Autumn Rambles in North Africa ... With illustrations from the sketches of the author

Front matter

AUTUMN RAMBLES IN NORTH AFRICA. it LONDON PUINTED BY SPOTTIHWOODB AND CO. NEW -STREET SQUARE [Page 56. OASIS OF EL KANTBA. North limit of the Sahara. AUTUMN RAMBLES IN NORTH AFRICA BY JOHN ORMSBY, OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE. 'O me, my pleasant rambles ' — Tennyson. I am a stranger to you, and you to me : if you be going this way, I shall b< glad of your company; if not, I must be content.'— Pilgrim's Progress. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE SKETCHES OF THE AUTHOR. LONDON: LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN 1864. The right of translation is reserved. TO MY FRIENDS IN ALGERIA, MILITARY AND CIVIL, TO WHOSE ASSISTANCE AND SOCIETT I OWE MUCH OF THE ENJOYMENT OF THESE RAMBLES.

Preface

. From the days of Sir John Mandeville downward, the purpose of a Preface has been to show the author's consideration for his species, and his desire to make himself useful. Rambling Sketches — I do not call them Pictures of Travel — of this sort, giving the practical experience of a vacation tourist, would have been most welcome to me when I was about to make the experiment of a holiday in Algeria ; and I venture to hope that these, if they are good for nothing else, may be of use to some brother holiday-maker. Still further to meet his requirements, I have added a chapter of such hints as two seasons' wanderings suggested, about the route to be adopted, the mode of life, manner of travelling, and other similar points. This addition will also serve to supply the missing link required to connect some of the rambles described :

PREFACE.

. the chapters which precede it having been reprinted from Fraser s Magazine, where they appeared sepa rately, as occasional magazine articles, and at considerable intervals. The present may not seem, perhaps, the most fitting moment to recommend a tour in Algeria and Tunis. But disturbances like those now rife in the east and west are only temporary. Tunis will soon settle down, and the insurrection in Oran can have only one end. Besides, the reader must recollect that there is no more reason for avoiding the country I have described on account of a rising in Oran, than for abstaining from a Swiss tour because the Dalmatians might happen to be in arms. Nor is there, I think, the least danger of the insurrection spreading into the province of Constantina. The Arabs of Constantina are a very different people from those of Oran ; and France is, and always has been, far more firmly established there than in the western parts of her African dominions.

French Colonisation and French Rule in Africa I have merely touched upon incidentally and here and there. The subject has been already fully and ably handled by Mr. G. Wingrove Cooke ; besides, it is not one whicli has any great interest for the mere vacation tourist.

PREFACE.

. IX except in so far as it affects his personal comfort. He, at any rate, has no right to complain of a conquest which enables him to explore, with ease and safety, regions a few years ago inaccessible to Europeans ; and perhaps, if he compares the neighbouring States of Morocco and Tunis with Algeria, he will think that even the Arabs have not much real cause for complaint, 'sua si bona norint.' As to French Colonisation, I fear the impression he will carry away will be, that it is, even at the best, but a hothouse plant : that, except in one or two favoured districts, it may be described in the same terms as the snakes of Iceland ; and that in Algeria, in nineteen cases out of twenty, a colonist means only a camp-follower. June 1864. a CONTENTS- CHAP. • PAGE I. FROM MARSEILLES TO PHILIPPEVILLE ...

I II. CONSTANTINA ....... 20 III. ACROSS THE ATLAS ...... 36 IV. EL KANTRA 56 V. THE SAHARA ....... 79 VI. B0RDJ-B0U-ARERIDJ ...... 90 VII. LA GRANDE KABYLIE . . . . . .106 VIII. THE DJEBEL AURESS . . . . . .122 IX. TEBESSA AND THE BORDER . . . . .137 X. A RAMBLE WITH THE LION-HUNTERS . . .161 XI. A DERBY DAY WITH THE ARABS . . . .201 XII. TUNIS AND CARTHAGE 225 XIII. A CHAPTER OF HINTS . . . . ' . . ILLUSTRATIONS. Oasis of El Kantra Frontispiece page .Street in Constantina ......... 26 On the Track 74 Gone! 75 The Road to the South 82 Saharan Village, Oasis of Biskara . .... To face 84 Sunset on the Edge of the Sahara . . . . . . .89 A Lion of the Auress ' . . . . 136 Roman Archway .......... 155 The Lion's Path 200 Tunis, from the West ....... To face 227 Bazaar at Tunis .......... 246 Street Architecture at Tunis ........ 250 Confectioner's Shop at Tunis . . . . . . . 253 Carthage To face 263 Country Market and Costume AUTUMN EAMBLES IN NORTH AFRICA.

