning
sun had melted the snow which lay lighter there
and had even dried the paving-stones of the
Roman streets. About three miles off we could
discern, close up to the mountains, the two giant
pillars, the only two remaining of the Capitol,
like the tall steeples of some church. Here, in
the midst of the conquered wilderness, fronting
the unconquered mountains, an outpost of Em-

78 BARBARY

pire, the Quetta of the second century, stood a
Roman city. It was not a mere fortress in a
native village, not a collection of the shacks
of pioneers, not a group of houses near a camp,
but a Roman City, on the model of Rome itself,
built complete with all the resources of Roman
town-planning science, equipped with all the
luxuries of Roman civilisation, endowed with all
the legal, municipal, social, industrial, and educa-
tional institutions which knitted the Empire
together. It was as if one of the great Roman
cities of Italy had been lifted complete, by some
necromancer's art, and deposited in the wilds.

For the past thirteen centuries Timgad has
lain hidden under ten feet of debris and accumu-
lated soil. The Vandals plundered it, and after
them the wild men of the hills had their will of it.
The Byzantine soldiers took its stones to build
their fortress outside the walls. After the Arab
invasion it was deserted and the wilderness
reclaimed it. There were no new cities or houses
building in the neighbourhood for which its ruins
might serve as a quarry. It was buried in its
own ruins and in drifting sand and water-borne
silt. And so the main substance of it has been
preserved like Pompeii and Herculaneum. The
strong foundations, the stone framework of the
whole city, are as perfect to-day as when the
Legionaries laid them in position. Modern ex-
cavation has uncovered the whole ground plan
of the city. If it were determined to rebuild
the city to-day the chief work would already
be done.

We trod the paved streets ; we explored the
palaces and mansions ; we lingered in the

AFRIC'S SNOWY MOUNTAINS 79

Forum, and pictured the vanished hfe and gaiety
and commerce and ambition ; and we returned
for lunch to the excellent little hotel which has
been built beside the ruins. The head waiter
had been for four years in the Piccadilly Hotel.
But where was our car ? It had returned to
Batna with another party and would be back
for us presently. An hour passed. No car !
Ring up Batna and make anxious enquiries. It
is all right ! The chauffeur had lunched and set
out for Timgad again. Patience 1 Another hour !
A dark suspicion. Is it a plot to keep us at the
hotel for the night ? Cross-examine the manager.
He is most distressed. It has begun to snow.
Perhaps the weather has delayed him. Perhaps
he has had a breakdown. Hope he had a spare
tyre.

Another hour. Snowing heavier. Telephone
again to Batna. Alas ! The chauffeur has just
returned to Batna on foot. He has had a break-
down, and had to walk back eight miles. Another
car will be sent at once. Well, we must make
the best of it. The hotel is comfortable, we
have a roaring fire, and it is tea-time. It is
now a regular storm. It is impossible to see
across the road for snow and sleet. Night is
rapidly descending, and a faint watery radiance
shows where the moon is rising.

At last ! Honk, honk ! The car has arrived.
The chauffeur appears, muffled up in a shaggy
goat-skin coat, beating his hands on his breast
to keep out the cold. A cup of hot coffee to
revive him, an interval to light the lamps, and
we are off.

The snow was driving thick and fast, and as

80 BARBARY

we reached the higher part of the route it was
lying four inches deep on either side. The road
was covered with slush, and in the hollows there
were great pools. Swish ! A great wave went
up on each side of us. We might be in a hydro-
plane. Splash ! Another and a larger wave.
" Oh, sailor, 'tis a dreadful night — there's danger
on the deep." The hghts were washed out. A
halt to light up again. Before we had gone a
couple of hundred yards they were washed out
again. No use ! We must proceed without lights.
Fortunately the moon was up, although obscured
by clouds, and the reflection from the white
snow-fields afforded sufficient light to enable a
careful driver to pick his way. Round the
Horse-shoe Bend we swept. The snow was
drifting. Again we were reminded of Scotland.
We might be feeling our way across the Gram-
pians in a snowstorm.

Through such storms the Roman Legions
marched within a few stages of the Desert.
There were among them men who had served in
Scotland. Septimius Severus, who was Emperor
from A.D. 193 to 211, himself a native African
by birth, during his restless life led his Legions
to every frontier in his Empire. He penetrated
the Highlands of Scotland, and the wild passes
of the Aures Mountains. On the edge of the
Desert there may still be seen a stone with an,
inscription commemorating his victories in
Britain. He knew the snows of the North, and
the snows of the South. His experiences in
Africa must have prepared him for the worst in
Scotland.

At last we were back in the Hotel des

APRIC'S SNOWY MOUNTAINS 81

Etrangers. Dinner was waiting, and then, in
the bedrooms, great fires of cedar logs. There
is no fire so noble, so generous, so friendly, as
a log fire, and of all logs, the cedar is the best.
It sizzles and crackles and fills the room with
an exquisite balsamic fragrance like incense.
How eloquently it talks of the rest after the
day's march by the camp fire. From the same
forests came the cedar logs burned on the
hearths at Timgad, and in the camp of the
Legion at Lambese. The tired soldiers stretched
themselves after dinner just like us, and sniffed
the smoke and watched the flames, and dis-
cussed their campaigns. It was another link
with the past.

CHAPTER X
FRONTIERS OF ROME

AFRICA and Britain were both Roman
A\ Provinces, and there is a most in-
-^ -^ teresting parallel between them which
throws much light upon the early history of
both countries. On the Southern shores of the
Mediterranean and on the Northern shores of
the English Channel the Romans found the
trading settlements of the Phoenicians and the
dolmens and megalithic monuments of another
great pioneering race which, before the dawn of
history, preceded the Phoenicians. The same
great Emperors and generals, Caesar, Hadrian,
and Severus, led their legions there in person,
and consolidated their conquests by the same
methods. Throughout the Roman world the
same system of military and civil organisation
prevailed, and the same civilising agencies of
road-making, bridge-building, and town planning
were at work.

But the parallel goes much further. Both
were frontier Provinces. In both cases, at the
limits of their occupation, the Romans were
brought into contact with wild mountain tribes
whom they never succeeded in subduing, and
who constantly broke through the defences to
plunder the rich towns and farms of the Province.

82

FRONTIERS OF ROME 88

The Picts and Scots in the North carried on the
same guerilla warfare as did the Berbers in the
South. In both cases the Romans were forced
to defend their settled possessions by means of
a strongly fortified line beyond which they
subsequently erected an advanced line. Stranger
still, when the Empire was breaking up in the
fifth century, the Vandals who crossed over from
Spain and fell with fire and sword upon the rich
towns of Numidia were a branch of the Gothic
race of pirates — to which also belonged the
Saxon, Angle, and Danish pirates — who found
in England their plunder ground.

There the parallel ends. The Vandals, having
subdued the effete Romans, were themselves
subdued by the climate, and were succeeded by
the Arabs who brought with them a system of
religion, and ethics, and of life which was alien
to Europe. The Northern races took permanent
root in Britain, and their soul was the soul of
Europe. Mohammedanism became the religion
of the South and Christianity of the North.

It was the Emperor Hadrian who, having
succeeded to the throne in a.d. 117, set himself
to consolidate and defend the rich new Provinces
which the Romans had developed so rapidly
during the previous century. Britain was his
first care. The narrow isthmus from the Solway
to the Tyne, some seventy-five miles across, was
the defensive line which he selected, and he
had it fortified with all the resources of the
military science of his age. A great wall of
dressed stone was built across, with a deep
ditch on its North side and a line of earthworks
on the South. Along the wall at intervals were

84 BARBARY

strong permanent camps such as those whose
remains have been uncovered at Housesteads,
Corbridge, Chesters, and Birdoswald, which,
with their residential suburbs and trading
stations, assumed the aspect of towns and
astounded the Barbarians with the spectacle
of Roman civilisation and luxury.

Hadrian's Wall was not, like the Great Wall
of China, a mere dead barrier between barbarism
and civilisation. It was a fortress rather than
a sharp boundary. It was a military stronghold
from which a strong influence could be exercised
over the territory beyond, and, indeed, there
were strong stations and settlements to the North
of it as at Birrens and Bremenium. The tribes
sheltered by the Southern Highlands of Scot-
land, the Louthers, the Lammermuirs, and the
Pentlands, continuing to give trouble by their
raids, it was found necessary to advance further
to the North and to erect a second defensive
line across the still narrower isthmus between
the Forth and the Clyde. This was carried out
in the reign of Antoninus Pius, a.d. 138-161,
by the legate LoUius Urbicus.

The Antonine Wall might rather be described
as an entrenchment with an earthen vallum
and a military road, and the military stations
along it were fortified posts rather than towns.
It held in check the wild Caledonians of the
Northern Highlands. It was an advanced line
which could be quickly reinforced or abandoned
if necessary, but the real military base upon
which the security of the Province depended lay
along the line of Hadrian's Wall. Septimius
Severus, a.d. 193-211, another of the great archi-

FRONTIERS OF ROME 85

tects of Empire, came over like Hadrian to see
to the defence of the British Province. Undis-
mayed by age and sickness, he penetrated to the
North of Scotland, borne in a litter with his
army, suffering heavy losses among the in-
hospitable mountains. But finding no better
frontier or no territory worth the cost of conquest
he returned to the former lines and repaired and
strengthened the works of Hadrian. Before he
could return to Rome death ended his long
Odyssey at York.

In Africa we find the same policy carried out in
person by the same Emperors. The Roman occu-
pation of Africa was gradual. They were forced
to penetrate further and still further into the
interior by the necessity of subduing the raiding
nomad tribes. At first the politicians would
have been content with Carthage and the sur-
rounding country, but the colonists were at-
tracted by fertile plains of the Medjerda Valley
and of Southern Tunis, or Byzacium. It was
a land of milk and honey, or rather of wine and
oil. Then the lure of the rolling wheat lands of
the High Plateau attracted them further inland,
until they came to the mountain wall which
supports the Plateau on the South and shuts
it off from the Sahara Desert. This is the Atlas
range which at its Eastern extremity gathers
into a well-defined group known as the Aures
Mountains, containing some of the highest peaks.
On their Northern side they rise some 3000 feet
above the Plateau, but on their Southern side
they fall almost 6500 feet sheer down to the
Desert.

As they advanced into the continent the

86 BARBARY

Romans found no narrow isthmus like that
between the Solway and the Tyne, but in the
Aures Mountains they found a wall already
built. Here was the defensive boundary which
Nature seemed to have fixed to their Empire.
In the high valleys, sheltered by dense cedar
forests, disdaining agriculture and living on their
herds and by the chase, lurked the wild Berber
tribes, as untamable and as inaccessible as the
Caledonians, and beyond, through the Sahara,
moved the still wilder tribes of Desert nomads.
It was along the Northern base of this mountain
range, therefore, that the Romans drew their
defensive line and planted their garrisons in
military strongholds. This line can still be
traced by the ruins of the great cities of strength,
and the fortified camps, and the military road
with its stone paving and massive bridges which
connected them, and along which reinforcements
could be hurried to any point of danger. From
East to West, from the frontier of Tunis for
150 miles to where a minor range cuts North-
west across the Plateau to the coast this chain
of towns and camps consisted of Tebessa (The-
veste), Khenchela (Mascula), Timgad (Thamu-
gadi), Marcouna (Verecundia), and Lambese
(Lambaesis), and the line was continued in less
strength North-west through Ain Zana (Diana)
and Setif (Sitifis).

The chief expansion of the Roman Empire
in Africa was spread over the first century.
Tebessa was the first great military centre from
which the interior was held in subjugation.
Lying at the Eastern extremity of the Aures
Mountains^ in the midst of fertile valleys, and in

MAP OF
ROMAN AFRICA

.<^ A'

?\

^^^ Mountain Regions
,„«.— Roman Frontier at end
of First Century
Roman Frontier at end
of Second Centurij
Modern names in brackets

^

ROMAN

&^

5\

(Sousse)

(CHOTTS^

^Scillinm (Kdsserine)
Th elepi-e (Ferid nd)

BYZ/^CIUM

^pi oCaps^(Gdfsd)

{:;p(DjerbaI.)

SALT^L

)

Gi^hthis(3ou Ghard)^

n

^-E S E RT

AFRICA

i^VVitIiiI I 1-lr,— ips

FRONTIERS OF ROME 91

an important strategic position, it soon became
the richest city in Africa after Carthage. A
military road of 190 miles connected it with
Carthage, and it was the junction of nine roads
radiating to different points on the coast and in
the interior. The well-preserved ruins of the
Arch of Caracalla, the Temple of Minerva, the
early Christian Basilica, and the Byzantine
Citadel are among the most interesting archi-
tectural monuments of Rome that still survive.
About the year a.d. 20 Tacferinas, a native
deserter from the Roman Army, led a great
revolt of the Berber tribes, and the Third Augus-
tan Legion was first quartered in this district,
which remained its headquarters for half a
century.

In the scheme of Imperial Defence one legion
was assigned to Africa, and three legions to
Britain. At first sight this would seem dis-
proportionate, but the explanation is that in
Africa the defensive policy adopted on the
Western limits was at first one of buffer native
states, and later one of a loose occupation by
means of native levies. Proconsular Africa,
corresponding roughly to Tunisia, civilised,
rich, and pacific, was under a civil administra-
tion. Numidia, corresponding roughly to the
Algerian Province of Constantine, was under
direct military administration and was the real
base of Roman military dominion in Africa.
The two Mauretanias, corresponding roughly to
Western Algeria and Morocco, were governed
not by Legates of senatorial rank, but by Pro-
curators of equestrian rank, who were not
entitled to command legionaries, and had to

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rely on auxiliary troops for their garrisons. The
treasure lay in the rich plains round Carthage,
and upon Numidia the defence of Africa de-
pended.

The famous African Legion was the Third
Legion, which for some unrecorded exploit had
been honoured with the name of Augustus
himself. Augustus first established the legions
on a permanent basis as a regular standing
army. Hitherto the troops had been specially
raised for each campaign and then disbanded.
Moreover, he assigned to each legion its perma-
nent place in the defensive scheme of the Empire.
The Third Augustan Legion was sent to Africa and
for three centuries Africa was its home. In times
of stress it was reinforced by drafts from other
legions, including even the legions stationed in
Britain ; or it would send out drafts to remote
parts of the Empire. It is recorded that there
were Moors serving in the garrison along the line
of Hadrian's Wall in Britain. But the Third
Legion as a body never left Africa. It was
recruited from the colonial and native popu-
lation. Father, son, and grandson served in
the ranks and finally settled down with a
pension and a grant of land within sound of
the bugles.

From Tebessa the line of defence was gradually
extended Westwards, keeping pace with the
advance of colonisation. At first the base was
pushed forward to Khenchela, or Mascula as it
was then called, and there another Roman city
grew up commanding one of the mountain passes
to the Sahara. By the end of the first century
it was found that the key to the Sahara lay still

FRONTIERS OF ROME 93

further West. In the year a.d. 100 the Emperor
Trajan committed to the Legion the task of
building complete, on the ground plan of a
Roman camp, the city of Timgad, which was to
be at once a fortress in strength and a perpetual
witness to the tribes of Aures of the splendour
and magnificence of Rome. For thirteen cen-
turies the city of Timgad has been deserted,
and there it still stands to-day, a monument in
the wilderness, its thousand broken columns
pointing to the sky, its massive walls enclosing
vacant temples and palaces, its flag-stoned pave-
ments furrowed deep by the chariot wheels of
four Roman centuries.

The Emperor Hadrian, having estabUshed the
defence of Britain upon a sound basis, traversed
Gaul and Spain and crossed over to Africa to
study the military problem for himself. The
whole land felt the quickening influence of his
genius for construction. Nowhere, not even in
Rome itself, is there to-day a more stupendous
monument of Roman dominion than the eighty
miles of aqueduct by which he brought the
waters of Zaghouan to Carthage. He paved
with stone the 190 miles of military road from
Carthage to Tebessa and drove forward other
new roads. He completed the Southern line
of defence by moving the Legion still further
West to Lambese, commanding the approach
to the great gorge of El Kantara through which
the railway now runs South to the Sahara. He
reviewed the Legion at Lambese while it was
building its great permanent camp there, and
the enduring stone still records the speech which
he made on that occasion.

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The importance of Lambese in the defence of
Africa cannot be exaggerated. It was the pivot
upon which the hne turned North towards the
coast again. It was the real key to the Sahara.
The French have acknowledged the wisdom of
the choice by establishing at Batna, in the same
neighbourhood, their chief garrison town in the
South. Indeed, when they first founded Batna
they gave it the title of New Lambese. Here
the Third Legion had its headquarters for over
two centuries. The place became a military
colony rather than a barrack. The soldiers
married and built houses for their families out-
side the camp. A great and prosperous town
grew up, and the veterans farmed the surround-
ing land.

The records which have survived of the Roman
occupation of Britain and of the life of the
garrison along the wall from Solway to the
Tyne, are few and scattered. A stray sentence
here and there in the fragmentary works of
a Roman historian, a couplet from the verses
of a panegyrist or satirist, a few inscribed
stones discovered beside the wall — such are the
materials from which we have to reconstruct our
picture of the past. The wear and tear of
centuries in this most densely populated country,
with the operations of agriculture and industry,
and a corrosive climate, have served to obliterate
most of the footprints of Rome, but in Africa
the conditions tended to preserve them. The
climate was dry and desiccating. The country
in the interior was depopulated and the ruins
remained deserted and undisturbed from genera-
tion to generation. Timgad remains to-day as

FRONTIERS OF ROME 95

complete an example of a Roman town as is
Pompeii, which was preserved in the ashes of
Vesuvius. Lambese is a library in stone record-
ing the history of the Roman frontier system.

Nowhere else in Europe, Asia, or Africa does
there exist a Roman camp so perfectly pre-
served, so fully documented with inscriptions,
as the headquarters of the Third Augustan
Legion at Lambese. Over two thousand five
hundred inscriptions have already been de-
ciphered. The lay-out of the camp, the prin-
ciples of fortification, the system of military
administration, and even the domestic life of
the soldiers are all revealed. If Scott's Anti-
quary, the Laird of Monkbarns, had been able
to study this perfect model on the spot there
would have been no need for him to revise his
Essay on Castramentation after his interview
in the Kaim of Kinprunes with the old beggar,
Edie Ochiltree, who scattered his theories and
brought down his house of cards with the fatal
words " Praetorian here. Praetorian there, I mind
the bigging o't ! "

Here the historian of Roman Britain may find
the solution of many of the problems that baffle
him. Here the digger among the long-buried
foundations on the muirs and fells of North-
umberland and Cumberland will find the key-
plan that will tell him what to look for and how
to interpret his discoveries.

In the reign of Antonine the Romans had to
solve the same problems in the Aures Mountains
as in the Southern Highlands of Scotland, and
they solved it in the same way, by an advance
through these turbulent regions and the estab-

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lishment of an advanced line of defence. In
Africa this advanced line, corresponding to the
Antonine Wall in Scotland, was drawn from the
great salt lakes in Southern Tunisia, along the
edge of the Desert at the foot of the Southern
slope of the Aur^s. Beginning at Gafsa, which
corresponded to Tebessa on the North side of
the mountains, it stretched Westwards to Biskra,
which corresponded to Lambese. There were
no great cities or camps on this line, but there
was a series of fortified stations and forts
(castella). From these forts a series of watch
towers led through the mountain passes, and
from one to another signals of any threatened
danger were flashed to the stronger bases on the
North.

In these wild and remote passes the record of
the Roman pioneers still remains. Where the
train to-day passes through the gorge of El
Kantara there has been found an altar dedicated
by some Asiatic legionaries from Palmyra to
their god Malagbelus. In 1850 the French
General, Saint-Armand, with his troops, pene-
trated Khanga-Tigaminin, one of the most in-
accessible defiles of the Aures. Convinced that
he was the first general to lead an army through
that defile, he proceeded to look for a suitable
rock on which to cut an inscription celebrating
so notable an achievement. To his amazement
he found that on the rock he selected he had
already been anticipated, for there, in the bold
lettering of the masters of the world, still fresh
after seventeen hundred years, was a record
which told that, in the time of Antonine, the
Sixth Ferrata Legion (from Judea) had been

FRONTIERS OF ROME 97

employed here in opening up a military road
across the Aures.

Septimius Severus was an African by birth
and by descent. A mighty ruler of men, his
compelling hand was felt from the Euphrates
to the Tay, but most of all in his native Africa.
The march of his conquering Legion was stayed
only by the Sahara in the South and the Atlantic
in the West. But he soon recognised that these
remote regions would be a barren and a costly
heritage, and that the line North of the Aures
must remain the true military base. When he
came to Britain to fight his last campaign, to
renew the Wall of Hadrian, and to die at York,
he came fresh from a study of the African
frontier system, and a great triumphal arch
which still marks the entrance to the ruins of
Lambese recalls his visit to the headquarters of
the Legion.

The French, with logical precision, have fol-
lowed the Roman model. Batna, the modern
garrison town, rectangular and walled, is laid
out like a Roman camp. Their excellent military
road runs East and West along the Northern
base of the Aures from Batna to Tebessa. As
the tourist speeds along through the solitude in
his motor, he passes the grim Praetorium at
Lambese, the wind-worn arch on the height at
Marcouna, and the forest of pillars at Timgad.
The Roman engineers for the most part drove
straight ahead ; the French engineers have been
more careful to follow the contour lines so as to
secure a gentle gradient. Repeatedly the new
road crosses the track of the old road and they
are seldom far apart. To left or right the old

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track can be discerned, direct and undeviating.
Here an isolated arch amid the snow of January
testifies to the existence of some vanished rest
station. There a broken bridge of massive piers
and heavy round arches shows where the chariots
crossed a gully.

