Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
Literature
by Various

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Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume
11, No. 24, March, 1873
Author: Various
Release Date: August 26, 2007 [EBook #22402]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
MARCH, 1873.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by J. B.
LIPPINCOTT & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes
moved to the end of the article.

THE ROUMI IN KABYLIA.
[Illustration: ALGIERS FROM THE SEA.]
A fact need not be a fixed fact to be a very positive one; and Kabylia, a
region to whose outline no geographer could give precision, has long
existed as the most uncomfortable reality in colonial France.
Irreconcilable Kabylia, hovering as a sort of thunderous cloudland
among the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, is respected for a capacity it
has of rolling out storms of desperate warriors. These troops disgust
and confound the French by making every hut and house a fortress: like
the clansmen of Roderick Dhu, they lurk behind the bushes, animating
each tree or shrub with a preposterous gun charged with a
badly-moulded bullet. The Kabyle, when excited to battle, goes to his
death as carelessly as to his breakfast: his saint or marabout has
promised him an immediate heaven, without the critical formality of a
judgment-day. He fights with more than feudal faithfulness and with
undiverted tenacity. He is in his nature unconquerable. So that the
French, though they have riddled this thunder-cloud of a Kabylia with
their shot, seamed it through and through with military roads, and
established a beautiful fort national right in the middle of it, on the
plateau of Souk-el-Arba, possess it to-day about as thoroughly as we

Americans might possess a desirable thunder-storm which should be
observed hanging over Washington, and which we should annex by
means of electrical communications transpiercing it in every direction,
and a resident governor fixed at the centre in a balloon. France has
gorged Kabylia, with the rest of Algeria, but she has never digested it.
[Illustration: "IMPREGNABLE KABYLIA."]
A trip through Algeria, such as we now propose, belongs, as a
pleasure-excursion, only to the present age. In the last it was made
involuntarily. Only sixty years ago the English spinster or spectacled
lady's-companion, as she crossed over from the mouth of the Tagus to
the mouth of the Tiber, or from Marseilles to Naples, looked out for
capture by "the Algerines" as quite a reasonable eventuality. (Who can
forget Töpfer's mad etchings for Bachelor Butterfly, of which this little
episode forms the incident?) Her respectable mind was filled with
speculations as to how many servants "a dey's lady" was furnished with,
and what was the amount of her pin-money. A stout, sound-winded
Christian gentleman, without vices and kind in fetters, sold much
cheaper than a lady, being worth thirty pounds, or only about one-tenth
the value of Uncle Tom.
[Illustration: BOUGIE, AND HILL OF GOURAYA.]
The opening up of Algeria to the modern tourist and Murray's
guide-books is in fact due to the American nation. So late as 1815 the
Americans, along with the other trading nations, were actually paying
to the dey his preposterous tribute for exemption from piratical seizure.
In this year, however, we changed our mind and sent Decatur over. On
the 28th of June he made his appearance at Algiers, having picked up
and disposed of some Algerine craft, the frigate Mashouda and the brig
Estido. The Algerines gave up all discussion with a messenger so
positive in his manners, and in two days Decatur introduced our
consul-general Shaler, who attended to the release of American
captives and the positive stoppage of tribute.
The example was followed by other nations. Lord Exmouth bombarded
Algiers in 1816, and reduced most of it to ashes. In 1827 the dey

opened war with France by hitting the French consul with his fan.
Charles X. retorted upon the fan with thirty thousand troops and a fleet.
The fort of Algiers was exploded by the last survivor of its garrison, a
negro of the deserts, who rushed down with a torch into the
powder-cellar. Algeria collapsed. The dey went to Naples, the
janizaries