 Chapter 15 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter The oldest white race of the world. The people of the Atlas Mountains are whites, with features like ours and some of them have blue eyes and red hair. Many have rosy skins and complexions so fair that if dressed in European clothes they would not look strange in London, Paris or New York. Others are darker from their admixture with the Arabs and Moors, but they are still a distinct people and strong enough to impress their type on their offspring. This race is scattered through the mighty mountains of northwestern Africa. It is composed of the Berbers or Cabales who are numbered by millions and are found everywhere in these hills. The Atlas Mountains begin opposite the Canary Islands, well down the Atlantic coast and run from southwest to northeast for a distance of more than 1500 miles, ending near Cape Bonk below the island of Sicily. They are longer than from Philadelphia to Omaha and wider than the distance between Washington and New York. The region is more than one-seventh the size of the United States proper and including the valleys has a population of 15 millions or more. Only one-half of these people are made up of the descendants of this white race and if we add the tribes which have left the mountains and gone down into the lowlands and desert the Cabales will number still more. Torex, the fierce brigands of the Sahara who wear veils night and day and scour the desert on camels and rob the caravans are a Berber origin and so are the Biscrees and others who come from far down in the Sahara to do the heavy work about the wars of the Algerian ports. There are several million Berbers in Morocco where they have divided up into hundreds of tribes. They live in the mountains and are lawless and wild. The band of Rezuli which kidnapped Ian Pradikaris was one of these tribes. The Berbers are the oldest white race upon record and if we could trace our own forefathers back to the Stone Age we should probably find that they are our cousins. They are supposed to have come here from southern Europe but if so it was when Europe was savage and when our ancestors were still eating with their fingers and sleeping on skins in the wilds of the forests. Indeed the Berbers were here when Athens was in its infancy and when Rome was yet to be born. There are records in the Egyptian temples dating as far back as 1300 years before Christ which speak of them as having rosy cheeks blue eyes and red hair and we find them fighting with the Phoenicians the Carthaginians the Romans the Goths and the Vandals. They were conquered again and again but they fled to their fastness in the Atlas and have kept their individuality to this day. When the Arabs came the Berbers were once more overcome. They adopted the Mohammedan religion but modified it to suit themselves and they have still their own ways and customs as they had in the past. The Kabbal women do not veil their faces and a man is satisfied to have but one wife. A large number however have intermarried with the alien races so that there are now among them as many brown skins as fair ones. The fierce African sun darkens the lighter-hued Kabbals in the summer until they take on the brown, roseate complexions of Italy, Spain and South France. I've seen many of these fair-skinned Berbers or Kabbal since I came to the Black Continent. I met them first in Morocco and again in Spanish Africa and I found them everywhere during my travels in Algeria. I have spent a week in Grand Kabbalia where they are almost the soul inhabitants and have gone from village to village investigating their customs and photographing them at work and in their homes. Within the last three days I have driven for more than a hundred miles through the wildest of these African mountains crossing the Grand Atlas chain from Tizi Uzu the capital of Kabbalia by way of Fort National and Michelet over a pass almost as high as Mount Washington and then coming down to this little town of Mayo in the rich valley of the Tell where I am now. Our road over the mountains covered a distance of about 65 miles. It was built years ago by the French as a military highway and it is so smooth that one can go over it in an automobile. Indeed I was offered a car for the trip from Algiers at a cost of $25 per day but I found that I should have to pay one day's return fare for every day I use the machine making the cost really $50 per diem as there was also danger of a breakdown in the mountains I concluded to hire a carriage instead. This I got for $15 a day. I had an Arab driver and three horses hitched up a breast and the carriage travel enabled me to make my way leisurely from point to point now stopping at a village and now at the little fields where the Kabbalas were working. This road over the Atlas is a wonderful piece of civil engineering it goes along the sides of the cliffs and has been actually cut out of the rocks in places the drop to the valley below is something like 2,000 feet at times when a caravan of camels passed by us each beast loaded with two great long bags of barley which tripled its width we had to stop for fear we might be crowded over the rocks and dash to pieces in the valley below. At other times we met droves of donkeys which their Kabbalas owners had to bring down to single file to enable us to pass and again companies of burburs with loads on their backs who walked in the same order. The road is a limestone pike with frequent stone culverts and now and then bridges of stone and iron. Away up on the top of the Atlas there is a tunnel which has been blasted through the rock and at the very top of the pass we went through a deep cut made for the road along the whole way are piles of broken stone showing that repairs are going on all the time and there are guard houses at every few miles where the men who take care of the road are stationed this pass is in fact a military highway and enables France to control the whole surrounding region. The Kabbalas are among the most insurrection area of the population of Algeria like the Swiss they live in the mountains and have the same love of freedom. In 1871 when France had its war with Germany some of these mountain tribes revolted and an army of them marched on Algiers. They were defeated by the French and since then no Kabbal or other native except in certain wild districts is allowed to have arms. Another reason for denying arms to the Kabbalas of the Atlas is the fact that these people are much given to deadly feuds among themselves. At Fort National I found a battalion of Suaves about 800 strong. The town itself is fortified in such a way that its guns command the many villages on the neighboring peaks. On my way to Tizi Uzu I passed several regiments of French soldiers on the march and I could easily see how an army of them with a road like this could keep the people in order. I found most of the Kabbalas friendly the contrast between them and their brothers in Morocco being most striking. Before I describe my visits to the Kabbal villages I want to tell you something about the mighty mountains which form their homes. I have traveled through the Alps, the Himalayas, the Andes and the Rockies. Each has its own grandeur. The same is true of these lofty African mountains which in many respects have scenery surpassing that of any other range of the world. The air here is as clear as that on the high plateau of Bolivia and one can see as far as on Lake Titicaca. The sun is so bright that where it strikes the fleecy white clouds it paints patches of navy blue velvet on the slopes below. These high Atlas peaks rise from the plain in rugged majesty. They roll over each other with great canyons and gorges and may be seen a hundred miles or more away cutting the blue sky of the horizon. They are of as many colors as the mountains of Colorado and in places are quite as ragged and rocky. Almost everywhere they are cultivated high above the line of fertility of the hills of other countries. Their sides are cut up into patches of all shapes some of which are no bigger than a parlor rug. About these patches are stone walls or hedges or sometimes furrows or ditches. Some have fruit trees growing in them but more often only bunches of scrub among which the grain has been planted. Each of these little patches is a cabal farm. Nearly every family owns some land to which it clings as its dearest possession. The men cultivate their little crops making what they can from them and then go down into the lowlands to work for the French farmers to piece out their incomes. Along the lower slopes of the Atlas there are many big orchards but these are owned mostly by the French. They are walled off from the road by hedges of cactus in which dried thorn bushes have been twined to make a barrier impassable for man or beast. There are also olive orchards and almost everywhere even high up in the mountains are groves of wild olive trees with now and then a forest of the evergreen oak the bark of which furnishes our cork. Others of the mountains especially the slopes facing the valley of the tell are covered with scrubby oaks with light green leaves and inch long and have much the same shape as those of a rose bush. The trees are nothing like the grand oaks of America but nevertheless they bear acorns which feed numerous hogs. Many of these oaks are trimmed of their branches every year in order that the twigs and limbs may be used for fuel. I'm told that it is against the law to cut the trees down to the ground and that most of the charcoal and firewood of Algeria are made from these switches. They are used by the bakers the bread of a great part of Algeria being baked by them. As one climbs up the Atlas Mountains the views widen so that the whole world seems spread out below. One can see so far that panoramas from such mountains as the Alps dwindle by comparison. The ragged hills stretch away for hundreds of miles on every side and in the winter when the Atlas is covered with snow the views must be beyond expression magnificent. I saw one sunset at the very top of the pass which will remain in my memory as among the most wonderful of the cloud paintings of my life. During the day the Sorocco had been blowing its hot blast from the desert and the sun had been hidden. When it set the sky was full of clouds which it gilded with a hundred rosy eight hues. We were high up on the mountain pass with great masses of fleecy gold overhead and beneath us the mountains took on all tints and shades their sides becoming a patchwork of many colors which we saw through a thin golden veil. On some hills the veil was a delicate lavender. On others a snow white tinged with rose pink as the sun disappeared a band of royal purple ran around the foot of the mountain peaks while there were bands of burning copper above and below. But far the most striking feature of the whole of these Atlas scenes is the human interest which shines out of their every picture. The Kabbal villages are everywhere. There are thousands of them in the Algerian mountains. Every great hilltop is spotted with them and they cap all the lower peaks. Right on the tops of the hills the people build their little huts of stone and plaster with roofs of red tile. The walls are whitewashed so that every town makes a great patch of white and red on the landscape. The villages are usually far off the road and are reached only by mule paths. I climbed up and visited some of them. One was entered by a gate forming a sort of loafing place for the gowned, bronzed face, turban citizens. Passing through this I was in the midst of the settlement. The houses stand close together built along narrow streets with no pavements of any kind. They are all of one story and look more like stables than homes. The doors are rude although some have carving upon them. They open into a court upon which are sometimes two houses both facing the street. The average house is about 15 feet square with a