Chapter I. From Marseilles To Philippeville

TO the traveller bound for Africa, a couple of days at Marseilles is a capital preparative. As the mystic gridiron of the Freemasons, according to the popular superstition, serves to try the pluck of the neophyte, and to show whether or not he has nerve enough for further ordeals, Marseilles, with its heat and glare, mistral and mosquitoes, tests the patience and firmness of purpose of any adventurous spirit who may have conceived the design of taking his pleasure amonothe palm-groves of the Sahara. Nor are there wanting experts who, if he makes known his intention, will put his resolution to further proof. A remark on the heat will generally bring out some allusions to the sufferings of the soldiers in Algeria. Hint that the mistral is not as refreshing as a zephyr, and you are B requested not to venture an opinion on that or any other wind before you have felt a puff of the sirocco ; and as for mosquitoes, just wait till you get to Algiers, that's all.

The last admonition is the one which will make the deepest impression, if you have already paid that octroi duty which these unrelenting insects generally contrive to levy on everyone bringing fresh blood into the Marseilles market. Over-night perhaps, following a natural impulse and being, as the poet says, ' unawares of the ways of this bad town,' you opened your bed room window before seeking the couch where you expected, as you had every right to do, to sleep the sleep of the just. Most travellers who have sojourned in a Mediterranean port, and are not blessed with a cuticle of the colour and substance of their own portmanteaus, know the sort of night that follows an indiscretion of this sort. As you are dropping off to sleep, there comes at you from the outer darkness a blast of a fiercely blown little trumpet, which vibrates in your ears like the note of a very shrill musical glass ; and, if you are at all familiar with the sound, drives sleep away at once.

The first thing to be done is to shut the window, and in the course of this operation you damage your fingers with that combination of crank and lever employed to fasten windows in France. Your temper is thus dangerously roused, and with towel and lighted taper you go forth to battle, determined to spare neither age nor sex. In the blindness of your wrath you murder a couple of innocent sleeping flies, and smash a late spider who is hurrying home to bed up the wall ; but of the . enemy you can see nothing. He is in ambush, however, watching you, for no sooner are you in bed and the candle out than he returns to the charge. Then you think of trying stratagem, and letting him settle before you attack him. After a prolonged fantasia in something unusually sharp, the music comes to a sudden stop, and you prepare to steal out your hand for a match, when sting ! goes his stiletto into the corner of your left eyelid, and instinctively you deal yourself a thwack on the adjacent organ that for the moment produces the effect of the final burst of fireworks at Cremorne.

Surely you hit him that time, you think; but you did n't, and he comes down on you again as soon as you are quiet; and so, with sorties and retreats and severe punishment about the face — and perhaps, if you have mosquito curtains, a diversion created by setting fire to the house — the night drags on until at last, wearied out and fairly beaten off, you bid him bite his best, and fall into a dogged doze and dream that you are being pursued down very steep steps on account of an informality in your passport by the whole French army, which somehow changes into a cloud of mosquitoes just as you are getting away. But the sorest trial comes with the morning light. The field of Waterloo on the morning of the 19th was B not a more touching spectacle than that which your glass presents to you. Left eye nearly closed; eyelid pendulous, looking like a little sack of currant jelly, and forcing you to regard nature with a wink fixed and rueful ; forehead all over bumps like the crust of a pigeon-pie or the surface of a common where the moles have been burrowing.