It is a wonderful sight, the Ancient and the
Modern side by side after the dark interregnum
of Mohammedanism. It is as if, digging through
the accumulated rubbish of pagan centuries, we
suddenly come upon the antique foundations of
a civilisation that is our own.

CHAPTER XI

THE DOLMEN-HUNTER

" "I" BELIEVE there are some interesting
I Roman Remains hereabouts," I said ten-
-*- tatively to my professorial-looking neigh-
bour, as I sat down to early morning cafe in the
hotel drawing-room at Hammam Meskoutine.
The hotel consisted of four separate pavilions
built round a large square, in the centre of which,
although it was February, the orange and lemon
trees were heavily laden with golden fruit.
Among the trees was scattered a small open-air
museum of Roman antiquities, statues, pillars,
capitals, memorial and votive stones, dedica-
tions and other inscriptions, together with a
number of pre-Roman relics, Phoenician and
Libyan. I had spent an hour last evening after
my arrival examining them, and down below
the Hot Springs I had caught sight of a broken
arch which bore the unmistakable stamp of the
Eternal City.

" Yes," he replied, with a slightly bored look,
" I daresay — for those who are interested in
such things. But they are rather modern, are
they not ? I always think the Romans vulgarised
things. Their spirit was commercial. Every-
thing was standardised and machine-made — an
utter lack of individuality about them ! "

100 BARBARY

" Ah, I suppose you will be more interested in
the Phoenicians. I see they have left their traces
here also," I rejoined. " But were they not also
rather a commercial race ? "

" Yes, indeed, and pretty modern too. If you
want a really interesting problem you must go
back more than four thousand years. Hire a
mule and ride out to Roknia — it's only some
nine miles away — and there you will find some
of the most interesting megalithic monuments
I have encountered. There's individuality.
The whole place seems to have been one vast
cemetery. There must be over a thousand
dolmens. There are thousands more down to-
wards Philippeville. Now, who were the Dol-
men-Builders ? "

" Who were they ? " I echoed. " Were they
the same people who built Stonehenge and the
dolmens in Brittany ? "

" That's just the question I am trying to
answer ! " He had lost the bored expression,
and was speaking with the zest of a hunter on the
trail. " I have come here on their track. I have
followed them through Sicily and Malta. Ah,
what a labour it would save if all this informa-
tion had been properly collected and indexed.
There is the history of the march of civilisation
waiting to be written, but instead of being able
to consult the authorities in the British Museum
and the Records Office one must tramp the
world. The reference library is scattered over
the surface of three continents. I must see the
dolmens in Syria next. There are others to be
found as far East as Persia."

" Are you looking for any special signs ? " I

THE DOLMEN-HUNTER ' ' lOl

asked. " How do you hope to identify the
builders ? "

He produced a scrap of paper from his pocket
and pushed it towards me with some excitement.
It contained the pencil outline of a clay urn, the
lower half bulging out and the upper half curving
inwards to the narrow mouth.

" There ! " he said, " I am looking for that pot.
If it exists in the sepulchral cists here it proves
that these dolmens were built by the same race
who built dolmens in Scandinavia, in the British
Isles, in Brittany, and in Spain. Notice its
peculiar shape — convex in the lower half, and
concave in tKe upper part. It is a peculiar shape
— not one which would naturally occur to a
man making an urn out of clay for the first time.
Why did they choose that shape ? What sug-
gested it ? If we only knew that it would help
us to form a theory. I have made a guess, but
there are not sufficient data to confirm it. If
you take a vessel of skin and insert in it a hoop
of willow to distend it, when you lift it by the
neck it would assume some such shape as this.
I have heard that the Shawiah tribe from the
Aures Mountains, who come here every year to
burn charcoal after they have sown their corn,
use a water jar of this very shape. I hope to
verify this when I go further South."

" But what conclusion does all this lead to ?
Will you be able to deduce who the Dolmen-
Builders were, and where they came from, and
what they were doing in all these different
countries ? "

" Unfortunately the data are not yet suffi-
ciently collected and arranged to enable one to

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do more than guess. A great deal depends on the
distribution of the dolmens, on the frequency
or infrequency of their occurrence in certain
countries. What we want is a complete survey
on a large-scale map, noting every known in-
stance. They occur very frequently in the South
of Sweden, but very seldom in Norway, and then
only in the parts adjacent to Sweden. They
occur on the Southern shores of the Baltic. One
or two very interesting and suggestive examples
are to be found in Poland, in the Posen district.
They occur also, though not with great frequency,
in Denmark, and a very few in Flanders. Many
examples exist in Scotland, in Ireland, and in
England as far South as Derbyshire. Then we
come upon them again in the Southern Counties,
in Cornwall, in Wiltshire, and in Kent. Stone-
henge is probably the latest and most perfect
development of the art. They are very numerous
in Brittany and Western France, ' the arc of
greatest density ' " (he spoke this phrase caress-
ingly), " running from Brest to Montpellier.
They occur again frequently in Spain and
Portugal, in Sicily and Malta, in Syria and in
Persia. One example has been found in Egypt.
None have been noted in Cyrenaica, Tripoli, or
Tunis." (He was wrong about Tunis. I saw
dolmens later at Enfldaville, near where the
mountains rise from the edge of the rich Sahel.)
" But they are very numerous in this neighbour-
hood. I do not think they occur much further
West in Algeria, at least I have not been able to
hear of any."

I was glad to be able to make a small contri-
bution to this erudition. " You will find an

THE DOLMEN-HUNTER 103

example in the Museum at Algiers," I said,
" and I heard of several on the coast a few miles
West of Algiers."

" That is very important. I will inquire about
them when I reach Algiers. Well now, there
you have the general distribution. They are to
be found in countries adjacent to the Mediter-
ranean, the North Sea and the Baltic, from
Syria to Sweden, but only in certain of these
countries, and with varying frequency. These
are the countries in which the Dolmen-Builders
lived, or, as I think more probable, which they
visited. They were, therefore, a maritime people
and they voyaged in search of something. But
where did they come from, and what did they
seek ?

" Swedish archaeologists incline, perhaps natur-
ally, to the view that the Dolmen-Builders origi-
nated in Scandinavia and migrated Southwards.
It is possible, but the theory does not explain
everything. The Dolmen-Builders had a know-
ledge of agriculture, and agriculture did not
originate in Scandinavia. For my own part I
incline to the view that they originated in the
Eastern Mediterranean, probably in Syria. They
were a race of pioneers and prospectors, and they
came Westwards along the Mediterranean shores
looking for copper. It is in the countries where
copper is to be found that their traces are most
numerous. And my theory is that they were the
race who first discovered the secret of the manu-
facture of bronze. They were the founders of
the Bronze Age. The discovery probably took
place in Spain, where both tin and copper are
found in proximity. By some accident the two

104 BARBARY

ores would be smelted together and the amalgam
formed. Weapons made from this wonderful
new substance would be harder, stronger, and
more capable of taking a cutting edge than any
other weapons. The Dolmen-Builders having
discovered the secret would exploit it. Their
bronze weapons would give them a superiority
over every other race with whom they came in
contact, just as the fire-arms of the Spaniards
gave them a superiority over the Indians of
America. This accounts for the hold which they
obtained over the countries which they chiefly
visited, and in which they probably made great
settlements."

"Did they get copper in Sweden, or was it iron
they were after there ? "

" Oh, no. This was long before the discovery
of iron. They went to the Baltic for amber,
which was greatly prized by the early races,
and in this lies the possible significance of the
isolated dolmens in Posen. One of the most
ancient trade routes between the North and the
South was from the Black Sea up the River
Dnieper. In later times, at the beginning of the
Viking Age, just before Ruric carved out a
kingdom for himself which became Russia, the
route joined the Baltic at its Eastern extremity,
passing through Novgorod to the Neva. In
these earlier days, however, it probably did
not ascend the Dnieper past the Pripet Marshes,
but cut overland, on the East of the Carpathians,
through the Bukavino, through Poland, and so
on to the Southern shore of the Baltic. If the
Dolmen-Builders used this route it would account
for the dolmens in Posen. But I have no informa-

THE DOLMEN-HUNTER 105

tion as to whether any examples have been found
along the Southern portion of this route. It is
a matter for investigation.

" Some day the history of that great pioneer-
ing, seafaring, conquering race, who founded the
age of bronze and built Stonehenge, will be
written. The past will be made to yield its
secrets. We have still to learn the grammar
of archaeology. The materials are scattered all
around us. It must be collected, arranged, and
indexed. Above all, a good index is necessary to
make the data available for those who are doing
the constructive work. So far we have only
turned a few random pages in the prehistoric
library. We must learn to read."

CHAPTER XII
WHO GOES SHOPPING ?

THE artists had swooped down upon
Tunisia in earnest and painful pursuit
of the colour of the East — the strange
architecture, the streets, the native life, the
Arabs and donkeys and camels. We found
them at Tunis, at Carthage, and at Kairouan,
strongly entrenched in the hotels. The ladies
wore " artistic " blouses or jumpers, and they
talked the, jargon of the studios. The country
or the people seemed to interest them little.
They gave scarcely a thought to the historical
associations. They cared nothing for romance
and adventure. Their sole occupation was the
grim pursuit of colour impressions, tones, light
and shade. They made a toil of the pursuit of
beauty. Early in the morning they went forth
in a procession with camp stool and canvas, box
of paints, and brushes. They returned for meals
and set out again with clockwork regularity.
They seemed obsessed with the idea that art
was greater than life.

But the Glasgow artist whom we met in
Tunis was different. He was interested in life,
in men and women, in places and things, in
history, philosophy, politics, and stocks and
shares. He had ^n insatiable curiosity about

106

WHO GOES SHOPPING ? 107

life, the kind of curiosity which makes a great
journaHst. And withal he was no smooth-
rubbed cosmopolitan, but a Glasgow man, Glas-
gow in the grain, Glasgow in his accent, Glasgow
in his shrewdness, Glasgow in his instinct for a
bargain. He had the artistic detachment which
enabled him to laugh at himself and at others.

" Let us visit the Souks," said the Glasgow
artist. " There is an auction of jewellery pro-
ceeding in the Old Slave Market. You might
pick up a bargain."

We entered the Medina, or native quarter,
through the great arch of the Porte de France
which leads direct from a Paris boulevard to the
Bagdad of Haroon Al Raschid. We walked
through the tangle of lanes beset by touting
" guides " and importunate shopkeepers who lie
in wait for tourists at their doors. " Meester !
Meester ! " " Look here ! " "I will show you
somtheeng ! " These are the tourist traps. They
catch the unwary before they reach the genuine
Souks where business is done in a much more
leisurely and dignified Oriental fashion.

It was a strange world we entered, ancient
beyond computation. We passed antique pillars
picked out with barbaric colours, arches, vaulted
passages, dark cavernous shops that look like
a wild beast's den. Here a door ajar affords a
glimpse of a wonderful courtyard full of colour.
Here a fig, or a palm, or an orange tree laden
with fruit, looks over a wall. Here is a window
of exquisite arabesque lattice-work through
which the ladies of the harem may be peeping.
Jews, Sicilians, Maltese, Greeks, Turks, Arabs,
Moors, Kabyles, Negroes, Berbers of innumerable

108 BARBARY

tribes clad in every variety of turban, fez, and
burnous, go shambling past in slippers. Strange
viands are cooking outside the eating houses,
and strange smells assail the nostrils. This
town is full of the loot of Carthage. No one can
tell what carved stones, what exquisite pillars,
what stone-inscribed records may be built into
these walls, concealed for centuries. A shoe-
maker squats on a block of stone at the mouth
of his little cave. It is a Corinthian capital.
Here are others seated on a bench. It is a fluted
column. This native quarter must very closely
resemble what the business and trading parts of
Carthage were two thousand years ago. Manners
change but slightly and slowly in the Orient.

The first of the Souks to be reached by the
visitor approaching through the Porte de France
is the Souk-el -Attarin, recognisable at once by
the heavy scent of attar of roses. It runs
alongside the Grand Mosque from which proceeds
at certain hours a pungent savour of incense.
The doors are carefully barricaded to prevent
the infidel from catching even a glimpse of the
interior, and a notice in French, Italian, English,
and German proclaims : " Reserve au Culte
Musulman. Entree Interdit.'' The Souk-el-
Attarin deserves a special visit all to itself.
We will return.

But here is the Souk-el-Blagdjia, the Souk of
the shoemakers, or rather the slipper-makers,
for the Arab has no use for shoes. Festoons of
the saffron-coloured leather slippers hang from
the walls, and at the mouth of each den the
proprietor sits hammering and sewing. To see
the Arab shuffling about in his slippers is to

WHO GOES SHOPPING ? 109

realise the meaning of the expression " slip-
shod." His shppers " slip " on to the feet and
" slip " off like a sheath. 1 hey are not semi-
shoes like our slippers. They have no heels and
no uppers at the back to hold them on. Even
when they are made like ours the Arab folds the
uppers down flat into the slipper and pulls the
inner sole out over the top of them so that his
foot can slip in and out without impediment.
It is only by shuffling that these slippers can be
prevented from falling off. They are incom-
patible with hurry or with any display of energy.
They necessitate ease and leisure of movement.
It is said in derision of the Arabs of Mostaganem
in Algeria that they had heels made on their
slippers to enable them the better to run after
their prey — and away from their enemies.

We were fain to buy a pair of yellow slippers,
but the Glasgow Artist would not hear of it.
" No, no 1 " he said. " The man who wears
these slippers is already half a Turk. Their moral
effect is instantaneous. Insensibly there is a
relaxation of rigid standards — a softening of the
hard Northern fibre. Like an Eastern drug
they paralyse the will. Like the lotus fruit they
transform the man of action into a dreamer.
Their philosophy is fatahsm. There is a street
near the Place Bab Souika where they make
European slippers in beautiful green, yellow, or
reddish brown leather. They are just as interest-
ing as souvenirs, and you can wear them with
self-respect.

" Besides," he said, " at the Place Bab Souika
you can buy these identical Arab slippers at a
franc the pair cheaper ! "

110 BARBARY

And here is the Souk-el-Trouk, the Souk of
the tailors, with all the tailors stitching away for
dear life or unravelling long hanks of wool
across the street. We stop to price a burnous.
A swarthy interpreter springs up from nowhere
and the neighbours gather round. " I spik
Scotsch," he says pointedly to our Artist. " I
know Glasgow. The Broomielaw ! I was sailor
in ship sailing to Clyde. In Glasgow is much
money."

" Never mind that," said the Glasgow Artist,
blushing. " What is the price of this burnous ? "

" It is ver' cheap — only three hundred and fifty
francs."

" It is ver' dear. We will return another day
and see if they are cheaper." He lesisted all
further attempts at bargaining. " That is the
way to deal with them. They will be in a much
more reasonable frame of mind to-morrow. You
must not hurry a bargain here." The news of
our attempted deal travelled along the Souk
in front of us and burnouses were dragged from
their receptacles and displayed to us as we passed
along. " Only three hundred francs ! " '' Not
to-day. We will return."

" This is the Souk-des-Femmes, the Ladies'
Paradise. I have my eye on a piece of silk in one
of the shops, a real antique, hand-woven, the
relic of some harem long vanished. In the
Baido Palace you will see that the hangings of
the bed of the Bey's favourite wife are of the
same fabric. Just the very thing for a studio."

It was nearly eleven o'clock before we i cached
the Old Slave Market, a pillared court like the
nave of a church, where, in the days of the

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1)

Q -5
O £

WHO GOES SHOPPING ? Ill

Barbary Corsairs, the Christian captives were
put up for auction. Many a fair Circassian has
looked desperately round these pillars as round
the bars of a cage, while her charms were being
enumerated and the bids increased. This square
is a kind of public forum. It was so they
trafficked in ancient days.

At one corner is an Arab Coffee House. Out-
side are benches covered with bamboo mats, on
one of which sits, cross-legged, a venerable Arab.
He bears a close resemblance to one of the most
distinguished of our judges. " That old chap,"
said the Glasgow Artist, " is a rich dealer. He
has no shop, but he sits every day on that seat.
He carries no stock but what he wears. He will
sell you any of his jewellery. Let us look at his
rings."

The Glasgow Artist greeted him ceremoniously
and pointed to one of his rings. The venerable
gentleman, smiling benignly, took it off and
handed it over for examination. It was a large
sapphire in an antique setting. " What is the
price ? " " Two hundred francs." " But is it
genuine ? " " Alas, he does not speak French,
only Arabic." But a man from the crowd which
had gathered round volunteered to act as inter-
preter. " Is it genuine ? " It is ancient. He
has had it eleven years. It pleases him. It is
undoubtedly emerald. If Monsieur wishes to
buy it he can have it. There is a bureau in the
Souk, maintained by the Government, at which,
for a small fee, an expert will examine jewels,
and certify whether they are genuine. A refer-
ence to him revealed the fact that this was,
indeed, an emerald, but it was what is called a

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" reconstructed " stone. Yes, no doubt that
is so, the owner agreed, but it is very good and
very cheap. He slipped it philosophically on his
finger again.

The old Arab sported a massive watch chain
which looked as if it might serve to weigh an
anchor. Perhaps Monsieur would like to see his
watch. It is also ancient. He unfastened it,
chain and all, and handed it over. It was a gold
watch, most interesting in design and workman-
ship. Monsieur may have it for a thousand
francs. The Artist hankered after it, but the
Scotsman in him was too strong. " How about
my watch ? " he asked. " Will you buy it from
me ? It is of gold also." The Arab did not
pause to examine it. No ! He will not buy it,
but he will exchange watches if Monsieur wishes.
He made an indescribably sly gesture, holding
out his open hand and shoving his other hand
edgewise across it, which, I suppose, is some
Arab gesture to indicate a barter transaction.
The Glasgow Artist pocketed his own watch
rather hurriedly, and the Arab smiled delightedly
a,t his joke and refreshed himself with a pinch
of snuff.

We sipped our coffee from the little cups,
thick and sweet, and watched the trafficking.
Many Jews were present, as keen on a bargain
as the Glasgow Artist. A valuable article had
little chance of escaping being snapped up.
Innumerable auctions were going on, and the
attendants were busy carrying round the jewels
and trinkets for inspection and shouting out the
latest bids. It was almost impossible to force
a way through the crowd.

WHO GOES SHOPPING ? 113

The Artist had sold. a watch here, an old one
left him by a grand-uncle. Now he had his eye
on a necklace, a very curious piece of goods,
rubies in an antique setting. He had been
bargaining with the owner for weeks over in-
numerable cups of coffee. He sat with him for
an hour each day at the cafe, talking about many
things, with an occasional reference to the neck-
lace which was produced and re-examined. The
present figure was twelve hundred francs, and he
thought that if he brought it to London he
could sell it for double the price.

We returned to the hotel in time for lunch,
having bought nothing, but vastly entertained.
And the Glasgow Artist discoursed on life in
general. He was interested in " Burmah Oils,"
a Glasgow concern, and knew the latest market
quotation — 22. Alas ! he had waited rather
long. Not so very long ago they stood at 4,
and there had since been an issue of bonus
shares. He feared he had waited too long. But
yet he knew a man who knew one of the directors,
and he said it was impossible to put a limit on
what they might do yet. There was nothing
like them ! Those who knew most about them
would not sell. He had done well in rubbers,
but they seemed to have reached their limit now.
After all, a painter might do worse than invest
in oils as well as rubber.

Thus do we pass at a step over two thousand
years from the Souks to the Stock Exchange.
Thus do the ancient and the modern go hand in
hand in Tunis.

CHAPTER XIII
THE STREET OF PERFUMES

THE Souk-el-Attarin, the Souk of Per-
fumes. No need to be told its name.
The very air whispers it. Here are
attar of roses, jasmine, amber, and many other
concentrated essences which might make sweet
all the vileness of earth. Before some of the
shops stand sacks and baskets of dried leaves from
aromatic shrubs and herbs, whole leaves and
leaves ground to powder, incense for worshippers
in the Mosque opposite, or henna with which the
native beauties redden their hair and the palms
of their hands and the soles of their feet. There
is a profuse display of seven-branched candles
and of the familiar long, stick-shaped bottles in
which the perfumes of the East come West.

The perfume-seller is the aristocrat of the
Tunis Souks. The Souk-el-Attarin commands
the approach to all the other Souks. Its little
cave-like shops are on an ampler scale, and have
a more lavish display. They alone are furnished
with cushioned divans on which customers may
sit while selecting their purchases. There is a
tradition that in the old days rich Arabs who
wished to conceal their wealth from extortionate
Beys used to hire a shop in this Souk in order
to make a pretence of being poor tradesmen.

114

THE STREET OF PERFUMES 115

An air of spacious leisure and condescending
ease still pervades the place. Each little den is
more like a shrine than a shop, and the pro-
prietor is the officiating priest.