ridge roof which is seldom more than 12 feet in height at the comb. Here in the atlas these roofs are of red tile but in other places they are of thatch. The houses are entered by doors as rough as those in the walls of the courts. The homes are absolutely without ornamentation. They have no windows and except through a little hole about a foot square under the roof at one end have no light but that which comes in at the door. Let me give you a picture of one of these Berber homes which I visited yesterday. My Drago man Emmanuel Zammet who speaks the Kabbal language acted as my interpreter and through him the owner gave us permission to enter. We had tried at several other houses but the women ran from us as though we had the plague and the boys slammed the court doors in our faces. Like all Mohammedans the Kabbals are jealous allowing their women to have nothing to do with strange men. In this case both husband and wife were at home for the man was more liberal than most of his kind. He did not introduce us to his wife but she was with him in the hut and as usual unveiled. She had a baby at her breast while a half dozen more small children were sprawling over the floor. Indeed we had to step carefully at first for fear of trampling a baby but as our eyes became accustomed to the darkness we got along very well. In this house there was no sign of what we call furniture. There were neither chairs nor tables. The members of the family were sitting around a pile of figs which they were sorting as we entered. At meals they sit on the floor and eat squatting about the single bowl which usually contains the main dish of each meal. They eat most things with their fingers and often break up bread and soak it in the soup or stew. They have meat about once a week but their chief diet consists of fruit and a bread made of wheat or other grain. They grind their meal themselves sometimes in the family mill and sometimes in one belonging to the village in common. In a little home like this the winter supplies of the family are stored. One of the receptacles I noticed was a stone jar for figs with a hole in the bottom to allow the juice to run out. Another was a larger vessel of the same material for wheat or corn. The latter would hold perhaps 20 bushels. There was also a large clay jar for the olive oil made on the little home farm and pressed out by the family. When I asked where the cooking was done the woman pointed to a hole in the floor in one corner of the hut. The floor is the bare rock so that there is no danger of fire. As I looked about me I heard a sheep bleeding apparently right under my feet. Turning quickly around I saw a long horned ram and a nanny goat looking at me from under a shelf at the back of the hut. This shelf was the chief sleeping place of the family while the space below it served as a stable. There were some chickens in the same place and at night the donkeys and other animals belonging to the family are brought in and all sleep together. These cabal sheep are tame following their masters from place to place like dogs. The people have many sheep which they pasture on the mountains in one common flock watched by a shepherd. The sheep and goats are brought into town every night. As soon as they enter the village each runs for its own home and remains there until morning. Some of these cabal women are fine looking. The wife of my host was about 20 and would have been considered pretty in any crowd of American maidens. Her cheeks were rosy and her features as regular as those of the Venus de Medici. She wore a dress of bright red calico which came almost to her feet but still showed the thick silver rings about her bare ankles. She had heavy earrings and bracelets. Around her neck was a chain to which many ornaments were hung and her breast was covered with great pins of white metal set with bright colored stones. I should say that she had at least two pounds of jewelry upon her. Her eyelids were blackened to add to her beauty. Like nearly all the cabal women I have seen she was also tattooed on the cheeks and on the forehead and the chin. Although even the poorest of the women of cabalia were more or less jewelry many are ragged. Those who go through the streets have their skirts so pulled up that they show a large expanse of bare calf. I see them doing all sorts of hard labor. They carry water from the village well in clay jars. They gather the wood needed for cooking and not a few labor out in the fields. Indeed their situation makes one think of the vaudeville song. Oh the women do the work do the work while the men do the standing around. Or of that other sweet and well-known diddy everybody works but father. The cabal men are a strange combination of thriftiness and laziness. I saw many of them loafing about the streets while the women pass by loaded with all sorts of burdens. When at home they let their wives do as much as they will yet they hire themselves out to the French farmers of the tell to aid in planting and harvesting the crops. They are cumulative saving almost all their wages and many of them amass small fortunes of a few hundred dollars or so. Indeed these people have many qualities which distinguish them from the Arabs and Moors by whom they are surrounded. Their white blood crops out in their desire for independence and self-government. They are ruled by the French but regulate local matters themselves. Each town is a little republic with its own council and a public meeting house where town affairs are discussed. It has its own municipal laws and elects its own officials. Each village has a mosque and a school. The school is supplied with teachers by the French and the children are taught to speak and write French as well as Arabic. The mosques are rude affairs but the Kabbals go to them regularly and face Mecca as they pray. They are naturally religious though they have changed the Mohammedan faith to suit themselves and have their own ideas of morals, right, and justice. End of chapter 15. Chapter 16 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. An exiled African queen. Once the ruler of the third largest island of the world, a country bigger than France, twice as large as Italy, and more than three times as big as New England, the beloved queen of more than four million people with all the money she could spend an army of her own, the most brilliant royal court south of the equator, and all that she could wish for in the way of luxury, pomp, and power. Today, deposed from her throne, a pensioner on the bounty of the French government, an exile in the hands of her conquerors, watched always by spies and guarded by a muscular French woman who controls her conversations and actions, such as the present condition of Rana Valona, the third, the famed queen of Madagascar, by whom I was granted the honor of an audience today. Her name, Rana Valona, is an imperial cognomen, meaning the granddaughter of God. She comes of the royal family which ruled Madagascar for many years. She is a descendant of Radama I, who became king of all Madagascar in 1810. He was a chief of the Hovas, one of the largest and most civilized tribes of the island, who after conquering many of the other tribes formed a union with the Sakhalavas by marrying Rosalimo, a Sakhalava princess. King Radama was the first to introduce our civilization into Madagascar. He welcomed the missionaries, and as far back as 1820, introduced Protestant Christianity among the Hovas. During his reign, schools were established, churches were built, the Bible was printed in the Malagasy language, and numbers of the people were converted. After his death, one of his wives, Rana Valona I, assumed the throne. She opposed the missionaries, but her son, Radama II, again gave the people full religious liberty, and after him, Queen Rana Valona II, the aunt of this queen, carried on the good work. She was succeeded by the woman I talked with today, who was at that time only a young girl. I think she is a widow, for according to custom, when she took the throne, she married the prime minister, who was then 70 years old, and who must have died long ago. When Rana Valona was crowned, she made a change in the coronation ceremonies of the country. Other monarchs had always been attended by soldiers. She made school children her chief guard of honor. She had picked out 500 boys and 400 girls from the chief schools of Tanana Rivo, her capital, and all the scholars with their teachers had excellent places to see the ceremony. The day before, the school boys drilled and went through their spear and shield exercises in her presence, and at the time of the coronation, she was attended by regiments of boys in uniform and troops of girls dressed in white. The queen, when I met her today, wore a plain black silk skirt with a blouse of white silk beautifully embroidered. She had at her throat a star of diamonds set in old silver, while about her neck was a bold chain as big a round as your little finger. Her clothes were like those of any American lady might wear when receiving afternoon callers, being neither extravagant nor striking in any way. When Rana Valona was crowned, she wore a white, located silk robe heavy with gold with a train of crimson velvet embroidered in gold. She wore a large gold crown of peculiar design which fairly sparkled with jewels. She said still to have many beautiful jewels. In fact, when she left the island of Reunion, to which she was first banished, the statement was made that the precious stones she took with her were worth more than two million dollars. As the crown rested upon the queen's head, the people fell upon their knees and then burst forth into a shout of applause, while the soldiers flourished their spears and the cannon roared. There were cheers upon cheers from the boys and girls and from the 200,000 natives said to have been present. After that, the queen made a speech to her people. She used Bible quotations throughout her address, saying among other things, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and righteousness exalteth a nation. She promised to defend her country and stand up like a man with her people against anyone who might attempt to take even a hair's breath of it. She urged her subjects to obey the laws and said that she expected to obey them herself. Closing her statement with the words, I wish no one's life to be taken. Whoever forsakes the paths of righteousness walks in the paths of darkness. Is it not so, O my people? That was the way that Rana Valona started. She kept up her good work, but nevertheless got into trouble with the French who had long proclaimed their right to the protection of Madagascar. Warren sued and at a cost of many millions of dollars, the French were at last victorious. They kept the queen for a time on the throne, but finding she could not maintain order under the change conditions, they finally took entire possession of the government. At this time they treated Rana Valona rather harshly. Instead of calling upon her, the general of the French army made the queen call upon him. When she did so, it was to request that he be kind to her people and to say that she knew he would treat them well. Shortly after this, Rana Valona was taken away from the capital and exiled to the island of Reunion, where she remained until she was brought first to France and then here to Algiers. Upon arriving at Marseille, she had expected to go directly to Paris. She was delighted with the idea of seeing the Parisian capital and when she was told that she must again cross the Mediterranean to an exile home, this time in Algeria she is said to have burst into a flood of tears, crying, Who is certain of tomorrow? Only yesterday I was a queen. Today I am simply an unhappy, broken-hearted woman. However, that may have been the woman I saw today bore no marks of sorrow and has, I judge, become reconciled to her situation. She may be a captive, but she has a gilded cage and