Nay, more than this. There are yet other woes in store for you, for is there not an unusual feeling about the tip of your nose? Surely the accursed insect cannot have violated the sanctity of that sacred feature ? And yet, now that you come to look at it, there does seem to be something wrong ; it is far redder than it has any right to be in a person of your strictly temperate habits, and viewed sideways, there is a decided lump on the end of it. This is the cruellest blow of all. Now, you think you could have been happy with a closed eye and a knobby forehead. What is even a black eye to a nose that is gradually assuming — for you do feel it swelling — the dimensions and colour of a tomato ! There is something rudely heroic about a black eye ; it may have been received in defence of beauty and virtue, but the expression of your unfortunate countenance is simply comical, and here you are condemned to go about for at least eight and-forty hours (supposing you don't get bitten again) with bitterness in your heart, irritation in your skin, and a physiognomy as grotesque as a pantomime mask.

How are you to face that excessively jocular and obviously unfeeling old major below stairs who is on his way to join his regiment in India, and the uncommonly pleasant family who are going to Nice, including the being who is all soul and sat next you at the table-cVhdte yesterday? If you were in spirits you might sing her a comic song with wonderful effect, but with such a nose and eye you cannot attempt to quote poetry as you did last night. And you get no sympathy, or if you do, it is of an offensive kind. The major recommends you to wear a raw beefsteak on your nose, and the head garcon says, ' Mon Dieu ! mais, monsieur, vous etes abime,' and assures you you must have brought the mosquito in your baggage, for such a thing was never known in the house before. There is, however, one fact about Marseilles which to some extent compensates the traveller for this and other discomforts.

In no city in the world is he let off so cheaply in the matter of ' chief objects of interest ' There is nothing which ' you really must see,' or about which you need be the least uneasy lest it should rise up in judgment against you hereafter, as ' the finest thing of its kind in Europe,' or ' the greatest loss you ever had.' You are not obliged to spend half a day, looking for the Rue des Senteurs, where stands the cabaret of the Poisson Vieux, beneath whose humble roof the gallant anybody did anything. The many ' eminent,' ' illustrious,' and ' ill-fated ' men who might have taken this sort of advantage of posterity have been considerate enough to be born and buried nowhere in particular. There is not even, I believe, a single picture ' of which Sir Joshua Reynolds has left the following eloquent criticism.' One sight, indeed, there is which may be gratifying to travellers of a certain temperament.

Perched on one of those bare grey hills that surround Marseilles, and looking down on the housetops and omnibus-roofs of the city, is the chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde, the great centre of the devotion of Marseilles and the neighbourhood. All day sleek priests, with their petticoats daintily tucked up, and ancient mariners and matrons, in general fully blown — for the path is steep, are climbing the steps which lead from the city up to the chapel. Especially in time of trouble, when war or cholera is raging or the equinoctial gales blow, for the good people of Marseilles believe that 'in great emergencies there is nothing like a prayer' to Notre Dame de la Garde, and the shrine, like the Funds at home, serves to indicate the extent of public anxiety, the only difference being, that instead of saying there was a fall of so many per cent., they say, so many went up to Our Lady of the Look-out yesterday.

From floor to roof the chapel is hung with votive knick-knacks, and probably no church in Christendom so practically denies the doctrine that faith without works (of art) avails anything. It looks like something between the Suffolk-street Gallery and the United Service Museum. The walls are covered with pictures of accidents by flood and field, of steamers blowing up and fishing-boats going down, of death-bed scenes and surgical operations, each with its label setting forth by whom it was presented 'ex voto;' while from above dangle models of ships, pairs of crutches, legs, arms, and other emblems of danger or suffering. There is a little shop outside for the sale of the com moner articles of this sort, where they also keep in stock a few good plain sea-pieces and shipwrecks, much recommended for ordinary use.

I do not think, how ever, it does as good a business as an adjacent establishment, where there is provision for the flesh in the form of absinthe and lemonade. No British tourist who keeps a journal, and is fond of recording his 'impressions,' should neglect the chance. If he belong to the old comfortable glorious-constitutional school of travellers which is now nearly extinct, he will have a rare oppor tunity for expressing his contempt of the ' degrading and superstitious practices which shock the eye at every turn in these countries.' On the other hand, the sen timental and cosmopolitan order of mind will also find food for meditation. There, for instance, is a poor old soul who has come up to pray for Jacques or Pierre, who is away on the Cochin China expedition, and to vow, at the least, a candle if he comes back safe and sound.