An Arab friend whom I met at Batna had
recommended me to seek out Hadji Mohammed
Tabet in his shop at No. 37, Souk-el -Attarin.
He is a famous man in his craft, and he bears the
title of Hadji by virtue of having made the
pilgrimage to Mecca. He welcomes us with
urbanity. He is fat and jolly and his smile is
a cure for the doldrums. We sit round on
cushions while he takes his place behind a little
table hke a magician about to begin his incan-
tations. Coffee is ordered, thick, sweet, and
fragrant. There is a touch of incense in the
air. We are surrounded by bottles of exquisitely
coloured liquids, and by glass jars full of rare
gums, resins, aromatic woods and leaves, and
tiny pastilles for burning. It recalls the chapter
in Flaubert's great epic of the senses wherein
Salambo ascends to the roof-terrace of her
father's palace at Carthage to invoke the moon
goddess, and long perfuming pans filled with
nard, incense, cinnamomum, and myrrh are
kindled by slaves.

And now the Perfume Wizard begins to
practise his art upon the olfactory nerves and
to rim through the gamut of the sense of smell.
His wares are not the ordinary scents dissolved
in volatile spirit with which we are familiar, but
concentrated quintessences the most delicate
touch of which is sufficient to confer a lasting
perfume. To use a drop is to squander with
prodigahty. Hadji Tabet withdraws a stopper

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from a crystal phial and gently passes it across
a fur collar, or a muff, or the back of a glove,
and the fragrance lasts for days.

First amber, sweet, ambrosial, exciting, the
lure of the adventurer, the song of the endless
quest, the double-distilled spirit of pine forests
a geological epoch ago. Try it on a cigarette —
just touch the paper with the stopper and inhale.
Ah 1 Dizzy ! Dizzy ! A moment of vertigo. Did
the room swim ? A memory, swift and evan-
escent, of summer seas in the North, and golden
sand, and birch trees like fountains of green
spray. Did it last a moment or a million years ?
For this the Phoenicians, and their unknown
precursors who have left their megalithic monu-
ments on the shores of the Baltic, ventured forth
in their frail boats beyond the pillars of Melcarth,
whom the Greeks called Hercules. A wild-
looking scarecrow, a holy beggar from the gates
of the mosque, with uncombed hair and tattered
rags, is whining at the door of the shop. Hadji
Tabet gives him a coin.

Another stopper. It is jasmine, sweet with
the sweetness of wild honey, the spirit of the
woods, of the dryad among the reeds, and of the
cool shadows and the noontide rest. Happy
girlhood. Then orange blossom, tender, inno-
cent, virginal — the breath of brides' adorning.
Try this attar — roses, roses, rapture and languor,
a call from the land of the lotus-eaters. No
longer the sweet freshness of the woods, but the
closeness of the alcove. And here are others,
the scents of the harem, narcissus and lily of
the valley, seductive and alluring, drugging the
mind like a love-philtre, and musk for intrigue,

THE STREET OF PERFUMES 117

and the secret perfume that steals away men's
senses.

The ragged fanatic has not departed with his
coin. He has crept into the outer shop and is
sitting on the floor, his eyes staring fiercely
through his matted hair. He sniffs the air and
his nostrils twitch. What can these delicate
odours signify to such as he ? " Do not mind
him," says Hadji Tabet. " He is quite harm-
less," tapping his head. " Allah has visited him
and he is sacred. He loves some of my perfumes
— not these, but incense and such like."

Another stopper. It is like an organ-player
pulling out another stop in an oratorio of perfume.
He releases the scents of the open air, the balsams
which the sun distils from the forests of pine,
and cypress, and cedar, and myrtle, and throws
broadcast on the wind. It is the air the hunter
breathes in Spring in the passes of the Aures
Mountains, from which one can look out over
the Desert far below, as over a sea of sand, or
from the slopes of the Djurdjura, whence one
can survey the broad blue expanse of the Mediter-
ranean. When the Roman legionaries bivou-^
acked after a day's march on the frontier, and
stretched themselves at ease beside the fire, the
spurting tendrils of smoke from the cedar-logs
scented the night. It is the call of the wild, the
lure of adventure. Women do not love these
scents. They draw a man away from the soft
delights of domesticity.

The sense of smell is the sense most closely
associated with memory. It can recreate a
vanished vision in the mind's eye. Its seat is
nearest to the brain, and at the vibration of the

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olfactory nerves emotions glow again among the
embers of the past and thoughts long buried
come to the surface. Just as we may con-
struct a drama of music or pictures, so we may
construct a drama of perfumes, a drama of
memories. The Perfume Wizard, like the Witch
of Endor, can make a man read his own heart by
calling up the past before him.

Hadji Tabet discourses on the qualities of his
perfumes and the preferences of his clients.
The ladies of the harem prefer rose, jasmine,
narcissus, muguet (lily of the valley), and
musk — musk especially, " because it makes itself
felt a long way off." Amber is the scent for a
man, a bold, adventurous man who fears nothing.
The soldier is content with geranium, " because
it is cheap." Parfum du Bey, a composite
essence, is the royal scent, the perquisite of
kings, the privilege of the wise, the rich, and
the great, who are honoured by the Bey. For
the priest, for the holy man, there is incense.
And here is something in a buffalo horn, a black
oily paste. A loathly odour of musk, so con-
centrated and powerful that it is nauseous, fills
the little room. It is civet — the unguent exuded
from the skin of the wild cat under torture, the
perfume for Black Magic, a potent essence much
sought after by the tribes of the Desert and the
negresses of the South.

The holy beggar displays a most unholy in-
terest in this horn of Satanic pomatum. He is
whining and stretching out his talon-like hands
for it. The Wizard speaks sharply to him in
Arabic and he subsides again on the floor,
muttering what sounds like imprecations.

THE STREET OF PERFUMES 119

" What is he saying ? " we ask, looking at him
askance. " I do not know. It is not Arabic.
He understands Arabic and he can recite long
passages from the Koran. But he speaks some
obscure native dialect. There are ancient
tongues, older than the Roman, still spoken by
tribes in the mountains and in the Desert beyond."

Again Hadji Tabet removes a stopper. Ah,
it is not a perfume, it is a drug. It excites, it
maddens, it compels. It is the voice of the
Sirens. The beggar on the floor is telling his
beads. No wonder Ulysses had his sailors bind
him with ropes to the mast till he was past that
danger.

A brasier of charcoal is produced and a small
portion of dark-coloured resinous wood is placed
upon the glowing ash. A column of smoke rises
and spreads out from the roof, gradually filling
the room. It is incantation — a magic rite.
Through the reek the ample form of Hadji
Tabet looms larger, like a Djinn rising from the
earth. We are oppressed by a sense of danger,
a terror of the unknown. The blood rushes to
the head and sings in the ears. What is that ?
The beggar squatting on the floor is swaying his
body violently to and fro, beating a weird
rhythm on some instrument like a tom-tom.
Was that a jangling of cymbals and a shrill
screeching of stringed and wind instruments ?
The buzzing in our ears increases. It is like a
telephone which has been cut off and in which
the wire is still alive. Strange sounds can be
heard coming out of limbo. Hark ! The ecstatic
cries of the priests gashing themselves with
knives before the image of Moloch, heated red-

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hot by the furnace within, the shrieks of the
children as they pass into the flames, the waihng
of the mothers, the murmur of the crowd.
" Hear us, O Baal." We have had a ghmpse
into the dark places of the earth.

Another stick is flung upon the brasier and a
different smoke arises. It is incense. It clears
the mind. It calms and reassures. This is the
perfume of adoration, supplication, aspiration.
Let the world be shut out, and let us sink slowly
into Nirvana. The holy one on the floor is recit-
ing monotonously long passages from the Koran,
or perhaps it is only the same sentence repeated
over and over again. " There is no God but
Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet."

Hadji Tabet sits smihng placidly behind his
table spraying something into the air. It is
verbena, a clean scent, sharp, slightly acid,
fresh, pungent, and reviving. It clears the
brain of vapours and mists and mad fancies, and
braces the nerves like a call to action. Have we
been dreaming ? It is time to make our pur-
chases and go. The holy one's hand is out-
stretched. We pass him some small coins. He
conceals them hurriedly in his rags without a
word of thanks. Hadji Tabet offers him some
morsels of incense. He grasps them eagerly,
kisses the hand of the donor, and shambles off
in the direction of the mosque.

CHAPTER XIV
MARBLE DUST

HOW small are the famous sites of
history. We have seen them through
a magnifying-glass. The literature of
two thousand years, in which the glories of their
prime are described by poets who measured
them with a different scale, leads us to enlarge
them in space. Unconsciously our idea of them
is shaped from our own far-spreading mushroom
cities of to-day. We forget that Troy, Jerusalem,
Athens, Carthage, Rome, covered but a small
space of ground, and that their glory was that of
quality rather than quantity.

Before Rome was the fleets of Carthage
ranged the Mediterranean and explored the
unknown shores of Africa and Gaul and Spain
and ventured forth in search of the Hesperides
beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Carthage dis-
puted the Empire of the World with Rome. In
her prime Carthage was a city of towers, temples,
and palaces, of gold, marble, and precious stones,
of wealth, art, and luxury. Of none of the
great cities of antiquity have we a more vivid
topographical description than that which Appian
has given us of Carthage in the second century
before our era at the time of the third Punic
War. It might have been written for a guide-

121

122 BARBARY

book. The walls which guarded the landward
side were from fifteen to eighteen metres high
and ten metres wide. There were built into the
wall, on the lower floor, casemates for three
hundred elephants. Above were stalls for four
thousand horses, stores for fodder, and barracks
for twenty-four thousand soldiers. After Scipio
breached the sea wall, and rushed the inner
harbour, it took him six days' street fighting
before he reached the central fortress, the Bursa.

Delenda est Carthago. Let Carthage be wiped
out. It was Cato who spoke the words and
Scipio who gave effect to them. The proud
city was wiped out like an ants' nest that the
spade of the husbandman levels with the ground.
For a generation it lay there abandoned, an
abomination of desolation. Then a new Carthage
arose, a Roman Carthage, richer, more beauti-
ful, more luxurious than the old, the repository
of the arts of Greece and the science of Rome,
the nursery and seminary of early Christianity,
the brightest jewel in the Imperial crown. It
survived the fury of the Vandals, shared in the
dying splendour of the Byzantine Empire, and
then perished utterly, like the flame of a candle
blown out in the night by the blast of the ruthless
fanaticism of Islam.

Carthage has disappeared, and is only gradu-
ally being discovered. For centuries the ruined
fragments have lain buried, twenty, forty, sixty
feet underground. The destruction and the
obliteration were so complete that even with the
help of the complete and detailed topographical
descriptions handed down in ancient literature
antiquaries have disputed as to the actual site.

MARBLE DUST 128

The soil heaves in many a mouldering heap.
The Arab plough passes and repasses over the
gentle swelling of the ground and in autumn the
ripe corn waves above it. It was not till the
work of excavation was commenced under expert
guidance that the general ground plan was
established and the main sites identified. But
even yet a traveller passing over Carthage might
never guess that he was treading on holy ground.
The portions discovered, being deep below the
surface, are not visible till one has actually
entered the excavation.

We visited the site of Carthage in perfect
February weather. The crystal-clear air was
fresh and sweet, with a faint touch of the scents
of Spring in it, and the sun was shining hotly
from a sky of unflecked blue. The sea near
shore was a bright and vivid green, the colour of
leaves which have just burst from their buds,
but as it receded from the shore the tones
deepened gradually till they became a deep
violet. Along the opposite shore ran a line of
hills of variegated colour, yellow, grey, brown,
or slaty-blue, according to the rocks, with
patches of dark green where the sides were
clothed with forest and specks of pure white
where the villages nestled. Beyond them the
tops of another range of hills just showed them-
selves, purple against the turquoise of the
horizon. The isolated cone of Bou Kornein rose
from the water's edge, thrusting high above the
horizon its two horns, emblem of Tanit, where
once the smoke of her sacrifices ascended like
the reek from a volcano.

First of all the landmarks of ancient Carthage,

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the two harbours catch the eye. They He at the
margin of the sea, surrounded by green fields,
two shallow, sky-reflecting lakes. The inner one
is circular, with an island in the centre. This
was the Military harbour, and the Admiralty
Palace, with its stately porticos and look-out
tower, stood upon that island. It communi-
cates with the mercantile harbour, a long-shaped
lake, which, in turn, has direct access to the sea.
Looking down upon these land-locked patches
of water, it is difficult to realise that this was the
emporium of all the trade of the Western world
from Sicily to Cornwall, and that in this harbour
were fitted out the fleets which threatened Rome
with destruction. It requires a vivid imagina-
tion to recreate round these grassy margins the
pillars, the wharves, the landing-stages, the
stores and factories of which we have so full a
description by Appian. But descend to the
water, pass over by the narrow isthmus which
is now left high and dry to the island, and there
all doubts will be resolved. It is much larger
than it seemed at first sight. The vast founda-
tions of the Admiralty Palace and of the pillared
and porticoed embankment that surrounded it
have been laid bare. In the centre, tumbled
pell-mell into what must have been the dungeons,
are some colossal pillars of the most rare and
beautiful marble, whose weight alone has saved
them from being carried away to grace the
Grand Mosque at Kairouan.

The excavations of the theatre give the best
idea of the architectural beauty of the city in
Roman times. A multitude of massive columns
have been unearthed, mostly fractured, all over-

MARBLE DUST 125

thrown. Some are of granite, but the majority
are of marble, and porphyry, and onyx, richly
coloured, black and white, red and green, and
yellow, exquisitely chiselled and fluted and
polished, each of them a miracle of grace like
the limbs or draperies of a Greek statue. The
labour of hewing out and transporting these
megalithic monuments is as nothing compared
to the labour expended upon the carving and
polishing of their surface, which is as delicate as
the engraving on a gem. Even more impressive
from their massiveness as well as from their
delicacy are the pillars already referred to, which
have been exhumed on the site of the Admiralty
Palace. The greatest Imperial Powers of the
modern world, with all their efforts to express
majesty and dominion in terms of art, have pro-
duced nothing to surpass them.

As one strolls over the fields from site to site,
to the Phoenician Tombs, the Bursa, the Theatre,
the Odeon, the Basilica, the Villa Scorpianus, the
Amphitheatre, the Cisterns, the Cemeteries, and
the Aqueduct, the soil beneath our feet, in which
the corn is sprouting, is a compost of the works
of man. It is as much an artificial soil as that
in which plants are bedded in a hothouse. Every
stone has been worked or fractured by the art
or destructiveness of man. The rock is brick,
or concrete, or built stone ; the earth is brick or
marble dust. You cannot lift a single spadeful
of this soil without finding in it a hundred mani-
festations of human workmanship. A few spade-
fuls would afford sufficient material to start a
small museum. Vegetation leaves a deposit ;
it may be a coal seam or a peat bog. A tiny

126 BARBARY

shell-fish by its deposits left the chalk beds of
England. The twenty or forty feet of soil above
Carthage are a human stratum.

Consider how intensive has been the cultiva-
tion of this soil. It has been built upon and
built upon, over and over again, for three thou-
sand years, by Phoenicians, Romans, Byzan-
tines, Arabs, and French. The most recent
addition is the Cathedral of St. Louis, conse-
crated in 1890, upon the summit of the Bursa,
covering one knows not how many foundations
of past centuries. But the builders of the past
were not content with high towers. They
burrowed, and mined, and excavated deep into
the hill. Even on the plain the excavator breaks
through a vault and finds a vast well-like cavity
descending about 100 feet, far below the level
of the sea. On the top of the hill, out of whose
Southern flank the Theatre has been cut, the
explorers have cleared away some twenty feet
of deposits and have come upon the floor of the
Odeon littered with pillars, capitals and statues.
One would think that the heavy flags of this floor
rested upon the natural earth-bed at last. Far
from it. With tremendous labour the excavators
have hewn through three feet of solid masonry
and come upon vaults below vaults. Behind
the Theatre vaulted and domed chambers and
arched passages penetrate to unknown depths
into the heart of the hill. We are compelled to
ask : '' Is there any hill at all ? "

The Bursa, the Juno, and the Odeon Hills —
they stand in a row — are all alike honeycombed.
The whole mass is an incrustation of the human
hive. They rise from the Carthaginian Plain

MARBLE DUST 127

like gigantic ants' nests. In speaking of this
site one must speak in geological terms. The
strata of the various epochs follow each other as
regularly as do beds of sedimentary rock or
chalk. At one excavation I observed that the
lowest layer visible consisted chiefly of shards
of pottery ranging from amphorae of the roughest
clay to the finest Samian ware. It was overlain
by earth which seemed almost alluvial and
which may possibly have been cultivated at one
period. Above that came a layer of coloured
marble chips about three or four inches thick.
Then came a bed of several feet of miscellaneous
debris in which abounded potsherds, tiles, bricks,
crumbled mosaic and concrete, fragments of
beautiful marbles and fractured portions of
pillars, capitals, cornices, and linings.

This accumulation of debris has had the effect
of protecting the oldest relics of all from the
hand of the spoiler. When Scipio carried out
the savage sentence of Cato and left the city a
heap of smoking ruins he preserved unwittingly
the more ancient Carthage for us. It was
already buried before Rome built anew on the
top of it. Deepest of all, embedded in the clay,
and now at last, after nearly three thousand
years, being uncovered, are the archaic Phoe-
nician tombs reminiscent of the tombs of Egypt,
and yielding like them a rich harvest for the archae-
ologist. With the mummies have been buried the
personal ornaments and utensils, the trinkets
and jewels of the dead, together with vases,
votive tablets, inscriptions and sacred images.
All this treasure trove, collected, arranged and
displayed by the expert hands of the White

128 BARBARY

Fathers, who have conducted the excavations, is
to be seen in the museum behind the cathedral
upon the summit of the Bursa.

Of all the remains those relating to the
Phoenician Worship of Baal and his consort
Tanit, or Ashtaroth as she is known to us in the
Bible, are the most interesting. The inscriptions,
of which the site has yielded many, reveal much
of the strange gods who so often ensnared the
Children of Israel. Their spirit still haunts the
place after two thousand years of Christianity
and Mohammedanism. Strong links draw us
to Asia Minor, to Tyre and Sidon, to Canaan,
and to Assyria. Names of power from the Old
Testament, which ring in our ears with a familiar
sound, are here represented by the reality. The
old gods still call though no priests gash them-
selves before the altars, and no victims pass
through the fires, and the groves are long since
cut down, and the High Places on Bou Kornein
are deserted.

As I strolled among the pits and trenches
which have laid bare the most ancient Phoenician
tombs, built of huge blocks of tufa in a style of
architecture which suggested now Egyptian and
now Assyrian, I suddenly heard the bells of the
cathedral ring out a peal. It is nearly two
thousand years since the religion of Christ was
first planted in Africa. For a time it flourished
and became a mighty Church. It was blotted
out and exterminated as completely as Phoenician
Carthage had been. And now it has been planted
again. The tomb of its latest African Saint,
Cardinal Lavigerie, is within the cathedral he
built. The new church, a magnificent example

MARBLE DUST 129

of modern Byzantine architecture, dominates
the scene and its bells peal out over the ruins.

And as I listened to the bells I looked down
into the pit leading to the Phoenician tombs.
To one of the massive blocks of tufa clung a
lizard about six inches long. Startled by my
shadow it ran swiftly across the upright surface
of the stone and darted into a crevice. The bells
rang out to summon the White Fathers to prayer
for the redemption of Africa, and the lizard
played upon the tomb of the Priest of Baal.

CHAPTER XV

" SALAMBO "

" ^^ ALAMBO" is more talked about than read.
^^ It is by way of being a classic, but it
^^-^ is a classic of a certain limited period
and of a certain limited phase of art. The sub-
title of the English translation gives it away.
It is " A Realistic Romance of Ancient Carthage."
A Realistic Romance ! Realistic ! The word
transports us back to the time when the prim
prudery of the mid- Victorian era was being
shocked by the brutal directness of the Zola
school of fiction, when the ban of the circulating
libraries still maintained the veil before the eyes
of the Young Person, and when Vizetelly went
to prison for his translations.

The moral inquisition of that time was wrong.
It was defending smug hypocrisy and sham
morality and shrivelled conventions which ought
to be discarded as the London plane tree discards
its last year's bark. The censors imagined that
every work which strayed beyond their fastidious
conventions might be dismissed as

Some scrofulous French novel
With grey pages and blunt type.

But they were not merely trying to suppress
indecency and licentiousness. They were fight-

130

" SALAMBO " 131

ing a new movement in human thought. The
new school of writers which was rising in France
was in revolt against a prudery which was itself
prurient. Zola was essentially a moralist, as
came to be recognised in the great campaigns
of his later years. They sought to bring humanity
out from the enervating atmosphere of hot-house
morality into the bracing open air, to teach it
to face the facts and to stand by itself, to extend
the range of human interest and human emotion
out of a monotonous routine.

The innovators had both the virtues and the
defects of rebels and revolutionaries. They were
crude in their iconoclasm. They smashed the
windows to ventilate the room. They often
thought more of destroying a convention than
of creative art. They thought they were calhng
a spade a spade when they called it a bloody
shovel. " Realist " is a question-begging epithet.
They were not photographers of the nude, but
rather theorists, doctrinaires, idealists, fanatics
for the personal emotions which they called
" truth." They swerved insensibly to the oppo-
site extreme to that which they were attacking.
They tended to exaggerate the facts which the
prudes ignored. They shouted hmited truths
with an emphasis that falsified them. They were
not content to paint the portrait of a man
" warts and all " ; they must needs paint a wart
with a man attached to it.