sufficient money to satisfy all her wants. The French supply her with one of the finest villas of Algiers. She has horses and carriages, gives receptions and dinners, and holds a little court of her own. Her captors allow her enough money on which to live comfortably and she is permitted to go to Paris for a month every summer. It was through a card of introduction from the American consul that I met Queen Rana Valona. I took an interpreter with me and in a carriage climbed the winding ways which lead from the sea to the villas of Mustafa Superior on the height above the harbor. Here, surrounded by great hotels and magnificent homes, the former queen lives with her aunt, her niece, and a French woman who is called her companion but who is really a guard. Nominally she goes where she pleases but really she is closely watched by the government, her every motion and every word being reported. When I first presented my letter the servant came back with the statement that her majesty could not receive me as Madame de Pré was not present and the queen was not allowed to hold any conversation with strangers in her absence. Rana Valona later sent word however that she would be glad to see me at 10 o'clock. When I called again I first met Madame de Pré. I was admitted to the villa by a maid servant and waited for a while in the reception room at the right of the entrance where two Paris hats and two parasols of lavender and rose pink which hung on the rack showed that the ladies were home. When Madame de Pré entered my interpreter performed the introduction and I presented my request for an interview. The Madame replied that I could have an audience with her majesty although it was contrary to her custom to receive newspaper correspondence. She gave me to understand that the queen would not talk about politics in her own country and from the way she uttered the words I saw that she meant them. The lady then led the way into the parlor a large room floored with blue tiles and containing many sofas and chairs upholstered in fine white satin. We had hardly taken our seats before Rana Valona entered. Her aunt who was with her remained during the audience. I arose as her majesty came in and Madame de Pré introduced me. The queen shook my hand looking me straight in the eyes as she bade me welcome. She has a very small hand and large and beautiful eyes. She is a fine looking woman who appears much younger than she actually is. She has a high and rather full forehead a long somewhat thin face and rather full lips although they are by no means so thick as those of a negro. Her complexion is of a chocolate brown. It seems to me that her features are almost typically Malaysian. Her hair which is jet black is straight rather than curly and is put up in a great knot on the top of her head. I've already described her dress of a simple Paris made white silk blouse and black skirt and I've referred to the plainness of her ornaments. Her manners were as simple as her dress being entirely free from ostentation of any kind. In fact her every act was that of a well-bred society lady and her soft low voice that of the drawing room. Motioning me to a chair she sat down on another nearby. I opened the conversation by telling her that I had written a book for the American public school children about the islands of the seas in which I had described Madagascar that I would take pleasure in sending her a copy. I then showed her some photographs which the governor general of Madagascar had sent me to illustrate this book. She looked over the pictures and at once became interested. Her eyes lighting up with pleasure as she recognized her far away island home and the various types among its people. Ah that was my palace she said as she held out a photograph of Tanana Revo the capital of Madagascar and pointed to a building in the center rising high over the others upon which the French flag was floating and these are hovas she continued as she picked up another showing the family of well-dressed colored people and those Sakalavas as she looked at a third a group of blacks with features like negroes. Each picture brought out some remark and before either she or her aunt was aware of it they were talking quite freely. Meantime the French madam looked rather sour and when I put a direct question as to how her majesty liked the change from Madagascar to Algeria she gave a sign and the queen replied that she could not answer that and that she would prefer to say nothing more about her own country as the French government objected to her discussing such matters. A moment later when for some reason Madame de Prey was called out the queen's aunt said that no conversation could go on until she returned interpreting this to mean political conversation I said a word or two about the weather asking the queen how she liked the climate of Algeria. To this she replied it does not much matter I have to like it nevertheless it is a very good climate. Afterwards she spoke of Paris and mentioned the pleasure she had in the life there when I suggested that she extend her travels to the other side of the Atlantic and visit America she said she thought that she would like to do so but doubted if that would be allowed. I had brought a copy of my geographical reader on Africa with me and made her present of it saying that its simple language might aid her in her study of English. She took the book and looked over the pictures comparing the natives there represented with their own people on that great island not far away from the African coast. She told me she found the English language much more difficult to learn than the French. Ronna Vallona is a good French scholar and speaks, writes, and reads that language well. During our conversation which was carried on in French she never hesitated for a word or a phrase to express her meaning. At the close of the audience I told her that I would consider it a great favor if she would allow me to take a photograph of her as I would like to have a picture made by myself to show to the American people. At first she said that she did not think it would be permitted but that she would ask Madam to pray and that if there were no objections she would go outside and pose for the camera. At this moment her French guardian came in and the question was submitted to her. The Madam replied that it was all in the hands of Her Majesty who could do as she pleased. Upon being assured that the pictures were not for use in Algiers Ronna Vallona and her aunt went with me into the garden back of the house and she stood in the sun while I made the pictures. I had one photograph snapped by my Drago Man of myself standing beside the Queen. I am five feet seven inches in height and the Queen is almost a head shorter. After taking the photographs I left Her Majesty again shaking my hand as she said goodbye. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. The Pompeii of Africa. Tim Gad the wonderful ruined city of Roman Africa which the French have dug out of the sand lies about 150 miles south of the Mediterranean and perhaps 300 miles southwest of Tunis. It is just over the mountains from the desert of Sahara on one of the lower slopes of the Atlas Mountains overlooking a valley which in the days of Rome was enormously rich. Pompeii was in existence about 300 years before Christ and was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius 79 A.D. It contained only 20 or 30,000 people and was not half the size of this ancient African city. Tim Gad was founded just 21 years after the destruction of Pompeii. It was built by the Emperor Trajan whose soldiers aided in its construction and was then known as Thongas or Thumgati. Situated at the intersection of six Roman roads it was a fortified camp as well as a great commercial city. The excavations show that it must have been a social capital besides inhabited by many rich people and surrounded by all the luxuries of Rome at the height of its glory. Later Tim Gad became a religious city. St. Augustine was born near it and in the seventh century when the Arab invasion occurred it had a Christian church the ruins of which still exist. For more than a thousand years after Tim Gad was destroyed by the Arabs the rain and soil of the Atlas Mountains and the dust and sands from the great Sahara close by drifted over it bearing its remains layer by layer until the greater part of it was lost from view. For centuries only a few of the more prominent of the ruins rose above the surface. There were columns here and there apparently growing out of the soil. Great mounds covered the half destroyed buildings and it was not until the French began their excavations that anyone imagined that a great city lay buried beneath. I saw gangs of men working at the ruins as I wandered about through them this afternoon and I photographed them as they raised buried columns out of the earth. The covering soil rose far above the height of my head. I came here from Algiers by railroad a distance of about 250 miles. The nearest station is Batna a French military outpost at the entrance of the valley in which Tim Gad lies. There I hired a carriage and drove for 25 miles up this valley to the site of the excavations. The only town we passed on the way was Lambisi which also was prominent in the days of the Romans and which has ruins that would be considered wonderful were they not overshadowed by the greater ones at Tim Gad. The road which was built by the French is as good as was the Appian way when Tim Gad and Rome were still in their prime. The grades are so gentle that our horses went on the trot and we covered the distance in less than three hours. We met many soldiers at Lambisi but except for them we saw nobody save Arabs. Sometimes we crowded a caravan of camels going solemnly on their way and sometimes past villages of low brown tents the homes of Bedouin shepherds feeding their flocks on the foothills of the Atlas. At places in the valley we saw Arabs plowing but the soil is now semi-arid showing but little signs of the fertility it must have had when this region was the granary of Rome. Antipole then was much greater than now and it may be that the cutting away of the forests has modified the climate of Algeria as has been the case with Spain Palestine and other lands. I have already been here for the better part of two days. I am living at the little hotel put up for the excavators and strangers and have been going over the ruins with an old French soldier long connected with the work of unearthing the city. I almost despair of giving any conception of the character and extent of the city uncovered. The old Roman houses like the Jerusalem of the Psalms were built compactly together and although Tim Gad included only 100 acres it was a beehive of humanity and its people needed less space than many an American town of one tenth the size. The chief business and residential centers were divided into streets about 20 feet wide crossing each other at right angles. There are miles of these streets and one can walk over them on the same pavements as those on which the Romans rode in their chariots. I tramped much of my way in the ruts cut by the chariots and I found the stones of the roads worn smooth by the feet of these people of 15th century since. The main thoroughfares are flagged with great blocks of limestone about three feet wide and often four feet long fitted close together. Under every street is a deep sewer running from one end of it to the other where the whole city is underlaid with drains. Nearly every house has its own connection with the sewer and there are public conveniences in all parts of the town. There are rows of curb stones along the streets and the principal avenues have great marble columns on each side of them some of which are broken and some almost perfect. In some places one looks for a mile through ruined pillars easily picturing the grandeur of Tim Gad in its prime. We enter an avenue by a