Should we not respect her simple piety? Tread lightly, my brother, as you pass that meekly bending figure. Disturb her not, for that sound sleep she is enjoying will be very refreshing after such a fatiguing ascent on such a hot day. Notre Dame de la Garde excepted, there is nothing to do at Marseilles, unless it be to lounge on the quays. To a thorough-bred lounger — not a, flaneur, he is of Paris Parisian, and is unhappy off the Boulevards, but a real con amore stroller — there is a peculiar attraction about quays. The stir and bustle afford him that pleasure an indolent man always takes in witnessing activity in which he is not obliged to take a share ; and he finds there in the greatest abundance the class of object he loves to contemplate. By some law as yet unexplained, all the eccentricities of a city gravitate towards its quays.

There and thereabouts are congregated invariably the men who are engaged in abnormal trades, who belong to exceptional professions, who deal in articles that you fancy no one ever purchased except in a dream or in a pantomime. There are plenty of cities in Europe that afford facilities for the indulgence of this pastime. In Paris, for instance, what noble sauntering ground there is in the cheerful neighbourhood of the Morgue, where the old curiosity shops are ; and between the Pont Neuf and the Pont des Arts, where the river wall is crowned with trays of coins, and medals, and Rem brandt etchings manufactured in the adjacent Latin quarter, and little religious books fifty centimes au choix ; at Rotterdam, under the trees of the Boompjes, where the wanderer ' slacks his course, cheered with the grateful smell ' of cinnamon, and rum, and molasses; at Bordeaux, where the peaceful retainers of the rival castles of Lafitte, La Rose, and Margaux stand eager for the chance of drawing a sample in the cause of their chieftains ; at Antwerp, where the busy steamers are stirring up the lazy Scheld, and protesting with all their force of waste pipe and paddle against the dreamy old world influence of the cathedral chimes; — above all, along that paradise of idlers which lies beneath the pillar of St. Mark at Venice, where Shylock has walked up and down many a time with young members of the council, and talked about the impossibility of renewing, and where now the pigeons (who also, by the way, seem to have their little bill transactions with one another) strut gravely in the sunshine, looking for a livelihood.

But none of these cities can show anything fit to com pare with the quays of Marseilles. The long strip of dirty water called the Old Port — an old port crusted with abominations, and so ' peculiar ' that the very fish will not touch it — is covered with ships of every nation and build, and the pavement at each side is crowded with human craft displaying a corresponding variety of rig. It may be observed that there is a curious Ukeness between these men and the vessels they belong to. Between Tom Bowling of Deptford and that cousin of his, Enoch Bowling, who maintains disci pline on the high seas with knuckle-dusters and belaying AFEICA. pins, there is a difference very much like that which exists between the Susan of London and that rakish barque, the Ephraim P. Slogger of New York ; while red-shirted, bristly-bearded, unwashed Mons. Bolin of Dieppe, may be at once distinguished from either by very nearly the same features which serve to distinguish his ship, the Princesse Mathilde, from the other two vessels.

And any one of these, again, as he rolls along up the quay in nether garments painfully taut in parts, differs from Tomaso Bolino of Genoa, or that baggy breeched Boulingos from Smyrna, quite as much as a brig under double-reefed topsails from the loose lateen rigged craft of the Mediterranean. They all agree, however, in wearing their hats, or scull-caps, or red jellybags, as near the nape of the neck as possible ; in having a kind of lurching gait, as if there was a heavy ground-swell, and not enough wind to give them steer age way ; and in always sailing in small fleets of four and five, telling yarns, as far as one can judge. Even the yarns, I venture to say, have a strong family like ness, and whether in Greek, or Turkish, or Italian, are merely versions of the one which Tom is spinning to his two messmates, and of which the following fragment reaches the ear — ' But I warn't agoing to stand that, you know, so I ups and sez, " Bill," sez I, " you're a ;" ' the rest of the speech and the character assigned to Bill being lost to the reporter through an adjournment of the discussion into a house that bears on its window the legend, ' Englich bier.' It is a curious, and of course a sad fact, that here as well as in other Continental seaports, the English language appears chiefly in the form of invitations to liquor.

