Part 5

Between Boufarik and Marengo the country is fairly well cultivated; substantial farmhouses, surmounted by groves of eucalyptus trees, stand amid great fields of vine and corn. It is difficult to realize that, in spite of its long history, this is essentially a new country, far newer than the Colonies of South Africa, newer than a good deal of Australia. At Marengo we join the main road from Blidah to Cherchel and descend rapidly by the side of the newly-constructed railway. From a contemplation of the enterprise of modern France, we are taken back at a bound to the works of ancient Rome by the appearance on a hill to the left of a portion of the aqueduct of Cæsarea. At this point it spans a lateral valley in a triple series of arches, rendered perhaps more impressive by a breakage in the middle. Leaving the car we scramble up by the side of a stream and reach the great watercourse itself. Passing beneath its arches we ascend the valley a little, and turn to look down on its immense proportions. Amid the rough mountain scrub we have passed from all evidence of modern cultivation, and are alone with this mighty fragment of the past. It is difficult to find a reason for the feeling, but few of Rome’s monuments impart a fuller sense of her magnificence than the aqueducts which survive at so many different points of her Empire. They are a symbol perhaps of her relentless power over nature and man, of her determination to have what she wanted at all cost. Sometimes, as in the Campagna, it is the long lines of interminable arches which impress us; here it is rather their soaring height. Many modern peoples would have carried the open watercourse by a circuitous cutting on the hill-side round the head of the little valley; such a proceeding was alien to the directness of Rome.

“See distant mountains leave their valleys dry, And o’er the proud arcade their tribute pour, To lave imperial Rome.”

The city to whose fountains and baths the aqueduct brought copious streams of fresh water from the hills has disappeared. A squalid little port fills some of its site, and entombs its marbles, but the aqueduct, situate too far from the habitations of subsequent man to serve his purpose as a quarry, and too threatening with its mass to encourage any hasty attempt at demolition, has survived.

A mile or two lower down are a few arches of a branch of the same aqueduct; perhaps more picturesque in their greater ruin, but less impressive in their situation and height. All around as we enter Cherchel are evidences of its ancient glory. The fashioning of the ground, the great squared stones which are built into the walls, the marble columns lying about in the town square, and the huge masses of shapeless brickwork on the shore prepare us for the collection of statues and other objects gathered together in a well-arranged museum.

The city of Cæsarea, renowned for its magnificence in the splendid Roman world of the first century, rose under the hand of a woman, as Carthage under Dido’s. To the loves of Antony and Cleopatra was born the Princess Selene. In her veins flowed the blood of the Ptolemies,—perhaps of the Pharaohs,—and of the paramount family of Rome. Truly, to adapt the language of the turf, was she bred for building. Possibly with the idea of providing for this inconvenient young lady at a safe distance from Rome, Augustus mated her to Juba, a descendant of that Masinissa, King of Numidia, who had been the staunch ally of the Romans in their long struggle with Hannibal. Juba, educated at Rome, had developed literary tastes. He is lauded by Pliny for his erudition, and we learn from Plutarch that he merited a place among “Royal and Noble Authors.” Save perhaps for the dark blood of his ancestry, he was a fitting match for Cleopatra’s daughter, especially as he was restored to the Numidian throne of his family, with all the power of Rome behind him. Retiring to the ancient Phœnician town of Iol, the Royal pair set to work to raise a noble city, which perhaps with a punning reference to its former name they called Julia Cæsarea; and to gather around them a circle representing the best culture of the time. Marble colonnades and porticoes, baths and theatres and temples sprang into being on the fair curve of the bay beneath the wooded hills. Great libraries enshrined the literary labours of the monarch and the learning of the age. The scholars of Greece found a comfortable and inspiring home at the court of the pedantic king, and the existence of a hundred thousand citizens attested the material wealth of the new city. Juba and Selene lived here in peace to old age. The king died in A.D. 19, and was succeeded by his son Ptolemy, who inherited none of his father’s good qualities. A debauched tyrant, he plunged his kingdom into anarchy and was summoned to Rome. He was received with every mark of honour, but was put to death by Caligula, because, as it was said, the splendour of his attire unduly excited the attention of the populace.

Ptolemy’s sister Drusilla was the wife of that Felix, Governor of Judæa, before whom Paul reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, so that Felix trembled, and answered, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season I will call for thee.” Drusilla is described in the Acts of the Apostles as a Jewess, which she was not, by birth at any rate.