great stone gate decorated with carvings over flagstones cut into deep ruts by the chariot wheels. There are pillars on both sides of the streets leading to the forum while beyond them on each side are acres upon acres of ruined buildings ranging in height from a few feet to far above my head. The ravages of time, of siege and of the Mohammedan iconoclast have cut away the tops of the buildings but enough of the walls are left to show one just how they were constructed and one can walk from room to room through house after house. At the right side of this main street ran a covered passageway the top of which rested upon these pillars. This was for foot passengers who could their move along without danger from the throng of chariots and horses in the roadway outside. On the Via Decumonus Maximus which leads from the great arch of Trajan to the forum one side is lined with stores. The greatest number of stores are near the forum and these probably formed the chief mercantile houses of the city. Each establishment had a main room facing the street with another in the rear which was perhaps used as a warehouse or as a private room for its owner. The Decumonus Maximus has deep wheel tracks and the flags from one end of it to the other and it is easy to imagine it filled with the gay throng of the days of the Emperor's Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. After walking through store after store in this quarter I went to another part of the city where the Roman market used to be. The marketplace which was surrounded by columns still shows many evidences that it was an interesting and picturesque place when the people from all the country about came here to buy and sell. The stalls of the meat market were on a platform built in a half moon facing the square. The marble counters behind which the butchers stood are still intact and still bear the nicks made by the cleavers used in chopping off the stakes of antiquity. These counters are slabs each about a foot thick and five feet in length. Crawling under one I stood in the place of the butcher trying to imagine the customers who waited outside for spring chickens roasts of lamb and rump steaks 1500 years ago. In my mind's eye I could see Mrs. Caesar testing the breastbone of a fowl and Madam Cicero telling the boy to cut her a steak off the loin and watching him to see that he did not cheat in the weight. Later I saw in the museum the weights which were used to weigh the meat. They are balls of stone ranging in size from as big as my head to no larger than marbles. Some of the houses of Tim Gad were magnificent. They had marble benches, beautiful frescoes and floors of mosaic. The museum has many mosaics equal to almost anything discovered at Pompeii. They are made of bits of stone some of them no bigger than a baby's fingernail so fitted together that they seem one solid block. They are of many colors and represent the famous characters of mythology. One about 15 feet square shows Venus riding through the sea on a centaur while the dolphins swim about beside her. Another represents the triumph of Neptune and others show various scenes connected with the gods and the goddesses of old Rome. Near the form I explored a palace which contained about 60 odd rooms some of which are still decorated with marble columns. This house had a wide entrance porch and the stones at the front showed plainly the marks made by the carriages as they were driven out and in. When I walked in the floors seemed to be nothing but plaster but as I scraped my feet on them I saw the mosaic beneath. Even the floors of the bathrooms were a beautiful mosaic. If it be true that cleanliness is next to godliness these old Romans were pretty nearly godly. There are ruins of baths here which show that this old town of Timgat of anywhere from 50 to 100,000 people had better accommodations of that kind than our largest cities of today. Just outside the chief entrance gate stand the remnants of an enormous brick building covering almost two acres which was devoted to bathing and gymnastics. I spent some time in these baths. A large part of the outer wall is still intact and the rooms although the walls are broken down in places can be easily traced. There were 35 of them grouped about a grand hall 40 feet wide and 75 feet long where the men went through their gymnastics or rested and loafed after bathing. There were many hot chambers for steam and vapor baths and several cold plunges with large swimming pools. The hot rooms had mosaic floors with underground flues and fires. The remains of the heating arrangements could even now be repaired and the baths used as in the past. In the southern part of the city are ruins of other public baths while in many of the houses there are remains of private bathrooms. Tim Gad had a theater which seated more than 4,000 people. This theater was in the upper part of the city at the edge of the hills. I went through its ruins and sat for a time in one of the boxes which faced the marble rostrum forming the stage. The audience came in through a covered passageway made of stone and there was a covered passageway for exit. The actors had their own entrance which led direct to the stage. There was no roof over this theater. The audience sat in the open with a magnificent view of the valley and mountains ever before them. The seats which are of stone run around the arena in the shape of a half moon rising tier above tier. The orchestra played in the crescent below. I was also much interested in the library or public lecture room of this ancient town. I do not suppose that ancient Thaumgati had an Andrew Carnegie but its ruins show that this building would have been a worthy monument to any corn king of old Rome. It has the shape of a half circle with steps around it and shelves in the walls where the scrolls of manuscripts were stored. Another curious structure is the ancient flower market equipped with fountains to keep the flower fresh. The form of Timgad which has been entirely unearthed bears evidence of having been far larger and more beautiful than that of Pompeii. Its stone quartz are almost intact and many of the tall marble columns which surrounded it are still here. It was manifestly a magnificent place. It is reached by stone steps. About it on every side were covered passageways upheld by pillars of marble. At one end behind marble columns was a great stone rostrum I suppose for the speakers and there was an extensive lobby with retiring rooms somewhat as in our capital at Washington. A joining the forum was a building of marble and limestone which is supposed to have served as a kind of stock exchange and tribunal of justice combined. It had a statue of justice in it a part of which remains. There are several ruin temples in Timgad. One was devoted to victory and another to the Jupiter of the capital. The walls of the ladder are six feet in thickness and are made of great blocks three or four feet in length. On a lofty platform overlooking the whole city some of the enormous columns which formed the back of this structure still stand. Each column is 50 feet high is fluted and carved and has a capital of wonderful beauty. I climbed up to the base of these great pillars to take a bird's-eye view of the ruins with the broken marble shafts here and there among them. The half shattered buildings looked more like a palatial cattle yard a brick and stone than a city. The houses are now little more than walled pens and the streets through them are like roads. This however is only a first impression. The ruins of the famous old city spring at once interview and the wealth of the past everywhere strikes the eye. Just below me were great blocks of marble pieces of broken statues. I could see the stone tables upon which the Romans offered their sacrifices and beyond them the homes of the city. The columns beside me were as big around as a hog's head and rose above me to the height of a four-story house. They were made in blocks each of which must have weighed many tons. They were probably chiseled out on the ground but how they were raised so high without the aid of modern machinery I cannot imagine. This temple had 12 columns in front of it and 22 pillars of these enormous proportions on the platform above. At the entrance of the Via Decumanus Maximus now stands the remains of the Arch of Trajan. The city, as I have said, was founded by Trajan and this arch is a splendid monument to his memory. It must be 80 or 100 feet in height. It is of sandstone with columns of marble. It is aged by the weather and as the sun shone upon it this morning it took on the color of old gold and made a great gilded frame standing out against the blue sky. The arch has three entrances, two at the sides for foot passengers and one in the center for carriages. The road through the central arch has been cut deep by chariot wheels. Birds were flying through this arch as I visited it and looking beyond it over the plane I could see the black tents of the Bedowins with the sheep feeding near them. They were grazing among the tops of ruined columns and on land covering a part of Tim Gad not yet excavated. All the relics found at Tim Gad are kept in the museum here and the collection gives live pictures of the old Roman days. Some of the rooms are walled with mosaics and contain enough broken-nose statues to people of town. There are cases filled with gold coins and others containing jewelry of gold some of which is set with precious stones. There are rouge pots like those discovered at Pompeii and there are golden finger rings and earrings. There are surgical instruments including pincers and forceps of steel wonderfully well made, knives of various kinds and needles of all sizes. There are Roman lamps of bronze and of clay. There are bronze handles of vases and beautiful vessels and pieces of iridescent glass. Indeed the collection is extraordinary but it is shut up here in the heart of North Africa 25 miles from the nearest railroad so that few people ever behold it. I have photographed some of the ruins and measured many of the columns and buildings. I also talked with the director of the excavations. He told me that the excavation has been carefully done and many articles of gold and precious stones have been found as well as remains of beautiful statues mosaics and antiques which throw a new light on Roman North Africa. There are traces of the Roman civilization scattered all over this part of the world. Nearly every town in Algeria of any size has some relics of the Romans. I have seen the hand of old Rome in nearly every place I have been. It has left its mark upon Algiers, Oran and Tlemcen. The latter city which was ancient Pamaria shows the remains of a great Roman aqueduct. I came across the old Roman military wall many times while exploring Algiers and Constantine has some Roman ruins about it. Lambisi, 17 miles east of Timgad, was built by the Romans 125 AD to form the headquarters of the 3rd Augustan Legion. The ruined arches of the gates outside the city show that it covered several miles. In its center is a building of stone 92 feet long and 66 feet wide and some 50 feet high. The facade of this structure has a peristyle with handsome iconic columns. Near it is a temple built during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and a great arch put up in honor of Septimius Severus. There are ruins of baths from which have been taken wonderful mosaics. The town had two forms one of which measured more than half an acre and in one of which was a great temple surrounded by a colonnade. On the side of Lambisi the friendship built an enormous barracks for such soldiers as they send to Africa for a correction and as I rode by I passed several companies of French troops going through their evolutions on the site of the old camp just as the Roman soldiers did in that same place more than 1700 years ago. End of chapter 17. Chapter 18 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter. The Slibervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. The Garden of Allah. Biscara is the Paris of the Sahara. This oasis lies 175 miles south of the Mediterranean Sea in the midst of the desert. At one side of it great sand dunes roll on and on until they are lost in the Yellow Horizon. On the other side are the well-worn stones of the Oud or Dry River. Biscara which becomes a flood during the short rainy part of the year but which is now so parched under this blazing sun that it would blister your bare feet to cross it. Biscara is situated on a low plateau a little more than 300 feet above the river. To the north of it is the mighty wall of the Great Peaks of the Atlas which here rise a thousand feet higher than Mount Washington. In the crystal clear African noon the mountains are of a pale yellow the color of the limestone of which they are made. A little later they will turn to hazy blue changing as the sun drops to primrose and gold and then dying out through a dark purple into the night. This oasis is an island in the mighty sea of the Sahara. The mountain wall is a part of the shore and the great cliffs rise almost straight above it. With the glass one could find a break in those mountains known as the Gorge of Cantara. Here a river has burst through the wall forming a golden gate to the greatest of deserts. One comes out from the mountains straight to the desert passing through the little oasis of Cantara a green key to that gate of gold. Biskara has been rather voluptuously described in Hitchens' novel The Garden of Allah. He makes it the chief scene of that story painting all of its surroundings in more or less glowing colors. The Sahara becomes the Garden of Allah and Biskara its capital. It is in fact the European capital of North Africa to which every winner tourists and health seekers by the thousands come over the railroad built by the French. There have been erected large hotels where one can live comfortably at reasonable rates. There are frequent concerts and many cafés chanteaux while the casino steadily runs its roulette and rouge et noir tables so that the place might well be called the Monte Carlo of the desert. The season begins in November and lasts until May being at its liveliest in February at the time of the races in which horses donkeys and camels take part. There are long distance camel races run by Arabs on Mabaris. These camels are so tall and lean that they seem to be all legs. They have saddles with high supports in front and behind and the rider bobs up and down with a seesaw motion. The camel races are supposed to start from the oasis of Tugort 210 miles away a distance which a fairly good camel ought to cover in less than 10 hours. The horse races are run by Arabian steeds with Arab riders who are splendid horsemen and delight in cross country going jumping everything on the way. The city of Biskara is really composed of two towns French Biskara and Old Biskara. The former contains about 900 Europeans and two or three times that many natives. While the latter is altogether native and as is usual in these oasis towns is ranked rather by the number of its palm trees than by the number of its inhabitants. It comprises six little mud villages scattered through plantations which support about 150,000 date trees. The French town is surrounded by walls and entered by gates. It has several wide streets the chief of which is the Rue Bert which runs from the railroad station past the public gardens and on out toward the oasis of Tugort. It goes beyond the oasis of Old Biskara two miles off which is connected by streetcar with French Biska. Prices are much lower here in this far away part of the world than at home. When I take a Turkish bath in the United States I have to pay at least one dollar with 25 or 50 cents extra for fees. I had a Moorish bath here for 20 cents in a bathing establishment that would be considered fine in any American city and this included a thorough massage and a cup of delicious Turkish coffee. The men who bathed me were brawny Arabs as yellow as gold and naked to the waist and they spent something like an hour on the job. I do not mean to say that it took that much time to get off the dirt but the hour was used in the massage and other extras. Biskara was a famous bathing place in the days of the Romans. It had a Roman name meaning baths which probably refer to the hot sulfur springs outside the city. Biskara is the chief military station of the eastern Sahara and is called the Territoire de Comonde de Montt. One sees French soldiers everywhere and there are French officers at the hotels and on the streets. They are fine-looking fellows, straight, broad-shouldered and bronze-faced who have been fighting with these tribes of the desert and show it. Some of the officers have the appearance of dudes and are noted for their extreme politeness but no one dares to presume upon their foppishness. The territory of Biskara which is about as large as the state of Ohio has all told a population of less than 100,000 living in Oasis scattered over the desert. Biskara itself is commanded by a major assisted by a captain, three lieutenants and a military interpreter. The town has electric lights and schools for both French and Arabs. There's also a Negro quarter. The French city is made up of flat roofed white houses of one or two stories. Many of the roofs have walls about them. The women and children gossip and play on the roofs in the evening and the people sleep there at night. I wish I could take you through one of these Sahara towns. Even in French Biskara the scenes would seem strange. There are more sitting out in the street or on the sidewalks upon mats laid down for the purpose quietly playing dominoes. They have little tables about as high as the footstool and squatting with their bare feet under them will move the blocks for an hour or more without saying a word. Many of the players are gray bearded and gray headed but age does not affect their love for the game. On every hand I meet the characters of the Bible. As I write these notes I can see in one group an old Abraham with the aged Sarah beside him and the Buxom Hagar behind. That little baby in Hagar's arms might be young Ishmael and I observe that Abraham looks upon him with apparent love. At the same time Sarah seems to be jealous and glares at both baby and mother out of the tail of her eye. That handsome war coming down the street might be Joseph the friend of King Pharaoh. Observe his costly raiment of fine silk and wool. He walks with a strut and is evidently a man of authority. On that donkey slowly pacing along is an old man whom one might easily imagine to be Balaam and lo the donkey stops opens his mouth and braze. His words however we do not understand for he has not the power of speech like the ass of holy writ and so I might go on finding a character at every step which would correspond to one in the scriptures. This is a bit of the Simon pure orient where the natives are about the same today as they were in Bible times three or four thousand years ago. They are however all Mohammedans and believe only in Allah and the prophet. But let us go out to an oasis and visit the people who live under the palm trees. We drive along the roue berth by walls of yellow mud enclosing date palms which rise high above them and are loaded with ripe golden fruit. The walls are as high as my head and on their top dry thorn bushes set in while the mud was still wet protect the fruit like so much broken glass. This oasis is fed by springs from the river Biscara which is dry the greater part of the year. Wells have tapped the springs however and there is a flow of gallons a minute. The water is somewhat alkaline but it puts the sugar into the dates and the sun is so hot that the fruit is delicious. According to the Arabs to make good dates the head of the tree must be in the burning sun the greater part of the year. The thermometer here even in mid-winter never falls below 60 and the climate seems just right although it is not so at Kintara 30 or 40 miles farther north. Biscara is annually producing something like 10 million pounds of dates enough to furnish a handful to every boy in the United States and leave some to spare. As we ride into the oasis we can see men picking dates or rather cutting them. The fruit is not good until it is dead ripe. I bit into some green dates today and they puckered my mouth like unfrosted persimmons. In the oasis of Biscara water rites are often sold in perpetuity but there are also leases at so much per year and even at so much per hour. Not long ago the price was 200 dollars for a perpetual stream half an inch wide and as deep as the rainfall would afford an 800 dollars for a stream of four inches. Where the water is let out by the hour so many times per week an Arab watchman with an hourglass stands at the hole where it flows out and when the sand is run through he shuts off the supply. I cannot describe the dreariness of everyday life in these Saharan oases about the only green thing one sees in the streets is the palm leaves overhead. Inside a garden there may be patches of vegetables and grass with trees bearing various kinds of fruit but in the villages themselves everything is as bare as the middle of the road notwithstanding the fact that this is a land which might be a tropical paradise. The houses themselves have no gardens in or about them. They are joined close together and are more like catacombs than places where people live, move and have their being. During much of the day there are few signs of life. There are no windows facing the streets. The only means of ventilation on that side of the houses being little holes about the size of a paving brick up near the roof. In villages so poor as these of Biskra though the people look squalid and dirty the dirtiest of them are loaded with jewelry. I photographed one middle age dame of swarthy complexion who had earrings as big as an after-dinner cup and as she turned around I noticed that she wore anklets of white metal as wide as a pint cup is high. Indeed they looked like tin cups without bottoms or handles. Even the children were loaded with jewelry. Some of them were not averse to being photographed and both women and children held out their hands for money as soon as their pictures were taken. The coffee houses look not unlike an American stable. Their only light comes in through the door and the people sit on the floor. In The Garden of Ala the novel to which I have already referred there are some vivid descriptions of the Chateau Landon a wonderful date plantation belonging to a wealthy French nobleman. If one would know just how much water means in the desert he may learn by visiting this place. It contains about 15 acres including a wonderful botanical garden right here on the edge of the desert. It is a date forest interspersed with all sorts of tropical and subtropical fruit trees and shrubs. There are great hedges 15 feet high as carefully trimmed as those in the botanical gardens of Algiers or in that of Buitzenzorg Java. About 20 Arab gardeners are busy keeping the plantation in order and not even the leaves are allowed to lie on the paths or walks here and there in the garden are houses of Arab architecture the homes of the owner and in one place there is a great circle cut out under the trees where dances may be held in the open. Have you ever heard of Sidi Akbar? He was a famous Arab general who conquered the whole of North Africa from the Nile to the Atlantic. All whom he conquered he converted to Islam by telling them that they must die if they did not espouse the Muhammad in religion. It is said that when he reached the sea he rode into it exclaiming that if it were not for this barrier he would make every people beyond it worship Allah or die. This man was one of the great Muslim heroes. The people looked upon him as a saint and they have named towns oases and other places