CHAPTER I
GOING AND COMING

“Say, dear friend, wouldst thou go to the land where pass the caravans beneath the shadow of the palm trees of the Oasis; where even in mid-winter all is in flower as in spring-time elsewhere.” – Villiers de l’Isle Adam.

THE taste for travel is an acquired accomplishment. Not every one likes to rough it. Some demand home comforts; others luxurious appointments; but you don’t get either of these in North Africa, save in the palace hotels of Algiers, Biskra and Tunis, and even there these things are less complete than many would wish.

We knew all this when we started out. We had become habituated as it were, for we had been there before. The railways of North Africa are poor, uncomfortable things, and excruciatingly slow; the steamships between Marseilles or Genoa and the African littoral are either uncomfortably crowded, or wobbly, slow-going tubs; and there are many discomforts of travel – not forgetting fleas – which considerably mitigate the joys of the conventional traveller who affects floating hotels and Pullman car luxuries.

The wonderful African-Mediterranean setting is a patent attraction and is very lovely. Every one thinks that; but it is best always to take ways and means into consideration when journeying, and if the game is not worth the candle, let it alone.

This book is not written in commendation only of the good things of life which one meets with in North Africa, but is a personal record of things seen and heard by the artist and the author. As such it may be accepted as a faithful transcript of sights and scenes – and many correlative things that matter – which will prove to be the portion of others who follow after. These things have been seen by many who have gone before who, however, have not had the courage to paint or describe them as they found them.

Victor Hugo discovered the Rhine, Théophile Gautier Italy, De Nerval the Orient, and Merimée Spain; but they did not blush over the dark side and include only the more charming. For this reason the French descriptive writer has often given a more faithful picture of strange lands than that limned by Anglo-Saxon writers who have mostly praised them in an ignorant, sentimental fashion, or reviled them because they had left their own damp sheets and stogy food behind, and really did not enjoy travel – or even life – without them. There is a happy mean for the travellers’ mood which must be cultivated, if one is not born with it, else all hope of pleasurable travel is lost for ever.

The comparison holds good with regard to North Africa and its Arab population. Sir Richard Burton certainly wrote a masterful work in his “Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina,” and set forth the Arab character as no one else has done; but he said some things, and did some things, too, that his fellow countrymen did not like, and so they were loth to accept his great work at its face value.

The African Mediterranean littoral, the mountains and the desert beyond, and all that lies between, have found their only true exponents in Mme. Myriam Harry, MM. Louis Bertrand, Arnaud and Maryval, André Gide and Isabelle Eberhardt, and Victor Barrucaud. These and some others mentioned further on are the latter-day authorities on the Arab life of Africa, though the makers of English books on Algeria and Tunisia seem never to have heard of them, much less profited by their next-to-the-soil knowledge. Instead they have preferred to weave their romances and novels on “home-country” lines, using a Mediterranean or Saharan setting for characters which are not of Africa and which have no place therein.

This book is a record of various journeyings in that domain of North Africa where French influence is paramount; and is confidently offered as the result of much absorption of first-hand experiences and observations, coupled with authenticated facts of history and romance. All the elements have been found sur place and have been woven into the pages which follow in order that nothing desirable of local colour should be lost by allowing too great an expanse of sea and land to intervene.

The story of Algeria and Tunisia has so often been told by the French, and its moods have so often been painted by les “gens d’esprit et de talent,” that a foreigner has a considerable task laid out for him in his effort to do the subject justice. Think of trying to catch the fire and spirit of Fromentin, of Loti, of the Maupassants or Masqueray, or the local colour of the canvases of Dinet, Armand Point, Potter, Besnard, Constant, Cabannes, Guillaumet, or Ziem! Then go and try to paint the picture as it looks to you. Yet why not? We live to learn; and, as all the phases of this subtropical land have not been exploited, why should we – the author and artist – not have a hand in it?

So we started out. The mistral had begun to blow at Martigues (la Venise Provençal known by artist folk of all nationalities, but unknown – as yet – to the world of tourists), where we had made our Mediterranean headquarters for some years, but the sirocco was still blowing contrariwise from the south on the African coast, and it was for that reason that the author, the artist and another – the agreeable travelling companion, a rara avis by the way – made a hurried start.

We were tired of the grime and grind of cities of convention; and were minded, after another round of travel, to repose a bit in some half-dormant, half-progressive little town of the Barbary coast, or some desert oasis where one might, if he would, still dream the dreams of the Arabian nights and days, regardless of a certain reflected glamour of vulgar modernity which filters through to the utmost Saharan outposts from the great ports of the coast.