It is to be feared that, where'er he roams, whatever realms he sees, poor Tom's taste untravell'd fondly turns to the stimulants of his youth, and forces the foreign purveyor to provide him with ' rhum' and ' portare,' and ' punsch,' and ' grocs.'* Next to the English, the Greeks seem to be the people most cared for by the Marseilles tradesmen. For their benefit the marine store of M. George Ventura is, with Homeric sonorousness described as KaTtiaTtjfia Teop<ysov HsvTovpa. In fact, all their little wants and comforts are seen to. Another Philhellene calls attention to his dva'yKalov irpos 5 sKaroara, and a grandiloquent barber introduces himself as Kovpevs twz> 'EXXjjvom. Fancy getting your hair cut in Greek ! I wonder how he coaxes a customer to buy a pot of regenerative unction, and whether he employs the language of Demosthenes on the Crown when he tells him his hair is getting rather thin on the top.

Wonderfully perfect in their cosmopolitanism are these quays of Marseilles. There are places where you can get medical advice in any language from Cockney to Coptic ; clothiers who keep ready-made every article * Notice to Members of the Temperance League. — This observation is copyright. Any platform-speaker or pamphleteer making use of it will be proceeded against. from a kilt to a yashmak, and who will turn you out dressed in any known costume, at five minutes' notice ; hatters who would make nothing of an order for half a dozen turbans. You might indeed indulge in any eccentricity that money would enable you to perpetrate. You might purchase a complete outfit for the Polar regions, or set up a menagerie, or furnish a library, or establish a museum, or fit out a privateer at a moment's notice, or without being obliged to walk more than ten yards in any direction.

On one side is Marseilles Moses, who tempts you with his ' choix de dix mille pantalons a quinze francs.' On the other the canary and parrot merchant, whose door is guarded by a moulting and feeble-minded old cockatoo, that sits blinking in the sun and laughing horribly over his tin pannikin of bread and water. Then there is the shop of the dealer in marine curiosities, who exhibits shells so monstrous and many-chambered that no reasonable mollusc could have lived in them without taking in lodgers, and puts in his window hideous prickly fish, that look at you with staring eyes and gaping mouths, as if you were a ghost. Aud then there are watch makers who manufacture a serviceable sea-going article, just like Captain Cuttle's ; and dealers in ship furniture, who sell binnacles, and logs, and marling-spikes, and harpoons, and shark-hooks, and other objects that recall to your mind the days when you used to read Peter Parley's Tales about the Sea.

But in the window of a dentist hard by, who with a bitter humour arranges his patients' teeth in grim arabesques upon a black board, you may see an object even more suggestive of the wonders of the ocean. It looks like a chest protector, but is in reality an ' apparel contre le mal de mer.' A label, considerately printed in English as well as in French, gives directions for its use. You are to apply it ' to the pit of the stomach by means of the strings adapted to his lateral parts, whilst the string forming the handle is passed round the neck, and prevents it sliping downwards. Kota— This apparatus don't sticks to the skin, and leaves none trace.' The delicate atten tion shown in offering to make English travellers parti cipators in such an inestimable boon, will, I trust, be appreciated by every one who knows in what light the French regard the mal de mer.

It was our great staple of conversation for the first day on board the Messageries Imperiales steamer Chellif, bound for Stora, Bona, and Tunis ; and I believe before we were well out of the harbour everybody on board knew exactly what were the hopes and fears of every body else regarding the dreaded malady. There certainly was nothing to justify any extraordinary appre hensions. Sea or sky could not by any possibility look more thoroughly good-humoured. The mistral had been succeeded by a light westerly wind, which just wrinkled and crisped the blue Mediterranean in the distance. The white lateen sails of the outward-bound fishing boats and the white buildings on the rocky islands of Rattoneau and Pomegue glittered cheerily in the sunshine. Even grim old Chateau d'lf seemed to look down in a good-natured way on the little dimples of waves that played about its feet, like a well-meaning Newfoundland watching the frolics of a kitten ; and al together gave one the idea of having washed off the burnt cork of its melodramatic days, and settled down as a respectable and inflexible coast-guard station.

