Part 14

During the latter part of the third century two processes were at work in Africa, the formation of great estates out of the ruin of small proprietors, and the spread of Christianity. The two were not unconnected. The new religion attracted all who were dissatisfied with the existing order. It ran like a flame through Barbary. It produced three great men: Tertullian in the second century, Cyprian in the third, and Augustine in the fourth. But the movement throughout was more political and social than religious. It was based among the Berber population rather on discontent than conviction. With the official recognition of Christianity under Constantine its attraction as a symbol of revolt disappeared. A substitute was found in schism. The curious inter-workings of finance, politics and religion have never been more fully illustrated. The misery of the cultivators under the wretched financial system of Rome has not been accorded its due weight as a factor in the most extraordinary event in history, the conversion of the Empire to Christianity.

Even under Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, the schism of the Donatists, destined to ruin Roman Africa, grew to a head. It arose from a personal dispute as to the position of a bishop named Donatus; if there were any differences on points of doctrine they were insignificant. But it plunged Africa into anarchy for centuries; it laid open the way to the invasion o£ the Vandals, and was extinguished only with Christianity itself.

Timgad was the very focus of Donatist agitation. Its bishops took a leading part; of one of them Augustine says that for ten years Africa trembled beneath his yoke. To this century perhaps belong the ruins of several Christian churches unearthed in the city. The schism was not bounded by the arguments of doctors. It extended to the pillage of estates and the sack of cities. The wild tribes of the Aurès and other mountain districts which had never completely owned the sovereignty of Rome made common cause with the schismatics. And Roman Africa was ruined. Then came the Vandals.

The historian Gibbon, who rises to his highest flights in the consideration of Christianity and its heresies, has sketched the Donatist pretensions in immortal words: “Excluded from the civil and religious communion of mankind, they boldly excommunicated the rest of mankind. They asserted with confidence, and almost with exultation, that the apostolical succession was interrupted; that _all_ the bishops of Europe and Asia were infected by the contagion of guilt and schism; and that the prerogatives of the catholic church were confined to the chosen portion of the African believers, who alone had preserved inviolate the integrity of their faith and discipline. This rigid theory was supported by the most uncharitable conduct. Whenever they acquired a proselyte, even from the distant provinces of the East, they carefully repeated the sacred rites of baptism and ordination; as they rejected the validity of those which he had already received from the hands of heretics and schismatics. Bishops, virgins, and even spotless infants, were subjected to the disgrace of a public penance before they could be admitted to the communion of the Donatists. If they obtained possession of a church which had been used by their catholic adversaries, they purified the unhallowed building with the same jealous care which a temple of idols might have required. They washed the pavement, scraped the walls, burnt the altar, which was commonly of wood, melted the consecrated plate, and cast the holy eucharist to the dogs, with every circumstance of ignominy which could provoke and perpetuate the animosity of religious factions.” Such an account would almost describe proceedings of religious fanatics at a date much nearer our own age. But the fervour to which the Donatist schism gave birth produced under the African sun remarkable developments. “The rage of the Donatists was inflamed by a frenzy of a very extraordinary kind; and which, if it really prevailed amongst them in so extravagant a degree, cannot surely be paralleled in any country or in any age. Many of these fanatics were possessed with the horror of life and the desire of martyrdom; and they deemed it of little moment by what means, or by what hands they perished, if their conduct was sanctified by the intention of devoting themselves to the glory of the true faith, and the hope of eternal happiness.” They would disturb worshippers, waylay travellers, or insult courts of justice, in the hope of achieving martyrdom. Failing other resources, they would cast themselves headlong from some lofty rock. “In the actions of these desperate enthusiasts, who were admired by one party as the martyrs of God, and abhorred by the other as the victims of Satan, an impartial philosopher may discover the influence, and the last abuse, of that inflexible spirit which was originally derived from the character and principles of the Jewish nation.”

Genseric, King of the Vandals, landed in Africa from Spain in A.D. 429. Born a Catholic, he embraced the Arian heresy, and made common cause with the African Donatists. He swept through Barbary, an easy conqueror. His fleets ravaged the coasts of Italy and Sicily. In A.D. 455 he sacked Rome. For a hundred years the rough Northmen held the fertile provinces. They rased the fortifications, but did not overthrow the Roman cities; they rather succumbed to their luxury. They did not destroy, but they constructed nothing. They had no thought of substituting their own institutions for those of the conquered races. They considered themselves merely a garrison, for which the country must provide subsistence. Their decadence commenced with the death of their leader.