By a fortunate chance weather and circumstances favoured this last journey, and thus the making of this book became a most enjoyable labour.

We left Marseilles for the land of the sun at six of an early autumn evening, the “heure verte” of the Marseillais, when the whole Cannebière smells of absinthe, alcohol, and anise, and all the world is at ease after a bustling, rustling day of busy affairs. These men of the Midi, though they seemingly take things easy are a very industrious race. There is no such virile movement in Paris, even on the boulevards, as one may witness on Marseilles’ famous Cannebière at the seducing hour of the Frenchman’s apéritif. Marseilles is a ceaseless turmoil of busy workaday affairs as well. From the ever-present gaiety of the Cannebière cafés it is but a step to the great quais and their creaking capstans and shouting longshoremen.

From the quais of La Joliette all the world and his wife come and go in an interminable and constant tide of travel, to Africa, to Corsica and Sardinia; to Jaffa and Constantinople; to Port Said and the East, India, Australia, China and Japan; and westward, through Gibraltar’s Strait to the Mexican Gulf and the Argentine. The like of Marseilles exists nowhere on earth; it is the most brilliant and lively of all the ports of the world. It is the principal seaport of the Mediterranean and the third city of France.

Our small, tubby steamer slipped slowly and silently out between the Joliette quais and past the towering Notre Dame de la Garde and the great Byzantine Cathedral of Sainte Marie Majeur, leaving the twinkling lights of the Vieux Port and the Pharo soon far behind. Past Château d’If, the Point des Catalans, Ratonneau and Pomègue we steamed, all reminiscent of Dumas and that masterpiece of his gallant portrait gallery, – “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

The great Planier light flashed its rays in our way for thirty odd miles seaward, keeping us company long after we had eaten a good dinner, a very good dinner indeed, with café-cognac– or chartreuse, real chartreuse, not the base imitation, mark you, tout compris, to top off with. The boat was a poor, wallowing thing of eight hundred tons or so, but the dinner was much better than many an Atlantic liner gives. It had character, and was served in a tiny saloon on deck, with doors and ports all open, and a gentle, sighing Mediterranean brise wafting about our heads.

We were six passengers all told, and we were very, very comfortably installed on the Isly of the Compagnie Touache, in spite of the fact that the craft owned to twenty-seven years and made only ten knots. The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique has boats of the comparatively youthful age of twelve and seventeen, but they are so crowded that one is infinitely less comfortable, though they make the voyage at a gait of fifteen or sixteen knots. Then again the food is by no means so good or well served as that we had on the Isly. We have tried them both, and, as we asked no favours of price or accommodation in either case, the opinion may be set down as frank, truthful and personal. What others may think all depends on themselves and circumstance.

In Algeria, at any rate, one doesn’t find trippers, and there are surprisingly few of what the French call “Anglaises sans-gêne” and “Allemands grotesques.”

The traveller in Algeria should by all means eliminate his countrymen and study the native races and the French colons, if he wishes to know something of the country. Otherwise he will know nothing, and might as well have gone to a magic-lantern show at home.

It is a delightfully soft, exotic land which the geographers know as Mediterranean Africa, and which is fast becoming known to the world of modern travellers as the newest winter playground. The tide of pleasure-seeking travel has turned towards Algeria and Tunisia, but the plea is herein made to those who follow after for the better knowing of the places off the beaten track, Bou-Saada, Kairouan, the Oasis of Gabès, Oued-Souf or Tlemcen, for instance, something besides Mustapha, Biskra and Tunis.

Darkest Africa is no more darkest Africa. That idea was exploded when Stanley uttered his famous words: “Doctor Livingstone, I presume.” And since that day the late Cecil Rhodes launched his Cape to Cairo scheme, and Africa has been given over to diamond-mine exploiters, rubber collectors and semi-invalids, who, hearing wonderful tales of the climatic conditions of Assouan and Biskra, have foregathered in these places, to the joy of the native and the profit of the hotel director – usually a Swiss.

Occasionally one has heard of an adventurous tourist who has hunted the wild gazelle in the Atlas or the mountains of Kabylie, the gentlest man-fearing creature God ever made, or who has “camped-out” in a tent furnished by Cook, and has come home and told of his exploits which in truth were more Tartarinesque than daring.

