CHAPTER XIII

FROM ORAN TO THE MOROCCO FRONTIER

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 about to see, the rest of the country is its magnificent site and the recollection of the momentous history of its past.

The most striking characteristic of its life and manners is the manifest Spanish influence which is over all, a relic of days gone by. Even the chief city gate, the Porte d'Espagne, still bears the ornamental escutcheons of the old Madrillenian governors; and, three kilometres distant from the centre of the town, are the celebrated "_Bains de la Reine_," a remembrance of the epoch when Jeanne, "La Folle," daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, the mother of Charles V, took the baths there in state, "in company with a brilliant cortège of knights and ladies." Bathing was more of a public ceremony then than now, evidently.

One aspect of the life at Oran which one does not remark elsewhere is the numbers of Moroccans who slowly amble up and down, doing nothing, and living apparently in some mysterious fashion. The Moroccan of to-day is the typical Berber of our imagination, swarthy, lithe, and scraggy-bearded. He is not lovely to look upon, but he is picturesque.

One of the chief sights to be noted in the markets of Oran is the fruit market; and the principal article of commerce is the grenadine, a historic and classic fruit, and the one the most in favour with the Arab or Berber of simple tastes. It is not without reason that he chooses this delicious fruit; for it is food and drink in one. D'Annunzio called the grenadine an "_écrin en cuir vermeil, surmonté de la couronne d'un roi donateur_," and the description is faithful and poetic enough for any man. The Arab _toubibs_, or doctors, believe it to be an efficacious remedy for all ills, and that its seed originally descended from the skies, a gift from Heaven to struggling humanity. It is certainly very beneficent as a remedy for tropical fevers.

One will strain his eyes trying to hunt out more than a few of the vestiges of the old Oran of the Spaniards. The French have very nearly wiped them out. It was a great port in the days of the Romans, and between that time and the Spanish occupation it had a long history. The Mohammedans founded a town here a thousand years ago; and, about the time Columbus was sailing around the West Indian island trying to find a new way to the Orient, a Spanish author wrote that Oran had six thousand houses, a hundred and forty mosques, and schools and colleges equal to those of Cordova, Granada and Seville. It was sometime after this that Oran became Spanish, and in turn it reverted to the banished Moors, to become French in 1831.

Oran's evolution from Spanish to French is interesting. It was once a penal colony of Spain, where from seven to ten thousand wicked unfortunates sweltered under an African sun, laying the foundations of the present fortifications. The memory of this Spanish occupation is everywhere, but it is a memory only and is continually growing more vague. The soldiers of Islam captured Costechica from the Spaniards, and the French came in turn and took it and called it Oran.

Oran, like the rest of the North African coast cities and towns, is polyglot in its people and its architecture. The Orient rubs shoulders with the Far West, and the mingling is more astonishing and picturesque than delightful. A red fez, an alpaca coat, and white duck trousers is a bizarre effect, so is a bowler hat and a burnous. Joseph's coat of many colours was not more gaudy than that of many a Berber or Arab one sees to-day in Oran. The Sultans of other days have given way to an army Commandant, who, if he is a more practical person, is usually a less artistic one, and his influence is reflected in all his surroundings.

The two religious monuments of Oran are celebrated throughout all Algeria. The cathedral of St. Louis is a stronghold of the Christian church and an imposing, if not a very elegant, structure; whilst the Grande Mosquée, with the most remarkable and quaint octagonal minaret in all Algeria, was built by a former _pacha_ of Algiers with the money coming from the sale of Christian slaves. These two edifices well illustrate two opposing points of view, but they are both religious monuments.

If you can stand a mountain climb from Oran, go up the slope of Mount Mourdjadja, and have what a German authority has discovered to be the most impressive view in the world. The distance is but a few kilometres and the means of communication is shanks' mare. Majorca and Almeria on the coast of Spain may, it is said, be seen on a fine day. We have our doubts! The climb is the classic, conventional thing to do, however, if time permits.

Oran, like Algiers, Bona, and Philippeville, has become Europeanized, Frenchified. Four-fifths of its population is native, but ask a Frenchman and he will tell you: "_Il n'y a rien d'exotique, c'est Paris._" This shows that the Frenchman frequents the French part of the town, and knows little of the hidden charm which exists on the fringe. He knows the Arab as an inferior menial, or a possible customer for his goods, but he knows nothing of his life, and cares less.