Of this '' movement " Gustave Flaubert's
" Salambo " is a typical example. Flaubert was
a man of genius, but of ill-balanced genius. His
novel has all the merits of the movement, but
also all its excesses and extravagances. It has,

132 BARBARY

too, its mannerism emphasised almost to the
extent of caricature. It would be easy to parody
the book. Dumas, Victor Hugo, Scott, Dickens,
Thackeray, Tolstoy, Turgenieff, are novelists
who tower beyond their generations. They have
a universal quality that defies time. The things
which shocked the Victorians in " Salambo,"
and other novels of the same school, pass un-
noticed now. The revolution has been success-
ful. But " Salambo " belongs unmistakably to
its own generation, the period when the novel
was struggling to emancipate itself from the
shackles of an outworn moral convention.

The power of the book cannot be denied.
By a tour de force of imagination Flaubert hai?
rebuilt the topless towers of Carthage and re-
peopled the vanished streets and temples and
palaces with strong and vivid personalities.
By the conjuration of art he has recalled the
ghosts of the long-buried past and made them
walk for ever among the ruins. History has
given us Hasdrubal, Hannibal, Scipio Africanus,
Sophonisba, and Cyprian. But the creatures
of fancy are as real to most of us as the creatures
of flesh and blood. Virgil's love-lorn Dido
still haunts the hill of Sidi-bou-Said. Salambo,
distracted, still invokes the moon from the
roof of her father, the Suffet's, palace at Megara.
One of the stations on the electric railway from
Tunis to Carthage, just where it crosses the site
of the ancient wall, bears the name of Salambo.
The vision of Carthage which all of us have is
coloured by the art of Flaubert.

It is somewhat of a paradox that a great
novel of the ReaUstic School should be, not a

VIRGIL WRITING THE "AENEID"
A Mosaic discovered at Sousse. Now in the Mus6e Alaoui, Tunis

" SALAMBO " 188

transcript of contemporary life, but an attempt
to reconstruct a vanished civilisation twenty-one
centuries old, and that it should be designated a
romance. This was the lust of battle. The
pedants and the romanticists were assailed on
their own ground. The challenge to the con-
ventions was all the more outrageous. The aim,
the method, are as clear as if they had been set
forth in an introductory manifesto. Carthage
is a mere background for an epic of sensuous
impressions. The book is a tornado of smells,
tastes, colours, sounds, and of those nameless
sensations which are conveyed through the
sense of touch, and which can only be expressed
generally by such terms as " creeps," " shudders,"
" goose flesh," " hair standing on end," nay, not
nameless, for Flaubert has invented for them the
expressive name of " horripilation." It is not
by the mere piling up of antiquarian detail as
to architecture, dress, habits, religion, politics,
social customs, it is not merely by intellectual
sympathy, that the past can be made to live
again ; it is by evoking again the same sensa-
tions and emotions that were experienced by
the Carthaginians that we not only see them
again as they strutted on the stage, but feel
that we have become part of them.

It is not that the task of antiquarian research
has been shirked. On the contrary all the avail-
able sources of information have been carefully
ransacked. The bulky notebook was a character-
istic of the Realistic School, and it has been
freely requisitioned in the writing of " Salambo."
Indeed, one can see here and there the encyclo-
paedia behind the notebook. There are pages

134 BARBARY

in the book which are like a museum show-case
in which the archaeological material has been
admirably selected, reconstructed, arranged,
catalogued, to illustrate some special phase.
Take, for instance, a sample from the two-page-
long list of Barbarians who had assembled like
obscene birds from all parts of Africa in the
hope of sharing in the loot of Carthage. From
the Eastern regions there came : —

" Nomads from the table-lands of Barca,
bandits from Cape Pluscus and the pro-
montory of Dernah, from Phazzana and Mar-
marica. They had crossed the desert, drinking
at the brackish wells walled in with camels'
bones ; the Zuacces, with their covering of
ostrich feathers, had come on quadrigae ; the
Garamantains, masked with black veils, rode
behind on their painted mares ; others were
mounted on asses, onagers, zebras, and buffa-
loes ; while some dragged after them the roofs
of their sloop-shaped huts together with their
families and idols. There were Ammonians,
with limbs wrinkled by the hot water of the
springs ; Atarantians, who curse the sun ;
Troglodytes, who bury their dead with laughter
beneath branches of trees ; and the hideous
Auseans, who eat grasshoppers ; the Achyr-
machidae, who eat lice ; and the vermilion-
painted Gysantians, who eat apes."

One can not only see them but feel them and
smell them, as if one were shouldering through
the swarm. There are similar catalogues of the
foods at the banquet to the Mercenaries in the
garden of Hamilcar's palace, of the scents and

" SALAMBO " 135

balsams in the Factory of Sweet Odours, of the
murderous mihtary machines that were massed
against the walls of Carthage, of the gods in the
temples, of the musical instruments by which
the cries of the little victims as they were hurled
into the furnace of Baal were drowned. And yet
all this detail is kept strictly subordinate to the
main purpose. The emotions and the sensuous
impressions fuse it all into a vivid impression of
reality. The book is not overloaded with archae-
ology. The thing has been managed with
consummate art. The effect produced is that of
the catalogue of ships in the Iliad.

" Salambo " is the story of the revolt of the
Mercenary and Barbarian allies of Carthage
which took place in the years 240 to 237 B.C.
The Carthaginians had just been enfeebled by
the disastrous end of the first of their three
great struggles with Rome. They were unable
to meet the demands of these rapacious allies
for pay and donations. The Mercenaries and
Barbarians, on the other hand, had the prospect
of the loot of the wealthiest and most luxurious
trading city in the world. For the purpose of
his plot Flaubert makes the dominant motif the
infatuation of Matho, a leader of the Libyan
Barbarians, for Salambo, the daughter of Hamil-
car, an exquisite flower, reared in the hot-house
of the palace under the tutelage of the High
Priest of Tanit. He had seen her when she tried
to quell the riot at the feast of the Barbarians
in the absence of her father. He had drunk
from the same cup. The thought of her haunts
hi« mind, and inflames his blood, and impels
him back to the assault on Carthage aifter each

136 BARBARY

defeat. Inspired by the dexterous cunning of
Spendius, an escaped Greek slave, he penetrates
to the temple of Tanit, steals the sacred veil of
the goddess, the talisman of the city, and by
virtue of its possession becomes the most in-
fluential of all the Barbarian leaders. The
turning point in the fortune of the rebels comes
when Salambo visits by stealth the tent of
Matho in the midst of the locust-like army which
is besieging her father in a fortified camp and
steals back the sacred veil. She is both repelled
and attracted, horrified and fascinated, by the
rugged strength and rude passion of the Barbarian.
Hamilcar returns from five years of battles
and final defeat in Sicily to find Carthage be-
sieged by the Mercenaries. His head is full of
great schemes for the conquest of Spain, the
founding of a New Carthage at Carthagena,
and the renewal of the attack on Rome by land,
schemes which his greater son, Hannibal, was
destined to carry to the verge of consummation.
But now all seems lost. Encumbered by a selfish
oligarchy and by a jealous rival, he bends all his
energies to reorganising the city's defences and
preparing the means for attack. By his masterly
tactics he outmanoeuvres the Barbarians and
keeps them at bay. The water supply is cut
off and the city is nearly starved into surrender.
To appease the god it is resolved to sacrifice to
Baal several hundred children from the noblest
families. By a trick Hasdrubal saves Hannibal,
the child of Destiny, from the hecatomb. He
bursts out from the city and attacks the Bar-
barians in the rear. He succeeds in detaching
Narr' Havas, Prince of the Numidians, from the

" SALAMBO " 137

rebels, and promises him his daughter in marriage.
Finally, by a master stroke, he traps an army of
forty thousand of the Barbarians in a defile
between the Mountain of Hot Springs (Bou
Kornein) and the Lead Mountain (Djebel Ressas),
walls them up there, and starves them, till not
even cannibalism can save the last remnant from
agonising death.

From the first chapter to the last the book
moves in a crescendo of horror. This is one of
the limitations of Flaubert and of the School to
which he belongs. In their determination not
to ignore the ugly side of life they become
mesmerised by it. The spell of terror and of
fascination which Matho cast over Salambo is
the same as the morbid attraction which the
bizarre, the gruesome, the horrific, have for
Flaubert. The description of the Barbarians,
their weird mongrel breeds, their mutilations
and deformities, their gluttony, their drunken-
ness, their bestial vices, their savage ferocity,
makes the flesh creep. The luxury, the corrup-
tion, the superstition, the greed, and the lust of
cruelty of the Carthaginians are as vividly
depicted. Hanno, the old general, with his
perfumes and unguents, his hideous diseases, his
diet of flamingos' tongues and honeyed poppy
seeds, his medicines of viper broth and the
ashes of a weasel and asparagus boiled in vinegar,
and his bravery, is a compelling figure. There
are sacrifices to Baal, tortures, crucifixions,
elephant charges in battle, and massacres of the
wounded by the women camp followers. The
final scene of all is the martyrdom of Matho in
the presence of Salambo on the day of her

138 BARBARY

wedding to Narr' Havas. She looks upon the
hardly human remains of the man who tried to
burn up the world for her sake, and, seized with
a convulsion, she dies in the arms of her husband.
Of such material is the " Realistic Romance "
composed.

Flaubert has an uncanny genius for imagina-
tive detail, as when, after the battle, " the
vermin might be seen to forsake the dead, who
were colder now, and to run over the hot sand,"
or as when, during the famine of the siege, the
teeth of the Carthaginians fell out, " and their
gums were discoloured like those of camels after
too long a journey." The novel is like the
witch's cauldron in " Macbeth," into which he
throws the ingredients of the incantation by
which he recalls the apparitions of the past.

" In the poisoned entrails throw

Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark.
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered of a drab :
Make the gruel thick and slab."

The boiling pot bubbles over with the horrid
brew. Horror can give as vivid an impression
of reality as can charm. One's gorge rises — but
one believes.

Is it a true picture of Carthage ? The answer
must be both " yes " and " no." It is an aspect
of Carthage, but it is not all Carthage. Flaubert
has omitted to give us the finer side of Cartha-
ginian character which undoubtedly existed,

" SALAMBO " 139

the pioneering spirit of the people which must
have gone to the making of the first great Empire
of the Seas, the refinement, the beauty, the
domestic happiness, the philosophy, the deeper
politics of the time. In " Salambo " it is Car-
thage, indeed, that we see, but we look through
a distorting lens.

CHAPTER XVI
BOU KORNEIN

BOU KORNEIN, the Mountain of Baal,
Father of Two Horns, dominates the Gulf
of Tunis as Vesuvius dominates the Bay
of Naples. The inner Gulf is fifteen miles across
at its entrance between Carthage on the West
and Korbous on the East, and, as it bites into
the land, it opens out into a wider circle, after
the fashion of a Moorish arch. Its Western
shore is but a narrow spit of sand separating it
from the great lagoon, beyond which lies Tunis
gleaming white in the sunlight. The Eastern
coast is fringed by a range of low hills rising
abruptly from the water's edge, forming part of
the great peninsula which ends at Cape Bon.
On the Southern shore two rivers fall into the
Gulf — the Miliane and the Massi. Each of these
rivers before it enters the Gulf flows through a
broad fertile plain covered with vineyards and
olive groves — the Plain of Mornag on the West
and the Grombalian Plain on the East. Between
them, close to the sea, rising from the level plain
with all the abruptness of a cone, is the Moun-
tain of Bou Kornein, with the cleft summit from
which it derives its name.

The early Phoenician mariners as they coasted
along the Southern shores of the Mediterranean,

140

BOU KORNEIN 141

past the desert shores of Cyrenaica and Leptis
with their occasional oases of palm trees, past
the Great and the Little Syrtes, past the Island
of Djerba, the land of the Lotus-eaters, and
rounded Cape Bon, came suddenly upon this
sheltered Gulf, with its amphitheatre of hills, its
rich, well- watered plains, and its lagoon in which
a fleet fit to conquer the world might ride safely
at anchor, and its solitary mountain, rising
like a beacon, visible far out at sea, and horned
like their own god. Probably they cared little
for the natural beauty of the scenery, but they
had the sailor's eye for a good harbour and the
merchant's eye for a land which surpassed even
the Canaan they had left — a land flowing with
milk and honey. They landed twelve hundred
years before Christ, as the British landed on the
shores of India, bargained with the native Berber
chiefs for sites, estabhshed their trading depots,
and built their factories and forts which soon
developed into flourishing cities. Utica and
Tunis were their first settlements in the Gulf.
It was not till 800 B.C. that they founded Car-
thage, which grew to be the greatest city of
them all, the Imperial City of their maritime
empire. It had greater advantages than any of
the others in regard to defence against attack by
land. It had greater natural beauty, standing
as it did on the edge of a promontory and facing,
across the Gulf, the Mountain of Bou Kornein.

Bou Kornein is a precipitous mountain, but
an excellent track has been engineered from a
point just opposite the railway station at Ham-
mam Lif right to the summit. It winds along
the contours of the northern bastion until it

142 BARBARY

comes to the central cone, up the side of which
it zig-zags to the saddle or col between the two
peaks, from which either peak may be reached
in a few minutes. The total height is 1875 feet,
and the ascent may be made with comfort in
two hours.

It was a warm day in February when we
made the ascent. The afternoon sun beat
strongly upon us until we had rounded Eastwards
into the shadow of the peak itself, and we were
glad of the shade of the Aleppo pines with
which the lower slopes were clad. Beyond the
pines there is a thick growth of dwarf cypress,
with occasional bushes of myrtle, reaching to
the summit. The warm air was fragrant with
their aromatic essences. The mountain, en-
veloped by the sun in this aura of incense, well
deserves the name of '' The Scented Mountain."
A profusion of wild flowers decked the sides of
the path, white and pink and mauve begonias,
daisies nearly as large as marguerites, large
heath bells, wild clematis with pale greenish
white blossoms, and unknown little flowers of
turquoise and cornflower blue. Bees were hum-
ming, richly coloured butterflies were flitting
about, and here and there a stray dragon-fly.
In the orchards at the foot of the mountain the
almonds were in full blossom, and the bursting
leaf-buds of trees that shed their foliage in winter
had begun to clothe the naked branches in sprays
of delicate and tender green. The scents, the
colours, the warmth of spring, were in the air.

As we mounted, the classic panorama towards
the North was spread at our feet, as if we were
looking down from an aeroplane. The Gulf swept

BOU KORNEIN 143

round like a deep horseshoe crescent, its horns
to the North. Strange how this sacred symbol,
the crescent moon of Tanit or Ashtaroth, and
the bulls' horns of Baal-Hamon, is repeated so
often in the outlines of the Gulf and in the cloven
summit of the mountain. Carthage tips the
Western horn of the Gulf. The Cathedral of
St. Louis crowns the Bursa in place of the
Temple of Moloch, the ancient land-locked har-
bours gleam like hand-mirrors that have fallen
from the sky upon the margin of the sea, and
behind, on the peak of the horn, gleam the
white walls and the red roofs of the modern
palaces at Sidi-bou-Said. Opposite Carthage,
nestling at the foot of the hills, on the water's
edge, at the tip of the Eastern horn, is Korbous
of the hot springs. Between these two there
opens out and sweeps round in a long regular
curve the beach, outlined by a faint white edging
of surf where the wavelets break on the sand.
The sea was a deep purple, shading off into a
vivid green near the shore. The lagoon of Tunis
was like a sheet of silver. Tunis shone on the
further side like a white queen. As we rose
higher the prospect opened out wider, for this
mountain stands like a tall sentinel over the
sea and the islands, over the capes and penin-
sulas, over Carthage and Tunis and Utica
beyond, and over all the rich and fruitful plains
which nourished these ancient towns. The
plains of Mornag and Grombalia at our feet were
like vast spiders' webs, a criss-cross of white
roads radiating from shining white villages
against a background of vines and olives.
This was the landscape which Agathocles, and

144 BARBARY

Pyrrhus, and Hasdrubal, and Hamilcar, and
Hannibal, and Scipio, and Csesar, and Cyprian,
and Augustine, and Belisarius, and Genseric
beheld. We were looking down upon the stage
on which was enacted one of the greatest
dramas of history, a struggle which lasted
nearly one hundred and fifty years and which
decided that the foundations of European
civilisation were to be Roman rather than
Asiatic. Here, in this Gulf, was the fulcrum
of destiny. And here, in later days, were the
granary of Rome, the cradle of Western Chris-
tianity, and the pirates' lair of the Barbary
corsairs. Nor are literary associations lacking.
Virgil made this the scene of the passion and
the parting of JEneas and Dido, and has invested
every feature of the Carthaginian landscape
with the magic glamour of great poetry. And,
by a tour de force of modern art, Flaubert in his
novel, " Salambo," has re-peopled the site
with the monstrous figures of Phoenician pride
and luxiu'y and cruelty.

Not until we had reached the summit was the
panorama complete, and then the prospect was
completely changed. The final stage did not
come gradually as it does when one passes over
a rounded dome. We chmbed up a precipitous
wall and suddenly we looked over the top as
over the battlement of a tower. We looked
South into the savage heart of Africa. Behind
us amethyst and emerald, before us a huddle
of wild mountains, of barren precipitous peaks
riven apart by dark gullies and passes. These
are the last spurs of the Atlas Mountains which
run in a continuous chain from the Atlantic.

BOU KORNEIN 145

Immediately to the South the Plain of Mornag
ends abruptly at the 2600 feet high cliffs of
Djebel Ressas, the Mountain of Lead, while,
forty miles to the South-West, rise the clustered
peaks of Zaghouan, 4200 feet high, whence
Tunis to-day, like Carthage of old, draws its
water supply. On the plain beyond Tunis we
could descry the gigantic stone arches of the
Aqueduct built by Hadrian, one of the most
awe-inspiring monuments of Roman power and
Roman will, more impressive than the Pyramids
because more purposeful. Like a colossal centi-
pede of stone, it winds across the plain, dis-
appearing where the ground rises, and straddling
across the valley of the Miliane. From Bou
Kornein the full magnitude of this engineering
triumph can be taken in at a glance.

Between Bou Kornein and the jagged ridge
of Djebel Ressas, which cuts into the air hke
the fin of a shark, the inland road from Tunis to
Grombalia passes through the gorge of Khanguet
el Hadjaj, the Pass of the Hatchet, surrounded
by sheer precipices. When the Mercenaries and
Barbarian allies of the Carthaginians revolted
after their defeat by Rome in the first Punic
War, it was in this gorge that the frightful
massacre was perpetrated which quelled the
rebellion. The episode forms one of the most
ghastly chapters in the accumulated horrors of
" Salambo."

Bou Kornein is a cone of igneous rook sharply
jutting through the limestone beds which have
been thrust up to form the bastions at its base.
The central cone is shot through with crystalline
veins of quartz. Obviously it is a volcano in

146 BARBARY

the line of the same fissure in the earth's crust
which has produced Etna, StromboH, and
Vesuvius. That the central fires are still active
is proved by the hot springs at Hammam Lif
at the base, and at Korbous a few miles along
the coast, where modern thermal establishments
continue the bathing tradition of the Romans.
On either summit there are deep shafts leading
down into the heart of the mountain. Lateral
caves lead into these shafts. Other caves have
been discovered nearer the base in the course
of blasting operations to form the road. One I
discovered blocked by a stone. Possibly there
are others still unexplored. The associations
of the mountain, the thousand years of Phoe-
nician history, and the romantic possibilities of
these caves, suggest the scenario of a Rider
Haggard novel.

But the supreme association of Bou Kornein
is with Baal. The whole mountain is one gigantic
altar to the Horned God of the sun, and of fire.
This was one of the High Places on which sacri-
fice was made to the Abomination of the
Sidonians. On the highest horn of the mountain
there was a temple dedicated to Baal-Caranensis,
whom the Romans identified with Saturn, and
to his consort, Tanit, or Ashtaroth, the moon
goddess. The temple was merely a small en-
closure with an altar in the midst, the god being
represented by a rudely carved pillar. The
ground around was studded with small steles or
stone slabs on which were carved dedicatory
inscriptions and rude emblems of the two Deities.
All these objects may now be seen in the museums
of Carthage and Le Bardo. A few shards of

BOU KORNEIN 147

rough pottery scattered among the roots of the
scrub are the only tokens that remain of the
ancient usage. The altars smoke no more, and
Phoenician Carthage has been buried for over
two thousand years ; but standing here on this
High Place and looking out over one of the
fairest of earth's kingdoms, one feels something
of the spell against which Israel struggled for a
thousand years.

CHAPTER XVII
THE SAHEL AND THE STEPPES

TUNISIA is an ideal country for motor-
ing. It has a wide variety of picturesque
scenery. In the North are wild moun-
tains and the beautiful Medjerda Valley. Along
the Eastern Coast are the rich and fruitful plains
of the Sahel, covered with olive groves and
vineyards. In the centre are the rolling Steppes,
abounding in sheep, horses, camels, and drome-
daries. And in the South, at Gafsa and beyond,
is the great Desert, studded with oases of date
palms and traversed by nomad tribes. The whole
country is a treasure-house of Phoenician and
Roman remains, rivaUing in majesty and interest
anything Italy can show. And the roads by
which it is traversed are perfect.

