LAST WINTER IN ALGERIA.*
ALGERIA has been so repeatedly described that a new writer stands at a certain disadvantage. Nevertheless, a Last Winter in Algeria is so good that it may be read with pleasure and profit even by those who are well versed in the literature of the country. Mrs. Evans unites very remarkable powers of observation to the command of a singularly picturesque style. She appears to have mixed freely with Arabs, Kabyles, and European colonists, as well as with the military and professional society ; and her book is, perhaps, the first that has really explained the prospects, the charm, and the comparative failure of French colonial life. It was her good fortune, as we presume she would now consider it, to be staying in Blidah during the great earthquake ; and she travelled for some weeks in parts of the country where the ordinary tourist does not go. In fact, a Last Winter in Algeria might easily do duty on occasion for a Murray's Handbook; and a few pages of practical hints at the end seem to be designed for this use. Its faults are not very numerous or important. Mrs. Evans is, we think, a novice in authorship, and her arrangement is not always the happiest ; the account of the earthquake at Blidah would gain in effect if it followed instead of preceding the vivid pages that describe the story of Blidah before the earthquake. A little too much prominence is given to anecdotes and remarks that are rather of personal titan of general interest. The story of a conversation with a functionary for the supply of military beds is conceived a little too much in a spirit of broad comedy, and the hunt for the Roman cisterns at Constantine would be more appropriate in a family letter than in a book. Still, when all abatements have been made, the book is one of sterling value as well as of singular interest.
It is scarcely wonderful that a colony like Algeria, comprising a larger area than all France, should offer every possible variety of scenery. Even in the neighbourhood of Algiers views of won- derful beauty may be visited. Mrs. Evans speaks with rapture of the panorama from the Sahel range. " The curved line of the chain stretches far away, terminating towards the east in the long points of Cape Matifou, and towards the west in the sharper headland of the Djebel Chenoua, a splendid diadem of mountain peaks encircling the Mitidja Plain, which lies in the middle distance, streaked with alternate bars of sunshine and shadow, dotted with white farms and villages, while in the foreground is the billowy mass of the Sahel Hills, on which we stand, almost every summit red with rocks or bare earth, every hollow green with vegetation." Contrast this with the borders of the Sahara, where Mrs. Evans met tribe after tribe emigrating with their sheep and goats, camels and asses, " the men armed to the teeth, quaintly chased pistols peeping through the folds of their burnous ; the women brown and wild- looking, with brilliant white teeth, and masses of coal-black hair plaited and curled round in a large whorl on each side of the face, enormous rings of silver and coral in their ears, barbaric- looking ornaments hanging from their turbans, keavy bangles encircling their ankles and arms." They were making their spring exodus from the Sahara, having already reaped the harvest down south, to find pasturage for their flocks in the elevated plateaux of the Tell. Presently the plain beyond Batna, over which the travellers were passing, " began to contract into a valley, then the valley into a winding gorge, across which our road kept as it were leaping from side to side, plunging continually into the river bed. The scene was barren in the extreme, even the weeds and lentisk bushes hitherto scattered over the hills disappeared, and save a few small green patches of corn struggling for existence at the water's edge all traces of vegetation had disappeared. Huge red precipices rose to the left, layers of bare sloping rock shelved away to the right, the defile grew wilder and narrower, the wall of rock to the south more and more scarped, till suddenly, so suddenly that we almost mis- trusted our eyes, on turning a shoulder of rock, a great chasm in the mountain, as if a monster ledge had been cloven out, burst on our view,—the Gates of the Desert, to use the Arab expression,— a blue vista of hill and valley, flanked with golden lights, lay beyond, stretching away to the Sahara."
The subject races of Algeria are the Kabyles or Berbers, its primitive occupants, their Arab conquerors, the mixed race of Arab and Kabyle, and, of course, Jews. Mrs. Evans takes part warmly against the Arab, regarding him as worthless for civiliza- tion, from his wild, intractable nature, his scorn of manual labour, his innate hatred of city life, his bigotry, and his low estimate of women. One great chief for whom a splendid suite of apartments had been prepared by a French General asked leave of his host * Lent Winter in Algeria. By Mrs. H Lloyd Evans. London: Chapman and Hall to be allowed to put up a tent in the courtyard ; it was bad enough to be in a city, but to sleep in a house in a city was beyond endurance. While the Kabyle family supports itself on less than eight acres a head, the Arab complains that more than seventeen are insufficient. Worst of all, since Mohammedan members have been admitted to the Provincial Councils, the excellent schools for native girls which were founded by Madame Luce have been suspended. Strange to say, it is the military who are the great patrons of the Arab. To them he is an important source of revenue, and a French colonel would be as sorry to see the Arabs extinguished or pacified as an English gamekeeper to know that stoats had died off or that poaching had been suppressed. Add to this a certain sentiment for " the grandly draped Arab," and a recollection of the old glories of the Arab dominion in Spain, and it will be easy to understand that the savage patrician of old Algeria never wants apologists or patrons. We believe the analogy from traditions of Granada is absolutely delusive, or rather, if accurately stated, tells against the Algerian Arab. All over the world the conquering races are dying out or declining in the scale of civilization, from their incapacity to meet the demands of an industrial epoch. The Turks, the