after him. One of the most important of these is Sidi Akbar which lies 12 miles from Biskara in the midst of the sands. There is the shrine of the saint and the mosque containing it is said to be the oldest Muhammadan building in Africa. The town is the religious capital of this part of the world so holy that the people make pilgrimages to it as they do to Karwan in Tunisia and to Mecca and Medina in Arabia. I rode across the desert to visit it. The way is over a country covered with a scanty vegetation of thorny scrub through sandy and stony wastes and by the oases of Philiac and Chetma. Sidi Akbar has 65,000 palm trees and the town has 6,000 inhabitants. The plantations are surrounded by mud walls like those of Biskara but the houses are better and some of the streets are so wide that one can drive through them. On our way there we passed caravans of camels and donkeys and saw many tent villages and great flocks of black goats watched by shepherds. Entering the gate we rode between the mud walls to the public square which is surrounded by the typical petty stores or bazaars of the Sahara low and box-like outside of which the customers must stand as they haggle with the vendors. There was considerable industry going on. Here men were weaving there they were making plows and farther on they were constructing saddles. In the street of the tailors I saw several men using American sewing machines but nowhere did I see any American goods. On the sides of the streets were mud ledges built out from the mud walls filled with white-gowned men working chatting or sleeping. Some were reeling cotton and some were sewing. At night these ledges are filled with sleepers. Many of these poor Arabs have no homes. They eat at the cafes and sleep in the streets. This is especially true in the cities. The men always sleep with their heads and faces covered. One reason for this is the number of flies which fairly swarm in all the oases making one pray for the caliph Andamelik the father of flies to breathe upon them and drive them away. This old caliph was so fatal to flies that everyone that flew over his mouth dropped dead. Like every traveler in Biskar I visited the famous mosque. It is an ordinary building with perhaps half a dozen rooms including the place of worship. It was filled with worshipers when I entered it and I heard Muslim boys singing out verses from the Quran in the school rooms on each side. I spent some time watching the men at their prayers and although it is known here that I am a Christian I was not molested. End of chapter 18. Chapter 19 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B. A City of the Air. If we could take one of our American towns of 50,000 inhabitants crowd its houses together so that they would not cover more than the area of a half section farm and then lift the bedrock on which they stand straight up into the air for 2,300 feet. We should have some of the conditions which exist here at Constantine Africa's famous city of the air. It lies in the heart of North Africa about 300 miles east of Algiers 50 miles south of the Mediterranean and 125 miles north of the desert of Sahara. It is built upon an enormous rock at an altitude of 2,000 feet above the sea and nearly encircling it is a mighty gorge a thousand feet deep. The houses stand on a huge stone platform on three sides of which rocky walls drop down precipitously to a valley almost twice as deep as the Washington Monument is high. A rushing foaming river flows through the gorge as thus made. On every side lies a rolling country ending in the desert-like mountains of the great Atlas chain. I doubt whether there is another such city on earth. The Arabs call it the city of the air and it is the mightiest roof garden known to man. But Constantine is far more than a roof garden. It is a fortification as well. For almost 3,000 years it has been the site of a camp or barracks for soldiers and its adventurous story is written in blood. It has successfully withstood 80 sieges. When the French took it about 1837 they employed an army of 10,000 men. At that time hundreds of its Arab inhabitants who tried to escape by letting themselves down over the rocks were dashed to pieces in the gorges below and so many Mohammedan women committed suicide in that way that the river ran blood. The Kasbah or citadel which was then the chief fort of the Arabs is now occupied by several thousand French troops. It commands the highest point on the rocky plateau and is above the most precipitous part of the gorge. In it there are stone cisterns and granaries built by the Romans while not far from it is a great stone aqueduct which the Romans made to supply the place with water. Constantine was a city in the days of the Phoenicians and under the name of Serta it was the capital of a Carthaginian province ruled by Hannibal's brother-in-law. Later on it became the capital of Numidia which furnished the famous Numidian lions for the gladiatorial shows of Old Rome. A little more than 300 years after Christ it was called Constantine in honor of the Roman emperor of that date and when the Arabs came in it was made one of their capitals. Though once so invincible the city could now be easily battered to pieces modern guns placed on the opposite heights could shatter the buildings and in a few hours sweep the rock clear of houses and people. In the warfare of the past however it was almost impregnable and the great canyon by which it is surrounded formed a barrier which no army could scale. If you would realize how great the barrier was come with me down into the gorge. Steps have been gouged out of the rocks by the French. There are hanging walks along the sides of the cliffs so that when we can climb a thousand feet down to where the river Rumel known also as the River of Sands races and froths its way to the Mediterranean Sea. We take carriages and drive far up the valley and then cross to get to the ladders. The way is rough and tiresome but we climb down down down until at last we are near the water far below the city. On both sides of us rise sheer black walls stained by drains and springs and roofed by the sky. The gorge is about 200 feet wide narrowing in places to 150 feet or less. The rocks rise almost straight up from the river and we make our way through a narrow canyon along this foaming stream. Down here in the gorge the noises of the city are unheard and nothing breaks the stillness but the whirring of the wings of the crows, storks and other birds as they fly across to their nests in one wall or the other and the roaring of the hurrying river as it dashes on through the rocks. The gorge changes in character as we go along. Here the cliffs are mighty pillars of stone 500 feet high. There they look like great battlements and farther on they almost meet overhead. At the lower end of the canyon almost under the Casbah is a natural bridge somewhat like that of Virginia. Across it runs an aqueduct built by the Romans and at the same place are the remains of the Roman road which joined the city to the mainland. This old bridge is still in good condition. It is right under the iron bridge of Cantara which now forms the chief highway to the city on the rock. I came here from the desert of Sahara by transferring at Alguera to the railroad from Algiers to Tunis. This landed me on Heights opposite the city and in a cab I crossed the Cantara bridge over the gorge to the Rocky Plateau. I am living in a comfortable hotel situated on a street so narrow that a carriage cannot turn around in it. I am only a short distance from where the ledge drops into the depths and were I a sleepwalker I might find my way out of the house and dash myself to pieces in the depths below. In one part of the town there are many fine buildings. The French have put up a city hall at a cost of several million francs. There are some excellent stores and at the north reached by bridges a European city has been constructed on a modern scale by a syndicate of capitalists from Lyon in France. This settlement has now more than 22,000 French residents and nearly 3,000 other Europeans. Constantine has about 32,000 souls who believe in the Prophet Muhammad and in addition something like 8,000 Jews. The Muhammadans are the controlling native element. Living at this place they might be said to have in reality mansions in the skies. I wish you could see their homes. They are along the usual narrow streets where you can stand in the middle and touch the walls on both sides. The streets wind this way and that. There are many blind alleys and the maze of crossing ways is often so confusing that one might wander about a long time and learn his location only when he came to the edge of the plateau and look down into the gorge. These houses are squalid and rough. They are usually of two or three stories made of brick and stone covered with stucco. They are painted blue or white with roofs of the same hues. The roofs are flat and each has a low wall about it. Few of the houses have windows facing the streets and all windows are covered with an iron network for fear the ladies of the harem may be seen by others than their husbands. The Arab women here are quite as secluded as those of other parts of Algeria or of Morocco. They wrap themselves in shawls when they go out of doors and wear pieces of white cotton tied tightly about their faces so that one sees only their eyes. So far I have not observed a single pair of the voluminous trousers so common in the streets of Algiers. The gowns of these Constantine ladies fall clear to the feet and the female population looks like so many big fat bundles waddling along upon slippers. The Arab men on the other hand are gorgeously dressed and spend much money on their clothes. The Jews here differ from their race in Europe or America so that what I write is not to be considered as applying at all to our Hebrew population. There have been Jews in Africa since the time of the Carthaginians. There are people of their own class but quite as African as the Arabs themselves. At Constantine they dress like Arabs. The men wear rich jackets elaborately embroidered and full trousers tied in at the knee. They have red pheasants which are often bound with great turbans. Some wear gowns but now and then one is to be seen in European clothes. The faces of these Israelites are darker than those of other countries but they have the same Jewish features and many of them are fine looking. I like especially the appearance of the Jewish women although I sadly fear that some of them are no better than they should be. They look at men boldly and without shame. Today is Saturday the Hebrew Sabbath and as it is also a fete day the people are all out in their fine clothes. The streets are swarming with Jewish girls loaded with jewelry. Their arms are bare to the shoulders. Their wrists and forearms are adorned with bracelets of silver and gold and their fingers sparkle with rings. Many of them are dressed in silk gowns over which lace shawls are thrown. Their heads are tied up in silk handkerchiefs and on the top of them are red velvet caps embroidered with gold. These caps are much like cornucopias. They are about four inches in diameter and are worn on the crown of the head. They are fastened on by silk bands tied under the chin and these bands are often decorated with gold coins. Sometimes gold chains are used. Nearly all of the Jewish's wear earrings. Some have brooches set with diamonds and many have strings of pearls about their necks. I have visited the chief synagogue which is situated near the gorge in the heart of the city and it seems to be very well attended. When I entered it was filled with Hebrew men wearing the same dress as the Arabs. Each had also a white shawl and all kept on their fesses during the service. The rabbi who occupied a pulpit in the center of the synagogue intoned the scripture with a nasal twang from parchment scrolls and the worshipers followed him with