The chief reason for coming to Oran at all is that it is the most convenient starting-point for Tlemcen. Tlemcen, lying well over to the Moroccan frontier, but linked with Oran by railway, is, in its plan and manner of life, the most original city in North Africa, the most captivating, and the least spoiled by modern innovations. It was the Pomaria of the Romans and enjoys to-day the same admirable belt of wooded shade that it did in those far-off days.

Tlemcen under Arab rule was sovereign of all the Moghreb, one of the great capitals of the Khalifs, the rival of Granada, Kairouan, Damascus, Cairo, and Bagdad.

Above its rocky-red substructure the walls and minarets of Tlemcen still pierce the azure sky, but no longer do the Sultans rule its people. A wild, untamed, savage soldiery has given place to French civil and military rule, and everybody is the more happy therefore. The Méchouar, the ancient palace of the Sultans, is an abandoned ruin, and the _caserne_ of the Spahis and the _Chasseurs d'Afrique_ now stand for a superior variety of law and order. The architecture of the Moors is at its very best at Tlemcen, even the fragmentary dilapidated remains in hidden-away corners are often the rival of the gems of the Alhambra itself.

Tlemcen is the most splendid and gracious artists' paradise in Algeria. A roving Frenchman whom we met at Algiers, and who painted better than he versified, wrote the following for us on the back of his card which he gave us as an introduction to the patron of the Hotel de France at Tlemcen.

"Il n'est pas une cité Qui dispute, sans folie, A Tlemcen la jolie La pomme de la beauté Et qui gracieuse étale Plus de pompe orientale Sous un ciel plus enchanté."

To-day at Tlemcen, more than in any other place in Algeria, one sees vestiges of the Moorish art and civilization of the days before the conquest, sculpturings in wall and gate, and tiny cupolas and minarets of a period greatly anterior to most others of their class. The fragmentary remains of Tlemcen's sixty mosques existing in the sixteenth century spring into view here and there, at each turning, in bewildering fashion. Tlemcen is in its decadence however, for from a city of 125,000 souls it has dried up to one of 30,000, of which perhaps a tenth part are European.

Tlemcen has many mosques, of which three must be noted as having been "viewed and remarked," as the antiquarians put it. The Grande Mosquée is the least grand, but it has a fine tower; the smallest mosque, that of Djama l'Hassen, is the most beautiful, and the best example of genuine Moorish architecture and decoration; the Mosque of El Haloui is the most daintily ornamented and most charming. The others dwindle down to ruined nothingness. Out of fifty-seven other minor mosques, most have been converted into cafés, shops, dwellings and sheep-folds, some are in ruins and some have disappeared entirely, but it is these unexpected fragments of a one-time splendour that makes the charm and value of Tlemcen for the artist.

The native life of Tlemcen is another great feature for the stranger, and a caravan of savage-looking creatures from Morocco is no unusual sight on a market day. How the late "disturbances" in Morocco are going to affect the interstate traffic remains to be seen. Probably the interstate part of it will be wiped out, and France will absorb it all, as she ought to do, whatever England and Germany may think. France has made a success in governing Mohammedans; the others have not. Jews, Ethiopians, and Arabs all people Tlemcen. That is what makes it so interesting to-day, and the types seem to be purer than elsewhere.

In the third century Tlemcen underwent a formidable siege at the hand of a Soudanese and his followers. The assailants were as tenacious as the defenders, and many times were obliged to retreat. It was one of the remarkable sieges of history. The would-be invaders built houses to replace their tents which were no protection against the rude climate they were forced to undergo for a protracted period, as did the Spaniards of Santa Fé under the walls of Granada. Less fortunate than Ferdinand and Isabella, the enemies of the Khalifas of Tlemcen were obliged to retreat, abandoning their fortifications on the height, which the besieged, however, disdained to occupy. It is thus that the fortifications of Mansourah have remained unoccupied for six hundred years, an ignoble monument to a campaign that failed.