I have never seen anything like these French
roads. In the country of the Sahel and the
Steppes they drive straight ahead for twenty
kilometres at a stretch. The contours of the
land never affect them. Their alignment is
chiefly determined by the towns and the wells.
About half-way between Sousse and El-Djem,
before we reached the dip into the valley, our road
could be seen running straight for the ridge, where
it seemed to end abruptly, a white ribbon suddenly
cut short. Then above it appeared the opposite

148

THE SAHEL AND THE STEPPES 149

side of the valley, dim in the distance, gradually
rising as we approached. And on the dim other
side a slender white thread, as narrow as a pipe
shank, rose from the middle of the abrupt end
of our broad ribbon of road. It was the con-
tinuation of our road. From the lip of the
valley the prospect was surprising. For a
distance of ten kilometres we could see the
road, faultlessly regular and undeviating, like
the segment of an immense arc, extending in
front of us. At the lowest point there was a
well on one side and a small olive tree on the
other. Along the side of the road, at intervals
gradually foreshortened by the distance, we
could see the ten milestones, or rather kilometre
stones, gleaming white in the sun, like beads
on a necklace. In our car we shot over the
ground at the rate of a kilometre in a minute
less five seconds, or forty miles an hour. Africa
was slipping away beneath us. The car was
eating up the miles — annihilating distance. As
we passed over the lip of the valley we seemed
to take the air like a bird or an aeroplane. The
milestones raced past like telegraph poles past
the window of one of the slow African trains.

This road bespeaks a purpose. It is not the
road of those who are content to follow in the
footsteps of their fathers. It has not been
developed unconsciously like the primitive track
of the great caravan routes. It is eloquent of
the will of man subduing Nature. Such a road
is built not for the present but for the future.
Its aim is not to serve existing needs, but to
open up the country, to develop its resources,
to serve a multitude of new needs which it will

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create. It is said that he who plants trees must
love others better than himself. So also he who
builds roads like this works for generations yet
unborn.

On such a road we would often pass a small
nomad caravan, a relic of the Patriarchal age,
journeying, as Abraham journeyed some four
thousand years ago, along this road of modern
destiny. Half a dozen camels led the way,
followed by a troop of donkeys and accompanied
by a motley tribe of Arabs with their women-
folk and children and innumerable dogs. They
straggled all over the road, and at the sound of
the motor horn the Arabs would start into
violent activity, put their shoulders to the
flanks of the camels and hoist them off the road.
These camels were not led or bridled, but were
driven like a flock of cattle. Whole families
moved together with their tents packed and all
their household belongings. Even their poultry
were carried with them, and we often saw a hen
perched on a donkey's back and fluttering to
balance itself when the donkey took fright.

Along the Eastern Coast, from Hammamet
Southwards to Gabes, stretches the Sahel, a belt
of fertile and well-watered land from twelve to
fourteen miles wide. Beyond it lie the Steppes,
and beyond them again a great chain of jagged
mountains running South-West from Zaghouan
to Tebessa. For geological epochs the mud and
detritus has been washed down from these
mountains into the shallow lagoons or sebkas
along the coast and deposited in deep beds of
alluvial soil. This land is of almost inexhaustible
fertility, a fat land, a land of corn, and oil, and

THE SAHEL AND THE STEPPES 151

wine, and fruit. It only requires that its surface
should be scratched and supplied with water to
bring forth fruits in abundance. Its fortunate
position between the mountains with their great
natural reservoirs and the sea makes irrigation
easy for any people who have the energy to make
use of the natural resources of the earth.

For miles we motored between groves of olives.
The soil beneath the trees was carefully terraced
and dyked for irrigation purposes. The older
trees had a most extraordinary appearance. So
decrepit were their trunks that they might have
been survivals from Roman times. They were
gnarled, corrugated, knotted, twisted, rotted,
hollowed out. They were like old men, bent by
age and toil. But their branches were still green
and fruitful.

From Sousse, the ancient Hadrumetum, we
proceeded to El-Djem. As we gradually rose
with the swell of the Steppes the olive groves
gave place to vast savannas of corn land, and
scrubby pasture, and then desert which in spring
is clothed with flowers and grass, but is baked
bare by the heats of summer. Not a tree nor a
shrub nor a house appeared on which the eye
could rest. The horizon circled round us level
and unbroken except in the West where the
distant mountains rose like a wall. There was not
a hedge to chequer a pattern on the monotonous
surface. The land had been lightly ploughed
and already in February a thin veil of green
shoots was spreading over the brown earth. As
the swell sank again towards El-Djem we passed
a large manorial farmhouse, probably that of
the owner of the domain who farmed his own

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land. It was dazzling white, of two wings,
in the Arab style of architecture, and with a
large enclosure behind it. No doubt it was sup-
plied within with all the luxuries of modern
civilisation like the mansions of the Roman
lords of the Saltus, the remains of which, in
the shape of beautiful mosaics, are sometimes
turned up in the wilderness by the Arab plough.

As we breasted a swell the Amphitheatre of
El-Djem could be seen, ten miles off, rising like
some phenomenon of Nature from the midst of
a wide valley as shallow as a saucer. It could
not be said to lie on the earth ; it rises from the
earth, enormous, astounding. It is so large
that it completely conceals the native town
which lies behind it. The road is aligned direct
for its centre, as if it were going to drive straight
through it. As we approached, it seemed to
tower higher and higher, dominating the land-
scape, more imposing than the Great Pyramid,
more threatening than a cliff. The houses and
domed mosques of the native village huddled
at its base seem like the cells of insects. It has
served as a quarry for centuries, but it has been
too colossal to be destroyed. Not since the days
of the Tower of Babel has the bosom of the earth
been burdened with a more ponderous pile.

The mere sight of it darkening heaven as one
stands in its shadow conveys a more enduring
impression of the might and power of Rome
than does any study of printed books. One
is compelled to think of it as made not by man
but by a race of giants or by the elemental forces
which thrust the rocks and mountains up through
the surface of the earth. It is the more astound-

THE SAHEL AND THE STEPPES 153

ing when one reflects that the quarries from
which this mountain of stone was dug are
situated twenty miles away. These monoliths
had to be dragged by teams of oxen over the
clay on specially built roads. The solidity,
the massiveness, the time-defying bulk of this
single building in a remote town near the Desert
frontier of the Roman Empire can only be
compared with the similar qualities in the
Pyramids. There is nothing to compare with
it in the monumental architecture of the great
empires of modern times. This Amphitheatre
and the Aqueduct of Carthage are together the
most eloquent witnesses of the greatness of
Rome, of the genius which made her the law-
maker and ruler of the world, of her far-reaching
purposes, and of her relentless will. If every
other historical record of Rome were blotted out
we could still appreciate her Imperial Majesty
from either of these two works.

Thysdrus, the proud city which stood upon
the site of El-Djem and which gave three Em-
perors of the Gordian name to Rome, has dis-
appeared. Not only its wealth but its stones
have been plundered. Its groves have been cut,
its irrigation works broken down, and its gardens
dried up. Its pillars of marble and onyx and
porphyry adorn the mosques of Kairouan and
Sousse and Sfax, or may be found with inscribed
stones and delicate carvings buried in the rubble
walls of the Arab hives. Not even the ground
plan of the city can be traced. The Arabs squat
all day in the shadow, and at night the tom-
tom beats in the dark cave-like little cafes of
the squalid village, and over all, in sunlight or

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in moonlight, like destiny itself, towers the
work of those who were once masters of the
world.

All this land of Sahel and Steppe was called
by the Romans Byzacium. It was one of the
chief sources from which Rome drew her sup-
plies of corn and oil. How inexhaustible was
its cornucopia is recorded in numerous anecdotes.
Pliny the elder tells of a mighty palm tree at
Gabes in the midst of the sands which bore a
heavy crop of dates. Under the palm there
grew an olive, and under the olive a fig tree
which overspread a pomegranate, and under
that again a vine, and under the vine they sowed
corn and then herbs, all in the same year. When
the Mohammedan invasion broke like a deluge
upon all this prosperity the Arab general who
captured Sufetula, the modern Sbeitla, marvelled
at the magnitude of the treasure that fell into
his hands. " Whence comes this enormous
wealth ? " he exclaimed. " From this ! " said
a captive citizen, taking up an olive which lay
trodden under foot upon the dust.

Under Roman rule this Byzacenian plain was
thickly populated with an agricultural popula-
tion and studded by flourishing cities in which
the arts, the luxuries, and the elegancies of
Rome were reproduced. The chief port was
Hadrumetum (Sousse), and inland were Thysdrus
(El-Djem), with a population of 100,000, and,
on the line of the railway, Vicus Auguste (Kai-
rouan), Sufetula (Sbeitla), Scillium (Kasserine),
and Thelepte (Medinet Kadina). But these are
only the chief landmarks. The whole country
bristles with mounds of ruins, and carved stones,

THE SAHEL AND THE STEPPES 155

projecting through the scrub on deserted hill-
sides, catch the eye afar off.

Enfidaville, which hes half-way between Ham-
mamet and Sousse, is perhaps the supreme
example of French agricultural development.
Here a vast estate of over 300,000 acres was
acquired by the Franco-African Company just
before the French occupation. After encounter-
ing great opposition from the native administra-
tion it was able, under the new regime, to
proceed with its ambitious plans for developing
the resources of this fabulously rich soil. It
brought capital, it brought brains, it brought
engineering and agricultural science into opera-
tion. It planted vines and olives and figs and
sowed vast stretches of land with corn. The
beautiful little French town of Enfidaville is its
creation. As one approaches from Kairouan
by the road which forges straight ahead, league
after league, across the bare Steppes, its trim
houses of several stories, with their red roofs,
embosomed in trees, are a welcome sight to
European eyes. And when one drives along its
trim boulevard it is a delight to observe the
graceful church, the shops, the cafe, the man-
sions, the municipal offices, and the head-
quarters of the Company. After the Souks of
Kairouan this is civilisation, this is home, this
is Europe.

But enter the little church. Its richest and
rarest decorations, covering the floor and the walls,
are the mosaics of fifteen hundred years ago, which
have been removed from the ruins of the Basilica,
or Ancient Christian Church, at Uppenna (Henchir
Fraga), about four miles to the North. There

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on the walls stand the sacred symbols of the
early Church, the circle containing the Greek
Monogram of the first two letters of Christ's
name, the X P, and the Alpha and Omega, as
fresh as they were on the day the artist wrought
them. The church is lined and paved with these
designs and with memorial panels recording the
names and ages of Christian men and women who
" lived in peace " so many years ago. In the
enclosure surrounding the church are displayed
a slender pillar, some beautifully carved sar-
cophagi, a massive altar with an inscription,
and one or two archaic stones which go back
to earlier days when Baal and Tanit of the
Phoenicians were worshipped under Roman
names.

A few miles further North of Enfidaville, in
the midst of a solitude, are the ruins of the
ancient city of Aphrodisium, called by the Arabs
Henchir Fradix, where Venus was worshipped.
Among the edifices which can still be traced are
a pagan temple, a Christian Basihca, and Amphi-
theatre, a Fortress, and a Triumphal Arch.
Enfidaville, flourishing and prosperous though
it is, has nothing to show in the way of monu-
mental buildings which can be compared to
these time-worn fragments of its ancient neigh-
bour which was hardly important enough to be
commemorated in history. A little further
North, beyond Bou Ficha, near the Tower-of
Babel-like mausoleum known by the Arab name
of Ksar Menara, there may be seen, parallel to
the modern road, the massive ruins of a Roman
bridge across the small Oued Cherchar. All the
arches are broken, but the piers, with the be-

THE SAHEL AND THE STEPPES 157

ginning of the arches still adhering to them,
remain. Modern engineering science has enabled
the French to make their road more perfect than
anything the Romans could produce ; but if
the modern road were abandoned for a single
century it would leave no relic which would
speak so eloquently of French genius as do the
solid fragments of this bridge of Roman power
and dominion after fifteen centuries of decay.

The Arabs and the Turks settled down on
this teeming land like a blight, and it relapsed
into a wilderness supporting only a few nomads
with their camels, horses, and asses, and their
sheep and goats. The French have been forty
years in occupation of the country, and already
the desert is beginning to blossom as the rose.
There are two great agricultural zones in Tunisia
— the Medjerda Valley in the North, and the
Sahel along the Eastern Coast. Of these the
Medjerda Valley is the more advanced, not
because the soil is richer, but because the rain-
fall North of the mountains is more abundant
and because the one great river of the country
affords greater facilities for irrigation. At Beja
and at Mateur the results have been miraculous.
In the Sahel the soil is equally rich, but there is
need for more elaborate irrigation works. Con-
spicuous success has been achieved at Enfidaville
and round Sousse. The land is returning to its
former prosperity. But as yet the French have
only scratched the surface. They are still
centuries behind Rome.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE GRANDE MOSQUEE

KAIROUAN was founded in the year
A.D. 670, by the Arab conqueror, Okba-
ben-Napy, better known as Sidi-Okba,
to be the centre from which North Africa should
be governed and from which the faith of Moham-
med should be propagated. It is still the most
holy city of Africa. Crowds of pilgrims flock to
it in the firm faith that seven pilgrimages to
Kairouan are equal in merit to one pilgrimage
to Mecca. The Phoenicians and the Romans
founded their capitals upon the coast where a
good harbour secured them communication with
the rest of the world. Only by means of a perfect
system of communications and organisation can
a great Empire be maintained. This choice of
a site for the Arab capital, high up on the Steppes,
and difficult of access, is typical of the character-
istics which prevented the Arabs, in spite of
their far-reaching conquests, from building up
any great Empire. Kairouan is a symbol of
their character and of their faith, exclusive,
bigoted, self-centred, and self-sufficient.

Kairouan is a ramshackle city, surrounded by
a massive brick wall round which clustering
suburbs have grown up in recent times. The
town itself is a museum of the ruins of Roman

158

THE GRANDE MOSQUEE 159

and Byzantine magnificence. To build it the
Arabs ruthlessly despoiled Carthage and Hadru-
metum, and Thysdrus and a dozen other cities
of renown, even as far away as Csesarea, beyond
Algiers, in the West. The columns and the
capitals, the rare marble linings, the delicately
carved cornices, the inscribed stones for which
historians hunger, now support the aisles and
arcades of the mosques or are built into laby-
rinthine rubble walls of the human hive. Here
lie concealed, covered with whitewash, or plaster,
or sun-dried mud, treasures which one can only
guess at from fragments exposed to view. One
notices that to strengthen the lintel posts of
a door or the angle of a wall massive recessed
pillars have been introduced. Scale off the
whitewash, and marble or porphyry is revealed
embedded in mud-bricks like a jewel in a toad's
head. It is the architecture not of deliberate
and scientific design, but of loot and plunder.
Here is a doorstep which still shows the fluting
of a marble column on its under-side. As one
walks along the narrow thronging streets one
has glimpses through open doorways of the
lighted interior of an Arab cafe which might be
the crypt of a cathedral, or of a caravanserai in
which the camels and asses seem to be stalled
in cloisters. Ichabod ! Ichabod ! The glory
has departed.

There are, naturally, numerous mosques in
Kairouan ; and although, elsewhere throughout
Tunisia, strangers are, by order of the Govern-
ment, rigidly excluded from the mosques, here,
in the holiest city of all, they are open to inspec-
tion on an order from the Civil Controller which

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may be obtained without any difficulty. The
Mosque of the Three Gates, Tleta Biban, with
its facade covered with inscriptions in gigantic,
archaic Cufic inscriptions, is one of the most
interesting of Arab antiquities. The Mosque of
the Swords, Amor Abada, with its six fluted
domes, is entirely of modern construction. The
Mosque of the Barber, Sidi-Sahab, is remark-
able for the beauty and intricacy and delicacy
of its internal decoration. The courts are sur-
rounded by fairy-like arcades of Moorish arches
supported by slender marble pillars. The walls
are lined with tiles of glazed faience. The domes
are an open fretwork of plaster arabesques as
exquisite as lace. The building belongs to
various dates in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries, and is a triumph of the
same artistic impulse which produced the Al-
hambra and the Taj Mahal. But it is primarily
to the Grande Mosquee, to the shrine of Sidi-
Okba, the Conqueror, that visitors will turn.
In size, in holiness, in its associations, and in its
general interest it surpasses any other building
in North Africa.

Architecturally the Grande Mosquee belongs
to the most primitive type of Arab temple.
Since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks
in the fifteenth century, the great Church of
Hagia Sophia has served as the model for most
Mohammedan builders. The structural concep-
tion, therefore, of most mosques is Byzantine, or
European ; only the decoration is Arabic. But
the Grande Mosquee retains the form of the
original sanctuary of the faith at Mecca, which
in turn simply reproduces that of the earlier

THE GRANDE MOSQUEE I6l

pagan temples of Arabia. The ground plan is an
oblong quadrangular enclosure which represents
the court in which the tabernacle containing the
idol was set up. Such is the enclosure round the
Kaaba which contains the Black Stone of Mecca.
The sides of this enclosure have been arcaded
round by a double row of cloisters. From the
centre of the North-Western side rises the
minaret from which the muezzin gives to the town
the call for prayer. The South-Eastern side,
in the direction of Mecca, has been roofed over
to the depth of nine arcades of seventeen bays
supported by an assortment of pillars and
capitals which must be unique in the world.
There are the priceless treasures of Carthage,
marble, onyx, and porphyry, red, yellow, green,
black, and white, exquisitely cut and polished
like megalithic gems. A florid Corinthian capital
has on its right side one that recalls the lotus
shapes of Egypt, and on the left another whose
tracery is purely Byzantine. Some of the capitals
are upside down. There are said to be 296
pillars. Built into the walls are stones con-
taining Roman inscriptions, and as one ascends
the minaret one notices that the steps are of
marble, and that at the sides where feet do not
tread there are still traces of mouldings and
carvings which indicate that these stones were
once the cornice of a Roman temple. The whole
structure has been not so much designed as
improvised.

In the grand simplicity of this building we
get the key to Arab or Moorish architecture.
The Arab house, be it the palace of the Bey or
the dwelling of a merchant in the native quarter,

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in a street like a rabbit's burrow, is built round
a square courtyard. A gallery of arcades runs
round each side and from this lead off the public
apartments, the kitchen, and offices. Above this
gallery ' there is a balcony supported by graceful
pillars and with a more or less elaborate balus-
trade. From this balcony lead off the private
apartments. One side, on which is the entrance,
is deeper than the others and sometimes higher,
with a central dome. The roof is flat.

The origin of this design is more clearly
revealed in the ordinary farm-house and in the
village caravanserais, which we had many oppor-
tunities of observing as we motored through the
country. It differs absolutely from the design
of the modern European house, the predominant
purpose of which is shelter from the elements.
In this North African climate there is little need
of protection from the weather, save perhaps
from wind and from sun, but there is a continu-
ing necessity for protection from enemies and
thieves.

In its essence the Arab farm-house is a square
enclosure of high walls with a single entrance.
It has no windows to the outside — nothing but
bare walls. It is nothing more or less than a
zareba of stone, a permanent structure to take
the place of the zareba of stakes and thorned
branches which the nomad builds round his tent
or hut. One end of this enclosure is roofed over,
in the case of superior buildings by three domes
in a line. This is the dwelling-house, and it has
some small windows looking out into the court.
On the opposite side a kind of shed is constructed
against the wall by means of a rough wooden

THE GRANDE MOSQUEE 163

roof, supported by posts, to serve as cattle shed,
stable, and store for fodder.

This rudimentary house plan was the model
for the pagan temple and the mosque at Mecca.
It is seen in an intermediate stage in the Grande
Mosquee at Kairouan, and it has been perfected
in the modern dwelling-house and palace with
its lining of brilliantly coloured tiles, with its
arcades and galleries of horse-shoe arches and
arabesque lattice-work surrounding a marble-
paved court in which a fountain plays, and with
its graceful domes.

To pure architecture the Moors or Arabs have
made little contribution. They have developed
no new structural principle. They have, how-
ever, modified in a distinctive manner the types
which they have borrowed from Greece and
Rome. Their treatment of these forms has
given them a distinct impress which we immedi-
ately recognise as the Moorish style. This
treatment is due partly to the climatic con-
ditions of their country, partly to the require-
ments of their form of worship, both of which
lead to essentially structural modifications, and
partly to mental characteristics which express
themselves in the form of decoration. It is
notable that the architects for the greater
undertakings were almost invariably European
foreigners, frequently slaves and renegades. The
human mind, as developed in the heat belt,
does not take easily to the prolonged strain and
concentration of grappling with its structural
problems of a vast building. But the Arab
genius has successfully imposed certain con-
ditions upon the foreign architects.

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The supreme problem of architecture, the
varying solutions of which provide the key to
every architectural style, is the supporting of
a roof. In these lands of perennial sunshine
there is no need for our Northern high-pitched
roof to throw off a gathering weight of snow.
The flat roof, resting on beams thrown across
from one wall to another, suffices for most
domestic purposes. It gives no outward thrust
as does the arch or dome, but presses steadily
downwards upon the walls. The native stone
seems to be somewhat intractable, and does not
dress easily, so the walls are built of undressed
stone, or sometimes even of rubble, and faced
with plaster, which is kept continually white-
washed. If such a roof has a wide span it must
be supported by an internal row or rows of
pillars. To give a wide lofty space uninterrupted
by pillars a dome is necessary, and as the dome
gives an outward thrust it is supported by
adjacent buildings which serve as natural but-
tresses. There is another motif which supplies
one of the most decorative features. The fierce
sun necessitates shaded spots open to the air —
hence the deep arcades in which one may sit
and enjoy whatever comfort and coolness shade
may give. The arcade must be deep set, the
arches must be low and not too wide, and there
must be plenty of lattice-work to admit the free
passage of air.