their Hebrew Bibles. Every man and boy had a little velvet bag decorated with Hebrew characters in gold or silver for carrying his books of worship. As far as I could see the books themselves were well thumbed. The Jewish stores are closed today but the Arabs are carrying on business as usual. This is one of the industrial centers of eastern Algeria and the native quarter fairly homes with men working at their trades. Constantine is famous for its leather work. It makes shoes, saddles and harness and also leather bags and cushions beautifully embroidered. Each trade has its own street. One will be filled with shoemakers, another with black smiths and another with weavers. About a hundred thousand hex and vernooses are made here yearly as well as a great deal of cloth for the tents used by the Bedouins. This work is all done upon hand looms in rooms which look more like stables or cellars than factories. I spent some time this afternoon in the street of the blacksmiths watching them make hoes and plow shares. The latter are for all the world like the long sharp trowels used by our masons say that they are about a quarter of an inch thick. They are of wrought iron and are so bent at one end that they can be fastened by an iron band to the forked stick which forms the rest of the plow. The blacksmiths are Arabs dressed in enormous trousers and jackets. Their sleeves were rolled up and they pounded away at the anvils just like our blacksmiths at home. The average shop of this kind is only big enough to hold the anvil, the furnace, and two or three men. It is a sort of a hole in the wall about six feet wide, 20 feet deep, and perhaps 12 feet in height. At the back are a rude bellows and furnace. In the center the men work at the anvil while at the front is a counter upon which the plow points are displayed for sale. In one street I found scores of Arab cobblers making red slippers for women and in another place men sitting cross-legged embroidering leather in gold. There are many restaurants and coffee houses in these localities. The coffee is always made to order and costs only about two cents a cup. The restaurant is usually in or back of the kitchen. The latter faces the street and the cooking goes on in full view of the customers. One of the oddest of these establishments sold nothing but boiled sheep heads cooked on an oven right next to the sidewalk. In a kettle filled with boiling water sheep heads were bobbing up and down their glazed eyes staring at the passersby. The heads had been skinned and as I looked in the long white teeth of the sheep appeared to grind themselves together in rage. On the floor were a number of heads still unskinned. They had just come from the butchers and the blood ran from them out into the street. My Drago man told me that the cook heads were delicious and begged me to step in and try one saying that we could get a whole head for 12 cents. Many of the heads are sold to be carried home and I find that sheep head is frequently on the bills of fare at the hotels. After what I saw today I shall eat them no more. This cook shop reminds me of a dog and rat restaurant of Canton in South China and of a horse meat restaurant which I once visited in Berlin. Both of them were cleanly in comparison. I spent some time in the palace of the bay. It is now the headquarters of the French army officers but for a long time it was the residence of the Turkish rulers of Constantine and their harems. From the outside it looks like an ordinary two-story building but its interior is wonderfully decorated and rich in marbles mosaics and carvings. The palace consists of an acre or so of buildings with galleries above and below built around beautiful gardens. The walls of the galleries are porcelain tiles and their roofs are upheld by marble pillars beautifully cut. The old bay who built the palace is said to have brought much of the material from the ruins of Carthage. The porcelains came from Genoa and the carvings from the houses of the wealthy residents of Constantine. If a man was noted as having an especially fine door or window the bay ordered him to send it to his new palace and if there was any furniture that he especially desired he got it in the same high-handed way. One of the strangest features of the arcades looking out upon the gardens is a series of paintings of Mohammedan cities. These are spread upon the walls without regard to harmony or art. The colors swear at each other the drawing is faulty and perspective is lacking. As it is contrary to the Quran to make pictures of men there is no sign of human life in the paintings. This work was done by a French shoemaker who was in prison in Constantine when the palace was building. The bay wanted some pictures on the walls and he said the dog of a Christian might do the work. The shoemaker objected saying he was not a painter but the bay's official was replied every Frenchman is an artist and you must paint for the bay if you do not you will be flogged with 25 lashes for every day you are idle. The result was a series of remarkable representations of Algiers, Cairo, Jerusalem and Constantinople. When the potentate saw them he was delighted. He paid the man well and sent him back to Paris loaded with presents. It was the same bay El-Haj Ahmed who punished one of his wives for plucking the forbidden fruit of the palace garden. It was his custom to sit every afternoon in a little kiosk in the center of a court filled with fruit trees and flowers. Here the bands played and here be times the women of his harem walked up and down and paraded themselves while his highness looked on. His four wives and 300 concubines were all dressed in their finest clothing as they walked in single file around the court with their arms crossed upon their bosoms not daring to look at their lord. They were allowed no liberties whatever and one regulation was that they were not to touch the flowers or the fruit overhead. One day a new hoary a fair red-headed Georgian girl just in from the wilds of the Cacossus who had not yet fully learned the dangers of her situation reached up and snatched off an orange after she had got past the bay. She was reported by one of the eunuchs and about three hours after was brought to the tree she had rifled and fastened there by two nails driven through the backs of her hands. This old bay and the others who succeeded him had quick and summary methods of divorce. Such of their wives as were faithless or such as they wished to get rid of for other reasons were sewed up in sacks carried to the edge of the gorge and heaved over into the river of sands a thousand feet below. Walks About Tunis Take a seat upon one of the magic carpets of the Arabian Knights and fly across the Atlantic Ocean and over the Mediterranean to the shores of North Africa. Direct your genie to set you down beside me on the top of the Kasbah or Citadel in the snow white city of Tunis and let us travel together through this one of the oldest populations of the Oriental world. Before we start cast your eyes over the expanse of buildings below you. You are high above the city which stretches out in every direction looking like a collection of great blocks of ice with here and there the white dome of the shrine of Ameribu or Muhammedin Saint or the square marble face towers of a mosque rising above them. That reddish brown section of buildings lying on the edge of the water is the French Quarter and that wide gleaming avenue is the canal across Lake Tunis built to bring the ocean steamers right up to the town. There are blue mountains on our right with white buildings upon them while away off to the left over the lake we see the snowy houses of Sidi Bon Said and the Cathedral of the White Feathers which marks the site where old Carthage once stood. More than 20 centuries ago there was a mighty city but Tunis above which we are standing was founded even before Carthage drove until it was supplanted by its Venetian rival and then lived on to see Carthage crumble to dust. The Tunis of today is rapidly growing and it is one of the most cosmopolitan towns of the world. It contains with its suburbs in the neighborhood of 200,000 souls. It has something like 44,000 Italians 26,000 Jews far different in costume and appearance from the Israelites of our country and thousands of Maltese Sicilians and Spaniards. Its French are somewhat fewer than the Italians but they include a large garrison of soldiers dressed in gay uniforms who form striking figures wherever they go. The most important part of the Tunisian population however is the Mohammedan element. This numbers at least 70,000 and its members form the chief inhabitants of old Tunis the great snowy town under our feet. There are orientals of the orientals and live in a world of their own. They do not like Christians and tolerate us only because they must. Their town is shut off from the rest of the city by an enormous wall and under French rule they are allowed to have their own customs and do about as they please. A person dares not enter any one of the hundred odd mosques where they go daily for prayers. He must not visit their schools while he who would attempt to go into one of their houses without permission might be killed and if he were I doubt whether the French would object. I have visited most of the great cities of the Oriental world. I have traveled through India, Turkey and Egypt and I have yet to find a section so strictly eastern as the streets of old Tunis. They are narrow and winding in some of them the fat Tunisian Juices have to suck in their breath in order to squeeze through. The white houses which wall these streets are almost windowless and the few windows there are perched so high above the street that a field glass would not enable one to look in. They are covered with meshes so small that a lead pencil would not go through them. The doors are kept closed and outside the business section there are only blank white walls on both sides. Many of the houses are built over the streets so that one goes through vaulted passages from one part of the town to the other. Let us step down into the city and see for ourselves. We shall spend most of the time in the bazaars which are stranger than those of Constantinople or Cairo and of greater extent than those of Damascus or Fez. There is an entrance near the Casbah and a three minutes walk will take us out of the sun and into a mammoth cave far stranger than that of Kentucky. This Tunisian cave is composed of a labyrinth of covered passageways lined with stores and filled with Arabs buying and selling. We shall meet all the characters of Eastern tradition and see them doing business in the same way as for centuries past. The streets of the bazaars are roofed so that they look like mighty vaults extending on and on until the eye is lost in following them. The roofs are of stone coated with whitewash. These are lighted only by graded holes cut here and there but the sun is so bright that there is plenty of light and under its rays the white ceiling itself shines like the stalactites of the cave of Luray. Some of the passageways are roofed with boards. They remind one of the old covered bridges of Venice or Florence which had shops upon them saved that the Tunisian bazaars extend for long distances and their shops are like nothing to be found outside the Orient. In addition there are smaller bazaars running off in every direction until the hole is a sort of Rosamund's bower for business in which we lose ourselves again and again in trying to find a way out. Let us examine the construction of the bazaars. Pillars and stones taken from the remains of old Carthage have been used everywhere. At the sides of each little shop are marble columns some of which have beautiful capitals. There are hundreds yes even thousands of these columns to be seen and sad to relate the Arabs have painted the snowy marble with stripes of yellow red green and black. Similar columns are to be