I must say it was only among the upper ten thousand of the quarter-deck that there seemed to be any misgivings. Impending nausea produced no effect on the jollity of the third class and deck passengers. These were, with scarcely an exception, soldiers returning after sick-leave or furlough to rejoin their regiments in Africa ; and of course they immediately made themselves perfectly at home, as French soldiers will anywhere, and under any circumstances. Long before we were out of the bay they were as firmly established on the deck as if they were in a winter camp, with the intention of commencing operations against the funnel in spring. Cunningly devised tents and awnings were set up to keep off the sun, impromptu beds made up with great coats and bits of sail-cloth, or anything that came to hand.

The manufacture of cigarettes set in with severity, and poor Jack of the steamer, after one or two feeble attempts to keep things more ship-shape, was forced to yield to military organisation and retire to the forecastle. The quarter-deck, I observe, takes a much longer time to settle down. Nearly every one has brought up a book, acting on that mistaken notion that the deck of a vessel at sea is a good place for reading. But somehow Edmund About and the last pamphlet on the last ' Question' remain uncut, and hour after hour slips by in watching the groups in the waist, and listening to snatches of bivouac songs, and in talking to one another about our respective destinations. As it is in the fore part of the vessel, so it is here. The military element is strongly predominant. There are, however, some three or four civilians bound for Constantina or Tunis on commercial business, and one who is bound for Algeria generally, and is forced to admit he has no business of any sort there, which, from the unusualness of the circumstance, makes him an object of some curiosity, and a recipient of a good deal of conflicting advice as to what he ought to do.

And here, in limine, and once for all, let me say, that one of the pleasantest recollections the tourist will bring away with him from North Africa will be of the many kindnesses he will be sure to receive at the hands of the officers of the French army. Algeria is so com pletely a military colony that they seem to consider themselves in some sort the hosts of the stranger who comes to visit it, and are always friendly, and kindly, and anxious to do the honours of the country. It is wonderful, considering that you do next to nothing, how fast the time slips by at sea. The sailor, who has to notify how many bells it is, seems to be always coming aft for that purpose. No sooner is breakfast down and digested, than the steward begins to make the circuit of the deck, telling every one that dinner is on the table.

And so the day goes in utter sensuality, eating, drinking, smoking ; watching the waves as they go spinning by with a hiss and gurgle ; and perhaps, in moments of extraordinary mental activity, looking out over the sea, and speculating on the destination and nationality of some chance sail in the offing. By way of experiment, the second day we were out I started a log. I find that at 11.15 there was a shoal of porpoises in sight. At 12 came the ceremony of heav ing the log, and mutual congratulations on the news that we were making ten knots an hour. At 3.20 there was great excitement about a bird which seemed to be following us. It turned out to be a falcon ; and shortly after there appeared a turtle-dove which, being more weary, actually came on board and perched on one of the boats, prompting the very pertinent query as to what business he had in that galley at some hundred and fifty miles from the nearest land.

Then were seen some flying fish, which are entered in the log as glittering Uke ' a handful of new sixpences.' This, although a rude and clumsy comparison, does, I am bound to say, convey some idea of the way in which a shoal of flying fish shoots out of a wave, sparkling in the sun for a moment like small silver, and dropping into the sea again, as if Neptune in a waggish mood was flinging the change of half a sovereign to the ragged little Tritons turning 'cartwheels' before his chariot. The next event seems to have been the appearance of a steamer going westward. Disputes as to whether she was a P. and 0. boat, or merely a Levant trader. Captain appealed to, but unwilling to commit himself. Steward on deck to say dinner is ready. Debate adjourned. After this the log is blank, from which I infer that for the rest of the evening the faculty of observation was dormant, and the mere senses had it all their own way.