It is sad to learn that as late as 1840 much of the Roman city was still to be seen. The theatre, now marked by a mere depression in the ground, was almost perfect. Here we have a genuine grievance against the French conquest; but 1840 was in the dark ages. So Cæsarea has passed; the Vandals, the Arabs, the earthquakes, and the French have all done their worst: and between them they have made an end of it. Perhaps even a systematic excavation would not yield us much of value. The statues to be seen in the museum are for the most part copies of statues already found at Rome, and suggest that there was little originality in the artists employed by Juba and Selene. But nothing can impair the beauty of the site, and not even the presence of a banal Franco-Arab town can forbid us to dream of a white marble city beneath a deep blue sty and facing a purple sea.

So we turn homewards. For a while we follow the Marengo road by which we came; pass the great aqueduct again; but shortly turn to the left to reach Tipasa and the seaside road to Algiers. As we approach the coast traces of the Roman past are everywhere;—on every mound great shaped stones, “the splendid wrecks of former pride,” lie in confusion, and here and there a portico suggests the existence of a suburban villa,

“While oft some temple’s mouldering tops between With memorable grandeur mark the scene.”

When we reach Tipasa itself the great stones lie in heaps, in most admired disorder. The ruins in their extent seem to indicate the existence of a greater town than the historians admit Tipasa to have been. It is said to have been founded by Claudius as a colony of veterans, and to have contained 20,000 inhabitants. It is rich in memories of the great Arian controversy which played so important a part in the history of North Africa after the triumph of Christianity. In A.D. 484 the Vandal king, Huneric, imposed an Arian bishop on the Catholic inhabitants. A great part fled to Spain; those who remained and refused to accept the heresy had their right arms lopped off and their tongues cut out. It would seem that different branches of Christendom have often been inclined to treat their erring brethren with more severity than they meted out to the unregenerate heathen. Perhaps the heathen has ever been a more likely convert.

The situation of Tipasa belies the opinion that the ancients had no eye for natural scenery. It stood on a fair promontory sheltering from the east a little cove which is protected from the west by the great mountain mass of Djebel-Chénoua, which lies between Tipasa and Cherchel. The country around is singularly picturesque, and the _tout ensemble_ very beautiful, even for this beautiful coast.

Thence we start for a run of fifty or sixty miles by the seaside road to Algiers, a road which has been splendidly engineered, and is kept for the most part in a condition beyond praise. In front of us stretches the coast-line past the Bay of Algiers to Cap Matifou; on our right are the wooded hills of the Sahel. Here and there the land between the road and the sea is laid out in gardens formed in small rectangular plots divided by hedges of a tall reed to break the force of the wind. Even so the Dutch nurserymen erect screens to protect their tulips on the wind-swept lowlands of Holland. In these enclosures we particularly note frequent plantations of the tall “silver” banana. And so in due time we reach Algiers, conscious of a well-spent day.

Travel gives the death-blow to many illusions. If there is one tenet to which British self-complacency has clung with more desperate energy than another, it is that our people are the only successful colonists. We are ready to admit that the German has hardly had a fair chance. He is relegated for the present to desert tropical lands which failed in the past to tempt even Portugal. That France owns colonies of a different class we have been dimly aware, but the oracles of the club and of the Press have consistently pictured to us the French colonist as a miserable being who passes his time sipping absinthe in a café, and longing for his return to _la belle France_. Possibly in the purlieus of Algiers such a being might be discovered; at any rate, he is certainly not more in evidence than the “remittance men” and bar-loafers are in our own colonies. And a motor drive for twenty or thirty miles through the rich plain which encircles Algiers will send our long-cherished belief a-packing to the limbo of dead British prejudices. We have recently discovered that the home-staying French, at any rate, know something about practical gardening, and the raising of vegetable crops for market; that their scientific methods and untiring energy combine to get more out of the ground than we do; and we have even been led to pocket our pride and to import certain practical French gardeners, at a fancy wage, to show us how the thing is done. In this we are only following the example of our ancestors, who acquired most of their arts and crafts from French and Flemish refugees. Yet it was quite a shock when one of these new-comers, looking round him at the fair fields of the home farm on a great estate in a southern county, ingenuously remarked, “But why is not this country cultivated?”

