In the Land of Mosques & Minarets

One arrives at Tozeur via Sfax and Gafsa and the light narrow-gauge railway belonging to the company exploiting the phosphate mines. Beyond Gafsa the line runs to Metlaoui, peop...

Algeria and Tunisia are already the vogue, and Biskra, Hammam-R'hira and Mustapha are already names as familiar as Cairo, Amalfi or Teneriffe, even though the throng of "_colis...

There are three kinds of _noblesse_ among the Arabs: there is the aristocrat class, the _noblesse de race_, descended, so they think, from Fatma, the daughter of the Prophet; th...

No one unless he be a Mohammedan can hope to experience the sentiments and emotions born of the Mussulman religion, or explain the fundamental principles of the Koran. It is a t...

A camel may be a cumbersome, ungainly and unlovely creature, and may be destined to be succeeded by the automobile, to which he seems to have taken a violent dislike; but there...

Old Tunis fortunately remains old Tunis. It has not been spoiled, as has Algiers, in a way. Its crooked streets and culs-de-sac are still as they were when pachas kept their har...

Kabylie is a wild, strange land known to few and peopled by many, though indeed the population is mostly native. Colonization has not made great inroads into the mountains of Gr...

Constantine is one of the natural citadels of the world. Hitherto we had only known it by name, and that chiefly by the contemplation of Vernet's "Siége de Constantine," in that...

The western gateway to French Africa is through Oran, which, with its 88,000 inhabitants, is the second city of Algeria. Its chief attraction for the tourist who has seen, or is...

For twenty years France has been putting forth her best efforts and energies into the development of Tunisia, to make it a worthy and helpful sister to Algeria. From a French po...

The whole region just west of Algiers is very properly accounted the garden of North Africa. Wheat, the vine, the orange, and all the range of _primeurs_ which go to grace the _...

One comes to associate the ancient Roman with Gaul, and is no longer surprised when he contemplates the wonderful arenas of Arles and Nîmes or the arch and the theatre at Orange...

Throughout North Africa, from Oran to Tunis, one encounters everywhere, in the town as in the country, the distinct traits which mark the seven races which make up the native po...

"A travers la douceur de tes jeunes jardins Je m'avance vers toi, Tunis, ville étrangère. Je te vois du haut des gradins De ta colline d'herbe et de palmes légères."

The Arab is not wholly a silent, morose individual. He has his joys and sorrows, and his own proper means of expressing them like the rest of us. Here in Mediterranean Africa he...

To get into the interior back of Algiers, you make your start from Maison Carrée. Here one gets his first glimpse of the real countryside of Algeria. These visions of the Arab l...

_Biskra, tout le monde descend! ouf!_ It might be Jersey City or Chicago; one experiences at last that sense of having reached a journey's end. At least it will seem so to most...

Algeria is by no means savage Africa, even though its population is mostly _indigène_. It forms a "_circonscription académique_" of France. It has a national observatory, a bran...

The first view of Algiers from the ship, as one enters the port, is a dream of fairyland, "_Alger la Blanche!_" "_El Djesair la molle!_" If it is in the morning, all is white an...

"Say, dear friend, wouldst thou go to the land where pass the caravans beneath the shadow of the palm trees of the Oasis; where even in mid-winter all is in flower as in spring-...

Gothic architecture is expressive of much that a mixed or transitory style lacks, but again the Roman, or Lombard, or the later architecture of the Renaissance, have their own p...

Algeria is guarded by an army of 60,000 men. But they keep the peace only, for there is no warfare in Algeria or Tunisia to-day. In the days of the Roman legions less than half...

Carthage, redolent of the memories of Dido, of Æneas, of Hannibal, of Cato, of Scipio, and a thousand other classic souvenirs of history, is the chief sight for tourists in the...

The real Barbary coast of the romantic days of the corsairs was the whole North African littoral. Here the pirates and corsairs had their lairs, their inlet harbours known only...

South from Constantine to Biskra at the desert's edge is two hundred kilometres as the crow flies. As the humble apology of an _express_-train goes, the distance is covered in e...

As a Kentucky colonel once said, the pure-bred Arabian horse is a fine thing in his native land; but there is more good horse-flesh, per head of population, in the United States...