In the early part of the sixth century Byzantium set himself to take up the mantle which Rome had let fall. The great Justinian determined to make good his claim to all the former possessions of the Empire. The Vandals were in no condition to offer a vigorous resistance. The native population was everywhere in revolt. The tribes of the Aurès descended from their mountains and sacked the fair cities which had been raised under the protection of the Third Legion—Tebessa, Bagai, Lambessa, and Timgad. Belisarius, the Byzantine general, landed in Tripoli in A.D. 533, and, marching rapidly westward, met with little resistance. In a few years a great part of the corn-growing districts was brought under effective control. All the ports were held by Byzantine garrisons. Barbary was to experience an Indian summer.

The first care of the Greeks was to build a series of fortresses to hold in check the tribes of mountain and desert which for generations had been acquiring greater boldness in war and pillage. Remains of such forts are all over the country. There is one at Timgad, situate about 150 yards from the Southern Baths. It is a great quadrilateral flanked with square towers, and covering more than 7000 square yards. It is extraordinarily solid in construction, the walls being nine feet thick. But it is at Tebessa that the most perfect example of Byzantine fortification exists. The enceinte encloses the Arab town, and to put it into a state of defence the French have only had to execute a few repairs. For these hastily constructed fortresses any materials which came to hand were used. Into the solid walls faced with square blocks were thrown the debris of private houses, the friezes of temples, the statues of the gods. What the Vandal had spared, the Berber and the Byzantine between them made an end of.

Under the shelter of these fortified places a neo-Roman civilization budded again. The great proprietors and the wealthy financiers of the later Empire had disappeared. Their place was taken by the Church. The bishops occupied themselves with business of every description, political, financial, administrative, and even military. Vast sums were spent in the construction of great basilicas and monasteries, the ruins of which may be seen at Timgad and Tebessa to-day. To this period doubtless belongs the huge building, basilica and monastery, to the west of Timgad. It covers a space of not less than 20,000 square yards. The basilica is 200 feet long and 70 feet wide, and is preceded by a court-yard of the same size as itself. It is built chiefly of stones taken from the neighbouring pagan temples, which must have been already in ruin at the time of its erection. If, as some suppose, these great churches were built originally during the fourth and fifth centuries, before the Vandal invasion, there can be little doubt that they were rebuilt with modifications and enlargements during the Byzantine period.

The domination of the Church did not make for the prosperity or security of the people. The great dreams of Justinian were never realized; his enterprise from the very beginning had in it the seeds of decay. The rapacity of the ecclesiastics at least equalled that of the former Treasury officials; the husbandmen were plunged in a condition of abject poverty; the persecution of schismatics decimated the population. Native insurrections, mutinies of troops, sullen detestation of the people prepared the way for the easy fall of the Byzantine administration before the invading Arabs of the next century.

It is natural to compare Timgad with Pompeii, and the comparison has often been made. But beyond the fact that both were towns of the Roman Empire, and that the ruins of both have been preserved to an extent unparalleled elsewhere, they have no great resemblance. It happened to me, as probably it has happened to few, two or three weeks after leaving Timgad, while the memory of it was fresh, to stand once again in the Forum of Pompeii. I recalled their different conditions. They were not contemporary; Pompeii was destroyed before Timgad was built; Pompeii, rather Greek than Roman in origin, was a pleasure town of the first century, which, after damage by an earthquake at the zenith of its prosperity, was overwhelmed by ashes from Vesuvius; Timgad was a military and commercial town of the second and third centuries, ruined first by religious faction and financial breakdown, and finally overthrown of set purpose by a horde of mountaineers. To compare them is like comparing the Tunbridge Wells of the eighteenth century with the Pretoria of the twentieth. The contrasts their ruins present are those we should expect. Timgad is more solid and more serious; its public buildings are finer; its main streets are more important; and there is nothing at Pompeii to compare with the magnificent arch of Trajan. But Pompeii is richer in minor matters, in all the illuminating incidents of private life; its chief interest lies in its wonderful houses, and in the almost miraculous preservation of much of their interior decoration. And their situations accord with their peculiarities. Timgad lies on a bare hill-side, far from the habitations of man; Pompeii hard by the lovely bay of Sorrento, in one of the fairest landscapes of Italy. The cities are not rivals; they supplement each other; and those of us to whom a study of what was before is one of the chief interests of life may be grateful that we have so much of both.

_XII—THE ROAD THROUGH KHABYLIA_

Setif—The Chabet pass—A fishless river—A lovely coast—Bougie—Khabylia— Greek types—Fort National.

“A rough laborious people, there, Not only give the dreadful Alps to smile, And press their culture on retiring snows, But, to firm order trained and patient war, They likewise know, beyond the nerve remiss Of mercenary force, how to defend The tasteful little their hard toil has earned.” THOMSON.