Of this great plain between the sea and the mountains no such question could be asked. Some corn is raised, and some vegetables, such as artichokes, but most of it is devoted to the culture of the vine. It is all in the highest state of cultivation, and not an inch is wasted. The vines are planted in open fields, with the precision of the hops of Kent. Now is the time of pruning, and they are all being cut back to within a foot or so of the ground. To an eye accustomed to the hill-side and rocky vineyards of the Rhine, of Italy, or of Madeira, to the vines which in Southern Europe throw themselves in reckless abandon over trellises and wayside trees, these flat fields, which suggest turnips or beet, have a very unromantic appearance. But it is easy to see that the cultivation is conducted on the most scientific and business-like lines.

It was our privilege to be invited to visit a French gentleman and his family at their residence about twenty miles from Algiers. Our host has purchased a large tract of land, the whole of which he has turned into a great vineyard. He has built a pleasant country house, and filled it with treasures of Arab art, and the trophies of travel in other lands. He has planted a garden of palms and sub-tropical shrubs—a garden not kept up to the standard of English trimness, but rich in shade, and pleasantly suggestive of a jungle. Not only are his vines planted and pruned with mathematical precision, but all his machinery for the extraction and treatment of the grape juice is of the latest and most practical character. A long building lined with huge vats gives an idea of the greatness of his undertaking, and is designed to enable him to hold the produce of two vintages in the event of a bad market:—a very important advantage to a producer. There is nothing of the model, or pleasure, farm about the place; it is all intensely practical. “It is an industry,” said our host; and indeed it is; a fine example of industrial intelligence applied to agriculture. The presence on the farm of two motor-cars and an aeroplane is evidence that he is otherwise abreast of the movement.

It may be that our host is exceptionally gifted, both in enterprise and resources, but at any rate his example must be of great value. And the vistas all around of similar properties with pleasant houses bowered in trees and gardens suggest that it is followed. It is agreeable to learn that this industry meets its due reward. In 1910 it has been exceptionally profitable. The chief buyers of Algerian wines are the wine-shippers of Bordeaux and Macon, from whose cellars they emerge as claret and Burgundy. The complete failure of the vintage in Europe has caused a rise of fully fifty per cent in the price of the produce of Algeria. In this happy climate, sure of its winter rain and its summer sun, a failure of the vintage is unknown and almost inconceivable. Viticulture has become the most important of the industries in which Europeans in Algeria are engaged, and its prosperity is of great importance to the Colony. Before the French conquest, the use of wine being forbidden by the Koran, the vine was only grown to a small extent for its fruit; the _raisin sucré_ of Khabylia was especially esteemed as a sweetmeat for dessert. The first colonists made experiments in the production of wine, but with insufficient knowledge and inadequate equipment. Wine-makers are an aristocracy among agriculturists; a high intelligence and inherited traditions count for much. The ravages of the phylloxera in France created the opportunity of Algeria. The wine-growers of the South thrown out of work were ready to emigrate, and the deficit in the mother country’s production offered a great market for the Colony. Since that time the industry has made steady progression. In 1850 2000 acres were under cultivation as vineyards; in 1905 about 450,000 acres. The production of wine, which amounted to 370,000 gallons in 1878, is now over 150,000,000 gallons. The price obtained for wine exported is subject to very wide fluctuations. In 1903 the 100,000,000 gallons exported realized £4,000,000. In 1906 110,000,000 gallons realized only £1,600,000.

Algeria has managed to keep comparatively free from the phylloxera; the provinces of Oran and Constantine, west and east, have suffered somewhat, but the central province, Algiers, has so far escaped. Energetic measures are taken to guard against the extension of the plague, and owners of vines which it is found necessary to destroy are compensated by the State. The policy of the Government is now not to encourage the extension of the vineyards, but to improve the quality of their produce. An effort should be made to find other outlets than the French market, and thus counteract the wide fluctuations in value which arise from its varying demands. Some attempt has already been made to produce rich dessert wines similar to those of Portugal and Madeira, of which there is a considerable consumption in France, and it would appear that there is no obstacle to its success. A delicious Muscat is already made, which might conceivably obtain a great vogue.

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_IV—A GARDEN AND SOME BUILDINGS_

Jardin d’Essai—A lost opportunity—Some suggestions—The villas of Mustapha—A model museum—Arab art—Its origins—Its limitations—Its significance.

“There is an art to which I hold no key, A tangled maze of curve and line I see; Do you, my brother, keener-eyed, discern A silent symbol of infinity?”

