CHAPTER XIX

BETWEEN THE DESERT AND THE SOWN

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 eight hours, and that's almost fifteen miles an hour. Delightful, isn't it? At the same time this snail's-pace gives one a chance to observe things as he goes along, and there is much to observe.

The high plateau on which sits Constantine, surrounded by its grain fields and its grazing-grounds, is a vastly productive region, and prosperity for the European and the _indigène_ comes easily enough. The conditions of life here are more comfortable than elsewhere in the Algerian countryside, save perhaps in the Mitidja around Blida.

This great plateau of the Tell, the granary of Africa and one of the finest wheat-growing belts of the old world, knows well the rigours of winter; but the summer is long and hot, and crops push out from the ground with an abundance known nowhere else in these parts.

The mountains of "Grande Kabylie" bound it on the west and north, and the Aures on the east and south. Beyond is the desert and its oases. The contrast of topography and climate between the desert and the "sown" is remarkable. All changes in the twinkling of an eye as one passes through the rocky gorge of El Kantara,--one of those mythological marvels accomplished by the hand or heel of Hercules. At any rate, the cleft in the rock wall is there, and in a hundred yards one leaves the winds and chilly atmosphere of a late autumn or early winter's day behind, and plunges into the still, burning atmosphere of the desert, with palm-tree oases scattered here and there. The same phenomenon may be observed elsewhere, but not in so forcible a fashion. At Batna in winter you may see an occasional bear-skin coat, with the "fur side out," and at Biskra, sixty odd miles away, you will find a temperature of say 30 degrees centigrade--86 degrees Fahrenheit.

_En route_ from Constantine by railway no towns or cities of note are passed until the great military post of Batna is reached. Here one may break his journey and get an aspect of the mingling life of the desert and the town Arab, which is astonishing in its complexity. The town Arab lives much as we do ourselves,--at least some of his species do,--wears, sometimes, a Norfolk jacket and shoes, which he calls "_forme Américaine_," and travels first-class on the railway when he takes his promenades abroad. The other still clings to his burnous and takes off his shoes at every opportunity, travelling by camel caravan, as did his ancestors of a thousand years ago.

Batna itself possesses no monuments of note. It is, however, the starting-point for Lambessa and Timgad, the finest ancient Roman ruined cities left standing above ground to-day,--not excepting Pompeii. A résumé of the delights of these fascinating Roman relics is given in another chapter of this book.

Batna possesses a remarkably well-kept commercial hotel, the "Hôtel des Étrangers et Continentals." It is not a tourist hotel, which is all the better for it. Moreover it has electric lights in the bedrooms, and a very distinctive and excellent menu on the table. What more could one want--in what people are wont to think of as savage Africa?

We took a likely looking Arab for a guide at Batna, though indeed there was nothing special in the immediate neighbourhood for him to guide us to. He wore a "Touring Club de France" badge in his turban, and read religiously each month the T. C. F. "_Revue_," and accordingly he appropriated every stranger as his right, whether one would or no. He was useful, however, in keeping off other importunate Arabs in the great market as we strolled between the stalls.

Batna's negro village is curiously interesting, though squalid and in ill repute among the authorities.

"_Ici le village nègre_;" says your Arab guide after you have trudged a couple of kilometres over a real desert trail. There are only a few of these "black blocks" in North Africa, the negroes usually mingling with the Arabs.

At night, in Batna's _village nègre_, one might think he was in some head-centre of voodooism, so quaint and discordant are the sights and sounds. Negroes are much the same the world over, whenever they herd together, whether they come from the Soudan, Guinea, or Alabama.

Here in Algeria the negro café is a coffee-shop only a shade more murky than the other coffee-shops. And the faces of those squatting round about, though they glisten in the smoky atmosphere,--ineffectually penetrated by a dim light radiating from a swinging lamp in the centre,--are more dusky.

A tumultuous, raucous chant breaks out above a murmur now and then, though most of the time the sound is a mysterious crooning wail, the genuine negro wail, which is not at all like the banshee's, but quite as penetrating.

It might be a prison cell or the hold of a slave-ship, this negro café, for all one can distinguish of its appointments. There is nothing luxurious here; it is not classy or exclusive in the least. A _sou_ a cup is the price the negro pays for his coffee. And since he hasn't the Arabs' prejudices against strong drink, he can get beet-root and turnip-top _cognac_ and chemically made absinthe at cut-rate prices, which appeal largely to his pocket, if not his taste.

This symphony in dusk, and in thin, shrill so-called music, is impressive. There are negro musicians, negro dancing-women, and a negro proprietor. It's the real, unadulterated "coontown" drama, where the players are the real thing, and not the coffee-coloured "In-Dahomey" kind.

One touch of white only was to be seen in Batna's negro café. This was an Arab of the Hauts-Plateaux, with a long, aquiline profile and a flowing burnous and _haïk_, most probably the lover of one of the trio of dancing-women. His emotions were passive. He might have been at home under his own vine and fig-tree. Still he was out of place, and looked it. The most he would do was to give a sickly smile at some rude pleasantry of his black companions,--and we did that ourselves.