The countryside roundabout is fresh and thickly grown with a subtropical African flora, but the snows of a rigorous winter--which occasionally rest on the hillsides for weeks at a time--give a weird, contrasting effect hard to reconcile with the topographical and architectural features of the landscape. The sight of Mansourah under a snowy blanket is one of the surprises which one, who twenty-four hours before left the vine-clad hillsides of Médea and the plains of orange groves neighbouring upon Blida, will never forget.

The legend of the Mosque of Mansourah is a classic among the Arabs who inhabit the mountain city of Tlemcen. A negro king of the Soudan, who himself as well as his followers were Mussulmans, invaded the region beyond the Atlas and laid siege to Tlemcen. So long and well-sustained was the siege that the invading army sought to build a mosque in their midst. A sort of competition was held, and the winners were a Jew and an Arab. The Soudanese king was at first embarrassed, and then enlightened by a happy idea which church-building committees might well adopt. He commissioned the Arab to proceed with the construction of the interior of the mosque, the Jew to be responsible for the exterior. A wonderful struggle took place, in which all the arts and ingenuities of the two races were brought to play, and which resulted in one of the most splendid of all Arab mosques.

The warrior king was highly pleased, and, calling the builders before him, said, frankly, that he had no words to express his satisfaction, nor ideas as to how they might be recompensed. The thing dragged for a time, as payment of architects' bills has ever done; and partisanship so got the influence of the better instincts of the king that, while he gave the faithful Mussulman builder many purses filled with gold, he condemned the "dog of an infidel Jew" to be imprisoned in the upper gallery of the minaret, for having dared to even penetrate the holy edifice. It never occurred to the dusky monarch that the procedure was defiling the shrine still more.

"Escape if you can," the Jew was told, as he was conducted to his prison. He did escape, after a fashion, so says the legend; for he made himself a pair of wings out of reeds and silks and cords; and, just as the blood-red sun plumped down behind the mountains of the Atlas, he launched himself in air. Like most flying-machine experimenters before and since, however, the daring innovator came forthwith to grief, falling precipitately at the base of the structure and smashing his skull.

He died almost instantly, but before he expired he uttered a final imprecation; the earth trembled, the thunder rolled, and the lightning blasted the minaret, which fell, as it may be seen to-day, lying almost _en bloc_, at full length, on the ground.

The same legend has its counterpart, with variations, in other lands, but it is as likely to be true of the Mosque of Mansourah as of the Cathedral of Orgis in Roumania, or at Cologne, in Crete or in Scandinavia. Legend was spread broadcast, even in the dark ages, by a system of "wireless" which has not yet been improved upon.

Beyond Tlemcen the nearest Algerian settlement of size to the Moroccan frontier is Lalla-Marnia, twenty-four kilometres only from the centre of the late insurrection at Oudjda, now occupied by the French. The name of this advanced post comes from that of a sainted woman buried in a tiny _kouba_ near the military camp. The place was always a strategic point, and formed the military frontier post of a band of Syrian invaders, who gave it originally the name of _Numerus Syrorum_.

Lalla-Marnia and Oudjda, one on Algerian soil and the other in Moroccan territory, separated by twenty-five kilometres of sandy roadway, bear each other a sisterly resemblance. The fêtes of Lalla-Marnia, with _fantasias_ and horse-races and a savage feasting of the natives, are followed by their counterpart at Oudjda a week later. Needless to say the fêtes are as yet unspoiled by non-contemporary interpolations.

North from Lalla-Marnia is the little townlet of Nédroma, whose clannish inhabitants are one and all descended from the Moors of Andalusia. The type here is the purest in North

Africa, and the custom which binds them together, presumably as a _totem_ or prevention against marrying with outsiders, is most curious. Each head of a family guards preciously the key of the paternal house in Spain, the same with which his ancestors locked their doors when they fled at the time of the expulsion of their race from the peninsula. Every one of the Moors of Nédroma expects some day, when the great bell sounds the tocsin of revenge, to return and take up life anew in Andalusia.

