Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 | Page 5

the inquisitive eye of the
Roumi. The roofs are of tile, for the winters on the hills are too severe
to permit the flat, terraced roofs of Algiers or Bona. These white houses,
roofed with brown, give a perfectly original aspect to the city as seen
from any of the neighboring eminences. The plateau of Mansourah is
connected with the town by a magnificent Roman bridge, two stories in
height, restored by the French.
[Illustration: ROMAN BRIDGE AT CONSTANTINA.]
From this bridge, which is three hundred feet high by three hundred
and fifteen feet in length, and has five arches, you look down into the
bed of the Rummel, while the vultures and eagles scream around you,
and you recite the words of the poet El Abdery, who called this river a
bracelet which encircles an arm. The gorge opens out into a beautiful
plain rich with pomegranates, figs and orange trees. The sea is
forty-eight miles away.
The last bey of Constantina, not knowing that he was merely building
for the occupancy of the French governors who were to come after him,
decreed himself, some fifty years ago, a stately pleasure-dome, after the
fashion of Kubla Khan. From the ruins of Constantina, Bona and Tunis,
Ahmed Bey picked up whatever was most beautiful in the way of
Roman marbles and carving. With these he built his halls, while the
Rummel, through caverns measureless to man, ran on below. Some
Frenchman of importance will now-a-days give you the freedom of this
curious piece of Turkish construction, where, among storks and ibises
gravely perched on one stilt, you examine the relics of Roman history,

preserved by its very destroyers, according to the grotesque providence
that watches over the study of archæology.
[Illustration: BEY'S PALACE, CONSTANTINA.]
You are told how Ahmed, wishing to adorn the walls of his gallery or
loggia with frescoes, of which he had heard, but which he had no artist
capable of executing, whether Arab, Moor or Jew, applied to a prisoner.
The man was a French shoemaker, who had never touched a brush: he
vainly tried to decline the honor, but the bey was inflexible: "You are a
vile liar: all the Christians can paint. Liberty if you succeed, death if
you disobey me."
[Illustration: SHAMPOOING THE ROUMI.]
Extremely nervous was the hand which the painter malgré lui applied
to the unlooked-for task. From the laborious travail of his brain issued
at length an odd mass of arabesques with which the walls were
somehow covered. His invention exhausted, he awaited in an agony of
fear the inspection of his Turkish master. He came, and was enchanted.
The painter was free, and the bey observed: "The dog wanted to
deceive me: I knew that all the Christians could paint."
You are amazed to find, in this nest of Islamite savagery and among
these wild rocks, the uttermost accent of modern French politeness.
Your presence is a windfall in quarters so retired, and you sit among
orange plants and straying gazelles, while the military band throws
softly out against the inaccessible crags the famous tower-scene from
the fourth act of Il Trovatore. As night draws on, tired of your
explorations, you seek a Moorish bath.
Let no tourist, experienced only in the effeminate imitations of the
hummum to be found in New York or London, expect similar
considerate treatment in Algeria. He will be more likely to receive the
attention of the M'zabite bather after the fashion narrated in the
following paragraph, which is a quotation from an English journalist in
the land of the Kabyles:

"We were told to sit down upon a marble seat in the middle of the hall,
which we had no sooner done than we became sensible of a great
increase of heat: after this each of us was taken into a closet of milder
temperature, where, after placing a white cloth on the floor and taking
off our napkins, they laid us down, leaving us to the further operations
of two naked, robust negroes. These men, newly brought from the
interior of Africa, were ignorant of Arabic; so I could not tell them in
what way I wished to be treated, and they handled me as roughly as if I
had been a Moor inured to hardship. Kneeling with one knee upon the
ground, each took me by a leg and began rubbing the soles of my feet
with a pumice stone. After this operation on my feet, they put their
hands into a small bag and rubbed me all over with it as hard as they
could. The distortions of my countenance must have told them what I
endured, but they rubbed on, smiling at each other, and sometimes
giving me an encouraging look, indicating by their gestures the good it
would do me.