The trail of the traveller is over all to-day; but he follows as a rule only the well-worn pistes. In addition to those strangers who live in Algiers or Tunis and have made of those cities weak imitations of European capitals and their suburbs as characterless as those of Paris, London or Chicago, they have also imported such conventions as “bars” and “tea-rooms” to Biskra and Hammam-R’hira.

Tlemcen and its mosques, however; Figuig and its fortress-looking Grand Hôtel du Sahara at Beni-Ounif; Touggourt and its market and its military posts; and Bou-Saada and Tozeur with their oases are as yet comparatively unknown ground to all except artists who have the passion of going everywhere and anywhere in search of the unspoiled.

When it comes to Oued-Souf with its one “Maison française,” which, by the way, is inhabited by the Frenchified Sheik of the Msaâba to whom a chapter is devoted in this book later on; or Ghardaïa, the Holy City of the Sud-Constantinois, the case were still more different. This is still virgin ground for the stranger, and can only be reached by diligence or caravan.

The railway with a fairly good equipment runs all the length of Algeria and Tunisia, from the Moroccan frontier at Tlemcen to Gabès and beyond, almost to the boundary of Tripoli in Barbary. An automobile would be much quicker, and in some parts even a donkey, but the railway serves as well as it ever does in a new-old country where it has recently been installed.

If one enters by Algiers or Oran and leaves by Tunis or even Sfax or Gabès he has done the round; but if opportunity offers, he should go south from Tlemcen into the real desert at Figuig; from Biskra to Touggourt; or from Gabès to Tozeur. Otherwise he will have so kept “in touch” with things that he can, for the asking, have oatmeal for breakfast and marmalade for tea, which is not what one comes, or should come, to Africa for. One takes his departure from French Mediterranean Africa from Tunis or Bizerte.

Leaving Tunis and its domes and minarets behind, his ship makes its way gingerly out through the straight-cut canal, a matter of six or eight miles to La Goulette, a veritable Italian fishing village in Africa which the Italian population themselves call La Goletta. Here the pilot is sent ashore, – he was a useless personage anyway, but he touches a hundred and fifty francs for standing on the bridge and doing nothing, – the ship turns a sharp right angle and sets its course northward for Marseilles, leaving Korbus and the great double-horned mountain far in the distance to starboard.

Carthage and its cathedral, and Sidi-bou-Saïd and its minarets are to port, the red soil forming a rich frame for the scintillating white walls scattered here and there over the landscape. La Marsa and the Bey’s summer palace loom next in view, Cap Carthage and Cap Bon, and then the open sea.

Midway between Tunis and Marseilles, one sees the red porphyry rocks of Sardinia. Offshore are the little isles which terminate the greater island, the “Taureau,” the “Vache” and the “Veau.” They are only interesting as landmarks, and look like the outcroppings of other Mediterranean islands. In bad weather the mariners give them a wide berth.

The sight of Sardinia makes no impression on the French passengers. They stare at it, and remark it not. The profound contempt of the Frenchman of the Midi for all things Italian is to be remarked. Corsica is left to starboard, still farther away, in fact not visible, but the Frenchman apparently does not regret this either, even though it has become a French Département. “Peuh: la Corse,” he says, “un vilain pays,” where men pass their existence killing each other off. Such is the outcome of traditional, racial rancour, and yet the most patriotic Frenchman the writer has ever known was a Corsican.

“Voilà! le Cap Sicié!” said the commandant the second morning at ten o’clock, as he stood on the bridge straining his eyes for a sight of land. We didn’t see it, but we took his word for it. A quarter of an hour later it came into view, the great landmark promontory, which juts out into the Mediterranean just west of Toulon.

Just then with a swish and a swirl, and with as icy a breath as ever blew south from the snow-clad Alps, down came the mistral upon us, and we all went below and passed the most uncomfortable five hours imaginable, anchored off the Estaque, in full view of Marseilles, and yet not able to enter harbour. The Gulf of Lyons and the mistral form an irresistible combination of forces once they get together.

At last in port; the douanier keeps a sharp lookout for cigars and cigarettes (which in Algeria and Tunisia sell for about a quarter of what they do in France), and in a quarter of an hour we are installed in that remarkably equipped “Touring Hotel” of Marseilles’ Cours Belzunce. Art nouveau furniture, no heavy rugs or draperies, metallic bedsteads, and hot and cold running water in every room. This is a good deal to find on this side of the Atlantic. The house should be made note of by all coming this way. Not in the palace hotels of Algiers, Biskra or Tunis can you find such a combination.