The amateur gardener, especially if he has any knowledge of tropical or sub-tropical horticulture, will probably not be long in Algiers without visiting the Jardin d’Essai. This modest title is given to an extremely successful attempt at acclimatization, chiefly of tropical trees, on a large scale. It was established by the Government eighty years ago, and is now the property of the Compagnie Générale Algérienne, which grows vast quantities of young palms and other trees for export to Paris and London.

The garden in itself will be a disappointment to the garden-lover. It is a rectangular piece of ground, intersected by straight alleys, and with the exception of a pool of water at the southern corner, containing a small island, there is little attempt at what is called landscape gardening. And the possibilities of a water-garden are neglected. One wonders what an Algerian Wisley would be like. The whole aspect of the place suggests a not very well kept nursery garden, which in effect it is. But the wealth of its contents completely atones for its poverty in design.

Perhaps the most striking feature is an avenue of india-rubber trees, which have attained a gigantic size,—a height in some cases of sixty feet and a girth of twenty feet. It is a wonder that this garden was not “floated” on the London market during the recent “boom.” At any rate, it does contain rubber trees, which it is understood some of the areas offered to the public did not. Another species of _ficus_ covers a large space of ground, throwing down fresh roots from its lateral branches, and apparently prepared to travel in this way in every direction. It is unfortunate that the trees and shrubs are very insufficiently labelled; occasional fragments of labels more or less indecipherable, and in some cases, I think, incorrect, may be discovered; but there is no systematic attempt to afford information. This ought not to be so in a garden for which the State is partially responsible.

The palms are very fine, and of many different species, including some great rarities which I am unable to name. All the commoner bamboos are in profusion, but being for the most part planted as hedges rather than as clumps they lose their natural effect. Various Yuccas vie with the india-rubber trees in their splendid growth. At the southern end of the garden, where the formality of the avenues gives place to a little wilderness, are some magnificent clumps of _Strelitzia augusta_,—finer in size and growth than I have seen elsewhere,—and towering above them are some lofty specimens of _Chorisia speciosa_ from Brazil. In the drier spots are various species of aloe; and in the wetter papyrus flourishes exceedingly. The fantastic _Monstrera deliciosa_ is quite at home, and imbeds its constricting coils in the palm-trunks, in a way which must be very painful to them.

Not much colour is to be expected in the early months of the year, but two or three Bougainvilleas make a moderate show, and both _Bignonia venusta_ and _B. Smithii_ are in flower. The exquisite _Plumbago Capensis_ is coming into bloom; also the single red _Hibiscus_ and its less attractive double variety. A little trouble spent on this garden would soon make it one of the finest in the world, without in any way impairing its commercial uses. The material is there, and a little skill in rearrangement of walks and in grouping of specimens is all that is wanted.

Perhaps a friendly critic may venture to be also an adviser. It is to be presumed that Algiers welcomes the advent of strangers. And I find that the local press records with satisfaction that hotels are full, and also that great steamers with hundreds of tourists constantly arrive. These strangers do good to trade, and it may therefore be worth while to pay a little attention to their tastes, and to increase rather than diminish the attractions which draw them hither. Even if the inhabitants of Algiers care little about the beauty of the surroundings of their city, they are part of its essential charm, and should be preserved from the destruction which is everywhere threatening them. The ruthless felling of ancient trees, the obstruction of points of view, the vulgarization of pleasant places,—these may seem little things individually, but in the mass they tell. There are, I believe, full powers to deal with such matters, and the Minister of the Interior has recently addressed to the _préfets_ of France a circular calling attention to the necessity of safeguarding sites of artistic and natural beauty. Let Algiers lead the way, and she will not repent it. But she may some day bitterly repent inaction now.

Another suggestion. It would not be a great matter for the town to purchase a block of buildings in the old streets below the Kasbeh, to clean them out and to preserve them without undue restoration. Strangers wish to see what the old town was like, and are not all able to battle with the squalor and turmoil of the old streets as they are. Such a little natural museum would more than pay for its cost. And—this is a smaller matter still—it would be for the convenience of foreigners if notices were affixed to public buildings, stating at what times they are opened to inspection. It is annoying, for instance, to arrive at the Bibliothèque in the morning and to find it closed, with nothing to indicate when it will be open.

I could extend these suggestions. But perhaps it would be too much to expect in a town largely peopled by Mohammedans that strangers visiting the mosques, or even passing in their neighbourhood, should be relieved from the importunities of irresponsible and worrying touts. The town is generally so well policed; the importunity of beggars is so trifling with what one suffers in Egypt, for example; that, like Oliver Twist, one asks for more.