The flat roof, the dome, and the arcade are
the three main motifs in Arab architecture. The
structural principles are Greek, or rather Byzan-
tine, which have been modified in various ways,
as, for instance, in the treatment of the dome.

THE GRANDE MOSQUEE 165

probably due to the characteristics of the build-
ing material, the paucity of windows, the form
of the arch, and the high development of arcad-
ing. The decoration is purely native. It is
very elaborate, but its invention or execution
requires little mental strain. It consists of the
constant and mechanical repetition of certain
geometrical formulae, just as their prayers con-
sist of the constant reiteration of a single sentence
or even name. The soul of this desert-born race
which could conquer but could not govern, which
could overthrow Empires but could not build
them, is expressed in its architecture as in its
creed.

CHAPTER XIX
THE OLD GODS

A LONG the North African coast from
/-\ Djerba, the Isle of the Lotus-eaters,
"^^ -^ to the Pillars of Hercules, in the
sheltered bays, in the river valleys, and in the
recesses of the mountains, linger traces of the
ancient gods whose names of dread have still
power to stir our blood. A place name, an altar
stone, a symbol worn by a native girl, a folk tale,
a popular custom the origin of which has been
long forgotten, all these are like echoes from
the dim beginnings. The gods of Rome and of
Greece are modern cults compared with these
awful deities the smoke of whose sacrifices went
up from the altars of Babylon, and whose
High Places and Groves, scattered through
Canaan, were a perpetual snare to the Children
of Israel. Here, as in the land of the Moabites,
the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Sidonians,
and the Hittites, from whom Solomon took the
wives who led him astray, the prophets cried
to Baal, and gashed themselves with knives,
and children were passed through the fires of
Moloch, and unnamed rites were practised in
the groves of horned Ashtaroth.

The Phoenicians were kindred of the Is-
raelites, of the ancient Canaanite stock. The

166

THE OLD GODS 167

word Canaan signifies simply the " low land,"
and Canaan proper was the plain between the
mountains of Lebanon and the sea, of which
the two chief ports were Tyre and Sidon.
Carthage was founded in the ninth century
before Christ, as a colony from Tyre. The
name Carthage is a Roman rendering of the
ancient Phoenician name Kart (the same root
as Kirjath) — Hadchat, which signifies " the New
Town." And the name by which the Cartha-
ginians designated themselves for centuries after
their conquest by Rome was, not Phoenicians,
but Canaanites. Tunis had been founded three
or four centuries earlier. At this time, when
the Phoenicians were extending their mercantile
enterprise and their trading colonies Westward,
Ahab was King over Israel. He took to wife
Jezebel, daughter of Eth-Baal, the Phoenician
King, established the worship of Baal, and for
generations he and his dynasty sought to fuse
the Israelites, the Jews, and the Phoenicians
into a single people with the same national
religion.

Out of the fearful pit of Tophet, out of the
miry clay of the Valley of Hinnom, have we
been dug. Our own pure Faith in the One
God, compassionate, merciful, righteous, had its
origin in the black superstitions and cruelties
and licentiousness of this older Faith, into which
it relapsed many times before it emerged as
the Gospel of Jesus. But the Old Faith lingered
on in the deserts of Arabia for some six hundred
years, until there emerged from it another
conquering Faith, less pure than the Christian ;
but still based on the idea of One God, the

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Compassionate and Merciful, the Gospel of
Mohammed. Here in the land of Barbary, on
the site of New Tyre, we have a glimpse back
into the abyss. Here we may look upon the
altars, the pillars, the images of the gods, the
High Places and Groves of the Abomination of
the Sidonians, about which our chief authority
is our own Scriptures.

We refer to Baal as if he were one particular
god. There were, however, an infinite number
of Baals, or Baalim. Each tribe, each city, had
its own Baal. The word " Baal " signifies simply
" Lord," and in the earliest days it was even
applied to the God of Israel, but as the concep-
tion of God became clearer the title was associated
only with the heathen divinities. He is Beelze-
bub, the god of flies or corruption, who is identi-
fied with Satan, Prince of Devils, in the New
Testament. We also read of Baal-Berith, and
Baal-Peor. Baal Moloch, God of Fire, Baal
Hammon, God of the Sun, and Baal Melcarth,
the tutelary god of the Merchant Adventurers
of Tyre, were all objects of special veneration
at Carthage. The other chief deity of the
Carthaginians was Ashtaroth, or Astarte, or
Tanit, the Moon Goddess, for whom Solomon
planted groves to please his Sidonian wives.
In Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, and Canaan
there were as many Ashtaroths as there were
Baals.

The Phoenicians, like the Greeks and Romans,
were eclectic in their divinities. They did not
hesitate to adopt foreign gods, to identify them
with their own and to endue them with their
attributes. Baal Moloch was identified with

THE OLD GODS 169

the Greek Chronos, who devoured his own
children, and with the Roman Saturn. Melcarth
was Hercules. Tanit was recognised as identical
with Aphrodite and Persephone of the Greeks,
and Venus, Diana, and Proserpina of the Romans.
After their defeat in Sicily, in the fourth century
before Christ, which they attributed to their
violation of the temple of Demeter and Perse-
phone there, the Carthaginians erected a temple
to these goddesses at Carthage. There are also
in the most ancient Phoenician tombs at Carthage
many traces of the gods of Egypt, Anubis, Isis,
Bes, Phthah, Ra, and Osiris. Tanit was identi-
fied with Isis.

There was another characteristic of the
Phoenician gods which leads to considerable
confusion. They were metamorphic. They were
not only liable to be identified with foreign
gods of a similar nature, but they also tended
to merge into one another even when they were
of the most diverse nature. As tribes merged
into kingdoms, and kingdoms into empires, the
old tribal and city gods began to coalesce into
a conception of one all-powerful Being mani-
festing himself in various forms according to
his various attributes. Baal was at once the
beneficent and the destructive, the sun that
blessed the harvest fields and the fire that
destroyed like pestilence or war. Tanit was the
goddess both of chastity and of licentiousness.
And there was a mystic union between Baal and
Tanit, the sun and the moon, the male and the
female. Tanit is always referred to as " Face
of Baal," i.e. Reflection of the Sun. All these
characteristics and tendencies converged on a

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deification of the vital, vivifying, creative, repro-
ductive principle in nature, a sexual dualism
which seemed to underlie the whole material
world, one dread power manifesting itself in an
infinite variety of ways. It is a doctrine which
was capable on the one hand of a high spiritual
development, and, on the other hand, of a gross
and debasing materialism. Humanity had a
slippery and thorny path to climb, and many
a time it relapsed into the mire. It was not
without giant agonies that the platforms of
Judaism and of Mohammedanism were reached.
Melcarth, " King of the City," whose chief
temple was at Tyre, was a god held in special
honour in Carthage as the founder of the
Phoenician empire in the West. He was the
Phoenician Hercules, a hero-god, who in the
dim beginning of things led his people through
desperate adventures and by his superhuman
strength overcame foes and removed difficulties.
Another temple was situated in the extreme
West, at Gades in Spain, near the narrow straits,
which gave them their name of the Pillars of
Hercules. Probably this god represented the
deification of the real leader of one of the earliest
expeditions into the West. Sallust, in his
history, quotes a native legend that the Berber
races owed their origin to the followers of Her-
cules, who, after the death of their leader in
Spain, crossed over the Strait into Africa.
Herodotus visited the Temple of Melcarth at
Tyre, and he has left it on record that it con-
tained no image of the god, but two pillars, one
of gold and the other of emerald. It was from
Sidon, the twin city of Tyre, that Solomon got

THE OLD GODS 171

Hiram, the cunning worker in brass, who cast
for him all the metal utensils and furnishings
of the Great Temple at Jerusalem. It is not
without significance that we are told that Hiram
cast two great pillars of brass which he set up
in the porch of the Temple, giving them names,
the one " Jachin " and the other " Boaz."

As Moloch, Baal was worshipped in Carthage
with cruel and bloody rites and self-immolation.
In times of great national danger when the
city was threatened with destruction, hundreds
of children of the noblest families were sacri-
ficed to placate the god. When Mesha, King of
Moab, saw that the battle was too sore for him
he took his eldest son that should have reigned
in his stead and offered him for a burnt offering
upon the wall. A brazen image of Moloch,
horned and bull-headed, stood in the Temple
in Carthage. On such occasions a fire was
kindled between the legs of the idol and the
great body was heated red-hot. The little
victims were placed in the brazen arms which,
being raised by pulleys, deposited them in the
furnace. The clashing of cymbals, the beating
of drums, and the blare of musical instruments
drowned the screams of the victims and of the
mothers. It has been conjectured that the
numerous urns and little stone coffins contain-
ing the calcined bones of children, which have
been discovered by the excavators in Carthage,
where cremation was an unusual method of
disposing of the dead, may indicate that the
parents used to beg back the ashes of their
children for burial.

Baal was also worshipped as Baal-Hammon

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and Baal Caranensis, but it is impossible to
determine the exact differences of these mani-
festations. In his temple the god was usually
represented not by an image, but by a pillar or
pillars in which he was supposed to dwell. The
archaic stone pillars, of which many examples
have been found along the Barbary coast, have
rude markings suggestive of human features.
Later, brazen pillars were cast, surmounted by
a bull's head — the molten calf. Throughout the
Bible the Temples of Baal are invariably re-
ferred to as "the High Places." "Then did
Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the
abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before
Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of
the children of Ammon." A typical High Place
has been uncovered by excavators at Gezer in
Palestine, where Baal and Ashtaroth were
worshipped. It consisted of a row of eight
rude stone pillars ranging from five to ten feet,
together with a trough-like altar. The sur-
rounding earth was packed hard and contained
many large jars in which were infant bones.
Such must have been the temple on the summit
of Bou Kornein, the two-horned mountain across
the Gulf from Carthage.

Tanit, Ashtaroth, Astarte, the Moon Goddess,
is invariably associated with Baal, and they were
often worshipped in the same temple. Round
the pillars in the temple there were set up in
the ground small votive tablets or steles, on
which were carved the sacred symbols, the
crescent and disc, the triangle, the upraised
hand, together with a dedicatory inscription.
Several thousands of such steles have been dis-

THE OLD GODS 173

covered on the site of Carthage and on Bou
Kornein. The inscriptions almost always follow
a rigid formula, with only the names varied.

To the Divinity Tanit, Face of Baal, and to
the Lord Baal-Hammon, a votive offering, made
by Hasdrubal, son of Hanno, because he has
heard the voice of the Goddess, Blessed be She,

Groves were planted round the temple of the
goddess, and on the branches of the trees rested
flocks of her sacred birds, doves. In her lower
aspects she was worshipped with obscene rites
and licentious revels. The ancient towns of
Sicca Venerea (Le Kef) and Aphrodisium, in
Tunisia, as their names indicate, were centres of
these demoralising practices.

But this religion was not all sordid and degrad-
ing. In his higher aspects Baal was both sun
and moon, father and mother, male and female,
self-created and self-reproducing, a majestic
figure dispensing justice, the germ of a nobler
ideal. And Tan it was not only the goddess of
lust, but of chastity. It was in this aspect that
the Romans identified her with Diana, the
goddess of the crescent or virgin moon.

The jewel of the Carthage Museum, discovered
in 1902 by the White Fathers in their excavation
of the Phoenician cemetery at Bord-el-Djedid,
is the life-sized figure of a priestess of Tanit
carved in high relief upon the heavy stone lid
of a sarcophagus. She is clothed in the robe of
the Egyptian Isis, the head of the sacred vulture
surmounting her head-dress, and its two wings
enfolding the lower part of her body, the crossed
tips at her feet having the appearance of a

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fish's tail. A gauzy veil is draped over her
bosom. Her robes are of deep blue with bands
of the rich Phoenician purple. In her right hand
she holds one of the doves of Tanit, and she
looks out upon the world in the colours of life,
as she lived in the fourth century before Christ.
It is the portrait of a gracious and queenly
personality, inscrutably calm, exquisitely beauti-
ful, and radiating charm. It is the eternal type
of noble womanhood calling through the ages.
Modern art has not succeeded in expressing the
type in any more ideal or refined form.

Who is she ? It is the figure of a woman in
the prime of life, but the bones in the coffin were
those of a very aged woman. Quite probably
it may have been the practice in rich families
to have the carved stone that would one day
cover the lifeless corpse prepared during hfe
and preserved in a place of honour in the house
to await death. Probably she was a matron of
a noble house serving for her year as priestess,
a position of honour and dignity. And in her
old age she was buried with this token of her
early service. What is important to know,
and what we do know, is that the cult of Tanit
could produce so fair and exquisite a flower.

It is easy to understand how the lower side
of this Baal worship, with its appeal to passion,
its pandering to the lusts of the flesh, its un-
speakable orgies at Sodom and Gomorrah, and the
mesmeric effect of its horrid cruelties, exercised
a fatal attraction for primitive races — and how
bitter was the struggle, and how many the back-
slidings before they were emancipated from it.
For centuries the struggle continued in Israel

ARIZAT-BAAL: A PHCENICIAN PRIESTESS
As represented on the lid of her Sarcophagus in a tomb of the 4lh Century, b.c, at Carthage

THE OLD GODS 175

and Judah. Two centuries before Solomon built
the Temple Gideon left threshing wheat at his
father's house to throw down the altar of Baal
which had been set up by the Midianites. Two
centuries after the building of the Temple, at
the time of the great drought, Elijah challenged
the Prophets of Baal to bring down fire from
their god upon the altar. And when he mocked
them saying, peradventure he sleepeth and must
be wakened, they cried aloud, and cut them-
selves after their manner with knives and lancets,
till the blood gushed out of them. And again
three centuries passed before Josiah, King of
Judah, made a clean sweep. He put down all
those that burned incense unto Baal, to the
sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and
to all the host of heaven. He burned the groves,
and broke down the houses of the Sodomites.
He defiled Tophet, in the Valley of Hinnom,
" that no man might make his son or his
daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch."
" And the High Places that were before Jerusa-
lem, which were on the right hand of the Mount
of Corrviption, which Solomon, the King of
Israel, had builded for Ashtaroth, the abomina-
tion of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh, the
abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom,
the abomination of the Children of Ammon,
did the King defile."

The end was not yet. Jerusalem was to be
destroyed and the Jews led captive to Babylon,
Jeremiah had yet to utter his Lamentations,
and Ezekiel to see his visions before the race
was purged of the taint in its blood. And then
it became but a remnant, dispersed among the

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nations. The Old Gods retained their hold in
Asia Minor and in Africa for centuries even after
Christianity had been founded and had become
the religion of the Roman Empire. The fierce
zeal of Mohammed at last ended their reign in
these lands. But their presence is still felt where
the sun shines hotly upon their ruined altars
and their broken pillars and their deserted
groves. The crescent still has honour, and the
jewelled hand which all the women wear as a
trinket, and which they call the hand of Moham-
med's daughter, is in reality the mystic hand
of Tanit. We stand upon a lava crust, below
which still glow the infernal fires, and we hear
faintly in the air the siren call of some far-off
dying pagan beauty.

CHAPTER XX
ISLAM

IF vre wish to understand the strength of
the Mohammedan rehgion, its rapid growth
in the early days in Asia and in Africa,
and its enduring hold upon the races of the
Heat Belt, we must obtain the right perspective.
The Gospel of Mohammed came as a message
of hope and deliverance to nations in bondage.
Against the bloody cruelty of pagan super-
stition, a religion of horror, it set up the ideal
of a single God who was merciful and com-
passionate. Into the anarchic political con-
ditions of that time it introduced the idea of
a religious community in which the blood-feud
was suppressed. Above all it appealed to the
slave and the oppressed. It broke down the
barriers of caste and of rank. All Mohammedans
were on a level before God. No Mohammedan
could own as slave a man of the same faith.
A slave, or a man of mean birth, might rise to
the highest position in the State. It tempered
political and social despotism by a crude form
of democracy. In this respect it resembled the
primitive Christian Church which five centuries
before the time of Mohammed had made great
advances among the same peoples.
M 177

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By the time Mohammed appeared the Christian
Church had definitely failed in its appeal to these
peoples. It had been adopted as the official
religion of the Roman Empire, and had become
the chief bulwark of that mighty despotism.
It had, moreover, become acclimatised to the
ethical system of the temperate zone, that is
to say, it had become European instead of
African or Asiatic as it was in origin. Both
in the political and in the moral spheres, there-
fore, it represented to them an intolerable
tyranny.

Islam is the most fiercely monotheistic of all
religions, not even excluding the Jewish and the
Christian. " There is no God hut Allah, and
Mohammed is His Prophet.'' That is the simple,
concrete, definite creed, clear and hard as crystal,
upon which the whole Faith is based. It has no
theology, no room for priestcraft. In its essence
it was a fierce revolt against everything that is
involved in theology and priestcraft. It is the
religion of an illiterate man, of strong character
and personality, who was in vehement revolt
against the evils of idolatry and superstition,
evils which weighed upon the human mind with
a horrible accumulation. Mohammed was a
puritan. He sought to establish a pure religion
of the One God, with a creed which even the most
illiterate, even the savage, could grasp and
understand, and to abolish altogether the inter-
mediation of any priest between a man and his
God. The negro who can repeat the magic
formula has grasped the whole essence of the
religion, while his mind reels before the mystic
doctrine of the Trinity. He is a Mohammedan.

ISLAM 179

This is the secret of the advance which Mohamme-
danism continues to make among the African
tribes.

From that simple creed much followed. The
law of the One God was set forth in the Koran
of Mohammed, his Prophet. The religion incul-
cated by Mohammed in the Koran was a pure
theism, and the rules of social conduct enjoined
brotherhood among the faithful, justice, abstin-
ence, and the regular performance of the rite of
prayer. But human nature is weak. The
human mind seeks the aid of superstition. In
his zeal against the abominable idolatry of his
time Mohammed absolutely prohibited, whether
for religious or for decorative purposes, all
images, all statues, and all pictorial representa-
tions of any kind, lest they should act as a snare
and lead the people into idolatry. And yet the
Mohammedan peoples have found a way of
circumventing him. They have made a fetish
of the Koran. They have made of the printed
book something greater than God. They use
it in a purely superstitious way. They regard its
texts as charms and talismans. For the human
intellect to venture on any intellectual develop-
ment beyond it is blasphemy. They have in fact
set it up as an idol to be worshipped blindly
and literally. They are not without their parallels
in Christendom.

The wandering Englishman whom I met at
Biskra, and who had lived much among the
Arabs, said to me : " The Mohammedan has
a very natural way of speaking about his religion.
He regards it as one of the natural facts of life,
like the weather. An Arab was once telling me

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of a journey he had made across the Desert.
One portion he described as the most sterile
and desolate land he had ever seen. ' For days
we went without ever seeing a blade of grass
or a living creature. Not a bird or even an
insect was to be seen — nothing at all. Only
the sand and God.' Just like that — the one
as naturally as the other — ' only the sand and
God.' "

The mosque is naturally the chief source from
which the European visitor can derive any
impressions of the nature of the Mohammedan
religion. Throughout Algeria the mosques are
freely open to strangers, but in Tunisia they are
rigidly closed, with the exception of the one
town of Kairouan. In the mosque the religion
is seen at its best. The worshippers are reverent,
there is an atmosphere of devotion, and a spirit
of humility and fraternity prevails. In the
course of my reading I came across an extract
from an article by Kathleen Wilson in the
''Echo" (12th May, 1897), which conveys
effectively the impression produced by a
Mohammedan shrine upon a person of religious
temperament.

" From the open court in the interior comes
the clear tinkle of running water. . . . But in
those solemn aisles that enclose the open court,
always that unbroken silence and that gloom.
Not an ornament, a picture, or a hanging ; no
sign of painted stories ; no least symbol of
ritual or of doctrine; nothing but aisle upon
aisle with snow-white arches converging intri-
cately, the thick, soft carpet, and the strips of
bamboo matting under foot, the dim, faintly

ISLAM 181

scattered lamps overhead. Not one window is
there in any of the many walls around, no
organ, pulpit, altar, chancel ; and yet without
the smallest aid to devotion, the very quint-
essence of reverent and passionate adoration
breathes from out the spaces that these white
undecorated walls shut in. So much so that
one reckoned at home a great man and upholder
of the Faith called orthodox, when he came
to thiL land and moved much in the stern, sweet
atmosphere of this other Faith, was known to
say, ' Almost thou persuadest me to be a
Mohammedan.' "

What puzzles Europeans most is the apparent
divergence between faith and works on the part
of these ardent worshippers, their zeal in
prayer and in certain forms of abstinence, and
their lax morality. It produces a painful or a
humorous impression according to the tempera-
ment of the observer.

Joseph Thomson, the African explorer, who
had thought favourably of Mohammedanism
before he visited Morocco, wrote : "It was
difficult to grasp the fact . . . that absolutely
the most religious nation on the face of the
earth was also the most grossly immoral. In
no sect is faith so absolutely paramount, so
unweakened by any strain of scepticism, as
among the Mohammedans of Morocco. Among
no people are prayers so commonly heard or
religious duties more rigidly attended to. Yet
side by side with it all, rapine and murder,
mendacity of the most advanced type, and
brutish and nameless vices exist to an extra-
ordinary degree."

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Palgrave, in his " Arabia," tells how he con-
versed about sin with Abd-el-Kereem, a master
of Islamic lore. He asked him which were the
" great " sins, and which should be reckoned
" httle."

