CHAPTER VII IN ORAN HAVE left Morocco and am now travelling in Algeria, another important part of African France. The richest of the French colonial possessions lie along the southern shores of the Mediterranean, and of them all Algeria is perhaps the best. It is a winter garden for France, furnishing vegetables for all of her cities, besides being the granary which supplies a large part of her flour. Many look upon this country as a little strip of mountain and desert. The truth is that the part of it lying along the sea and running back up the foothills of the Atlas has some of the richest soil upon earth. This is the Tell, which includes a territory about as large as New York and Massachusetts combined, running clear across Algeria and on into Tunisia. The Tell for centuries has grown the wheat of this part of the world. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians built empires upon it and it was for a long time one of the principal bread baskets of imperial Rome. It was fought for by the Greeks and the Vandals. It became a Mohammedan land in the eighth century, when it was conquered by the Arabs Algeria consists of these rich lands of the Tell, of the high plateaus of the Atlas just south of them, and of the foothills running down into the Sahara. The country is just about as long from east to west as from Philadelphia to Cleveland and as wide as from Washington to Boston by way of New York. It contains as much land as all New England, with New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana added thereto. Northern Algeria, or Algeria proper, is divided into three departments, each beginning at the Mediterranean and cutting across to the Sahara. The largest of these is at the east and is known as Constantine. It is almost as big as Minnesota and has about the same number of people. The next is Algiers, which is not far from the size of Missouri, with a population of sixteen hundred thousand, and the other is the western province of Oran, where I am writing. Oran is just about the size of Pennsylvania, and contains more than one million people. Southern Algeria consists of the four territories of Ain Sefra, Ghardaia, Touggourt, and the Saharan oases. The population of Algeria is a mixture of Spaniards, Italians, French, Maltese, Jews, Negroes, the white Africans known as Kabyles, or Berbers, and Arabs. The Mohammedan Arabs predominate. The Negroes were originally brought across the Sahara as slaves and sold in the market of Algiers. In some of the Algerian oases the people are nearly all Negroes, and I see many in the towns. The Negro women often act as shampooers in the Moorish bath houses, while many of the men are beggars some of whom dance about singing weird songs to the clashing of queer iron cymbals. One such followed my carriage today. His dance was a sort of a nautch dance, consisting of a continuous contortion of the hips and a twisting of the waist. Oran has a fine harbour in a beautiful bay with a high, ragged mountain looking down upon it. East of the mountain there is a ravine or canyon with low hills extending eastward, while in and on the sides of this is the town of Oran. There is some flat ground for the wharves, but back of them the buildings of the city climb the hills in three great terraces, giving every house an outlook over the Mediterranean Sea. The port has all modern landing facilities, including steam cranes and electric lights. A long breakwater has been built out at the west against which the stormy Mediterranean dashes itself in vain. From the wharves one rides up smooth roads, which have been cut out of the sides of the mountain, to the upper parts of the city and the best hotels. Down near the port are great warehouses filled with alfa grass, bags of wheat and oats, hogsheads of wine, and other stuff ready for export. The wharves are piled high with such wares which are hauled up and down the hills by mules in immense drays, each carrying four or five tons. I have seen seven huge hogsheads of wine on one dray drawn by four mules hitched tandem, and other drays carrying loads that would seem an impossibility in the United States. Most of the traffic here goes upon two wheels, from the load of five tons on a cart with a bed twenty feet long, to a bushel or so hauled in a little store box on wheels by a donkey not much larger than a Newfoundland dog. The Algerian mule has an odd harness. The collar ends in three horns. Two of them are as long as cows' horns and extend out from the shoulders. The third, about two feet long, is just over the neck and is shaped like the horn of a rhinoceros. These horns are hung with bells, which jingle as the animals move. I observe that the mules have leather blankets tied on their backs. They may be for hot weather or rain. Some of the better animals have the hair clipped from their backs and sides. Many wear shoes that stick out about half an inch beyond the hoof all around. The shoes of the donkeys are made in a triangle with no opening at the back as in our horseshoes at home. About four fifths of the people of Oran are Europeans, and were it not for Moors, Negroes, and Berbers sprinkled through every crowd, a person might imagine himself in one of the smaller cities of France. The buildings are just like those of French towns. They are usually of an even height of five or six stories, built of brick and plastered with stucco of a creamy hue. They have stores and shops on the ground floor and apartments above. Most of the people live in flats or apartments. In nearly every block there is a restaurant or café, with little round iron tables on the street outside it about which a motley crowd sit drinking coffee, wine, or some other liquor as they gossip and chat, play cards or dominoes, or read the newspapers. At the same time there are little Arab bootblacks moving about begging custom, and Arab newsboys who are selling copies of the Oran daily for about two sous apiece. The city has a number of newspapers that publish dispatches from all over the world. It has schools, libraries, and a museum. There are parks scattered throughout the town, and under their trees French peasant girls are sitting and knitting; there are many bareheaded French women moving about, and now and then a Frenchman in a blouse is pushing a cart just as in France. If one would see the African side of this French town he |