found in the residential quarters where a large part of Mohammedan Tunis has been built from the nearby ruins of the old Punic city. In the bazaars each trade has its own quarter. There are long streets filled with cells where the Arabs make nothing but shoes and others in which the shops are devoted to weavers. In some silk thread is sold and in others only perfumery or groceries. There are also bazaars of coppersmiths booksellers and tailors. The bazaar of the tailors is not far from the Kasbah. We push our way through the white gown, Fezd, Turban, Mohammedan crowd and take a look at it. We are in a covered street about 12 feet in width paved with stone blocks worn smooth by the bare feet and slippers of thousands. It is walled with shops extending 15 or 20 feet back on each side. The average shop is not more than eight feet in width. Its floor is about two feet above the street and the tailors sit cross-legged upon it before tables eight inches high upon which they cut and sew. They wear gowns or jackets and voluminous trousers with fezzes or turbans upon their heads. Many of them work away with the goods on their knees and their bare feet and bare calves plainly seen. At my right is a shop where they are sewing upon a bernouse of the finest white wool for some Arab gentlemen and at my left is a man making a pair of elaborate trousers for some lady of wealth and fashion. Other tailors are working on gorgeous jackets and vests for both men and women. They use silk and gold embroidered cloths. Indeed many of the garments are exceedingly costly as you may see by the richly clad customers who stand in the street outside and bargain for clothes. At 10 o'clock in the morning there is an auction of second-hand clothing in this tailor street when gray bearded men go about holding fine garments high over their heads. They sing out the prices and quality of the goods and beg the people to buy. I found hundreds engaged in that way and the crowd was so great that I could hardly make my way through. But let us go on to the souk of the perfumers. The word souk is used as a term for the bazaars so when one asks to be shown the Mohammedan Business Center he tells his guide to take him not to the bazaars but to the souks. The Muslims are fond of perfumery. Their great prophet once said that there were two things which especially delighted him. One was the society of a beautiful woman and the other was sweet perfume. The Tunisians have some of the best sense of the world. We can buy essence of Jasmine, a violet or a verbena that is worth its weight in gold and a quart flask of the Attar of Roses sold in the souk would cost a king's ransom. Some of these essences are so valuable that the merchant measures them out by squeezing them drop by drop from a bit of cotton which he takes from his ear. As we enter this bazaar several Arab boys come and try to induce us to purchase at certain shops for which they are touting. We select one where sits a gray bearded old Abraham in costly raiment. He is in a little pen surrounded by bottles and boxes with a great string of candles hanging from a pole over his head. Outside his shop there is a bench upon which we sit down and have a cup of coffee with him before he asks us to buy. The coffee is as black as ink, as sweet as molasses, and almost as thick as chocolate. It is made of the beans pulverized by pounding them in a mortar and is brought in hot from the coals. After we have drunk he begins to show his perfumes. He takes out a cork and touches it gently to the backs of our hands. The next bottle is tried on the wrist and the next by pulling up our sleeves to the elbow and pressing the cork upon the forearm. Indeed he stamps us with so many brands that when we leave we are walking perfume shops ourselves and the scents are so pungent that they last for hours. The Arabs use perfumery not only on their clothes and in their baths but also in their food and drink. They have an essence of orange flowers which is sold here with tea and other perfumes for various foods. I have spent some time today among the shoemakers. There is a long street devoted to their shops where there were hundreds of men and boys at work. They were cutting out shoes of bright yellow and red leather and sewing them into shape. The yellow shoes were for men and the red ones for women. They were also making many shoes for children. Nearly all the footwear of the Mohammedan world is made by hand and perhaps someday a bright American shoemaker will set up a factory here and supply the trade. The Tunisian cobbler's bench is not at all like that of the American. These cobblers cut and pound upon a section of a tree like a butcher's block raised upon lakes. They do not use hammers but pound the leather with pieces of brass so molded that they can be easily held in the hand. They are not unlike brass paper weights. The leather work of Tunis is famous and the shoes are sold everywhere. Though they are all hand sewed a good pair can be bought for 75 cents. Another street near that of the shoemakers is devoted to the saddlers, others to jewelers and some to the sellers of cottons and of silks. There are also bazaars filled with old and new carpets and many which have fine brasswork embroidery and furniture inlaid with mother of pearl. All trading among these Mohammedans is by bargaining. There are no fixed prices and the merchant always asks more than they expect to receive. I usually offer one half or one third and am surprised to find that the dealer often comes after me and gives me the goods just after he has refused the price I named. This is especially so with the Jews who have shops in the soups. Since they give a commission of 5 or 10 percent to the Drago Man, the first thing your guide does when you enter the bazaars is to lead you into one of these shops. He pretends that he works in your interest but he is really a confederate of the shopkeeper, getting a rake off from every sale he brings in. The first day I visited old Tunis I took along a Maltese named Gauchi, due act as interpreter. He warned me that I must expect the merchants to ask more than they would be satisfied to get and said that when I saw him draw his handkerchief across his lips I might know the price was too high. The first Jew shop we entered had some magnificent rugs for each of which the man asked about $100 but Gauchi's handkerchief remained in his pocket. In the next room I was shown Tunisian silk dresses for which the man wanted $12 a piece and still there was no sign from Gauchi. Notwithstanding I found that I could have bought the rug for one-fifth of the price asked and I did buy a silk dress for a little over $5. The soups fairly swarm with boys and men who beg you to come into the shops and look at the goods. They will say they want you not to buy but only to see and will gesture to show what they mean. They point to their eyes and catch you by the hand trying to drag you in. I have learned the words for go away and get out in Arabic and I now repeat them in that language and in French, German and English whenever one of these pests becomes over persistent. Many of these bazaars are run by corporations and there is a great semi-religious trust company that owns and rents out a large number of the shops. This is called the Habus. I think the Bay of Tunisia is connected with it and also some of the leading sheiks. This institution has been in existence for a long time and its funds amount to many millions. It has had considerable sums dedicated to it with the understanding that they are to be used for certain religious or charitable purposes. One rich Mohammedan for instance left his money to the Habus in order that it might supply free drinking water to a certain locality. Though this was many years ago the water still flows. Men sometimes leave fortunes to this trust with instructions that it is to handle them in the interest of their wives and children. And in short it does much of the same sort of business as do our American trust companies. The Habus owns buildings all over Tunis as well as extensive tracks of land outside the city. It possesses so much property that the French authorities are afraid of it and they would like to have a safety valve created that would prevent its money from being turned to improper uses. The company's officers pretend that they desire nothing so much as an investigation but when the French make their inquiries they learn nothing. There is always the fear that some Mohammedan fanatic may declare a holy war in which event the Habus might become dangerous by furnishing a war chest for the Arabs. During my wanderings through Tunis I have seen many of the shops owned by this corporation and today I went into the building containing its offices. It is within a stone's throw of the bazaars on the Rue des Glises in the very heart of the old city. It consists of many large rooms surrounding a court walled with marble and has so many clerks that it looks like a government department. In striking contrast with the era parts of the city is the section in which the French have their residences and chief business houses. This is outside the walls of old Tunis extending from them down to the harbour. Less than a generation ago the ground there was a swamp and considered fit for nothing. It now contains the finest buildings in Tunis and is worth hundreds of dollars per front foot. There are large hotels, banks and stores upon it. It has wide and well paved streets and were it not for the Arabs, Jews and veiled women in the crowds which created you might think it a part of Paris, Lyon or Marseille. French Tunis is growing rapidly. It stretches out far into the country one of its best avenues reaching to the Belvedere or municipal park. This is lined with fine houses and there are other good residential streets. The main business thoroughfares of the French city are the Avenue de France and the Avenue Jules Ferry formerly called the Avenue de la Marine. They contain the chief banks, shops and cafes and also the casino and the principal hotels. French Tunis prides itself on being an up-to-date town. It has electric lights and trolley lines which now go all around the old city and reach to some parts of its interior as well. It has several large banks, two or three department stores and a great many restaurants and cafes. The casino is devoted to vaudeville shows with a gambling department and during the winter it becomes a little Monte Carlo patronized by both native and tourist. This establishment has seats for something like 2000 spectators. Its audience room consists of a pit and boxes and the people can have coffee, beer or wine served while the actors are playing. At the right of the audience room is a large parlor in which several roulette tables are kept going both during and between the acts while on the left there are rooms for private gambling and public places for rouge and noir. When I visited the gambling rooms during the intermissions last night I saw crowds about the tables. The stakes at roulette were from a frank upward and the tables were well covered with silver. The rouge and noir rooms were deserted but I understand they are well patronized in the winter when many tourists are here. Tunis has also a summer theater at the Belvedere park and the military bands give frequent concerts in the public squares. The most interesting theatrical presentations in this part of the world are plays with Phoenician characters and scenes acted in a ruined theater excavated on the site of old Carthage. Several dramas have been written by French playwrights especially for Tunis to be acted in the open air in the same surroundings and upon the same site where the plays of Carthage were presented when it was the capital of Africa and arrival of Imperial Rome. The heroine of one of Zeth's plays takes the part of a beautiful woman whose statue was found in the ruins and is now in the museum of Carthage. End of chapter 20