Away to the south of Tlemcen, or from Perrégaux, if one follows the railway, runs the road to far Sahara of the Sud-Oranais. Ain-Séfra, Beni-Ounif and Figuig are not even names known to the average outsider, albeit they have already achieved a certain prominence among geographers. Here the _habitants_, their manner of living, and their architecture take on a complexion quite different from anything known among the tribes of the north. All is blended with a savage crudeness which is alike exotic and picturesque. The Moorish mosques of the north give way to a severe Arab manner of building which is formidable and massive in outline and grim throughout. Mud, baked mud of a dingy red, packed together with straw and propped and bolstered here and there with the trunks of the palm-tree, are the chief characteristics of the Saharan Arab's place of worship and of his dwelling as well. The contrasting descent from the beauties of the Mauresque variety is astonishing.

Throughout the Sud-Oranais civilization of the European brand is fast spreading; the railway and the telegraph have reached Figuig and beyond, and absinthe--of a particularly forceful brew--can be had in the cafés, also Swedish matches (made in Belgium) and clay pipes (from Holland). Not long since all was a desert waste, but the "_Légionnaires_," that mixed crew of nation-builders propagated by the French military authorities, went down into the interior and traced roads and built fortifications until this anonymous work came to be succeeded by that of merchants and traders of all creeds.

One finds the "_kif_" shops at every little village _en route_, often where he will not even find a "_café maure_." Frequently in the towns these dens are relegated to a site without the walls, but they huddle as closely to the centre of affairs as the authorities will allow.

Architecturally and artistically they are but vile, unlovely holes, lighted usually by a single

_oeil_ hanging from the middle rafters. Most likely this _oeil_ is a fifty-cent barn lantern, made after the real Connecticut pattern, probably in Belgium or Germany. The oil that it burns is not even American; the "_Standard_" here in the Mediterranean is often Russian--put up in American tins. However, now that King Leopold of Belgium has gone into partnership with "_Standard_" representatives in the rubber business of the Congo, it's only fair to suppose there may be a Rockefeller interest in the Russian oil trade.

These _fumeries de kif_ are to all intents and purposes low-class cafés, peopled with all the nomad riffraff of the Mediterranean from Mogador to Crete. Seemingly no one is proprietor, but each shuffles around for himself regardless of any apparent reckoning to come. It is a picturesque setting indeed for a theatre of crime.

For furnishings, a straw mat covers a part of the floor, and a few cushions of grimy embroidered, or embossed, leather are backed up against the wall here and there. A great carven coffer, presumably a strong box containing the stock, ends the catalogue, if one excepts the now smoke-dimmed arabesques and horseshoe arched decorations of the walls themselves.

In one we saw tied a bald-headed vulture, a dirty fowl, and an itinerant blind musician with a tanned skin, twanging out minor chords on a _gambri_, or Arab guitar with two strings, and those not even catgut, but a poor Arab substitute therefor.

Figuig is the end of the railway line into the Sud-Oranais, and, though it and its Grand Hotel du Sahara are of little interest to the tourist, the surrounding environment is as far removed from civilization as one could hope to get and yet find himself fairly comfortable between the four walls of a hotel of imposing proportions.

Figuig is the virtual end of encroaching civilization; eight hundred odd kilometres from the coast straight south into the desert. The railway is not intended to stop at Figuig; and, by this time, it may have reached Colomb-Béchar, a hundred kilometres further on, to which point it was projected when these lines were written. Fifteen miles an hour is the ordinary speed of this toy railway, and the journey takes from twenty-four to thirty hours of uncomfortable and dusty travelling, which costs, however, only a matter of a hundred francs or so, coming and going.

Going east from Figuig, four hundred

kilometres, the only communication being by the caravan trail, is Laghouat, another outpost of civilization on the desert's edge.

Laghouat, like most desert towns, like Touggourt, like Tozeur, like Biskra even, is an oasis. In its markets one may see the traffickings of all the desert types of the Sahara, from the M'zab--the Auvergnats of Algeria--to the wandering nomads of the south,--the tramps of the desert, not omitting the picturesque _Ouled-Naïls_ and the terrible Touaregs, with their still more terrible-looking guns and their heads swathed in black veils.

At Laghouat and Figuig one gets the truest perspective of the life of the desert that one can have short of Oued-Souf in the Sud-Constantinois. Biskra is in the class of "exploited tourist points," whilst these desert towns are practically inaccessible to all but the hardiest of travellers,--the real genuine travel-lover, not those who are averse to riding in creaky diligences with dusky Arabs for companions, or on mule, donkey, or camel back, for all these means of locomotion come into the desert itinerary.