" ' The first of the great sins,' he re-
plied, ' is the giving of divine honours to a
creature.'

" ' Of course,' I replied, ' the enormity of
such a sin is beyond all doubt. But if this be
the first there must be a second. What is
it?'

" ' Drinking the shameful,' in English :
' smoking tobacco,' was the unhesitating
answer.

" ' And murder, adultery and false witness ? '
I suggested.

" ' God is merciful and forgiving,' rejoined
my friend, ' that is, these are merely little
sins.'

" ' Hence, two sins alone are great, polytheism
and smoking,' I continued, though hardly able
to keep countenance any longer. And Abd-el-
Kereem, with the most serious asseveration,
replied that that was really the case."

Another thing which astonishes Europeans in
Mohammedan peoples is their apathy and in-
difference on many occasions that excite us to
energy and effort. The merchant does not rush
about seeking for custom ; he is content to sit
passively awaiting it. A nation will accept
defeat with resignation. "It is written."
" There is no escape from what is written."
" I am in the mercy of God." " As God wills."
With such phrases the Arab meets good fortune or

ISLAM 183

disaster or reconciles himself to a dead level of
stagnation. Kismet, fate, is the universal law,
and men are but the creatures of destiny. No
human effort can alter the course of events
already decreed. So much have we come to
regard this attitude of mind as characteristic of
Mohammedan peoples that there is a tendency
on the part of some writers to regard Kismet
as part of the doctrine of the Koran, and as the
cau6e of the decay of all the Mohammedan
Powers.

The matter, however, is not so simple as this.
No such doctrine of predestination is specifically
taught in the Koran. Mohammed himself, and
his successors whose conquests extended from
Persia to Spain, showed no signs of paralysis
of the will or of passive acquiescence in the
decrees of fate. The doctrine of predestination
in its extreme form has been held by people,
by Calvinists, for example, whose stern and
grim character admitted of no surrender to fate
and who would maintain a fight against over-
whelming odds. Of two men who hold the same
doctrine one will bow down supinely before the
inevitable, while another will rush furiously into
action, saying : " Thus and thus it is decreed !
I am myself the instrument of fate." Habit of
mind, character, temperament, is the true fate.
A man cannot escape from himself. And,
indeed, it is written : " Greater is he that ruleth
himself than he that taketh a city." It was the
Arab temperament which was capable of the
furious zeal of the cavalry charges which drove
Rome out of Asia Minor and Africa. It was the
Arab temperament which prevented the growth

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of any permanent Arab Empire. And tempera-
ment depends largely on climate. The Moham-
medan religion, like the date palm, is a product
of the Heat Belt.

CHAPTER XXI
THE TASK OF FRANCE

THE French have not yet succeeded in
developing, colonising, and European-
ising North Africa as thoroughly as
the Romans did. They have been in occupa-
tion less than a century in Algeria and less
than half a century in Tunisia. The Romans,
on the other hand, had been in occupation of
this same territory for half a millennium, three
times as long as we have been in occupation of
India. For five centuries it was one of the
richest and most flourishing of the Roman
Provinces. Fifteen centuries ago the country
was Europeanised to a far greater extent than
it is to-day. It was better equipped with the
machinery of civilisation. Aqueducts and irriga-
tion dams represented a vast sunk capital and
far-sighted development. Plains which are now
desert were then cultivated. Great cities
equipped with all the luxuries and refinements
of Rome, adorned with art and centres of learn-
ing, flourished not merely on the coast but far
inland, on the frontiers of the Desert, where
now silence reigns. Magnificent roads pene-
trated the remotest parts of the country, and
rivers were spanned by bridges whose ruins are
still eloquent of conquest over man and Nature.
The civil engineer was supreme in the Roman

J85

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Empire, and his handiwork is everywhere visible.
He was the real builder of the Empire after the
soldier had opened up the way. It was here
also, in Africa, before St. Peter's in Rome was
ever heard of, that the Christian Church first
became a power. It was the country of Ter-
tuUian, Cyprian, and Augustine. Then came
the Mohammedan deluge, sweeping both Rome
and Christianity out of Africa, and the Dark
Ages descended like the fall of a curtain.

France has brought back to this derelict
province the European tradition. Consciously,
deliberately, avowedly, with the logical system
and set purpose that are characteristic of her
race, she has taken up the task of Rome with
the methods of Rome. She has subdued the
robber tribes of the Atlas and the Sahara. She has
driven roads and railways into the recesses of the
country, and linked up cities, towns, and villages
with telegraph and telephone. She is draining
the fever-haunted valleys, irrigating the desert,
planting orange and olive groves and vineyards,
and ploughing the corn lands. She offers sub-
stantial inducements to French settlers to colonise
the land. She has established schools, and post-
offices, and savings' banks, and boulevards, and
cafes, and introduced cinemas, gramophones,
and newspapers. And, lastly, she has introduced
popular elections.

Gaul, the greatest of the Roman Provinces,
loves to think of herself as the heir returning
to his own. In all that she does she sets before
herself the Roman model. Rome aimed at
making her provinces a part of Rome, incor-
porated in the Roman system, held together by

THE TASK OF FRANCE 187

common institutions, by common privileges of
citizenship, by a uniform legal system, by a
standardised education, and by systematic
organisation. Algiers is not a self-governing
Dominion like Canada, or a subject State like
India, or a Crown Colony like Jamaica ; Algiers
is incorporated as an integral part of France,
directly represented in the French Chamber of
Deputies. The aim of France is to assimilate
rather than to dominate or to establish in an
independent career.

To all outward appearance the French seem
to have met with marvellous success. The
contrast between Egypt on the one hand, and
Algeria and Tunisia on the other hand, is too
obvious at the present moment not to be noticed
by the most casual observer. In both cases an
ancient civilisation has been swept away by the
tide of Mohammedanism. In both cases a
European Power has in comparatively recent
times stepped in and assumed responsibility for
the government of the country. The British in
Egypt are confronted by violent agitation and
incipient rebellion. There is no trace of any
similar movement against the French in Algeria
or Tunisia — at present. Some young Arabs who
have had associations with Egypt may talk
wildly about ideas they do not understand in the
cafes, but they have no following, and no material
to work on.

I looked in vain for signs of the general
Mohammedan unrest about which so much has
been heard in the East. I did, indeed, hear some
rumours of trouble among the tribes in the
Aures Mountains, but it was of a purely local

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character, and seemed to have no pohtical
significance. There were, I was informed, some
bandits led by a deserter from the army, a
sergeant who had committed several murders
and who knew that if he were captured he would
go to the guillotine. He had gathered round him
a small band of men as desperate as himself.
They played the role of Robin Hood, befriending
the poor and robbing the rich. Hitherto they
had not meddled with Europeans. Their plan
was to send a message to some rich native that
they wanted a thousand francs. He generally
paid up, for he knew that if he did not they would
take his life as well. So they levied a kind* of
tribute or blackmail on the district, but they
were very popular with the poorer people who
would not betray them. There had also been
some small trouble with the enforcement of
conscription during the War. There was a small
rising and a prominent official had been killed.
Some German agents may have been at work.
The matter was hushed up at the time. But
none of these incidents seemed to give rise to
any anxiety on the part of the authorities.

Economically British rule in Egypt has been
more successful than has French rule in Algeria
and Tunisia. It has created greater material
prosperity. But politically it has been less
successful. I made many efforts, by enquiries
among British subjects of long residence in the
country, both business men and officials, to find
an explanation of this contrast. I received no
completely satisfactory explanation, but there
seemed to be a general consensus of opinion on
several points. The military regime, and espe-

THE TASK OF FRANCE 189

cially the presence in Egypt of the Australian
soldiers in the early days of the War, had a
bad political effect. The Australians regarded
all the inhabitants ahke as " Niggers," who must
get out of the White Man's way. The poorer
natives were ill-treated and sometimes plundered.
The educated natives, many of them men of high
position and dignity, were humiliated and
treated with indignity. The people of French
Africa, moreover, were quite different from the
Egyptians in race, in temperament, and in
education. There were distinct differences even
in the territory between Tangiers and Tunis,
which are well expressed in the Arab saying
that the Moroccans are a race of warriors, the
Algerians a race of gentlemen, and the Tunisians
a race of women. The French were themselves
a Latin race, more akin to the natives, and,
lacking the element of race prejudice, they
mingled with the natives more on equal terms.
In Egypt education was much more highly
developed. In this respect the very success of
our rule was creating the means for its own
destruction. Finally, the proximity of Egypt
to Turkey offered facilities for agitation by pro-
Turks, while the French sphere was far removed
from such influences.

It is not that the French have shown any
excess of tenderness for Mohammedan sentiment.
They have taken over mosques in many instances
and converted them to Christian or to secular
uses. They make no effort to suppress Moham-
medanism, they give it full tolerance. Their
attitude towards religion in general is secular.
The State is their Church, and they leave no

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room for mistake as to whether the State is
master. Christianity must have an equal right
to flaunt its emblems where once they were
trodden under foot. At one of the best view
points on the Rue Michelet, in Mustapha
Superieur, from which the whole panorama of
the town, harbour, and bay of Algiers may be
surveyed, there is erected an iron cross with the
legend :

IN HOC SIGNO VINCES

1858.

In the course of suppressing an insurrection
fomented by a Marabout called Bou-Amama Bel
Arbi, in 1881, Col. Negrier committed an act
which gave deep offence to the Arabs. He
destroyed the tomb of Sidi Sheikh, the great
Saint of the Sahara, to whose family Bou-
Amama belonged, and transported the ashes to
Greyville. The act, which bore a close resem-
blance to the much-discussed desecration of the
Mahdi's tomb by Lord Kitchener in the Sudan,
was very popular with the extreme French party
in Algeria, and was never formally repudiated
by the Government. The tomb, however, was
reconstructed by the State, and the Saint's
bones were redeposited in it. This combination
of religious tolerance, or indifference, and drastic
insistence upon the supremacy of the State, was
characteristic of pagan Rome.

There is no sign of friction. One meets no
surly looks in the street or beside the mosque.
But one wonders if there is anything beneath the
placid surface. There are deeps below deeps.
In his book on " Roman Africa," Gaston Boissier

THE TASK OF FRANCE 191

says in effect something like the following : We
have conquered the country much more rapidly
than the Romans. But we have not won over
the inhabitants. There has been no fusion, no
real union. They cherish their separate beliefs,
customs, hatreds. At heart they are our mortal
enemies and probably will never blend with us.

At Biskra, as stated earlier, I met a wandering
Englishman who had lived much with the natives,
and who might have served as a prototype for
Browning's " What's become of Waring ? " I
quote his opinion because it seemed to me the
best informed and most fully informed of any
that I heard.

" Why do the French get on better with the
natives than we do in Egypt ? It is difficult to
say. The natives here are of a different race
from those of Egypt. They have no educated
proletariat knowing nothing of practical affairs.
Then the French are more cunning than we are.
They treat the richer class, the chiefs, and the
leading men, as Europeans. They travel in the
same railway carriages with them and use the
same hotels and restaurants. We insist more
on the race distinction, and these men feel that
they are slighted and humiliated. We protect
the poor people, the agriculturists, and we see
that they secure justice, and we prevent them
from being exploited by the more powerful ones.
This further aggravates the richer men whom
we have already humiliated. The French are
cunning enough both to placate the wealthy
and to secure justice for the poor, at least in a
large measure. Then the French are so logical.
If a man is good enough to fight for his country

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he is good enough to vote. All the soldiers who
were enrolled during the War have now got votes.

" The French local population, however, dis-
like the Arabs intensely. Their temperament
is so different. The Frenchman is, above all
things, industrious and thrifty. He is keen on
making money. He does not understand the
Arab, who is content to live from hand to mouth,
and who, if he has enough for to-day, takes no
thought as to how he is to live to-morrow. The
local French are often very bitter about the
Arabs having votes. The home Government,
they complain, does not understand how to
treat the native.

" The Arabs, again, hate the Kabyles, or
Berbers, the native stock which was here before
the Arabs, before the Romans, before the
Phoenicians, and which has retained its own
language in spite of all subjugations. They are
an industrious and hard-working people, es-
pecially in agriculture. Goodness knows what
is their racial origin. They are scattered very
wide, from the Djurdjura to the Atlas Mountains,
and even to the oases of the Touaregs, far in the
Sahara. They are not negroid, though a shght
prognathous tendency indicates an admixture of
Negro blood. They are not Semitic like the
Arabs. Apart from their costume they are as
European in appearance as you or I. Suitably
dressed they would be indistinguishable from
the natives of any French or English village.
They are of that Mediterranean race which
inhabited the country at the time when Africa
and Europe were joined by land bridges at
Gibraltar and across Sicily, when the Western

THE TASK OF FRANCE 193

Mediterranean was an inland lake, and when
probably the Sahara was a sea cutting them off
from the rest of Africa. They were to be found
in Italy and Sicily and they even penetrated
to Britain and Spain, where we call them Iberians.
The Greeks of the Islands were of the same stock,
but the Greeks of the Mainland were quite a
different race. In my view these Kabyles are
' Europeans,' and, if the French occupation con-
tinues, in the course of a century or so they will
be indistinguishable from the French. The
religious barrier will probably be broken down.
They are not orthodox Mohammedans as it is.
They are very lax, and they go in for many
practices which are not Mohammedan, while
the French, on their side, are very tolerant, if not
indifferent in religious matters."

Will France succeed where Rome failed ? I
am not sure. It is too early to venture on
prophecy. The great experiment is only at its
beginning. There are many factors which require
time for development and whose significance is
obscure. France has taken Rome for her model,
but France is not Rome, and she has to contend
with two factors which were unknown to the
Romans — Religion and the modern theory of
Democracy which has dominated France since
the Revolution.

The Mohammedan religion has a stronger hold
on the African population than any of the old
pagan cults which existed in the time of the
Romans. It is as hard and as self-centred as a
diamond. It opposes a blank wall to the most
active and stimulating ideas and motive forces
of our civilisation. It is a spiritual armour

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against Europeanisation. It does not yield.
The soul of Africa is still the soul which Moham-
med gave it from the Desert.

The evolution of the modern idea of Democracy
is hostile to the imposition of an alien civilisation
upon another people. It is all in favour of " self-
determination." Strictly interpreted it would
leave the heathen in his blindness if he so desires.
It rejects the somewhat hypocritical idea of the
White Man's Burden. It assumes that if people
are left alone to govern themselves, they will
always choose the better course. The pressure
of French public opinion at home restrains the
present Government from adopting many drastic
methods of assimilation which were open to the
Romans.

And in spite of prehistoric affinities of race
there is in Africa something intractable and
alien to Europe. Why should the Roman
tradition have survived the Mohammedan
domination in Spain and not in Algeria ? It
is the sun which claims Africa as its own. The
great tropic heart of Africa can never be
Europeanised. Africa is the land of the camel,
the palm, the cactus, the desert, the mirage,
the Koran. You cannot teach the palm to branch
like an oak. It is true that Spain is in climatic
respects almost identical with Morocco and
Algeria ; but the heart from which it draws its
blood is European. Its reservoirs lie not in the
South but in the North.

Europe has once more laid hold of Africa as
she has laid hold of Asia at intervals since the
first beginnings of history. She has conquered,
she has taken possession, but in the end she has

THE TASK OF FRANCE 195

always recoiled. To conquer is one thing, to
assimilate is quite another. The assimilator may
be assimilated. The struggle is not merely a
physical one but a spiritual one. The soul of
the conqueror is in danger. Western Europe
was saved from being Byzantinised by being cut
off from Africa and Asia. In spite of our great
possessions in Asia and Africa, the salt estranging
sea has saved us so far. We sup with a long
spoon with the East and the South. But France
lies only a few hours' sail from the New France
which she is endeavouring to create in Africa.
Her success has been marvellous. Africa has
responded to the stimulus of stronger will and
character. But — but we have yet to see whether
there will be any reflex action.

CHAPTER XXII

"ESTO PERPETUA"

IT was through Mr. Belloc's short book
— an essay, he calls it — that I first felt
the enchantment of the Maghreb, that
lost outpost of Europe, corresponding to Tunisia,
Algeria, and Morocco, which France is now
steadily recovering. The book is slight, like a
fountain jet sparkling in the sunlight, with
perhaps a rainbow in the spray, but it springs
from deep reservoirs of feeling, knowledge, and
thought. It belongs to the period of " The
Path to Rome," and indeed, it might be a
supplement to that delightful book. It is
no laboured diary of his journey through
Algeria but a jeu d'esprit, an afterthought,
an improvisation. One might almost say it had
a lyric quality about it.

The spirit of the book is joyously heroic
— the spirit of the Three Musketeers. He has
all the recklessness of Porthos and all the
subtlety of Aramis. He is full of challenges.
His blade is always leaping from its scabbard.
He is ready to ram his opinions down the
throat of the first man he meets at the inn.
One can see him arriving at the inn, shouting
for wine and pasties, singing songs of his country,
and discoursing, with an air, upon the Eternal

196

"ESTO PERPETUA" 197

Verities. The gallantry and gaiety and audacity
of his gasconade are infectious.

The Belloc mannerisms, affectations, poses,
which give such a piquant flavour to this
book, are still fresh, young, tender shoots
pushed forth in the luxuriant exuberance of
youth. He rails at the Jews, he brushes aside
with a superb gesture the Protestant schis-
matics, he turns his back on the barbaric North,
he is in his most oracular vein, he shocks the
Puritans, he uses theological terms familiarly,
he chaffs his readers, he cuts short a disquisition
on the destiny of man to recount with circum-
stantial detail a wayside adventure of his
own.

" Would to God I could tell you of the shoe-
maker ! " he exclaims as he hastens through a
village in " The Path to Rome." Fortunately,
he finds time to tell us of the Shoemaker —
"or words to that effect "—in " Esto Per-
petua." There is the story of the House of
the Lions, of the Arab farmer who gave him a
lift on the road, and boasted of his possessions,
of the old soldier at Timgad who fed him on
stewed mutton which tasted like camel, and
of the strange man whom he met in the ruins
who was clad in a long cloak of stuff not woven
in a modern loom, who told him " that many
who saw the Desert learned ijiore than they
desired to learn," whose sentences were " full
of what he and his call wisdom and I despair,"
and who left him with the fantastic thought
" that he had known the city when it was
loud with men." Here is a httle incident seen
sub specie Mternitatis, There was " a poor

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Arab and old, who sold fruits upon a stall in
Setif. In his face there was a deep contempt
for Christendom. The snow fell all round
him swiftly, mixed with sleet and sharp needles
of cold rain. . . . He knew me at once for
someone to whom Africa was strange, and
therefore might have hoped to make me stop
even upon such a night to buy of him. Yet
he did not say a word, but only looked at me
as much as to say : ' Fool ! Will you buy ? '
And I looked back at him as I passed, and
put my answer into my eyes as much as to
say : ' No, Barbarian, I will not buy.' In
this way we met and parted and we shall never
see each other again till that Great Day."

Alas for the flight of years ! That was four-
teen years ago, and "The Path to Rome"
was earlier. The springs of poesy are drying
up. The lyric rapture has fled. The poet has
become a metaphysician. In his recent books
Mr. Belloc has run to seed. The early affecta-
tions which were as charming as the tender
shoots of asparagus have now become hard,
stringy, and fibrous. The mannerisms have
become a formula. The gaiety is no longer
spontaneous. The joy has given place to
asperity. He is no longer a musketeer for
fun but a hardened veteran. The trouble is
that he has successfully hoaxed himself. His
earliest books such as " Lambkin's Remains "
and " Caliban's Guide to Letters " were exer-
cises in elaborate and sustained irony. The
trick of posing captivated him. He posed in his
gestures, in his mannerisms, in his antipathies,
and, which was fatal, in his opinions. There

"ESTO PERPETUA" 199

is nothing more dangerous, more treacherous,
than to strike an attitude in opinion. This
is what Mr. Belloc did. He had lashed Lambkin
and CaUban with elaborate sarcasm and fool-
ing. He had exhibited their foibles and their
humbug in grotesque parody. Then he exceeded
the licence of parody. They had hoaxed the
public with their ponderous solemnity. The
public was an ass. He would show how it
could be hoaxed into accepting the most glaring
paradox by sheer intellectual audacity and
effrontery. He ended by falling into the pit
which he himself had digged. He persuaded
himself. He has fallen a victim to his own
practical joke. The pose has become grim
earnest. The masquerade has become a reality.
The opinion which he played with has gripped
him and mastered him, and become an obses-
sion. The farceur takes himself seriously. He
is in danger of becoming a crank like an inventor
whose great project the Government has
rejected.

In " Esto Perpetua " one sees in its simplest
and most attractive form the idea which has
since clambered like ivy round all his literary
activity. It crops up like King Charles's head
in every book he has since written. In one
volume after another the idea can be seen
growing, as it were, from an embryo taking
organic shape, developing, absorbing nutriment
from its environment, building up by vigorous
^election a hard shell or argument, until finally
it emerges in the full panoply of an historical
fliesis in " Europe and the Faith."

In bald terms the idea is this. The Catholic

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Church and the Roman Empire and European
civiHsation are identical. All the permanent
and stable elements in European Society are
derived direct from Rome and the Roman
Church. Everything that is not Catholic is
Barbarian and outside the pale. Protestantism
is a disease of the Barbaric North springing
from those countries which never were fully
incorporated into the civilisation of the Roman
Empire. The Goths, the Vandals, the Normans,
the Angles, the Saxons, the Huns, and the
Germans still beat like surf upon the frontiers
of the Empire. If we are to fulfil the mission
of Europe, if our civilisation is to endure, we
must recover the True Faith. The mere state-
ment of the idea is a challenge, and this no
doubt enhanced its attractiveness for Mr.
Belloc.