He who returns by motor-car from Biskra to Algiers may avoid the detour via Constantine by taking the new direct road from Batna to Sétif, a distance of 132 kilometres. It ascends to an altitude of over 5000 feet, and in winter is sometimes blocked by snow. But this is not likely to be a frequent trouble. Whichever way he comes, direct or roundabout, by road or rail, the traveller must make Sétif his point. If he omits to take the road from Sétif to Bougie, through the Chabet pass, a distance of 113 kilometres, he will have no idea of what Algeria is capable of in the way of mountain scenery.

There is a distinct tendency among Englishmen to-day to revolt against the domination of the guide-book. With our ancient constitution in the melting-pot, and our most cherished national convictions openly contested, it is hardly surprising that even the revered name of Murray has failed to maintain its authority. There are abandoned men who openly flout it, who want to see nothing of the things that ought to be seen, to know none of the things that ought to be known. The reaction was inevitable. Murray and Baedeker and the like set poor human weakness an impossible ideal. They direct us as if we were an army of invasion; they map out our operations day by day and hour by hour with a ruthless precision. Has anyone ever carried through the programme of How to spend ten days in Rome, and survived to boast of it?

Wherefore in our iconoclastic age there are men to whom the guide-book’s double star is but a danger signal. Let me implore them to waive their prejudices as far at least as the Chabet pass is concerned. If much be-praised it is still quite un-hackneyed; and it is magnificent. And they may steal a march on the enemy. The guide-books, as far as Algeria is concerned, have not discovered the motor-car. They direct you to hire a carriage at Sétif, to sleep at a roadside inn, and to lumber into Bougie at the close of the second day. We have changed all that. We take a car at Sétif after _dejeuner_, and loitering by the way we yet reach Bougie in time to stroll round the town before dinner. So we have a day in hand. But let us haste to do it before a revised edition comes out.

The plateau of which Sétif may be considered the centre lies at a high altitude, and as the sea is no great distance off, we may perceive from a glance at the map that there must be a more or less rapid landfall towards it. Such conditions commonly produce a picturesque coast-line. Here we have more than this. The plain is supported by a very abrupt range of mountains rising to twice its height,—the peaks to 6000 and 7000 feet. Such a range must either be crossed by a high pass, or it may be that we may find an outlet where a mountain stream, taking advantage perhaps of a rift caused by a natural convulsion, has worn for itself a passage. Such a passage is the gorge of Chabet-el-Akhira.

From Sétif, most hideous of modern French towns, the road leads northward for some distance through an uninteresting corn-growing country. After a few miles the surface becomes more broken, Khabyle villages begin to appear on neighbouring hill-tops, and Khabyle gardens are rich in apricot blossom. We cross a chain of hills running east and west, from the summit of which we obtain a splendid view of the mountain range which we are about to penetrate. We descend rapidly to the stream which is to be our companion, and at a distance of fifty-three kilometres from Sétif reach Kherrata, at the mouth of the pass. Here is the half-way house where the carriage-folk of former days were wont to pass the night. It lies in a cool upland valley at the foot of bare stony hills which might be in Wales or Cumberland. It is market-day in the village, and the street is crowded with Khabyles,—as ragged and dirty a crowd as you may see in county Galway. Their Arab dress looks curiously incongruous with such very northern surroundings.

Immediately beyond Kherrata the road enters the gorge with a dramatic suddenness. It descends rapidly by the side of the stream which here becomes a torrent. The valley contracts and soon grows so narrow that the road has to be bored, as it were, through overhanging cliffs, or borne on arches above the river. There are many kinds of gorges; the least interesting perhaps are those which run directly between unbroken cliffs. This is of the finest kind. Its turns are rapid. It has numerous lateral valleys which break its almost perpendicular sides into seeming pinnacles of rock. One looks almost directly upwards to peaks five and six thousand feet high. Even where the road is carried several hundred feet above the river you may toss a stone and strike the opposite cliff. It is said that before the French road-makers came not even an Arab could pass the gorge on foot. Great caves appear on the mountain sides, the haunt of innumerable pigeons; monkeys are generally to be seen, but on market-days the exceptional traffic scares them to seclusion. Here and there waterfalls descend from the tributary gorges, and rapidly swell the turbid stream.

Even the all-pervading Roman seems to have found this gorge too much for him. Yet it is not easy to discover an _endroit_ which has not echoed to the tramp of the legions. Mr. Belloc[12] tells a delightful story of a French general who, filled with pride at having conducted his troops through an almost impossible defile, sent a party to inscribe a record of the achievement on the face of a cliff. The men came back to say that there appeared to be lettering on the cliff already. On examination this proved to be “Legio III Augusta.”