Spaniards, the Magyars, the Norsemen have shrunk back into insignificance, and wherever a military caste made itself, as in France and England, the nobility of a country, it has been supplanted by the sons of merchants and lawyers. The Arab suited the seventh century because his tribal organization made everyman a soldier, his religious faith gave energy and concentration to his efforts, and his spirit of savage independ- ence carried him through the shock of wars where tenacity was the chief condition of success. IIe cannot stand now against the wealth and thought of Europe. Whether the Kabyle can ever quite replace him is to us more doubtful than Mrs. Evans seems to allow. It is true that Roman Africa was prolific in great writers, and that in earlier times still Juba and Jugurtha showed some powers of sovereignty. But a royal family is commonly of mixed extraction ; and we cannot now decide how much Roman blood may have flowed in Augustine's veins. During 1,400 years at least the Berber race has not produced a poet, thinker, prophet, statesman, or general, though its capacities have been tested by long wars of independence. The race seems eminently fitted to be the Gibeonites of French occupation, and to make the colony prosperous when civil govern- ment is substituted for military. During the recent incendiary fires it was remarked that none broke out in the Kabyle district. The people seem to have retained some traces of Roman municipal gov- ernment, having mayors and district councils and laws of property, seemingly on a Roman original. They are fond of commerce, take readily to every kind of industry, and are penurious to a pro- verb. "The Kabyle has a stone in his head," says the Arab, despising him for his life of stolid Philistinism ; and the Kabyle retorts that "The Arab has wind in his head." Fortunately the industrial element outnumbers the warlike by two to one in the colony.
Why have the French failed hitherto to make Algeria peaceful and prosperous? Mrs. Evans answers, first, that the failure is not so great as has been supposed. New cities are springing up, and culture and civilization, " like a vast wave, have flooded the Mitidja, have crept up the Lesser Atlas, and poured down its southern slopes to the edge of the Chelif Plain." Still the country is not half peopled, and the Tell alone, " the part fit for culture which lies between the Mediterranean and the Desert, is a good deal more than one-third the size of France." The chief cause of any deficiencies must be sought in the character of French govern- ment. Algeria has been made a champ de mana'ucre, and everything sacrificed to the army. Roads are made for the most part only between military posts, and as the best situation for a fort is not always the best for agriculture, the colonist is obliged to choose between a market and roads or superior land. Often when he has elected for the former, the troops have been withdrawn, the market has disappeared, the roads are left to decay, and the colonist has gone back to France a ruined and desperate man. Moreover, the pedantry of officialism, instead of leaving the colonist to work his land as he likes, hampers him with restrictions as to bringing so many acres into cultivation every year. These regulations are the more foolish, as Algeria is not yet a country of land-jobbers ; and the price of land is suffi- ciently high to ensure that it will not be kept long out of the market. Practically therefore a new settler prefers not to buy of Government, and purchases land already worked and unfettered by legislation. Moreover, the French nature is more prone to spasmodic efforts than to sustained industry. The Jardin d'Essai at Biskra has been allowed to run wild, and only serves to illustrate the Darwinian theory, the hardier plants having choked the weak, and transformed the garden into a luxuriant jungle. Again, the colonist looks to Government for help where he ought to work him- self, and is sometimes right in thinking that a necessary enterprise is beyond his strength. Tanks and irrigating canals are an abso- lute necessity of Algerian agriculture, and the Government hitherto has done little beyond forcing the colonist to plant trees, that the rainfall may be gradually increased and economized. Probably, however, Algeria has seen its worst days. Many restrictions in trade have been taken off, thanks partly to Mr. Cobden, and the European colonists now number 200,000. The trade of Bona is steadily increasing, and Algiers is attracting a little colony of English. A Last Winter in Algeria is not unlikely to swell their numbers ; and during a winter like the present, when Nice, Cannes, and Hyeres have been as cold as England, a migration to the opposite coast might well allure those who are in search of sunshine and warmth.
Our space compels us to omit all notice of several chapters which are among the most interesting in the book, though not the most important. The descriptions of Algiers, its balls and theatres, are very pleasantly touched off. The account of• a Moorish wedding, with the enamelling of the bride, the dance of the negro women, and all the curious incidents of the ceremony, is well matched by the more fantastic chapter on the fast of the Ramadan and negro sacrifices. Perhaps this latter is a little marred by the want of order we have alluded to ; at least, it is difficult to understand why a visit to the College Arabe should come under the heading of "Ceremonies and Sacrifices." Probably some of our readers may care to know the " menu " of an Arab dinner. Soup, meat, pastry, cabbage stuffed with force- meat, mutton and chickens, ragouts, sheep roasted whole and torn off in strips like crisp biscuit, flour and sour milk, oranges, honey, and bonbons. The description is not uninviting, but a Moorish lady of Blidah smiled contemptuously at the list, and when she heard that the honey was unmixed, ejaculated in quiet scorn, " Cuisine Bedouine !" Yet this lady was not demoral- ized by European civilization, for her husband had been warned by his mother, "If I find you corrupting your wife with your new French ideas, I shall just stick my dagger into her heart, rather than see our honour thus degraded." Evidently, the feud of desert and city is eternal.
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