Against this may be set up the counter idea.
All that is most characteristic of European
civilisation is derived from the marriage between
the Northern or " Gothic " intellect and tempera-
ment and the Roman culture. The Roman
Empire and the Roman Church, with their
gospel of authority, both political and religious,
had become an intolerable tyranny. They had
great learning, great art, great system, but
they smothered individual liberty under a dead-
weight of authority. As the power of the
State grew the character of the citizen deterior-
ated. Rome was rotten ripe for its fall when
the Barbarian deluge broke upon it and brought
the new blood, the new temperament, the new
spirit of individualism which, under the quicken-
ing influence of Roman culture, were to save

" ESTO PERPETUA " 201

Europe. Through gradual stages the Northern
intellect and character evolved the Feudal
System, Gothic architecture. Representative
Government, Protestantism, and the Federal
form of Empire. For those who do not like
this kind of thing, of course, it is just the kind
of thing they would not like, but it is at least
intelligible that others may find here the real
meaning and mission of Europe.

This is not the place to argue out such an
issue, nor does Mr. Belloc attempt to do so in
" Esto Perpetua." The idea is there, clearly
defined, sparkling, challenging, like the cockade
of a lost cause worn for bravado by a Musketeer.
The high spirits, the lightness of touch, the
dash, the artistry of the whole thing disarm
criticism. Even those who dissent most from
the central idea can enjoy it and enter into the
spirit of it as we do with a Jacobite song or a
Cavalier roundelay.

Wandering in Barbary Mr. Belloc discovers
once more that he is on the Path to Rome. The
land, its relief, and its story are a symbol of the
adventures of Europe. It is thoroughly our
own in race, climate, and situation. We falsely
assume the Berbers to be Oriental because of
their dress and language, until we have noted
their faces, but they are fundamentally of our
own kind, capable of the same civilisation. He
examines a hewn stone built into a rubble wall
and finds on it the lettering of " the august
and reasonable Latin." He suddenly comes
upon the colossal ruins of the Aqueduct which
supplied distant Cherchel with water. " It
spans a lonely valley in which the bay and the

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harbour are forgotten, and it is as enormous as
the name of Rome." The little museum in the
Town Hall at Constantine, with its collection
of inscribed stones, is ''a rediscovery of our-
selves." " You dig through centuries of alien
rubbish and when you have dug deeply enough
you come suddenly upon Europe." At Lambese,
as high as the top of Cader Idris, there stands a
square and hardly ruined tower, the Prsetorium
of the camp of the Third Legion. It looks
almost Jacobean, and yet "it is older than our
language by far, and almost older than the
Faith." He approached Timgad by night, on
foot, and suddenly, in a glimpse of the moon, he
saw " a large city unroofed and dead in the
middle of this wasted land." The triumphal
arch, the inscriptions, and the statues were
" full of that serenity which faces wore before
the Barbarian march and the sack of cities.
The foundations on which the Maghreb is laid,
and to which it must return, are Roman."

Nowhere else is the genius of Rome more
apparent than in these African ruins. And
yet the Roman tradition was completely extir-
pated. It passed like a shadow on the dial
when the Mohammedan deluge broke upon the
land. The Berbers, though they were of our
own kind, had something barbaric in them — a
genius for revolt. In the African Church every
heresy arose. Even under Islam sect warred
against sect. In Syria, and in Spain, the Moslems
failed to extirpate Christianity; in Africa only
their victory was complete. The Berbers had
not the tenacity of Gaul, Spain, and Britain ;
they were not merely overwhelmed but, what

" ESTO PERPETUA " 203

is worse, persuaded. The Roman towns did not
decay — they were immediately abandoned, and
of the oUve groves the stone presses alone
remain. It was an example of cataclysmic
history which the " Scientific Historians," his
hete noir, deny.

And now, after twelve centuries, the French
have taken up the task of Rome. They have
designed, then organised, and then built. " The
mind is present to excess in the stamp they
have laid upon Africa. Their utter regularity
and the sense of will envelop the whole pro-
vince." " The vine is in Africa again. It will
not soon be uprooted." Take for example the
little town of Guelma, high up on the Tell,
surrounded by new farms and vineyards, Euro-
pean in climate, vegetation, and architecture,
and framed in the heavy walls and arches of
Rome, all informed by that " nameless char-
acter which is the mark of Empire and carries,
as it were, a hint of resurrection." The re-
founding of such municipalities, and not adven-
ture in the desert, is Europe's task. And yet,
in Guelma, as throughout Africa, the Arab has
" cast a spell." From the midst of the roofs
" rises the evidence of that religion which still
holds and will continue to hold all its people,"
the minaret that mocks us. The influence is
intangible. It has sunk into the Atlas and
the Desert and fills the mind of every man
throughout this land. " Against this vast,
permanent and rooted influence we have nothing
to offer. . . . Nor will our work be accomplished
until we have recovered . . . the full tradition
of our philosophy, and a faith which shall

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permeate all our actions as completely as does
this faith of theirs."

How is France equipped for the task ? She
has been handicapped by the " dissolution of
the principal bond between Europeans, the
bond of their traditional ritual and confessional."
But for this Italy and Spain would have shared
in the task — Italy in Tunisia, and Spain in
Morocco. Owing to the division of nations the
task fell to France alone. " The vices and the
energy of this people are well known." Of
necessity they have produced in Africa, not a
European and a general effect, but a Gallic and
a particular effect. " They are not Roman in
permanent stability of character." On their
long route marches the French often fail to
reach their goal, and have to bivouac under
the sky, and sleep out unsatisfied. They may
fail in their task of recreating the Empire in
Africa, but, if they fail, Europe will fail with
them and our tradition is ended. But " they
have done the Latin thing."

Besides Islam and the lack of unity in Europe
there is another obstacle, or rather limit,
geographical and climatic, to the European-
ising of Africa. Mr. Belloc tells how he climbed
on foot over the last ridge of the Aures Moun-
tains until he reached the Southern slope and
saw stretched before him " a Vast space much
more inhuman than the sea . . . sharp reefs
of stone, unweathered, without moss, and with
harsh unrounded corners, split by the furnace
days and the dreadful frosts of the desert."
" I had then seen a limit beyond which men
of my sort cannot go." And as he returned

" ESTO PERPETUA " 205

" over an earth that was quite barren, with no
history," and observed the immobile figure of
an Arab of the Great Tent, he said : " This is
how it will end. They shall leave us our land
with the European climate and we will leave
them their desert." Esto Perpetua ! Let Rome
live for ever !

Vain dream — a mirage of the mind ! France
may indeed be successful in her task, but it is
not Rome that France brings back to Africa.
The well-springs of that Western civilisation for
which France stands are in the North and not
in Italy. Rome stands for dominion and
authority ; France stands for " Liberty, Fra-
ternity, Equahty ! " No doubt Gaul has much
Latin blood in her, but she has also much
Frankish and Norman blood, and the political
institutions which she has developed and is
developing bear, like Gothic architecture, the
characteristic marks of Northern origin. When
the Gothic races broke into the crumbhng
Empire it was the Vandals who occupied Spain,
crossed the narrow straits, and sacked the cities
of the African province. They settled down in
the country, but they were not sufficiently
numerous as were the Lombards in Italy, or
the Normans in France, or the Saxons in England.
They were cut off from their kind. The climatic
influences, moreover, were against them, and
they finally were absorbed in the native stock,
leaving no trace of their presence save occa-
sional blue eyes and fair hair among the Kabyle
tribes, and a single word added to the native
dialect, trinkan, to drink. They passed, but
their kindred races in Europe built up a new

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civilisation out of the ruins of the Empire. It
is not Rome which comes again to Africa with
the French. It is the Vandals returning on the
crest of the wave of Western Democracy which
is their own.

CHAPTER XXIII

CHARLIE MEETS THE BOAT

ON the arrival of the s.s. Eugene Pereire,
from Tunis, at Marseilles the pas-
sengers were gathered as usual in the
dining saloon, with their luggage awaiting the
appearance of the porters. Suddenly there
burst into the saloon an excited person with a
cap bearing the words " Agence X " on the
band. He was shouting " Meester Veegeens !
Meester Veegeens ! " in which form I recog-
nised the name of Mr. Wiggins, an official of the
British Government who had a cabin to himself.
He was soon directed to Mr. Wiggins's cabin,
but before going down he took the opportunity
to announce to the assembled passengers : " Une
grande Greve des Cheminots ! La Gave est fermee !
Les hotels sont remplis ! "

A railway strike — no trains — the hotels full !
The news went through the crowded saloon
like an electric shock. Those who had taken
the precaution to book rooms (and who had
letters or telegrams in confirmation) congratu-
lated themselves. The others, who had intended
to proceed direct to Paris, or who had trusted
to finding room at the inn, began to consult
anxiously with one another, and to speculate
upon the possibilities of bath-rooms and billiard

207

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tables. " I telegraphed to the Hotel du Louvre
a week ago," said a shrill voice, " and prepaid
a reply. I think that's good enough, don't
you ? They didn't reply but I shall hold them
to it. They should have let me know if they
couldn't give me a room."

The voice of the herald of bad tidings was
heard again — " There are no carriages, and
very few porters ! " The gloom deepened. I
went downstairs to consult with Mr. " Veegeens "
who seemed to be a person with authority,
and who, even in the midst of this catastrophe,
had a representative of the " Agence X " in
attendance on him.

It seemed that I had found my saviour. He
had got the Agency to make all arrangements
for him at Marseilles, to meet him at the steamer,
to take charge of his luggage, and to convey him
to his hotel. By a fortunate accident rooms had
been reserved for him in two separate hotels.
He had himself booked a room in the Hotel
Splendid, and he was informed that the Agency,
in ignorance of this, had booked another room
for him at the Regence. He would be very glad
to place the second room at my disposal. More-
over the representative of the " Agence X,"
after seeing him to his hotel, would, no doubt, be
glad to see to my transport. '' Can you arrange
for this gentleman, Ferdinand ? "

" For a friend of yours everything is possible.
A room at the hotel ! But yes — a good room.
A carriage ! A porter ! Nothing is impossible.
What is the name of Monsieur ? Ah — Meester
Scott ! If you will rest in the salle with your
hagages I will return. Allons .' " He staggered

CHARLIE MEETS THE BOAT 209

up the cabin stairs with a heavy trunk, nearly
knocking over a waiter and a passenger and
leaving a trail of maimed and wounded behind
him. Where had I seen him before ?

I returned triumphant to the saloon to await
this miracle worker. I had not long to wait.
His voice was heard again : " Meester Scott !
Meester Scott ! " " This way," I cried, and a
lane opened up as he charged through the dense
crowd of passengers who were casting envious
glances in my direction.

My " bagages " were not inconsiderable, as I
was travelling with my wife. He grappled
with a heavy cabin trunk while I grasped a
suit-case and a hold-all. " Non ! Non ! " he
exclaimed with an expression of anguish,
shaking his head till his cap fell off. He put
down the trunk to recover it and forcibly
deprived me of the luggage. " Ne touchez pas !
It is all arranged. Have I not said it ! Restez
ici, and guard well the other bagages. All the
people here are thieves. I will return with the
porter. He attends." His gesticulations were
violent, and, as he rolled off again with the
trunk, even his legs seemed to gesticulate.

He reappeared with an incredibly stout long-
shoreman, whom he seemed to have conscripted
to act as porter, and I followed them, sucked up
in the eddy made by their passage through the
crowd.

Our luggage was dumped on the pavement.
" Attendez ! Attendez ! Je chercherai une voiture.^^
An accomplice rushed past him apparently intent
on other business. He grasped him by the
shoulder and lugged him back, his arms and

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legs revolving like the spokes of a wheel. I
could not follow the rapid exchange of expletives
in the Marseillaisian dialect, but I gathered
that it had something to do with the voiture.
The accomplice disappeared up a side-street,
and the master of the situation ran across to a
cafe. A rattle of wheels. The voiture at last,
with the accomplice standing up in it and
shouting to the loiterers to clear the way. Our
deliverer emerged from the cafe as it passed,
and jumped on board. '' It is all right ! " he
shouted. " Fait accompli ! I have telephoned
to the hotel. The room is reserved for you."

H^ and the accomplice and the longshoreman
flung themselves violently upon the luggage
and began piling it on the carriage. An electric
car was approaching, and no one noticed that
our carriage overlapped the car rails. Too late,
Ferdinand rushed forward, with his hand in
the air uttering a string of imprecations.
" Arretez ! Arretez ! " The driver pulled up
but not in time. The car caught our hind wheel.
The decrepit horse started forward with a fright-
ened jump. The luggage was scattered along
the street. While the accomplice and the long-
shoreman were recovering it, our friend was
cursing the car driver by all the gods of the Midi,
and explaining to him that I was a person of
importance, whose well-being was an object of
peculiar solicitude to his Britannic Majesty !

At last we were ready to start. I looked
round for the longshoreman who would, doubt-
less, be expecting a tip. He had disappeared.
" Allons ! It is my affair. I see to everything."
Ferdinand jumped up on the step on one side

CHARLIE MEETS THE BOAT 211

of the carriage, the accomplice jumped up on
the other side, and the carriage lurched for-
ward perilously. " Allons ! Allons I " Ferdinand
shouted, taking off his cap and waving it to the
disconsolate crowd we were leaving behind.

Now we had time for a little conversation of
which he assumed complete control : " You
are from Tunis ? You like it ? Yes ? You have
seen the Souks ? And the Bardo ? And
Carthage ? And Korbous ? I know ! I know !
And you have stopped at the Hotel Majestic ?
No! The Tunisia Palace? No! Ah! The
Hotel de France ! But yes, it is small, but
ver-r-r-y agreeable. And the patron, M. Eymon,
he is very stout, like this. Very good man !
You like Tunisie ? Good ! Very good ! I am
Tunisian. He (pointing across to his accomplice)
is from Algiers. No good ! No Souks ! You
like Tunis ? "

The accomplice, hanging on perilously to the
carriage step on the opposite side, now took up
the ball. " But you have been in Algiers, also ?
Yes ? And you like Algiers ? Ah, you stop in
Algiers a month, and only a fortnight in Tunis !
You hear that, Ferdinand ? It is evident that
Monsieur loves Algiers twice as much as Tunis."

" Oh, you be silent ! " shouted Ferdinand.
" Pay no attention to him. He knows nothing !
He is from Algiers ! " He leaned across us,
grabbed his accomplice's cap and rubbed it
over his face as if he were trying to stuff it
down his throat. " Do not regard him ! "

The carriage gave a perilous lurch round a
corner and pulled up at an hotel door. " Regard
it ! " shouted Ferdinand. " A beautiful hotel !

212 BARBARY

First-class ! Thank you very much ! And your
room is prepared. Will you give the driver
twenty francs ? "

I was rather staggered. " Is that not rather
much ? " I asked.

" Non ! Non ! On a night like this it is
nothing. I assure you that you are very fortu-
nate to arrive here."

I paid the driver and Ferdinand led us in
triumph to the hotel office. Yes, a room was
ready. Would we ascend at once ? The price ?
But yes, it was a very good chambre, at thirty
francs. Was there anything cheaper ? No-o-o-n.
To-night of all nights it was impossible to have
a choice.

It remained to say good-bye to Ferdinand.
I owed him something, I hinted delicately. How
much was it ?

" It is a matter of nothing. As Monsieur
pleases."

I searched in my purse and found two 20-franc
notes. " How will this do ? " I said, extending
one of them to him.

" Ah," he said, " money is of no importance
to me. But one must spend on a night like
this. I will take them both if Monsieur is so
kind ! " He grabbed the other note which I
still retained, crumpled them both up in his
hand, and stuffed them carelessly in his pocket.
" Bonsoir, Monsieur ! Au revoir ! " He wrung
my hand.

As he turned the light shone fully on his face.
In a flash I recognised him. The element of
familiarity which had puzzled me since I first
saw him puzzled me no longer. The black

CHARLIE MEETS THE BOAT 213

curling hair, the little dab of a moustache, the
impish twinkle in the eyes, the extravagant
gestures — I saw them all together. It was
Charlie ChapUn himself, Charlie Chaplin incar-
nate !

" Au revoir ! " I said. " Au revoir ! We
shall certainly meet again."

The Mediterranean shores are the native home
of Charlie Chaplin. One cannot escape the
type. It is Levantine, a weird blend of all the
races swept up by the tides of humanity into
this cul-de-sac — Greek, Jew, Syrian, Arab,
Italian, Maltese, Spanish, and even a touch
of the negroid from the African shore. One
sees him everywhere, Charlie Chaplin in the
tram-car, Charlie Chaplin carrying a ladder and
a pot of paint along the street, Charlie Chaplin
in a cafe, Charlie Chaplin in a Homburg hat, or
a bowler, or a fez. He flutters about like Puck,
careless, impudent, childlike, impish, exuberant,
full of the joy of life. Archaeologists tell us of
a Mediterranean race which was one of the
original racial stocks of Europe. Charlie Chaplin
is its modern representative.

I was reading some notices on a board in the
hotel lounge when suddenly my eyes caught
the name of the hotel and a thought occurred
to me.

" Is this the Hotel Regence ? " I asked the
clerk at the Bureau.

" But no ! It is the Hotel Regina."

" Oh, Charlie 1 "

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TUNISIA

INDEX

INDEX

Algiers, 16-18, 19-23, 32
Antonine Wall, 84, 96
Aphrodisium, 156, 173
Aqueduct —

of Carthage, 93

of Cherchel, 38
Arab characteristics, 66-70,

150, 192
Arab conquest, 38, 83, 154,

158, 186, 202
Arabic language, 65
Architecture —

Byzantine, 16, 160

Gothic, 13-15, 201

Mohammedan, 17-18,160-5
Ashtaroth. See Tanit
Atlas Mountains, 20, 58
Aur^s Mountains, 71, 73,

85-6, 96, 101, 187
Avignon, 15

Baal-Worship, 42, 119, 128,

143, 146, 166, 176
Batna, 75, 94, 97
Belloc, Hilaire, 196-206
Biskra, 50-7, 58-61, 64, 73
Bou Kornein Mountain, 123,

140-7
Britain, Roman Province,

82-98
Byzacium, 85, 154

Caesarea. See Cherchel

Carthage, 93, 108, 121-9,

167
ChapUn, Charlie, 207-13
Cherchel, 30-9
Christianity, Early, 43, 156,

177-8, 186
Cirta. See Constantine
Cleopatra, 34
Constantine, 33, 202

Dancing, 24, 27

Desert, 55-6, 60-3, 73, 74,

197, 204
Djerba Island, 22, 141
Djurdjura Mountains, 19-20,

117, 192
Dolmens, 82, 99-105

Egypt, 188-9

El Djem, 151-7

El Kantara, 74, 93, 96

Enfidaville, 102, 155-6

Fakirs, 24, 27, 60
Flaubert, 115, 130-9
French Administration, 59,
77, 185-95, 204

"Garden of Allah," 50-7,

59, 74
Guelma, 203

Hadrian, 82-4, 93

22.1

INDEX

Hadrian's Wall, 83-4, 92, | Phoenicians, 32, 82, 99, 100,

97
Hammam Lif, 141, 146
Hammam Meskoutine, 99
Hichens, Robert, 50-7, 59,

68
Hilton Simpson, Mr., 70-2

Jewish religion, 166-76
Jol. See Cherchel
Juba, 33-8

Kabyles, 192-3
Kairouan, 124, 158-61
Klhenchela, 86
Korbous, 143, 146
Ksar Menara, 156

Lambese, 76, 86, 93-5, 202
Lavigerie, Cardinal, 51, 128

Marseilles, 16, 207

Masinissa, 33

Mecca, 160-1

3Iedjerda Valley, 85, 148,

157
Melcarth, 170
Mitidja Plain, 21, 31-2
Mohammedanism, 177-84,

193
Morocco, 91, 189
Mostaganem, 109
Music, 24, 26
Mustapha Superieur, 20

Negrier, Colonel, 190
Notre Dame Cathedral, 14

Ouled Nails, 24, 27, 60

Palgrave, 182
Paris, 13
Perfumes, 114-20

128, 130-9, 140-1, 166-
76
Protestantism, 200

Ressas Mountain, 145
Roads, 148-50

Roman Africa, 28, 30-9,

40-9, 77, 80-98
Roman Church, 200
Roman cities, 40, 154, 186-7

Sahel, 148-57

St. Armand, General, 96

Salambo, 115, 130-9

Sand-storm, 63

Sbeitla, 154

Scotland, 80, 82-3, 94, 97

Selene Cleopatra, 34

Septimius Severus, 80, 82,

84, 97
Shawiah Tribe, 70-2, 101
Souks of Tunis, 106-13, 114-

20

Tabet, Hadji Mohammed,

115-20
Tanit, 42, 143, 146, 168, 169,

172-^, 176
Tebessa, 86-93, 150
Thomson, Joseph, 181
Timgad, 76-81, 86, 93, 197
Tipasa, 40-9
Tombeau de la Chretienne,

37-8
Tunis, 106-13, 141, 143, 211

Vandals, 78, 83, 122, 205

Westminster Abbey, 14

Zaghouan Mountain, 93, 145,
150

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