What of this negro company were not drinking thick, muddy coffee or "caravan" tea were smoking _kif_. The odour of opium, mint, and kerosene was abominable. A negro of the Soudan might stand it, but not a white man; at least none whiter than the lone Arab. So we passed on our way, the dancing-women shrieking, the shrill trumpet or _chalumeau_ squealing, the tambourine jangling, and the oil-lamp smoking. It was not heavenly.

Batna has a very excellent French school for Arab children, and it is there that the young idea learns how to "_parler Français_." The French schools are doing good work, no doubt, but they are spoiling the simplicity of the native.

At Batna we saw a school "prize-giving," which was conducted as follows:

"Premier prix d'application," called out a black-coated preceptor, "Abdurhaman-ben-Mohammed, Arachin-el-Oumach." "Boum! Boum!" shouted the rest of the class.

Second prize, third prize, and so on; and all the little rag-tag brown and black population came up in a long file,--they all got prizes apparently,--and the whole thing wound up, as all French functions do, even if they are in the heart of Africa, with the singing of the "Marseillaise."

The next objective point, going south from Batna, is El Kantara and its gorge.

If ever Longfellow's poetic lines were applicable, they are here.

"Suddenly the pathway ends, Sheer the precipice descends, Loud the torrent roars unseen; Thirty feet from side to side, Yawns the chasm; on air must ride He who crosses this ravine."

El Kantara is easily the most remarkable "sight" of all Algeria. Its Hotel Bertrand is a most excellently verandaed establishment,--almost the only house in the place,--and one may sit on its gallery and watch a continual stream of camels, horses, mules, and donkeys going by its dooryard all the livelong day. The trail of other days has now become a "Route Nationale," and is the only means of highway communication, for a hundred miles east or west, between the plateau lands of the north and the desert of the south. Here all roads and tracks coming from a wide area in the north converge to a narrow thread of a road which squeezes itself between the uprights of the rocky walls of the Gorge of El Kantara.

The Romans knew this cleft in the rocky wall, and built a fine old Roman bridge to clear the rushing torrent below. The bridge is still there, an enduring monument to the Roman builder, but a new road and a railway bridge now overhang it; so it remains simply as a milestone in the march of progress.

The red curtain-rocks of the mountain chain at El Kantara form the dividing-line between the north and the south. Suddenly, as one clears the threshold, he comes upon a smiling oasis of a hundred thousand date-palms, where a kilometre back was a sterile, pebbly plateau-plain. Three little baked-mud villages, the "_Village Rouge_," the "_Village Blanc_," and the "_Village Noir_," huddle about the banks of the Oued Kantara with waving palms overhead and a rushing, gurgling torrent at their feet.

There are mouflons and gazelles in the mountains on either side, and "the chase" is one of the inducements held out by the hotel and Messaoud-ben-Ghebana to prolong your stay. They don't guarantee you either a mouflon (which is the "Barbary sheep" the novelists write about) or a gazelle; but Messaoud-ben-Ghebana will find them if any one can, and charge you only five francs a day for his services,--including a donkey to carry the traps.

There are three classic excursions to be made at El Kantara,--always, of course, with Messaoud as guide. To the Gorges de Tilatou, to the Gorges de Maafa, and to Beni-Ferah. You may get a gazelle on the way, or you may not, but you will experience mountain exploration in all its primitiveness. If you like it, you can keep it up for a week or a month, for El Kantara is a much finer centre for making excursions from, or indeed for spending the winter in, than Biskra and its overrated attractions of great hotels, afternoon tea, Quaker Oats, Huntley & Palmer's, and "Dundee,"--what the French call orange marmalade,--with which the grocers fill their shop-windows to catch visitors from across the seas.

El Kantara is an artist's paradise; the mountains, the desert, the palms of the oasis, and the native villages are all close at hand, and there, a short stroll away, is the ocean of sand itself.

The Artist set up shop _en plein désert_ one day, and turned her back for a moment only, when the outfit, white umbrella, paint-box, and camp-stool all disappeared as if buried in the dunes of sand. Not a trace of them was to be seen, nor of any living thing or person either, only a dim, shadowy low-spread tent, which had mysteriously sprung up beneath a neighbouring date-palm while her attention had been called away. From its cavernous door slowly emerged a real desert Arab and a train of followers, consisting of two or three women and a numerous progeny. Perhaps they knew something of a white umbrella, etc. No, they didn't. At least the father of the family didn't; but suddenly he spied under a corner of the tent flap something strange and hitherto unrecognized.

The umbrella was all right, also the stool, but the paint-box had been turned out, and the tubes looked, half of them, thin and twisted, as though they had been emptied; as indeed they had,--sucked dry by some of that numerous progeny like enough, though no ill effects were apparent. All was taken in at a glance, and the afore-mentioned father of the family turned on his offspring and called them "_putains de juif du Mellah_," "_rénégads_," "_voleurs_," "_racines amères_" and much more vituperation of the same kind. Apologies were profuse, but after all was said and done, we felt quite grateful for the exhibition of righteous wrath. The desert Arab is a stern father if a good one.

The Arab makes you angry sometimes, but in this case it was the children who had caused the trouble, and ragamuffins the world over lack responsibility, so that can't be laid to the Arab.