Footnote 12:

“Esto Perpetus.” London, 1906.

The actual gorge is about four miles long. The valley then gradually widens, the hills become rather less abrupt, their sides are clothed with ample vegetation, chiefly forests of cork and oak trees, and the lateral valleys grow larger, in due proportion to the general scheme. We pass from the thrilling sensations of the unique defile into a mountain valley of great beauty, but less unusual in character.

It happened that I offered a seat in my car to a gentleman whose party were inconveniently crowded in their own. I began by doing the unpardonable thing; deceived by certain guttural syllables, I said, “Are you a German?” He replied: “No! thank God, I am Dutch.” And my heart was glad within me, for the Dutchman is our brother, and our friend; perhaps because we have fought him over and over again, and sometimes we have beaten him, and sometimes he us. We have had, as far as I am aware, no such pleasant relations with the German; perhaps if we had fought him for a century or two we should appreciate his good qualities. In spite of this inauspicious beginning, I soon found points in common with my chance companion. We both knew many lands; especially we both knew the same places and the same men in Norway. My Dutchman loved Norway as I love it, and knew it better. Our points of view were different. His to range far and wide, to sip as a bee winging from flower to flower the varied beauties of fjord and fell, of fond and brae; mine to mark the rise and fall of one much-studied river, chained as a galley-slave to my angle.

So we played the pretty and seductive game of resemblances. Here in this fierce African landscape we contrived to see Bratlandsdal, here Sundal, here the smoothened rock-faces of Naerodalsosen. Lower down where a vast amphitheatre of hills guarded the meeting of two waters we saw the Pyrenees. But the while I was hugging to myself a secret study of which my comrade recked nothing. Even as a man may travel by train, and mark a country, and consider within himself how he would ride over it to hounds;—so was I noting the pools and streams of the river, muddy as a glacier-fed river may be in a hot July, and judging where the fish would be like to lie, and how I should put the fly to them. A very pretty pastime, but clouded by the knowledge that no fish that is a fish, not even a wee trout, may live in these waters. They contain calcareous salts, or something unpleasant, which no fish of the royal race will stand. There are hopes of acclimatizing tench; but who can wax warm at the prospect? Yet was this to look upon a real river, the finest river (with all respect to the Nile and the Zambesi; I speak as an angler) that I have seen in Africa; a fair succession of pool and stream,—of pools running swiftly beneath steep banks and shelving shores, of streams just steep enough to make the pools holding. The pity of it! From end to end Africa has an air of being unfinished and ill-designed; there is always something wanting to its completeness; in some ways it is too big, in others too small; it lacks water, or it has too much; and things are seldom what they seem,—when you descry a distant lake it is generally the mirage; wherefore a salmon river without salmon falls quite within the natural order of African things.

So on through the broadening valley, with glimpses of azure sea ahead, and soaring mountains, clad with primeval forest, all around. The road, well engineered,—that goes without saying,—is much cut up by the heavy traffic to and from certain mining enterprises in the hills. One iron-ore mine,—the property of an English company, I hear with national pride,—on the opposite side of the valley has a little railway and a little port of its own; and two vessels, hovering suspiciously in the offing, are not corsairs, but intent on a lawful freight. But here, as everywhere, the authorities are busy in making the road smooth for the motor-car, and the repairers and a steam-roller are at work. The car is not yet a familiar object to man and beast. A mule bearing a native bolts at our approach, and unseats its rider. We call to the chauffeur to stop. He replies, “Mais, ce n’est qu’un Khabyle”; in which I recognize a common colonial note. We look round to see the mule caught and the rider up again, and go on happily.

The long descent comes to an end at length, and at a point about twenty-three miles short of Bougie we reach the sea. The coast-lands here consist of a series of semicircular plains, divided by great spurs which run northward from the main range, and form capes. Across these flat and highly cultivated plains our road lies where it may with Algerian directness, but rises to dizzy heights by zigzags to surmount the precipitous headlands which once or twice bar its progress. The contour of this variable and rocky coast is eminently picturesque, the views of sea and mountain of infinite variety. And afar the dazzling whiteness of Bougie stretching upwards from its harbour among the olive groves invites us. The level lands appear to be of great fertility; amid great fields of corn and vine pleasant and prosperous-looking country houses stand, girt about with fruit trees,—figs, apricots and peaches. In some places the cultivation is carried almost to high-water mark, in others a sward of fine turf seems to meet the sand.