Lippincotts Magazine | Page 3

for the rare beauty of its site. It pants on a rock whose gorges of lime are the seat of a perpetual thirst. In vain have the suffering natives sunk seven basins in one alley of the town, the cleft separating the quarter of the Son of David from that of the children of Jesus (Aissa). The water only trickles by drops, and, though plentiful in winter, deserts them altogether in the season when their air-hung gardens, planted in earth brought up from the plains, need it the most. As the mellowing of the season brings with it its plague of aridity, recourse is had to the river at the bottom of the ravine, the Oued-Hamadouch. Then from morning to night perpendicular chains of diminutive, shrewd donkeys are seen descending and ascending the precipice with great jars slung in network.
[Illustration: KABYLE GROUP.]
But the Hamadouch itself in the sultry season is but a thread of water, easily exhausted by the needs of a population counting three thousand mouths. Then the folks of Kalaa would die of thirst were it not for the foresight of a marabout of celebrity, whom chance or miracle caused to discover a hidden spring at the bottom of the rock. By the aid of subscriptions among the rich he built a fountain over the sources of the spring.
It is a small Moorish structure, with two stone pilasters supporting a pointed arch. In the centre is an inscription forbidding to the pious admirers of the marabout the use of the fountain while a drop remains in the Hamadouch. To assist their fidelity, the spring is effectually closed except when all other sources have peremptorily failed, in the united opinion of three amins (Kabyle sheikhs). When the amins give permission the chains which restrain the mechanism are taken off, and the conduits are opened by means of iron handles operating on small valves of the same metal. In the great droughts the fountain of Marabout Yusef-ben-Khouia may be seen surrounded with a throng of astute, white-nosed asses, waiting in philosophic calm amid the excitement and struggle of the attendant water-bearers.
[Illustration: YUSEF'S FOUNTAIN.]
Seen hence, from the base of the precipice, where abrupt pathways trace their zigzags of white lightning down the rock, and where no vegetation relieves the harsh stone, the town of Kalaa seems some accursed city in a Dantean Inferno. Seen from the peaks of Bogni, on the contrary, the nest of white houses covered with red tiles, surmounted by a glittering minaret and by the poplars which decorate the porch of the great mosque, has an aspect as graceful as unique. In a vapory distance floats off from the eye the arid and thankless country of the Beni-Abbes. On every level spot, on every plateau, is detected a clinging white town, encircled with a natural wreath of trees and hedges. They are all visible one from the other, and perk up their heads apparently to signal each other in case of sudden appeal: it is by a telegraphic system from distance to distance that the Kabyles are collected for their incorrigible revolutions. Two ruined towers are pointed out, called by the Kabyles the Bull's Horns, which in 1847 poured down from their battlements a cataract of fire on Bugeaud's chasseurs d'Orléans, who climbed to take them, singing their favorite army-catch as well as they could for want of breath:
As-tu vu la casquette, la casquette, As-tu vu la casquette du Père Bugeaud?
Far away, at the foot of the Azrou-n'hour, an immense peak lifting its breadth of snow-capped red into the pure azure, the populous town of Azrou is spread out over a platform almost inaccessible.
[Illustration: THE LATEST IMPROVED REAPER.]
What a strange landscape! And what a race, brooding over its nests in the eagles' crags! Where on earth can be found so peculiar a people, guarding their individuality from the hoariest antiquity, and snatching the arts into the clefts of the mountains, to cover the languid races of the plains with luxuries borrowed from the clouds! The jewelry and the tissues, the bornouses and haiks, the blacksmith-work and ammunition, which fill the markets of Morocco, Tunis and the countries toward the desert, are scattered from off these crags, which Nature has forbidden to man by her very strongest prohibitions.
We are now in the midst of what is known as Grand Kabylia. The coast from Algiers eastward toward Philippeville, and the relations of some of the towns through which we have passed, may be understood from the following sketch:
[Illustration]
The scale of distances may be imagined from the fact that it is eighty-seven and a half miles by sea from Algiers to Bougie. The country known as Grand Kabylia, or Kabylia par excellence, is that part of Algeria forming the great square whose corners are Dellys, Aumale, Setif and Bougie. Though